http://www.rainbowbody.net/Finalempire/FEchap5.htm“Empire culture and the industrial system are inherently centralizing and simplifying forces. When the Green Revolution moves into a country it must have large acreages so that it can achieve “economies of scale,” meaning simply that within the mass production system it is cheaper, on a per unit basis, to produce a large amount of one item, than it is to produce only one of those items. This means that self-supporting, subsistence agriculture families in the area must move to the periphery, attempt to farm the hillsides and gain occasional labor on the new industrial farm. This means that the hold of the colonial elite grows stronger on the population that is no longer self-sufficient. This means also that the hold of the international political/financial system grows on the colonial elite. Either large loans or opening the country up to the transnational corporations are necessary to start the industrial agricultural system because the factors of production must be shipped in, the trucks, the seed, the irrigation works, the fertilizers and the other components. Because of the huge capital investments needed for industrial agriculture, the chances are good that the country will ultimately be forced into the hands of the international bankers for loans. When the system is well established and the indigenous population is heavily in debt, (in the tradition of the more advanced First World farmers), then the international banking system will send in teams of bankers to administer the government’s economic planning and will promote austerity measures that milk the population for interest money to send to the imperial capitals. As the farm system centralizes and the profit making industrial farmer takes more land, homelessness increases. The phenomena of cities exploding as people are forced out of the countryside is a familiar one in industrial societies. This trend is now particularly serious in the Third World where there is a low level of industrial infrastructure in urban areas. As the “labor saving” machinery is brought in, unemployment increases and people are forced to work at a lower wage under worse conditions. As the production of food increases with the industrial system, the people grow hungrier because much of the food is now in the international system. The food is grown for export to bring in hard currencies to repay loans, purchase manufacturing equipment for the industrial centers and consumer items for the colonial elite- not to buy food for the poor. A major point must be emphasized, the calculation of how much food a country grows has nothing to do with how well fed the people of that country are. The important question in the industrial system is how much money people have to buy food. The international flow of protein goes to the First World countries; they have the money to bid for the food.”
