Colin Todhunter – Off-Guardian May 13, 2023
It’s a lose-lose situation for Ukrainians. While they are dying, financial institutions are insidiously supporting the consolidation of farmland by oligarchs and Western financial interests.
So says Frédéric Mousseau, Policy Director of the Oakland Institute, an independent think tank.
Depending on which sources to believe, between 100,000 and 300,000 Ukrainian soldiers (possibly more) have died during the conflict with Russia. That figure, of course, does not include civilian casualties.
But it is not the purpose of this article to explore these issues. Much has already been written on this elsewhere. But billions of dollars’ worth of military hardware has been sent to Ukraine by the NATO countries and hundreds of thousands of young Ukrainians have died.
They died in the belief that they were protecting their nation – their land. A land that is among the most fertile in the world.
Professor Olena Borodina of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine says:
Today, thousands of rural boys and girls, farmers, are fighting and dying in the war. They have lost everything. The processes of free land sale and purchase are increasingly liberalised and advertised. This really threatens the rights of Ukrainians to their land, for which they give their lives.”
Borodina is quoted in the February 2023 report by the Oakland Institute War and Theft: The Takeover of Ukraine’s Agricultural Land, which reveals how oligarchs and financial interests are expanding control over Ukraine’s agricultural land with help and financing from Western financial institutions.
Aid provided to Ukraine in recent years has been tied to a drastic structural adjustment programme requiring the creation of a land market through a law that leads to greater concentration of land in the hands of powerful interests. The programme also includes austerity measures, cuts in social safety nets and the privatisation of key sectors of the economy.
Frédéric Mousseau, co-author of the report, says:
“Despite being at the centre of news cycle and international policy, little attention has gone to the core of the conflict — who controls the agricultural land in the country known as the breadbasket of Europe. [The] Answer to this question is paramount to understanding the major stakes in the war.”
The report shows the total amount of land controlled by oligarchs, corrupt individuals and large agribusinesses is over nine million hectares — exceeding 28% of Ukraine’s arable land (the rest is used by over eight million Ukrainian farmers).
The largest landholders are a mix of Ukrainian oligarchs and foreign interests — mostly European and North American as well as the sovereign fund of Saudi Arabia. A number of large US pension funds, foundations and university endowments are also invested in Ukrainian land through NCH Capital – a US-based private equity fund, which is the fifth largest landholder in the country.
President Zelenskyy put the land reform into law in 2020 against the will of the vast majority of the population who feared it would exacerbate corruption and reinforce control by powerful interests in the agricultural sector.
The Oakland Institute notes that, while large landholders are securing massive financing from Western financial institutions, Ukrainian farmers — essential for ensuring domestic food supply — receive virtually no support. With the land market in place, amid high economic stress and war, this difference of treatment will lead to more land consolidation by large agribusinesses.
All but one of the ten largest landholding firms are registered overseas, mainly in tax havens such as Cyprus or Luxembourg. The report identifies many prominent investors, including Vanguard Group, Kopernik Global Investors, BNP Asset Management Holding, Goldman Sachs-owned NN Investment Partners Holdings, and Norges Bank Investment Management, which manages Norway’s sovereign wealth fund.
Most of the agribusiness firms are substantially indebted to Western financial institutions, in particular the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the European Investment Bank, and the International Finance Corporation – the private sector arm of the World Bank.
Together, these institutions have been major lenders to Ukrainian agribusinesses, with close to US$1.7 billion lent to just six of Ukraine’s largest landholding firms in recent years. Other key lenders are a mix of mainly European and North American financial institutions, both public and private.
The report notes that this gives creditors financial stakes in the operation of the agribusinesses and confers significant leverage over them. Meanwhile, Ukrainian farmers have had to operate with limited amounts of land and financing, and many are now on the verge of poverty.
International financial institutions are in effect subsidising the concentration of land and a destructive industrial model of agriculture based on the intensive use of synthetic inputs, fossil fuels and large-scale monocropping.
Much of what is happening in Ukraine is part of a wider trend: private equity funds being injected into agriculture throughout the world and used to lease or buy up farms on the cheap and aggregate them into large-scale, industrial grain and soybean concerns. These funds use pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, endowment funds and investments from governments, banks, insurance companies and high net worth individuals (see the 2020 report ‘Barbarians at the Barn‘ by Grain.org).
Financialising agriculture this way shifts power to people with no connection to farming. In the words of BlackRock’s Larry Fink: “Go long agriculture and water and go to the beach.”
Funds tend to invest for between 10 and 15 years, resulting in good returns for investors but can leave a trail of long-term environmental and social devastation and serve to undermine local and regional food insecurity.
By contrast, according to the Oakland Institute, small-scale farmers in Ukraine demonstrate resilience and enormous potential for leading the expansion of a different production model based on agroecology and producing healthy food. Whereas large agribusinesses are geared towards export markets, it is Ukraine’s small and medium-sized farmers who guarantee the country’s food security.
This is underlined by the State Statistics Service of Ukraine in its report ‘Main agricultural characteristics of households in rural areas in 2011’, which showed that smallholder farmers in Ukraine operate 16% of agricultural land, but provide 55% of agricultural output, including 97% of potatoes, 97% of honey, 88% of vegetables, 83% of fruits and berries and 80% of milk.
In June 2020, the IMF approved an 18-month, strings-attached $5 billion loan programme with Ukraine. Also that year, the World Bank incorporated measures relating to the sale of public agricultural land as conditions in a $350 million Development Policy Loan (COVID ‘relief package’) to Ukraine. This included a required ‘prior action’ to “enable the sale of agricultural land and the use of land as collateral.”
According to the Oakland Institute:
Ukraine is now the world’s third-largest debtor to the International Monetary Fund and its crippling debt burden will likely result in additional pressure from its creditors, bondholders and international financial institutions on how post-war reconstruction – estimated to cost US$750 billion – should happen.”
Financial institutions are leveraging Ukraine’s crippling debt to drive further privatisation and liberalisation – backing the country into a corner to make it an offer it can’t refuse.
Since the war began, the Ukrainian flag has been raised outside parliament buildings in the West and iconic landmarks have been lit up in its colours. An image bite used to conjure up feelings of solidarity and support for that nation while serving to distract from the harsh machinations of geopolitics and modern-day economic plunder that is unhindered by national borders and has scant regard for the plight of ordinary citizens.
—
Colin Todhunter specialises in development, food and agriculture and is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization in Montreal. You can read his “mini e-book”, Food, Dependency and Dispossession: Cultivating Resistance, here.
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Alas!…and as usual… the imbeciles awaken TOO late…(if at all)..
…after being divided into the usual dialectic…the binary.. two teams.. favouring one mobster criminal or another thanks to persistent media’ narrative’ spinning…
… on their shiny screens…with borrowed opinion…and flag waving…
…which ever way they fall (and fall they will).. it’s all ‘catered’ for… but none of it True.
…some even queuing up to be slaughtered and maimed or even worse forced into the fake war meat-grinder… or as they say ‘theatre’… to thin out the surly disobedient Slavs and give them a shake… ready for ‘change’. and new normals.. and perpetual jabs…
the Hollow men now like the vultures they are .. circling for their plunder….and their new ‘country’ and ‘opportunity’….
Yellow journalism greasing the wheels…with weasel words such as ‘re-construction’ and ‘development’ and ‘investment’..
But Of Course..mission accomplished….
lf you really want real change..you are going to have to get off your fat arses..
THE EU IS POISONING ITS CITIZENS WITH UKRAINIAN GRAIN.
Posted by ham. Apr 2023 15.
https://civilek.info/en/2023/04/15/the-eu-is-poisoning-its-citizens-with-ukrainian-grain/
Toxic Contamination Found in Grain from Ukraine.
2023:04:05
https://hungarytoday.hu/toxic-contamination-found-in-grain-from-ukraine/
Slovakia bans toxic Ukrainian grain.
Aril 20, 2023
https://www.herald.co.zw/slovakia-bans-toxic-ukrainian-grain/
Despite being the ‘land that is among the most fertile in the world’ Ukraine fields and atmosphere has been polluted by toxic munition’s ingredients and cancer causing substances that have found their way into their agricultural produce. But we will be made to ingest foods made from
toxic ingredients nonetheless.
NB: don’t forget that as Zelenskiy has allowed the liberals and ‘jewes’ to go and holiday out of harms way..so has Putin…
but rural conscription..
This is a peasant slaughter..with the added bonus of wiping out your prison populations…
One could say that they are killing the only men with any fight left in them…
and as usual they are killing each other…imbeciles…
This is perhaps the most important article I have ever come across with regards to what the average MSM-washed Westerner should be presented with about the Ukraine.
If the BBC made this its major headline for all of next week, it might single handedly change the Course of History in a way that could even avert World War.
I wonder if they have anywhere you can send suggestions for News coverage to?
I think I will try to do this as an experiment – apart from anything else, to find out if there IS somebody in the BBC Newscorps who is not a passively- pathological Hollow Man.
Funnily enough, I did submit a complaint to the BBC about a warped headline story only this morning, which I concluded with some lines from T.S.Eliot – I wasn’t intending to do this, but I will share the Complaint.
Do you think they will respond? :-
Thanks for contacting the BBC. This is to confirm we’ve received the attached complaint sent in this name. We’ve included the text of the complaint and a case reference for your records (see below).
Our normal aim is to reply at this stage within 10 working days (two weeks), but we hope you will understand that sometimes we are unable to respond by then. We will let you know beforehand if we think it may take us longer.
We’ll normally include your complaint in our overnight report to producers and management. This will circulate your and all complaints with other reaction we receive today (but with any personal details removed) so it will then be available for the right team to read tomorrow morning.
For full details of our complaints process please visit: https://www.bbc.co.uk/contact/how-we-handle-your-complaint. Please don’t reply to this email because it’s an automated acknowledgement sent from an account which can’t receive replies. If you do need to get in touch, please use our webform instead at http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints, quoting your reference number.
Here are the details of your complaint:
———-
YOUR COMPLAINT:
Gratuitous War Propaganda – no actual News Content
Simply – this story :-
‘Ukraine Eurovision act’s city Ternopil attacked before performance
Published
3 hours ago’
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-65586701
There is absolutely no justification for this story except for the purposes of War Propaganda, and that means the deliberate continuance and escalation of the War and specifically Britain’s part in it.
What are we supposed to believe?
That the Evil Russians deliberately targeted the hometown of the Ukraine Eurovision act out of gratuitous cartoon villain nastiness, despite the sure knowledge that it would be used as propaganda against them?
Let us stop being the BBC for a moment here and grow up- you were looking for propaganda.
The WORST you could find was some warehouses damaged and two people injured.
Many more civilians are going to be killed in this conflict, a lot by NATO supplied weaponry such as Cruise Missiles.
The BBC can make a start in handling my complaint by being honest.
‘Actually, Guy, you know that we know that you know that the BBC Charter of Neutrality is a lot of nonsense and that we act on Orders from the ‘Deep State’ , which term we always put in inverted commas to make it seem like ‘Conspiracy Theory’ (although we made a big thing of our vaunted neutrality a few weeks ago with some affair connected to Boris Johnson, but he’s a ‘Tory’ anyway)
That is why we are schizophrenically expressing concern about the future of the planet one day ( https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-54074733 ) and doing our best to ensure its irreversible damage the next’ –
Screw this up and throw it in the bin, it won’t make the slightest bit of difference and the end result of your ‘investigation’ will be the same –
‘We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar’
———-
Thank you again for contacting us,
BBC Complaints Team
http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints
Please note: this email is sent from an unmonitored address so please don’t reply. If necessary please contact us through our webform (please include your case reference number).
They did the same in Iraq. As far as I’m aware, US and UK corporations own Iraqi utilities and the US controls 90% of Iraqi oil by treaty.
As far as UKraine is concerned, far better that Russia takes all of UKraine, and between Russia and China, they rebuild the country. These deals between the UKrainian Nazis and US corporate Nazis, will mean nothing if Russia does the full minty. I don’t see how Russia can leave any part of UKraine under NATO control.
Too many blondes & Germanic stock in Ukraine for Chandala Lubavitch’s liking, so they set up this war via their two yid agents (Putin/Zelensky) to exterminate them in Holodomor II.
UKRAINIANS no right to own their own land ?
only to die for the ZIO/US/UK/IS exploiters ?
The solution to this horrible problem is similar to the solutions to many other horrible problems. Expell the Jews from the Ukraine — and from the rest of the world as well. As to where they can go, I’ve no idea, but they can’t stay here.
ALL wars are someone`s business plan .
The OffGuardian is at last darng to look at a real outcome from this war for Ukrainians. But why only now, OffGuardian? You sat back silent while the elevated in our own (UK) system of governance (in large part a sordid lot) glorified the little mongrel Zelenski, and villainised President Putin, a genuine statesman and patriot. You did not blink at the intentional wasting of very nearly the entire generation of physically robust Ukrainian men.
Why were you so timid right up until now, when so much irreparable damage has been inflicted on Ukraine, and indeed on Germany, that the rest of Western Europe will soon feel acutely? (Actually, I know why: it’s because you know that the worm has turned, isn’t it?)
But still … Thank you, Mr Todhunter.
And a beauty: This is the most satisfying fist in Zelenski’s ugly mug that I have ever read. I commend it to all of you:
https://architectsforsocialhousing.co.uk/2023/04/25/washingtons-puppet-the-rise-and-fall-of-volodmyr-zelenskyy/
I don’t see the point in investing yet in Ukraine when Russia will be the final arbiter over who owns what and what they can do there. Of course it might just be a way to off-set some of the massive inflation that is already creeping into the economy. Spend a few hundred billion or a few trillion abroad to give your mass-produced dodgy currency some way of not accumulating inflation at home just yet, and who knows, they may get to keep some of that land their mass-produced wallpaper bought if it serves Russian interests. The money might have been claimed in pay rises anyway and they can’t allow that!
Guy Reid-Brown: why are you scared of World War when you are already in one, and always have been? All over the globe, Yid-man kills White People as much as he can
See the kind of (radioactive) pollution that goes to make ‘the most fertile land on the planet’.
https://rense.com/general97/ex3.mp4
lewis jones on May 14, 2023 at 8:36 pm
Guy Reid-Brown: why are you scared of World War when you are already in one, and always have been?’
I may be a lot of things, Mr. Jones, but I am not a scaredy-cat 😉 – on an earlier Post I put
Guy Reid-Brown on May 13, 2023 at 7:13 pm
…..
‘I am in the peculiar position of facing the prospect of a possible Third World War not remotely concerned if my now stupid and deranged country (not the one that Orwell cared about) gets decimated, and me along with it.’
The slavic people kill one another and the Jew oligarchs inherit the land…just as planned I think. Moloch is pleased.
This doesn’t add up. Why would the elite want the farmland, and at the same time contaminate it with depleted uranium?
When this war is over, the full power of the Adversary will be on display for the whole to see.
This is fully exposing the Time Of Jacobs.
That time is now. Whites are attacked everywhere by the Jews pretending to be Angels of light. instigating swarms of the basest of ‘men’, the black Homo Erectus near nem as the attack dogs as whites are accused of everything the Jews have done to wire up the 70 I.Q. attack dogs.
Then whites will be saved, as the Jews and their
swarms of blacks, the basest of men see the God Of This World come down for all to see. The greatest trick of all!! They thought that God was Baal, and Yahwey is coming to them. All of them… HE IS WHITE AS ADAM WAS WHITE!
King James
Isaiah 13:7 Therefore shall all hands be faint, and every man’s heart shall melt:
8 And they shall be afraid: pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them; they shall be in pain as a woman that travaileth: they shall be amazed one at another; their faces shall be as flames.
9 Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it.
@dwd…large percentage of Germanic stock in Ukraine..that’s the real reason behind the attack on Ukraine..
Saw a great meme the other day and it goes like this:
“It is not because we can’t feed the poor, it is because
we cannot satisfy the rich”.
Deep truth, if you ask me.
@ Sophie Johnson
Thank you for that link, great read!
Altho the serpent of the people won’t be making it as a concert peeainist,
he should go ahead and quit his day job while he’s still ahead.