[Marxism] Cuban sanctions linked to Obesity in americans

[bauerly at yorku.ca]

The grain surpluses, and the state policies that help to create them, are more
than just New Deal social democracy.  They represent the use of the state by
capital to increase the capacity to extract surplus value from agriculture.  As
Marx and latter Lenin and Kautsky understood, agriculture is a special industry
in society because of its spatial boundedness (it's reliance on a specific
field and nature).  By the way Kautsky was right and Lenin was wrong on this,
capitalism does not simply transform ag, but there is a dialectical process and
history shows that agrarian resistance to capitalism's expansion has been a
major force in the reconfiguration of capitalism (both for the better and
worse).

Because of the special characteristics of agriculture the ability to increase
absolute surplus value is greatly diminished, leaving relative surplus value as
the most important aspect of ag's incorporation into capitalist circuits (that
is increases in technological innovation on both the input and output side). 
The New Deal represents the use of the state to speed up the process of the
interaction between capitalism and agriculture and tip the balance towards
capitalism through extension services, land grant colleges and other programs
to increase the relative surplus value extracting capacities of corporations
manufacturing the inputs and outputs.  It also increase agricultural
productivity and politically sought some price floors and other forms of
subsidies to quell what was then a powerful bloc and blunt the more radical
aspects of this bloc.

Out of this came the explosion of both chemical farm inputs and industrial food
outputs (corn syrup, soy bean meal, soy oil, etc.) Therefore, while most
farmers still own there land and (sort of) own their machinery there percent of
the value of their product has been greatly diminished in an inverse
relationship to the increase of corporate agriculture.

But what to do with the mass of industrial food products?  Fist, sell them to US
consumers by creating all kinds of cheap unhealthy food like products.  Second,
send the surpluses overseas as food 'aid', distorting global markets and
creating food dependence on the US cheap industrial food system.

But, that is just a quick synopsis to get you started.  As already mentioned see
Fiedmann, Harriet; McMichael, Philip; Buttle, Fredrick; George, Susan; Perelman,
Michael and for a very pedestrian into see Raj Patels Stuffed and Starved.

Brad
Brad