Planet Farm
SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus behind Covid-19, is on the march. It’s infecting hundreds of thousands of people a day the world over. In countries that handled the outbreak badly – among them the US, Britain and Brazil – government rhetoric has at times suggested, in the early days and pre-vaccine, letting the virus largely ‘run its course’. With little scientific backing, politicians such as Donald Trump have declared that a mythical herd immunity – leaving perhaps millions dead in its wake – will save us.1
Agribusiness likewise proclaims that the industry that helped set loose many of this century’s deadly outbreaks is exactly the right path forward. The likes of the Animal Agriculture Alliance and the Breakthrough Institute say biosecurity, technology and economies of scale – bigger is better – are the only way to protect us from another pandemic. Never mind that agribusiness production and land grabs conducted in its name are documented to have driven the emergence of multiple pathogens in the past two decades.
How did we arrive at a historical moment when the very causes of the ongoing crisis are repeatedly presented as its solution?
Modern agriculture emerged hand-in-hoof with capitalism, the global slave trade and science. European countries deployed early imperial scientists to decode
