Originally published at Inter Press Service. By Timothy A. Wise CAMBRIDGE, Nov 9 2021 (IPS) – As world leaders wrap up the UN Climate Summit in Glasgow, new scientific research shows that there is still a great deal of magical thinking about the contribution of fertilizer to global warming. Philanthropist Bill Gates fed the retreat from science in his book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster earlier this year. “To me fertilizer is magical,” he confesses, nitrogen fertilizer in particular. Under a photo of a beaming Gates in a Yara fertilizer distribution warehouse in Tanzania, he ex ..read more

By Timothy A. Wise and Jomo Kwame Sundaram Cross-posted at Inter Press Service.  Since the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) was launched in 2006, yields have barely risen, while rural poverty remains endemic, and would have increased more if not for out-migration. AGRA was started, with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, to double yields and incomes for 30 million smallholder farm households while halving food insecurity by 2020. There are no signs of significant productivity and income boosts from promoted com ..read more

Part 1 of a two-part article from the March/April 2021 issue of Dollars & Sense.  We will post Part 2 later this week. By John Summa   Economics textbooks teach you that the London Interbank Offered Rate (known by the acronym “Libor”) is the rate at which big global banks make uncollateralized loans to each other. (An uncollateralized loan is backed solely by the perceived credit-worthiness of the borrower.) For years, Libor was considered a fair and efficient market rate of interest, reflecting money market supply and demand conditions, which gave it legitimacy as a benchma ..read more

Part 2 of a two-part article from the March/April 2021 issue of Dollars & Sense .  Find Part 1 here.  By John Summa   Was There a Third Dimension to Libor Rigging That Authorities Missed? One question that remains unanswered and got little press attention in the reporting of the Libor bank scandal involves reported patterns of unjustified upward movement of the U.S. Libor rate at the end of each month, prior to the subprime mortgage loan crisis that began to roil markets in mid-to-late 2007. Remember, Libor is the benchmark for a whole host of interest rates that a ..read more

By Timothy A. Wise This article was originally published at Inter Press Service News Agency. African organizations are demanding answers after a recent report found that Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) strategies have failed spectacularly to meet its goals of increasing productivity and incomes for millions of small-scale farming households by 2020 while reducing food insecurity on the continent. The theme for the tenth annual African Green Revolution Forum, a virtual week-long event hosted by Rwanda that opens September 8, is “Feed the Cities, Grow the Continent.” Based ..read more

Prabhat Patnaik reflects on the COVID-19 shock that has worsened the crisis triggered by globalized finance. Only two possibilities emerge: restructure capitalism by controlling finance, or let the tendencies towards very coercive forms of fascism grow. August 2, 2020 Produced by Lynn Fries / GPEnewsdocs TRANSCRIPT LYNN FRIES: Hello and welcome. I’m Lynn Fries, producer of Global Political Economy for GPEnewsdocs. This is a report on a conversation with Prabhat Patnaik on why capitalism is going to be finding it very difficult to come to terms with a post COVID-19 world. Prabhat Pat ..read more

On both sides of the border, Mexican workers are now essential—to U.S. corporations. By Mateo Crossa and James M. Cypher (guest post) This article is in the July/August issue of Dollars & Sense. Drafted to Serve: Mexican Workers under the Defense Production Act In March, the nationwide cries for more medical equipment evoked calls from Washington, D.C. to essentially conscript medical supply firms under the Defense Production Act. This Act was implemented in 1950 to force and enable the private sector to prioritize production and delivery of strategic supplies in a time of n ..read more

By Timothy A. Wise The United Nations issued its annual hunger report July 13, ringing alarm bells the world over as governments gird for a coming COVID-19-induced food crisis. For the fifth straight year, undernourishment – or chronic hunger – increased in 2019 to 690 million worldwide, up 60 million since 2014. And that was for 2019, before COVID-19. Experts say as many as 130 million more could be driven into hunger as a result of the virus. Some 2 billion people worldwide already experienced some regular form of food insecurity in 2019. These are sobering numbers, especially with ..read more

On both sides of the border, Mexican workers are now essential—to U.S. corporations. By Mateo Crossa and James M. Cypher (guest post) This article is in the July/August issue of Dollars & Sense. Lear Corporation—one of the world’s largest auto parts manufacturers—rose to position 148 on Fortune magazine’s famous list of the 500 largest firms in 2018. It operates with roughly 148,000 workers spread across 261 locations. Its largest presence is in Mexico, where approximately 40,000 low-paid workers make seats and labor-intensive electronic wiring systems to be used, primarily ..read more

New report shows Africa’s Green Revolution is “failing on its own terms.”  By Timothy Wise Republished from the Institute for Agriculture & Trade Policy blog. Fourteen years ago, the Bill and Melinda Gates and Rockefeller foundations launched the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) with the goal of bringing Africa its own Green Revolution in agricultural productivity. Armed with high-yield commercial seeds, fertilizers and pesticides, AGRA eventually set the goal to double productivity and incomes by 2020 for 30 million small-scale farming households while reducing food i ..read more