Monday, June 27, 2022

'Off the charts' chemical shortages hit U.S. farms


Soybean fields in Wisconsin are pictured in 2018

Mon, June 27, 2022 at 4:08 AM·5 min read
By Tom Polansek

CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. farmers have cut back on using common weedkillers, hunted for substitutes to popular fungicides and changed planting plans over persistent shortages of agricultural chemicals that threaten to trim harvests.

Spraying smaller volumes of herbicides and turning to less-effective fungicides increase the risk for weeds and diseases to dent crop production at a time when global grain supplies are already tight because the Ukraine war is reducing the country's exports.

Interviews with more than a dozen chemical dealers, manufacturers, farmers and weed specialists showed shortages disrupted U.S. growers' production strategies and raised their costs.

Shawn Inman, owner of distributor Spinner Ag Incorporated in Zionsville, Indiana, said supplies are the tightest in his 24-year career.

"This is off the charts," Inman said. "Everything was delayed, delayed, delayed."

Shortages further reduce options for farmers battling weeds that developed resistance to glyphosate, the key ingredient in the commonly used Roundup herbicide, after decades of overuse in the United Sates.

Prices for glyphosate and glufosinate, another widely used herbicide sold under the brand Liberty, jumped more than 50% from last year, dealers said, padding profit at companies like Bayer AG, BASF SE and Corteva Inc.

The U.S. Agriculture Department said it heard from farmers and food companies concerned about whether agribusinesses are hiking prices for goods like chemicals, seeds and fertilizer to boost profit, not simply because of supply and demand factors. The agency has launched an inquiry into competition in the sector, and some watchdog groups said it is moving too slowly.

Agrichemical companies blame the COVID-19 pandemic, transportation delays, a lack of workers and extreme weather for shortages. Fertilizer and some seeds are also in short supply globally.

SUPPLY CHAIN STALLED

More difficulties are on the horizon, as BASF, which formulates glufosinate, told Reuters the supply situation will not improve significantly next year.

"It's going to take more time than what our customers, farmers and retailers would have thought," said Scott Kay, vice president of U.S. crops for BASF.

Tennessee farmer Jason Birdsong said he abandoned plans to plant soybeans on 100 acres after waiting months to receive Liberty he ordered from Nutrien Ag Solutions. He ultimately received less than half his order for 125 gallons and planted corn on the land instead. Birdsong said he is better able to control weeds in corn than soybeans.

Nutrien said numerous events stalled the supply chain during the pandemic and the company provided alternate solutions to customers.

Birdsong said he needed Liberty to fight weeds that are resistant to glyphosate in soy fields. He said he ruled out a third option, a dicamba-based herbicide from Bayer, because of extensive federal restrictions on when and where dicamba can be sprayed.

"With the dicamba technology being so strict, Liberty is the go-to," Birdsong said.

The Environmental Protection Agency approved new restrictions on dicamba use this year in Iowa and Minnesota, two major farm states. The herbicide, approved in 2016, faces stricter regulations because it drifts onto neighboring farms and damages crops other than Bayer soybeans engineered to resist dicamba.

The rise of a rival Corteva soybean variety, Enlist, is further adding to glufosinate demand because the crop can be sprayed with glufosinate, among other chemicals, dealers said.

Generic versions of glufosinate-based Liberty sold for about $100 a gallon, up from $32 a gallon last year, said Dion Letcher, owner of Letcher Farm Supply in Garden City, Minnesota. The increase reduces farmers' profits from lofty crop prices.

Shortages of Liberty and other products began last year as distributors used backup supplies to offset supply disruptions in 2021, Letcher said. Now, there are no reserves, he said.

"Anything from BASF is short this year," Letcher said. "I'm worried about next year."

AGRICHEMICAL PROFITS CLIMB

For glyphosate, prices reached $50 a gallon to $60 a gallon, up from less than $20 a gallon in mid-2021, said Inman, the owner of Spinner Ag Incorporated.

Bayer reported sales of glyphosate-based products were "particularly strong" in the first quarter as prices increased and volumes declined. Overall, its herbicide sales soared 67% from a year earlier to 2.5 billion euros ($2.64 billion).

BASF's agricultural solutions unit posted quarterly sales of 3.4 billion euros, up 21% from a year earlier. Corteva also sold more than $2 billion worth of crop-protection products, up 23% from a year earlier, as prices rose 11%.


BASF is seeking to acquire raw materials earlier to avoid future shortages, Kay said. Bayer said it broadened its supplier base for raw ingredients and added bulk trucks to deliver products more efficiently. Farmers who cannot find glyphosate and glufosinate are switching to alternatives, Corteva said.

The supply limitations have caused practical headaches for growers.

Indiana farmer Denny Bell said he did not receive Liberty in his usual 250-gallon containers. Instead, he spent seven hours emptying 2.5-gallon jugs into a larger vat before spraying. Bell said he also waited six months for a popular BASF fungicide, Veltyma.

Reduced usage of herbicides this summer could allow weeds that escape crucial early sprayings to grow and spread their seeds in fields, leaving farmers with more weeds to fight for the next two years as the seeds sprout, said Scott Nolte, Texas A&M University weed specialist.

Iowa corn and soy grower Brent Swart said he is opting to use less glyphosate in the mix of chemicals he sprays due to short supplies, but does not expect it to hurt yields.

"There's definitely a different feel to this year," Swart said. "We've never seen as much supply issue."

($1 = 0.9488 euro)

(Reporting by Tom Polansek in Chicago; Editing by Caroline Stauffer and Matthew Lewis)



US wants farmers to boost wheat production amid a global food shortage. They can't afford to

Clay Schemm's great grandfather moved to Kansas in the 1920s with a tractor and not much else.

The cash crop was wheat.

Today, Schemm, 26, continues that tradition at farms in his home of Sharon Springs, Kan. near the state's western border and a few hundred miles away in eastern Kansas.

On the other side of the world, Russia's war in Ukraine has Schemm rethinking this year's harvests, just as the Biden administration is encouraging U.S. farmers to produce more wheat in response to the disruption of the market caused by the war in Ukraine — one of the world's top producers.

But Schemm said it might not be realistic for many reasons: growing seasons that are slow to respond to the unfolding crisis, federal incentives for double-cropping that aren't viable in most of his acres and a volatile wheat market. Wheat prices have fluctuated wildly after it soared for weeks following Russia's February invasion of Ukraine.

"Even that little bit drop in price has me very hesitant to go back in with wheat in the eastern farms," Schemm said.

More: How Russia's war against Ukraine could make our food prices – from bread to beer – more expensive

Biden heads Saturday to Germany for a meeting of the world's most powerful nations that make up the Group of Seven, or G7, where among the top priorities is addressing a global wheat shortage caused by Russia's war in Ukraine.

International organizations warn that current supply disruptions caused by the war are aggravating already high prices, which complicates access to food in some Northern African countries and parts of Asia that are dependent on Ukraine's wheat supply.

Farmer Andriy Zubko checks wheat ripeness on a field in Donetsk region, Ukraine, Tuesday, June 21, 2022. Russian hostilities in Ukraine are preventing grain from leaving the "breadbasket of the world" and making food more expensive across the globe, threatening to worsen shortages, hunger and political instability in developing countries.
Farmer Andriy Zubko checks wheat ripeness on a field in Donetsk region, Ukraine, Tuesday, June 21, 2022. Russian hostilities in Ukraine are preventing grain from leaving the "breadbasket of the world" and making food more expensive across the globe, threatening to worsen shortages, hunger and political instability in developing countries.

More: 'People are starving and thirsty': As the US sends aid to Ukraine, some say it's not flowing fast enough

Yet even U.S. farmers like Schemm who want to ramp up their production can't do so easily, raising doubts that the U.S. can fill much of the void from Ukraine's wheat supply.

"It's not like in the U.S. we have all these unplanted acres, fields just lying fallow," said Veronica Nigh, senior economist with the American Farm Bureau Federation, which lobbies on behalf of farmers.  "That's frustrating. Farmers want to do more. They want to be able to help to respond."

Limits to the push for more double-cropping

Droughts in the Great Plains and heavy rain in Minnesota and the Dakotas have slowed the production of wheat this year. Fertilizer costs have spiked as a result of the war. And the farming calendar presents another problem: Seventy percent of wheat in the U.S comes from a winter harvest – planted in the fall but not harvested until the spring, putting it off track with the immediate crisis in Ukraine.

There are also questions about the effectiveness of how the Biden administration is looking to expand wheat productions.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack met with United Nations members last week and relayed efforts by the federal government to encourage a farming process called double-cropping to boost the production of wheat. As an incentive, the Agriculture Department is working to extend federal insurance available to farmers to double-crop wheat to 681 additional counties.

President Joe Biden heads to Germany on Saturday for a meeting of the Group of Seven nations where a global food shortage will be among the top priorities.
President Joe Biden heads to Germany on Saturday for a meeting of the Group of Seven nations where a global food shortage will be among the top priorities.

Farmers double-crop when they plant a second crop after harvesting a different crop on the same field within the same growing year. It often involves soybeans and then wheat, or vice versa, and depending on the part of the country, can be wheat on top of wheat. It's a financially risky endeavor for farmers, who aren't likely to pursue double-cropping without insurance.

More: Biden to meet with G-7 leaders in Europe amid global economic crisis, conflict with Russia

But the incentives aren't expected to move the needle much because double-cropping is typically only an option in heavy-moisture areas east of the Mississippi River like Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Illinois – not in states like Kanas, Oklahoma and Texas that produce the most wheat in the U.S.

"If they're really wanting to replace the Ukrainian crop, they need to be able to hit our big wheat-producing states as a whole," Schemm said. "And these policies just aren't quite hitting that mark."

A $40 billion Ukraine package that Congress approved in May originally had $500 million earmarked for increasing the domestics production of wheat and other crops through expanded marketing loan rates and double-cropping incentives. The measure was scrapped before the bill's passage over concerns about the practicality of the loan program when it become more expensive amid high inflation.

More: Biden proposes three-month holiday for federal gas tax, but Congress is skeptical

Chandler Goule, CEO of the National Association of Wheat Growers, said if there is an increase in wheat production it would come from the upcoming winter harvest, but cautioned, "You're not going to see a 10%, 15%, 20% increase."

Wheat produced this year in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, three of the nation's largest wheat-producing states, is in "very poor to fair" condition as result of the droughts, according to Goule.  All three states are lagging behind their three years averages in production. The heavy moisture in the upper Midwest has put Minnesota and the Dakota states behind as well.

Wheat prices are up 27% since the beginning of the year and 11% since Russia's invasion, according to the Department of Agriculture. Many wheat farmers are spooked by a volatile market. Goule said those who do not farm might wrongly assume wheat growers are "falling over themselves to get out there in the field to plant more" to cash in on the high prices.

"Just as fast as that market went up, it has the potential of coming back down," Goule said. "And so really what it does to growers is is the opposite – planting probably less wheat."

What does the rise of wheat prices mean for grocery shopping?

Rattling the global wheat market further, India banned wheat exports in May after excessively hot weather hurt its harvest. Because the U.S. produces most of its wheat domestically, Americans have not faced a shortage like other countries, but the price of wheat in the U.S. has soared nonetheless.

Wheat prices were already on the rise before the war in Ukraine as a result of droughts in the West and Canada, said Chad Hart, an agricultural economist at Iowa State University.

“Then you put this war on top of that, and that sort of is an accelerant to what we’ve seen in terms of prices," he said.

More: 'Americans are anxious': Unrelenting inflation puts pressure on Biden ahead of midterms

Following Russia's Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, wheat prices jumped 20% to 25% almost immediately. Since then, price increases have come in waves, with the highest happening in May amid Russia’s blockade of wheat in Ukraine and concerns about Ukrainian wheat producers’ ability to harvest their crop, Hart said.

The price of cereals and bakery products was up 11.6% in May over last year, according to the Labor Department, a slightly higher percentage than the overall 8.6% jump in inflation. But that’s still less than other food items. Eggs, for example, cost 22.6% more than last year. Poultry is up 15.3%, beef and veal jumped 14.3%, and fish and seafood rose 11.9%.

Even American farmers who want to ramp up wheat production can't do so easily, raising doubts that the U.S. can fill much of the void from Ukraine's wheat supply.
Even American farmers who want to ramp up wheat production can't do so easily, raising doubts that the U.S. can fill much of the void from Ukraine's wheat supply.

Agriculture Department officials said they are tracking the price of wheat "closely" and acknowledged it could increase more in the coming months.

While food prices could continue to spike as well, it might not be a direct result of wheat.

The reason: food prices in the U.S. are tied more closely to other factors than commodities. Hart predicted the price of wheat will remain elevated for the next 18 months, having some impact on food prices in the U.S. "but not nearly at the scale that you would think.”

“When we look at that dollar we spend at the grocery store, on average only about 15 cents of that dollar actually goes back to buy the commodity from the farmer,” he said. “The other 85 cents is the transportation, the packaging, the advertising, the labor at the grocery store and up the warehouse chain. I make the joke – and it's actually fairly close to true – that we pay more for the cardboard in a box of cornflakes than we do for the corn that's in the box of cornflakes.”

True impact on U.S. wheat from war in Ukraine won't be clear until next year

Rising fertilizer costs have compilated farmers' decisions.

The price of fertilizer, a major Russian export, has more than doubled since last year – an increase the Agriculture Department attributes to multiple factors, including the war in Ukraine. Prices dropped in May but remain higher than normal.

Eddie Melton, a fifth-generation farmer from Sebree, Ky. in the western part of the state, said he expects more wheat planted in Kentucky this fall, but said farmers must also weigh the rising cost of fertilizer and fuel.

“The prices have tripled on a lot of those things, so it’s all kind of relevant,” said Melton, first vice president of the Kentucky Farm Bureau Federation.

Ukraine typically exports most of its wheat through the Black Sea, but blockades by Russian forces along the Ukrainian coast have prevented grains from entering the world market.

John Kirby, National Security Council spokesman, said the U.S. and other G7 countries will use meetings on food security in Germany to discuss ways to get around the blockade. Biden has mentioned building temporary silos on the Ukrainian border, including in Poland, to help facilitate exports.

Kirby also said the U.S. welcomes new involvement by Turkey to try to broker a deal to get grain out of Ukraine.

Melton, who raises corn, soybeans, wheat and beef cattle in Kentucky, said he empathizes with Ukrainian farmers who have seen their operations interrupted because of war.

“Farming is a stressful job in itself, but I can’t imagine what those farmers are going through in Ukraine right now,” he said.

In April, the Biden administration announced plans to provide $282 million in food assistance through the Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust – draining its entire balance – to countries affected by Russia's war in Ukraine. The fund, created in 2018, is the primary way the U.S. provides food-insecure countries direct aid during crises.

But those dollars can only go so far.

With the U.S. wheat supply down slightly because of weather challenges, the Department of Agriculture expects U.S. exports to drop as well over the next year to about 775 million metric tons, down from 779 million metric tons. The wheat harvested this summer – soon to be going on the market – was planted last fall before the war in Ukraine.

The first true picture of the war in Ukraine's impact on U.S. wheat production won't be known until this fall, when wheat farmers make their decisions about the winter harvest. It will be the first major harvest since the Russian invasion.

"That decision will be made in the next couple of months," said Nicole Berg, a fourth-generation wheat farmer in Paterson, Wa., who hopes the past year's weather troubles don't repeat itself.

"Farmers, luckily, are internal optimists," Berg, who serves as president of the National Association of Wheat Growers,  added. "We always think we're going to get that best price."

Schemm, who spent $67,000 more on fertilizer this year than last, said other farmers he knows are "cautiously optimistic" that they will be able to devote more acres to wheat. He said more farmers are "starting to look at wheat again" and he knows "farmers are interested in it."

But their decisions will come down to many factors, Schemm said. And the uncertainty, sure doesn't help.

Reach Joey Garrison on Twitter @joeygarrison and Michael Collins @mcollinsNEWS.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: US wheat farmers face hurdles to help fill Ukraine's void

The Transatlantic Network of Authoritarian Populism: The Rise of the Executive from Hungary to the USA
Paper Thumbnail
Author Photo Antal Attila

Can Colombia’s first leftwing president deliver change?


Photograph: Luisa González/Reuters

More ways to listen

Apple Podcasts
Google Podcasts
Spotify
RSS Feed
Download

Presented by Michael Safi with Joe Parkin Daniels; produced by Ned Carter Miles Tom Glasser and Solomon King; executive producers Phil Maynard and Elizabeth Cassin

Mon 27 Jun 2022

Gustavo Petro has been elected as the Latin American country’s first leftist leader. But he faces a huge challenge if he is to deliver on his promises, says Joe Parkin Daniels

How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know

Throughout Latin American history, as leftwing parties have taken power across the continent, one country has kept them out of office, very often through force: Colombia.

Last week that changed – and when Gustavo Petro formally takes over in August, Colombia will have its first leftist leader.

As Joe Parkin Daniels tells Michael Safi, the new president is promising to end the decades-long war on drugs, change Colombia’s relationship with the US, and shift the country’s economy away from gas and oil. It’s a tall order, especially as Colombia’s presidents are limited to a single term of four years.

And the challenges he faces are not just the political ones resulting from a slender margin of victory: after the result, he gave his speech from behind bulletproof glass, in a chilling reminder of the dangers that leftwing candidates face in Colombia.
 

Latin America’s new new left

The recent election in Colombia has produced new hope for the country--and for the whole region.


SOURCEForeign Policy in Focus

Perhaps the most radical statement from Gustavo Petro, the newly elected president of Colombia, has been his promise to keep fossil fuels in the ground. Petro has said that he will not issue any new licenses for hydrocarbon exploration, will stop fracking pilot projects, and will end the development of offshore drilling.

Petro has called for “a transition from an economy of death to an economy of life,” saying that “we cannot accept that the wealth and foreign exchange reserves in Colombia come from the export of three of humanity’s poisons: petroleum, coal, and cocaine.” Since oil and coal are Colombia’s largest export earners—and the country remains the largest cocaine producer in the world—this is not going to be an easy transition for a Colombian politician to implement or sell to the public.

But Gustavo Petro is no ordinary politician. He began his political career as an urban guerrilla, joining the revolutionary group M-19 as a 17-year-old. He was never part of the inner circle, but he did spend time in prison for his involvement in underground activities. Later, after becoming an economist, he served in the Colombian parliament and as the mayor of Bogota.

He has been fearless as a politician, exposing himself time and again to criticism and worse. He broke with his political colleagues in 2009 to form a new party. As a member of parliament, he exposed corrupt deals between his fellow senators and various death squads. Further revelations implicated the conservative Uribe government and the country’s spy agency.

As a parliamentarian and then as a candidate for president in 2010 and 2018, Petro received numerous death threats. The result has been bodyguards and security details, precautions he followed even when he came to Washington, DC to accept a Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award in 2007.

Running for president for a third time this year, Petro was even more careful. At one campaign stop, The Washington Post reports, “When Petro walked up, the crowd could hardly see him. He hid behind four men carrying large bulletproof shields. And as he spoke, the armor remained on either side of him, reminding those in the plaza of what it means to run for office in this South American country.” In the last 35 years, four presidential candidates in Colombia were assassinated, three of them on the left.

Vice-President-elect Francia Márquez has been equally courageous. A Goldman Prize-winning environmentalist, she led the fight against illegal gold mining in Colombia. What might be simply challenging work in another country is extraordinarily risky in Colombia where 138 human rights defenders were killed last year.

Standing up to a sometimes-violent right wing is par for the course in Colombia and elsewhere in Latin America. Dealing with a corrupt establishment is also, unfortunately, routine.

But politicians like Petro and Márquez, as well as newcomer Gabriel Boric in Chile, must also navigate their way through the various layers of the Latin American left. In so doing, they are helping to build a new progressive movement that is significantly different from the old left (Castro and Cuba) and the new left (Lula and Brazil). Transformed by social movements, Latin America’s new new left is showing the world how progressives can wield power justly and judiciously in an age of climate change and political polarization.

Fixation on Growth

Going back to the dawn of progressivism, the left has always been preoccupied with the issue of economic justice. Once in power, left parties have been united in their belief that to achieve a more equal distribution of wealth and power, the economy must grow—and fast. The Soviet Union set the precedent with Five Year Plans devoted to transforming a largely agrarian society into an industrial giant. Social Democratic governments in Europe also supported economic growth in the belief that a rising tide would lift all boats, as a similar-minded John F. Kennedy would later say. Communists embraced economic growth as a way to catch up to the West; middle-of-the-road leftists wanted to grow the economy to boost employment rates and have more resources available for social welfare programs.

This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Club of Rome report, Limits to Growth. Before climate change was a thing, 30 experts from around the world issued a stern warning that the planet couldn’t support the exponential growth of human activity because of the limits of arable land, mineral resources for industry, and the consequences of pollution. Except for the Greens, progressives have been slow to come to terms with these limits to economic growth.

In Latin America, Green parties never took off. Instead, progressives have traditionally followed one of two paths. Cuba followed the Soviet model of rapid growth with a command economy and state-owned enterprises, though it ultimately had to abandon large parts of that approach when the Soviet Union collapsed and subsidies from Moscow largely withered away. Flush with oil money, Hugo Chavez adopted a similar approach in Venezuela.

The new left in Latin America, by contrast, was firmly committed to operating within democratic institutions, beginning with the ill-fated Allende administration in Chile and continuing through the Workers Party governments in Brazil. Although the new left diverged from the old left on democracy and human rights, it also equated unrestrained economic growth with progress, particularly during the “pink tide” of the 2000s. The growth rate in Brazil under Lula, for instance, skyrocketed from 1.9 percent to 5.2 percent and the trade surplus more than doubled. In Argentina, left-leaning Peronist Nestor Kirchner also pushed to expand the economy in his initial years by devaluing the peso and severing the country’s dependence on the IMF. Uruguay, under the progressive Frente Amplio, underwent significant economic expansion, particularly in its first decade in power. In Bolivia, Evo Morales boosted his country’s extraction industries and achieved an average of nearly 5 percent growth annually across his 13 years in office.

But a different kind of left was also emerging in those years, one that reflected the demands of indigenous communities and environmental activists.

In 2007, Rafael Correa presented the world with an innovative proposal. The Ecuadoran president pledged to leave the oil underneath the Yasuni National Park, a vast reserve of biodiversity, if the international community came up with $3.6 billion in compensation (about half what Ecuador could have received by selling the oil). The fundraising began in 2011 and reached about 10 percent of the target figure a year later. But the effort fizzled out, and the Ecuadoran government ultimately teamed up with a Chinese firm to begin drilling for the Yasuni oil in 2016, a partnership that has only expanded under the current conservative government.

But Correa’s initial approach at least hinted at a new progressivism that did not put unrestrained growth at the center of economic policy. That approach has been reflected, for instance, in the shift in the politics in Uruguay where, despite conventional pro-growth economic policies, the left-wing government made huge investments in clean energy, with nearly 95 percent of electricity provided by renewable sources by 2015. Costa Rica, under several social democratic leaders, has followed a similar path of decarbonization.

Latin America remains a key supplier of both dirty energy and resources like lithium, which power a “clean” energy transition. The new wave of left politicians must grapple with the challenges generated by climate change as well as the economic precarity aggravated by the pandemic. They don’t have a lot of room for maneuver. A far-right populism—embodied by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and the two losing challengers in Chile (Jose Antonio Kast) and Colombia (Rodolfo Hernández)—remains powerful and at the ready if the new new left falters.

A Post-Pink Wave

The U.S. government is reserving judgment on the victory of Gustavo Pietro and Francia Márquez. Not so The Washington Post, which recently editorialized: “There is much cause for concern in the policy direction Mr. Petro has articulated, in particular his call for an end to new oil exploration, a potential blow to the country’s industry likely to do much damage to export revenue and little good for the global environment.”

The Post, which continues to publish full-page ads for fossil fuel companies instead of following the divestment lead of The Guardian, is being obtuse here. Yes, an end to new oil exploration will hurt Colombia’s export revenues, but The Post is probably more concerned about the impact on U.S. oil companies and the price of gas in America. As for doing “little good for the global environment,” if Colombia indeed phases down fossil fuel production under Petro, it would be the largest global producer to follow through on such a commitment. That would be hugely significant.

That’s not all. Petro wants to work with other progressive leaders in Latin America on a region-wide transition. One of those leaders is the recently elected president of Chile, Gabriel Boric, who has put environmentalism at the top of his agenda. One of his first acts was to reverse the policy of the previous administration by signing the Escazu Agreement, which focuses on access to information and environmental justice. He appointed scientists to top positions in his administration, including climatologist Maisa Rojas as minister of the environment. Climate change is not an abstract issue for Chile. The country has been experiencing a decade-long drought, among other conditions aggravated by global warming.

One of the major challenges that Boric faces is Chile’s lithium industry, which has the world’s largest reserves of this valuable commodity. He has promised to nationalize the sector, which could enable the government to regulate the mines more rigorously in terms of labor and environmental considerations. He is also eying the possibility of creating more value-added processing—rather than simply exporting raw materials—that would in turn mean more and better-paying jobs.

Across a range of issues, Boric faces a vocal conservative opposition. But he also must deal with an uncompromising left that is not happy with his willingness to talk with his political adversaries, for instance in championing a new constitution for the country. That kind of negotiating is essential in a democracy, and Boric is committed to the democratic process—both inside Chile and outside.

“No matter who it bothers, our government will have total commitment to democracy and human rights, without support for any kind of dictatorship or autocracy,” Boric has tweeted. He has criticized the human rights records of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s leader, countered by calling Boric a member of the “cowardly left.”

But “cowardly” is the least apt word to describe Boric. Like Petro and Márquez in Colombia, Boric is not afraid to chart an entirely new path for his country. Together, these leaders are willing to challenge many of the tired, outdated policies that characterized the previous pink wave.

“The Colombian victory is providing oxygen for a Latin American politics that has been characterized by a lack of vision,” write Argentinian environmentalists Maristella Svampa and Enrique Viale. “This has been visible in the obstinate progressivism in Argentina, Bolivia and most probably Brazil as well if Lula triumphs in the next elections. They are interested neither in promoting an ecosocial agenda nor in discussing a Just Transition. Consequently, they are significantly reducing the prospects for democracy and a life of dignity and sustainability.”

Although still within the big tent of Latin American progressivism, Petro, Márquez, and Boric represent something new. And it’s not just happening at the level of elite governance. Svampa and Viale helped create the Ecosocial Pact of the South, which has also challenged the growth paradigm, criticized the authoritarian tendencies of the old left, put environmentalism front and center, and insisted on amplifying voices of social movements from indigenous communities and feminists to LGBTQ and anti-racism activists.

These are grim times when some of the least competent and most outrageous men and women have risen to positions of power in some of the largest countries in the world. Maybe Latin America can show us a way out of this predicament. Led by Petro, Márquez, and Boric from above and pushed by the Ecosocial Pact from below, the region has a real chance to undo this extraordinary mismatch between the needs of the moment and the capacities of our leaders.


John Feffer is the director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies. His dystopian novel, Splinterlands, a Dispatch Books original (with Haymarket Books), will appear this fall. He is a TomDispatch regular.

Is universal basic income part of a just transition?

When you give everyone a chunk of change, does it really change their lives and their communities?


SOURCEForeign Policy in Focus

In the remote rural village of Dauphin, in the Canadian province of Manitoba, economists tried out an unusual experiment. In the 1970s, they persuaded the provincial government to give cash payments to poorer families to see if a guaranteed basic income could improve their outcomes. During the years of this “Mincome” experiment, families received a basic income of 16,000 Canadian dollars (or a top up to that amount). With 10,000 inhabitants, Dauphin was just big enough to be a good data set but not too big as to bankrupt the government.

The results were startling, including a significant drop in hospitalizations and an improvement in high school graduation rates. After four years, however, money for the experiment dried up, and this early example of universal basic income (UBI) was nearly forgotten.

Today, such UBI projects have become more commonplace. In the U.S. presidential race in 2020, Andrew Yang made his “freedom dividend” of $1,000 a month a centerpiece of his political campaign. Several pilot projects are up and running in California. In fact, at least 28 U.S. cities currently give out no-strings-attached cash on a regular basis (since the recipients are all low-income, these programs aren’t technically “universal”). In other countries, too, basic income projects have become more popular, including a new citizen’s basic income project in the Brazilian city of Maricá. Basic income programs were in place, briefly, in both Mongolia and Iran. Civil society organizations like the Latin American Network for Basic Income have pushed for change from below.

Unlike the mid-1970s, universal basic income must contend with two sets of factors: the weight of old but institutionalized social welfare systems and the demands of new priorities, particularly environmental ones.

“The old welfare systems are based on sustained economic development, on economic growth that creates jobs and fiscal resources,” points out economist Ruben Lo Vuolo, a member of the Centro Interdisciplinario de Estudios de Políticas Públicas in Argentina, at a recent discussion of UBI sponsored by the Ecosocial Pact of the South and Global Just Transition. “They are structured based on the fact that people will have jobs and contribute over the course of their lifetimes and the state will have fiscal resources to cover them. But now the state says that it can’t keep growing and can’t generate jobs as it did before. We’re seeing less growth than in 1950s or 1970s but more inequality and more carbon emissions. So, the basis of the social-welfare system has been seriously questioned by climate change.”

This conflict between the logic of the social-welfare state and the imperative to reduce resource use means that “we have to stop thinking about a state that can repair damages and start thinking about one that prevents damages: a state that’s not so concerned about economic growth and then redistribution but redistribution itself,” Lo Vuolo continues. The social welfare state provides compensation to those who have lost their jobs, experienced a health emergency, or needed extra provisions to feed the family. Instead, a new eco-social state should be thinking of ways to prevent those negative outcomes in the first place.

Key to this challenge of redistribution, of course, is the question of mechanism. Does the state rely on the market to meet basic needs or on other methods of assessing and then fulfilling those needs? One of the chief defects of the market is its focus on short-term outcomes. “With an economy based on market preferences, it is impossible to generate an intergenerational pact that takes on climate change,” Lo Vuolo adds. “If we continue on this path, future generations won’t have a healthy environment.”

One of the chief preoccupations of a social-welfare state is to make sure that those who have sufficient resources don’t receive assistance. This has led to often complex systems of “means testing.”

Universal basic income strategies, Lo Vuolo points out, flip this approach on its head. Instead of focusing so many human resources on ensuring that the well-off do not receive benefits, the universal character of UBI guarantees that no one who needs help is left out. A progressive tax policy, meanwhile, targets sectors where wealth is concentrated to address questions of “unfair distribution” as well as to finance the universal benefits. Such a “sustainable distribution” system has the additional benefit of suppressing consumption among the wealthy even as it boosts consumption among the most vulnerable sectors.

A UBI strategy can’t work, however, if individuals have to pay for public goods like education and transportation. The reduction of a country’s carbon footprint, meanwhile, requires not only robust public systems at the national level but institutions at the global level that coordinate mitigation. However, the track record so far of compliance with global pacts to reduce carbon emissions has been dismal.

The Stockton example

Stockton is a mid-sized city in California with a population of over 300,000 people. It is located about 85 miles east of San Francisco in the agriculture-rich Central Valley. In 2012, it also declared bankruptcy, the largest U.S. city to do so at the time. In response, the municipal government slashed public services. Unemployment spiked, and the lack of affordable housing led to a sharp increase in homelessness. One in four citizens lived below the poverty line.

In 2017, Stockton chose to participate in an experiment very similar to the one that took place in Dauphin in the 1970s. The Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration (SEED), as its name suggests, emphasizes the choices people make and the agency they exercise in making those choices. To qualify to participate in SEED, you had to be a Stockton resident in a neighborhood that was at or below the city’s median income of about $46,000. Participants were selected randomly. One hundred and twenty-five people were given $500 a month for two years. The other participants in the program, by receiving nothing, constituted a control group.

To determine the efficacy of the experiment, researchers asked three questions: how did the additional payment affect monthly income volatility, how did that volatility influence wellbeing, and how did guaranteed income improve participants’ ability to control their future?

As SEED’s Research and Program Officer Erin Coltrera explains, the group that received the universal income had considerably less income volatility. “There is an oft-cited statistic that nearly half of US citizens would choose not to pay a $400 emergency expense with cash or cash equivalent,” she reports. “They might use debt instead. But this has long-term implications because it means that a $400 emergency will cost more over time.” With the additional $500 a month, SEED participants were more likely to be able to handle an emergency with cash.

As in Dauphin, the Stockton experiment demonstrated clear improvements in mental health. Coltrera quotes one participant: “I had panic attacks and anxiety. I had to take a pill for it. I haven’t taken that in a while. I used to have to carry pills with me all the time.”

The basic income made a particular difference for women performing unpaid care work. “The SEED money allowed them to prioritize themselves in ways they’d ignored, for instance to catch up on their medical care or to center themselves in their own narrative,” Coltrera explains.

One criticism of basic income payments is that they discourage recipients from seeking employment. The SEED project demonstrated the opposite. At the beginning of the experiment, only 28 percent of recipients had fulltime employment. One year later, that number had grown to 40 percent.

“Recipients were able to leverage the payment to improve their employment prospects,” Coltrera says. “The $500 allowed participants to reduce part-time work to finish training or coursework that then led to fulltime employment.” One recipient, for instance, had been eligible for a real estate license for a year but hadn’t been able to take the time off to complete the license. The $500 allowed the person to take the time off and complete their license, opening up employment and other economic opportunities.

The money also provided people with more choice. They could choose to stop living with family, for instance, which meant freeing up time previously spent on unpaid care work. “Once basic needs are met,” Coltrera explains, “people could describe small and meaningful pathways to authentic trust, choice, and a sense of safety.”

Critiques of UBI

One of the major criticisms of universal basic income is that it encourages “parasitism.” If people receive money with no strings attached, they will become dependent on these handouts and stop working. “There is this logic that if you’re not receiving remuneration for some activity, then you’re not doing anything,” reports Ailynn Torres, a Cuban researcher with the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation based in Ecuador. As the Stockton case demonstrates, however, the payments didn’t reduce participation in the labor market. And the payments reach people who are otherwise overlooked by the social welfare system, such as those who engage in unpaid household work.

Another critique of UBI is that it’s not a good way to fight poverty compared to targeted subsidies. On the other hand, the social welfare system that provides such subsidies carries substantial administrative costs. Such as system has often fostered clientelism and bureaucracy and created systemic dependency.

A third critique, from the left, is that UBI is not anti-capitalist. “UBI is not a magic pill that will put an end to bad things in society,” Torres concedes. “But because it is universal and unconditional, it helps people without anything. It allows us to rethink different realities and explore the interdependence of rights. And what is more important than sustaining life? UBI is not utopian but a political program that has been shown to be feasible.”

A final critique involves the overall cost of UBI. “We’ve seen debate on how to finance this,” Torres continues. “Critics say, ’It’s really expensive, we can’t finance it.’ But could you make it possible by eliminating local subsidies and bundling programs together, removing administrative costs and actually increasing benefits? Really, we should turn the question around. It’s not how much UBI costs. It’s how much does it cost not to have UBI.”

Several countries in Latin America are looking into some version of UBI. Uruguay is exploring the financing of UBI through a personal wealth tax. Mexico, too, is looking at progressive tax reforms to cover a universal pension of the elderly and a basic income for children. Argentina instituted an Emergency Family Income program during the pandemic to sustain about 9 million people during the lockdown and economic downturn. According to one estimate, an extended UBI would cost 2.9 percent of Argentina’s GDP. Another estimate, for Brazil, suggests that one percent of GDP could cover the basic income for the poorest 30 percent of the population.

Still, more research is necessary to show how UBI can strengthen community networks, how it can increase access to basic services including banks, and what kind of differential impact it has on different ethnic communities. Introducing more money into Amazonian indigenous communities, where livelihoods are relatively independent of capitalist market relations and people have long fought for the recognition of collective rights, might cause more harm than good, for example. Thus, in culturally diverse countries, especially around indigenous peoples, an intercultural adaptation of UBI according to the collective decisions of recipients might be in order.

Amaia Perez Orozco, a feminist economist from Spain, believes that a UBI can be part of a package deal of socio-economic transformation. Much depends, however, on how it is financed and implemented. The challenge, she notes, is the broader context of ecological collapse, racial inequality, and the greater precarity of life under spreading mercantilization. “Can UBI play an emancipatory role in this context?” she asks.

So, for instance, does a UBI provide people with money to pay for private health insurance or is the UBI embedded in a system of national health care? Does UBI contribute to greater national debt and thus dependency on global financial markets? Is UBI boosting unsustainable consumption and making the hoarding of resources worse? Will men, provided with a basic income, increase their care work or will UBIs reinforce gender divisions and others based on race class as the wealthier continue to externalize these jobs?

On the other hand, if a UBI reduces material dependency for women, “it could open the way to new jobs, new opportunities for leisure, the option to leave violent relationships,” Ailynn Torres adds. “Women would have more opportunities to negotiate their work conditions.”


John Feffer is the director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies. His dystopian novel, Splinterlands, a Dispatch Books original (with Haymarket Books), will appear this fall. He is a TomDispatch regular.

Bayer appeal to dismiss Roundup weedkiller lawsuits rejected by U.S. Supreme Court

Bayer said it plans to replace glyphosate-based weed-killing ingredients in products for non-professionals in the U.S. with alternative active ingredients in order to “manage litigation risk in the U.S.,” but not due to concerns about safety.


SOURCEEcoWatch

The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected an appeal by German company Bayer AG to dismiss legal claims by customers who assert one of its products — glyphosate-based Roundup weedkiller — causes cancer. The multinational chemical and pharmaceutical company could potentially owe billions of dollars in damages, reported Reuters.

The decision by the Supreme Court meant a verdict by a lower court that had upheld $25 million awarded to Edwin Hardeman — a California resident and Roundup consumer who blamed Bayer’s weedkiller for his cancer after using it at his home for 26 years — was left intact.

In 2015, Hardeman was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and contended that Bayer hadn’t given a warning as to the cancer risks of glyphosate, The Washington Post reported.

“[N]ow thousands of other cancer victims can continue to hold Monsanto accountable for its decades of corporate malfeasance,” lawyers representing Hardeman, Jennifer Moore and Aimee Wagstaff said in a statement, as reported by The Washington Post.

Bayer acquired Monsanto, the original maker of Roundup, in 2018.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified the herbicide glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans” in 2015.

The weedkiller is still approved for use in the U.S., Europe and other places, reported BBC News. Parts of the European Union have banned the herbicide, according to Deutsche Welle.

A 2019 analysis showed that glyphosate was the most used pesticide in the U.S., the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting said.

Bayer is currently in the midst of thousands of lawsuits, with another Bayer appeal on the horizon for the Supreme Court in the weeks to come, Reuters reported. The Court’s rejection of the current appeal by Bayer led to a 2.9 percent dip in the company’s shares.

Last week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was ordered by a federal appeals court to reexamine if glyphosate presents risks that are unreasonable to people and the environment. 

In a decision favorable to farm worker, environmental and food safety advocates, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that the EPA hadn’t sufficiently considered if glyphosate poses a threat to endangered species and causes cancer.

In its annual report released in March, Bayer said that about 107,000 of its approximately 138,000 cases had been resolved. The cases against the company argue that customers should have been warned of the alleged risk of cancer.

Bayer has asserted that the claims that glyphosate and Roundup cause cancer are contrary to science and the approval of the EPA, which has supported assertions that glyphosate is non-carcinogenic and, when used as the label advises, not a public health risk.

Bayer has asked for a review of the Supreme Court’s decision in the Hardeman case. The company argued that it should not be punished when the EPA wouldn’t allow a cancer warning to be put on its product and had determined it to be safe.

Bayer said it plans to replace glyphosate-based weed-killing ingredients in products for non-professionals in the U.S. with alternative active ingredients in order to “manage litigation risk in the U.S.,” but not due to concerns about safety, reported The Washington Post.

US Court of Appeals overturns EPA’s

decision that glyphosate is safe for

humans and wildlife

Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto-Bayer’s pesticide, is the most widely used pesticide in the world.


SOURCENationofChange

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled against the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision that the pesticide, glyphosate, was safe for humans and wildlife. A coalition led by the Center for Food Safety brought the case against the EPA and several ag organizations.

The Court ruled that the EPA’s “inconsistent reasoning” made its decision on cancer “arbitrary,” and therefore ruled against the Agency and sided with the Center for Food Safety.

While research and epidemiological studies  have proved glyphosate to cause Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, new evidence shows a correlation between glyphosate exposure and infertility and endocrine disruption to name a few health risks, according to Dr. Zach Bush.

The Court also ruled that the EPA’s decision violated the Endangered Species Act since the Agency admitted prior that “glyphosate ‘may affect’ all listed species experiencing glyphosate exposure—that is 1,795 endangered or threatened species,” but ignored the ESA in its decision.

Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto-Bayer’s pesticide, is the most widely used pesticide in the world.