| The United States Department of Agriculture is gearing up to host its 85th annual Agricultural Outlook Forum. This year, it's titled "Global Agriculture and Rural America in Transition."
Note the invited speakers on the "Distinguished Plenary Panel":
Agri-Pulse Communications
Syngenta International AG
Land O' Lakes, Inc.
Cambridge Energy Research Associates, Inc.
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
This is just my two cents, but to me, it seems as though agribusiness (and yes, the B&M Foundation, too) are enabling and contributing to some of the worst problems facing rural America and rural populations around the world. CAFOs, flooding foreign markets with cheap subsidized grain, forcing genetically engineered seeds and petro-chemicals on small farmers in Africa (and South America and India), foreign aid that undercuts local food with imported (and again, subsidized) products, dams that displace local populations and flood farmland - the list goes on.
Seems as though if the USDA genuinely wanted to addresses the root causes of many of the issues people living in rural areas have to deal with, they'd try to broaden that conversation a bit. I don't see any more schedule information about the rest of the conference, so this is a judgement based upon what information is posted on the website now. Though I'm not holding my breath that any of the organizations listed on the right hand side of this blog are going to be invited to speak on this panel. |
