This is an abridged version of the second chapter of the author’s short e-book Food, Dispossession and Dependency. Resisting the New World Order (2022), which can be read for free here.

The ‘food transition’ is integral to the ‘great reset’. This transition is couched in the language of climate emergency and sustainability and warnings about the imminent need to address the Malthusian threat of too many people and not enough food to feed nine billion by 2050.

This transition envisages a particular future for farming. It is not organic and relatively few farmers have a place in it. It involves drones, driverless machines and largely farmerless farms. Cloud-based ‘precision’ agriculture as the norm – meaning GMOs and new gene-editing techniques and amalgamated farmlands growing monocultures.

GM crops are required to feed the world is a well-worn industry slogan trotted out at every available opportunity. Just like the claim of GM crops being a tremendous success, this too is based on a myth.