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Agriculture

Diet, Injections, and Injunctions

Published

11 minute read

From the Brownstone Institute

By TRACY THURMAN 

After the lockdowns of 2020 and the vaccine mandates of 2021, most Americans have heard about the idea of medical freedom and many have concerns about informed consent. One in four of our countrymen say they know someone who was seriously injured or killed by the Covid vaccines. The need for informed consent in medicine is apparent. But far fewer know anything about food freedom, or why it matters.

Medical freedom and food freedom are two sides of the same coin, and unless we fight to protect both, we will have neither.

Looking to the future in his 1951 book The Impact of Science on Society, the Nobel Prize-winning British mathematician, philosopher, and eugenicist Bertrand Russell forecast a future where the elites would use science as a means to control the population: “Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible. Even if all are miserable, all will believe themselves happy, because the government will tell them that they are so.” 

In The Scientific Outlook, Russell also wrote: “[In the future], [children’s] diet(s) will not be left to the caprices of parents, but will be such as the best biochemists recommend.”

While this likely sounded far-fetched to most of Russell’s contemporaries, his words capture our current era with alarming accuracy. In the past three years, millions of Americans saw their lives and livelihoods destroyed through injections and injunctions. Small businesses were decimated by the lockdowns. Legions of hard-working people faced ruin for demanding their right of informed consent – to evaluate the facts regarding any so-called medical treatment and to decide for themselves if they wanted it. They were fired for refusing the vaccine. They were killed with remdesivir. They died when doctors and bureaucrats denied them the truly safe and effective treatments they demanded, such as ivermectin.

Some of you are among the brave few who stood up in that moment and did what was right, to protect patients and vulnerable people at great cost to yourselves. I applaud you for this. You know first-hand what it means to have the boot of Injections and Injunctions on your face.

Now the third piece of the control grid Russell laid out must come into focus: diet. The battle to control you through what you eat is very real. It threatens to destroy what sovereignty we have left, and it is being perpetrated by the very same people who brought you “safe and effective injections” and “two weeks to slow the spread.”

The Covid lockdowns revealed the weakness of our overly centralized supply food chain on a global level. Government-mandated shutdowns disrupted food distribution hubs and shuttered meat processing plants, causing chaos, riots, and unrest worldwide as people scrambled to find food for their families. The situation deteriorated further when Russia invaded Ukraine, the breadbasket of Europe; numerous countries in Asia and Africa depended on Ukrainian grain for their sustenance. The decreased harvest drove up grain prices around the world, contributing to terrible food shortages for millions.

In 2023, 282 million people globally experienced high levels of acute hunger – an increase of 8.5 percent from 2022’s already elevated levels. In the United States, one in eight American households lacked adequate food in 2022, according to a report  from the US Department of Agriculture.

You’d think this would be the time to support farmers around the world who are trying to feed the hungry masses, and to encourage local food systems that are resilient in the face of supply-chain disruption. Instead, in country after country, World Economic Forum-affiliated leaders are cracking down on independent farmers and forcing them to comply with draconian new rules in the name of combating climate change.

In Sri Lanka, the World Economic Forum-affiliated Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe banned all chemical fertilizers in a bid to combat climate change, forcing farms to go organic overnight, something which any organic farmer will tell you is a recipe for disaster – making a change like this, even on a single farm, takes planning and time. Combined with an acute diesel shortage, this edict left farms unable to operate, leading to soaring food prices and famine. The situation became so dire that in 2022, hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankans rioted, invaded the presidential palace, and overthrew their government.

In Ireland, the agricultural sector has been ordered to cut carbon emissions by 25% in the next seven years. This requirement will drive many farms into bankruptcy and will force the culling of hundreds of thousands of cows.

In Canada, the goal is fertilizer reduction of 30%, including reductions in manure use on organic farms – the only viable alternative to chemical fertilizer. Farmers are ringing the alarm bells that this policy will devastate the food supply. Even though milk prices are hitting record levels, Canadian officials still force farmers to dump their milk if they produce more than an arbitrary quota. Dairy owners are banned from giving the milk away to neighbors or homeless shelters. In Ontario, farmers cannot sell their milk directly to consumers at all, but must sell it to a single government-approved body which then decides how it is distributed.

In the Netherlands, the government is requiring a 30% reduction in livestock and mandating cuts in nitrogen of up to 95% – nitrogen that is released from cow manure and, if used properly, is an earth-friendly fertilizer. The government also plans to seize and shut down up to 3,000 farms to meet climate objectives. Protests by Dutch farmers have been met with force, including the police firing live ammunition rounds at protesters.

Denmark, Belgium, and Germany are considering similar nitrogen reduction policies. Both the UK and US have already put schemes into place to pay farmers not to farm. In huge areas of the Midwest, large corporations are seizing prime farmland by eminent domain to install solar farms – installations that could instead be built in sunny, arid deserts where they would not disrupt the food supply.

All of this is happening at a time when we need more food and farms, not a reduction.

In the United States, there are many small, regenerative organic farms that raise pastured meats, dairy, and poultry on perennial pastures, without the use of chemical fertilizers, using animal manure to feed the grasses in a beautiful holistic cycle that is environmentally friendly and has starkly lower methane and carbon emissions compared to industrial farming. It reduces nitrogen runoff into rivers and streams and prevents erosion. If our government truly cared about climate change and human health, bureaucrats and scientists would be visiting these farms, begging to learn how to implement their methods to save the planet. Instead, these farmers are facing increased harassment and raids by armed agents seeking to shut down their operations.

You may have heard about Amos Miller, the Amish farmer from Lancaster, Pennsylvania who has been facing persecution from the CDC, FDA, and USDA for 7 years now for the unforgivable crime of providing raw milk and farm-processed, non-USDA inspected meats to customers who know what they are getting and want it exactly that way. We’ll get into why his customers want non-USDA-inspected meats later in this series. But for now, know that such raids are frequent and are threatening our ability to access local, healthy, environmentally friendly meats and dairy.

Since 2020 there has been a significant increase in the number of unexplained fires and other events damaging farms, barns, food warehouses, food pantries, and the food supply chain in general, prompting the FBI to warn that the food system is under threat from cyberattacks.

So why is this happening? Why is our food supply being disrupted, seemingly on purpose? And who is behind this global assault on our farmers?

Author

Tracy Thurman is an advocate for regenerative farming, food sovereignty, decentralized food systems, and medical freedom. She works with the Barnes Law Firm’s public interest division to safeguard the right to purchase food directly from farmers without government interference.

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Agriculture

It’s time to end supply management

Published on

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Ian Madsen

Ending Canada’s dairy supply management system would lower costs, boost exports, and create greater economic opportunities.

The Trump administration’s trade warfare is not all bad. Aside from spurring overdue interprovincial trade barrier elimination and the removal of obstacles to energy corridors, it has also spotlighted Canada’s dairy supply management system.

The existing marketing board structure is a major hindrance to Canada’s efforts to increase non-U.S. trade and improve its dismal productivity growth rate—crucial to reviving stagnant living standards. Ending it would lower consumer costs, make dairy farming more dynamic, innovative and export-oriented, and create opportunities for overseas trade deals.

Politicians sold supply management to Canadians to ensure affordable milk and dairy products for consumers without costing taxpayers anything—while avoiding unsightly dumping surplus milk or sudden price spikes. While the government has not paid dairy farmers directly, consumers have paid more at the supermarket than their U.S. neighbours for decades.

An October 2023 C.D. Howe Institute analysis showed that, over five years, the Canadian price for four litres of partly skimmed milk generally exceeded the U.S. price (converted to Canadian dollars) by more than a dollar, sometimes significantly more, and rarely less.

A 2014 study conducted by the University of Manitoba, published in 2015, found that lower-income households bore an extra burden of 2.3 per cent of their income above the estimated cost for free-market-determined dairy and poultry products (i.e., vs. non-supply management), amounting to $339 in 2014 dollars ($435 in current dollars). Higher-income households paid an additional 0.5 per cent of their income, or $554 annually in 2014 dollars ($712 today).

One of the pillars of the current system is production control, enforced by production quotas for every dairy farm. These quotas only gradually rise annually, despite abundant production capacity. As a result, millions of litres of milk are dumped in some years, according to a 2022 article by the Montreal Economic Institute.

Beyond production control, minimum price enforcement further entrenches inefficiency. Prices are set based on estimated production costs rather than market forces, keeping consumer costs high and limiting competition.

Import restrictions are the final pillar. They ensure foreign producers do not undercut domestic ones. Jaime Castaneda, executive vice-president of the U.S. National Milk Producers Federation, complained that the official 2.86 per cent non-tariffed Canadian import limit was not reached due to non-tariff barriers. Canadian tariffs of over 250 per cent apply to imports exceeding quotas from the European Union, the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, and the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA, or USMCA).

Dairy import protection obstructs efforts to reach more trade deals. Defending this system forces Canada to extend protection to foreign partners’ favoured industries. Affected sectors include several where Canada is competitive, such as machinery and devices, chemicals and plastics, and pharmaceuticals and medical products. This impedes efforts to increase non-U.S. exports of goods and services. Diverse and growing overseas exports are essential to reducing vulnerability to hostile U.S. trade policy.

It may require paying dairy farmers several billion dollars to transition from supply management—though this cartel-determined “market” value is dubious, as the current inflation-adjusted book value is much lower—but the cost to consumers and the economy is greater. New Zealand successfully evolved from a similar import-protected dairy industry into a vast global exporter. Canada must transform to excel. The current system limits Canada’s freedom to find greener pastures.

Ian Madsen is the Senior Policy Analyst at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

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Agriculture

Grain farmers warn Canadians that retaliatory tariffs against Trump, US will cause food prices to soar

Published on

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

 

One of Canada’s prominent agricultural advocacy groups warned that should the federal Liberal government impose counter-tariffs on the United States, it could make growing food more expensive and would be a nightmare for Canadian farmers and consumers.

According to Grain Growers of Canada (GGC) executive director Kyle Larkin, the cost of phosphate fertilizer, which Canada does not make, would shoot up should the Mark Carney Liberal government enact counter-tariffs to U.S. President Donald Trump’s.

Larkin said recently that there is no “domestic phosphate production here (in Canada), so we rely on imports, and the United States is our major supplier.”

“A 25% tariff on phosphate fertilizer definitely would have an impact on grain farmers,” he added.

According to Statistics Canada, from 2018 to 2023, Canada imported about 4.12 million tonnes of fertilizer from the United States. This amount included 1.46 million tonnes of monoammonium phosphates (MAP) as well as 92,027 tonnes of diammonium phosphate (DAP).

Also imported were 937,000 tonnes of urea, 310,158 tonnes of ammonium nitrate, and 518,232 tonnes of needed fertilizers that have both nitrogen and phosphorus.

According to Larkin, although most farmers have purchased their fertilizer for 2025, they would be in for a rough 2026 should the 25 percent tariffs on Canadian exports by the U.S. still stand.

Larkin noted how Canadian farmers are already facing “sky-high input costs and increased government regulations and taxation.”

He said the potential “tariff on fertilizer is a massive concern.”

Trump has routinely cited Canada’s lack of action on drug trafficking and border security as the main reasons for his punishing tariffs.

About three weeks ago, Trump announced he was giving Mexico and Canada a 30-day reprieve on 25 percent export tariffs for goods covered by the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) on free trade.

However, Ontario Premier Doug Ford, despite the reprieve from Trump, later threatened to impose a 25 percent electricity surcharge on three American states. Ford, however, quickly stopped his planned electricity surcharge after Trump threatened a sharp increase on Canadian steel and aluminum in response to his threats.

As it stands, Canada has in place a 25 percent counter tariff on some $30 billion of U.S. goods.

It is not yet clear how new Prime Minister Mark Carney will respond to Trump’s tariffs. However, he may announce something after he calls the next election, which he is expected to do March 23.

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