#monocultures — Public Fediverse posts

I try to avoid LinkedIn unless I have to go there. But an AgTech investment post celebrating the "Monsanto playbook" as a model to replicate got under my nose badly enough that I had to write about it.

Nobody who knows my work would call me anti-tech. But there's a hard line between technology that increases farmer capability and technology that engineers farmer dependency. The Monsanto playbook is the second kind.

The playbook: own the genetics, bundle the chemicals, capture the data, engineer the debt. Charge the farmer for all of it. Call it innovation.

Also in there: corporate capture of agricultural knowledge, India's farmer suicide crisis, Dark Emu and native grass seeds, and why a loaf of bread can be a political act.

Tech4Good means the farmer gets more capable. Not more dependent.

https://gaggl.com/blogs/2026-06-26-monocultures-dumb-by-design/

#RegenerativeAgriculture #AgTech #Tech4Good #Monocultures #FoodSovereignty #RentSeeking #FoodSystems #RuralAustralia #SlowFood

"AMY GOODMAN: It’s one of the largest oil corporations in the world, #ADNOC, the #AbuDhabiNationalOilCorporation, #SultanAlJaber, who is the head of this COP.

"NNIMMO BASSEY: Yes. And, you know, we’ve heard so many things going on. And with the #FossilFuel industry being so prominent here, with bankers crawling the spaces of the COP, we’re seeing a lot of trade discussions. And, you know, this breaks my heart when I look at the way African negotiators or policymakers, the politicians, are bending back and accepting whatever is being thrown at them by the — through those who are investing in #CarbonOffsetting or #CarbonTrading mechanisms. We’re seeing a sellout of #AfricanContinent.

"And we know the implications for this. One, it means once you sell out a territory for a period of time, you’ve lost #sovereignty, so to speak, over that place, over that #forest, over that community, over that territory. And then it means negatively — negative impact on communities who live in the area that we are selling out. We’re talking about millions of hectares being mapped out to be sold for #CarbonCredit generative facilities. And, you know, some of this means #reforestation or forestation. It means clearing the land and planting new trees. Now, that itself emits, releases a lot of carbon from the soil. And then, of course, these #NewTrees are #monocultures, and they don’t — they are not as efficient #CarbonSinks as #NaturalForests. And so we’re seeing losses in every dimension."

#Africa #COP28 #EnvironmentalRacism
#Greenwashing #ClimateActivism #CorporateColonialism