- Kim’s Dream
- Orlan R. Ravanera
The coronavirus pandemic is just a tip of the iceberg (one-tenth seen, nine-tenth unseen). The truism is that the real problem is globalization under the insane ideology known as corporate globalization that brought about a suicidal, globalized free-market economy based on plundering and polluting the earth’s vital resources. According to the Study of Dr. Vandana Shiva, world renowned physicist and environmentalist, that ”insane ideology has already displaced millions of farmers, craftspeople and workers. In fact, a global estimate supplied by an independent report commissioned by 20 countries to study the human and economic cost of climate change due to that insane ideology wrote that:
“That insane ideology is linked to 400,000 deaths worldwide due to climate change each year, project deaths to increase to over 600,000 per year by 2030. Heatwaves kill many, to be sure, but global warming also devastates food security, nutrition, and water safety. Since mosquitoes and other pests thrive in hot, humid weather, scientists expect diseases like malaria and dengue fever to rise. Floods threaten to contaminate drinking water with bacteria and pollution. When the report looked at the added consequences from burning fossil fuels – aside from climate change – the number of deaths jumps from 400,000 to almost 5 million per year.”
As elaborated by Dr. Shiva, “That insane ideology has brought about a globalized agriculture. Cash crop production and food processing divert land and water resources away from sustenance needs and excluded increasing numbers of people from their entitlement to food. The inexorable processes of agriculture – industrialization and globalization – are probably responsible for more hungry people than both cruel wars and unusual whims of nature.”
Are you still wondering why four out of five young people are leaving farming and have migrated to the urban centers working as janitors, drivers, waiters, and what have you – that is now making the cities highly congested? That insane ideology through globalization has bombarded our country with cheap rice and cheap corn substitutes at the height of the harvest season. While rice is produced by our farmers at P15 per kilogram, rice coming from Vietnam and Thailand are just sold at P10 per kilogram as allowed by Rice Tarrification. Corn being produced by our farmers at P11.50 per kilogram is just being bought at P8 to P9 per kilogram because of the entry of cheap corn substitutes like wheat feeds.
In global agriculture set-up, may I ask three questions, to wit: WHO CONTROLS? WHO PROFITS? WHO BENEFITS? ONLY A FEW OLIGARCHS AND CARTELS. Not the farmers who are working under the excruciating heat of the sun! Let us all reflect and know this truism as stated by Dr. Shiva: “When the economic dictatorship is grafted onto representative electoral democracy, a toxic growth of religious fundamentalism and right-wing extremism is the result. Thus, corporate globalization leads not just to the death of democracy, but to the democracy of death, in which exclusion, hate, and fear become the political means to mobilize votes and power.”
What should be the countervailing force against this insane ideology that has caused so many suicides of farmers lately? It is only through cooperativism whose main DNA is one of sustainability. As stated by Jeremy Cardona in his book, Sustainability, ‘”this is what sustainability is meant to counteract: a moribund economic system that has drained the world of many of its finite resources, including fresh water and crude oil, generated a meltdown in the global financial systems, exacerbated social inequality in many parts of the world, and driven human civilization to the brink of catastrophe by unwisely advocating for economic growth at the expense of resources and essential ecosystem services.”
Let us now debunk that insane ideology that has sacrificed Mother Earth and the people to the altar of greed and profit. Because of that flawed economic system, the earth now is facing its 6th extinction and we are now in the state of planetary emergency. And yet, humanity is fast asleep, so enamored in so much trivialities and externalities, giving so much veneration to the profit motive and denigration of spirituality! Even religions have not seen the oneness of all of God’s creation. In fact, billions of life forms and species have become extinct because the homo sapiens, the most flawed species that have caused more than 100 million deaths of its own kind in one century alone, has been captured by the ego-ic mind, buried in so much materialism and consumerism. Perhaps, COVID-19 is the wake-up call!
A new breed of species is now looming called the homo pacem (men and women for peace) or spiritus luminous (enlightened spirits). These are the Cooperatives whose DNA is members-owed (no one shall be left behind); value-based and principle-driven (may paninindigan); and sustainability (oneness with al of Goid’s creation). You must now stand to protect God’s vanishing creation which is only ours to protect for the coming generations – all for God’s greater glory!
