Developing the meat grab

‘Meat grabbing’ describes actually existing land deals undertaken for industrial meat production, either directly in the form of animal housing and stocking (confined animal feeding operations, or CAFOs), or indirectly in the form of monocrop grain and oilseed production for livestock feed. Meat grabbing is also a concept for analyzing the relationships between industrial meat regimes, food security politics and the global land rush, relationships which have not yet been sufficiently considered in research or in policy. Using China's reform-era meat revolution as an analytical case, this paper proposes meat grabbing as a concept with three broad goals: (1) to show how industrial meat complicates notions of food security and of food security land grabs, (2) to incorporate social inequalities and environmental injustices into the conceptualization and measurement of land deals and (3) to expand dispossession's domain to include relationships between people and agroecosystems. This is an initial exploration of the content and framing of meat grabs, intended to synthesize its core features and raise questions for further study.     

中国加入WTO对广东畜牧业的影响及应对办法

加入 WTO将缓解我省畜牧业饲料紧缺的矛盾 ,促进我省饲料工业发展并扩大我省畜产品出口 ,同时也会对我省奶牛业、肉鸡生产带来不利影响。为此 ,应选择如下对策 :加强宏观调控 ;依法治牧 ;按市场导向调整产业结构 ;增加畜产品科技含量 ;加强动物保护工程和饲料安全工程建设 ;加快畜牧业产业化发展     

Tomb With a View

正China's famed Terracotta Warriors conquer the Big Apple A600-pound armored general from China has invaded New York City.He has come in peace,along with a few warriors of his army,some livestock,a horse,kitchen supplies and even an acrobat.Nearby,a kneeling archer practices his aim,with a spray of arrows fanning out on the wall ahead.The entourage seems appropriate,since it is the 2,200-year-old general's first     

In Search of Strategies to Face the Economic Crisis: Evidence from Greek Farms

This study examines the strategies – defensive or aggressive, individual or collective – undertaken by sheep farms in a Greek rural area in order to face the repercussions of the economic crisis and their effects on the productivity and economic performance of these farms. The article presents the results of a farm management survey conducted in 2010 and repeated in 2014 in northern Evros, Greece. The mix of strategies – mainly passive – adopted by farmers shows their confusion in the face of crisis conditions, which has resulted in reduced productivity, more use of family labour and a rise in collective actions.     

加强北京市规模化畜禽养殖场污染防治工作

通过对北京市规模化畜禽养殖场污染现状分析 ,结合国内外畜禽养殖场污染控制原则 ,提出北京市规模化畜禽养殖场污染防治对策和建议。     

Working in the slaughterhouse: Tanganyika Packers Ltd., from colonialism to collapse, 1947–2014

Between 1947 and 1975, Tanganyika Packers Ltd (TPL) was Tanzania’s only export-oriented slaughterhouse and beef-canning factory, a branch of UK-based Liebig’s Extract of Meat Corporation (Lemco), which originated in 1860s Uruguay. Until shortly before TPL was nationalized in 1974, it was a profitable parastatal, employing some 1200 workers, anchoring a working-class community, and providing an outlet for indigenous Tanzanian cattle from open rangelands. While nationalization aimed to capture the full value of TPL profits and expand exports into the European Economic Community, it instead severed TPL from the world market when Lemco withdrew its marketing license. Worker layoffs followed, and TPL became primarily a domestic supplier of military rations, creating precarious working conditions, until the factory was shuttered in 1993. Although technically TPL still exists, this article contends that, far from being a victim of a post-cold war neo-liberal transition, as is usually asserted, TPL’s fate is properly located in the period between 1967 and 1974, when state socialism in Tanzania created pressures on the parastatal and its workers to contribute to nation building, particularly by supplying fresh beef to the local butcher trade. This was coupled with a political ecology of disease and corruption, at a time of drought, villagization, and agro-pastoral resistance to market pressures, which prevented TPL from acquiring sufficient numbers of cattle in Africa’s third largest cattle country to take advantage of international beef scarcities in the early 1970s. Global pressures, especially disease controls and the OPEC oil embargo, frustrated TPL beef exports as the world economy moved from beef scarcity to a sudden glut by 1974.     

Livestock livelihoods compromised: the dilemma of the Fast Track Land Reform and Resettlement Programme in Matabeleland South,Zimbabwe

This article attempts to unravel the rubric of livestock rearing in Southern Matabeleland in the aftermath of the Fast Track Land Reform and Resettlement Programme (FTLRRP). It also shows how livestock rearing has been placed high in livelihood rankings in this region. The article is based on a detailed ethnographic study of the impact of the FTLRRP in the decade 2000 to 2010 in Gwanda and Umzingwane districts, and is an extract of my PHD thesis entitled ‘Visible hectares, Vanishing livelihoods’. The broad argument of the thesis is that the land reform programme has achieved change of commercial land ownership patterns from ‘white’ to ‘black’ Zimbabweans. The programme however has not coupled that with the support necessary to improve the livelihoods of the majority of people in the region. One of the impediments is that the state-crafted ‘one size fits all’ resettlement model failed to take cognisance of the socio-economic and ecological conditions of different provinces in the country. Hence the argument in this article is that the FTLRRP could have improved livelihoods of people in this region if livestock rearing was given priority and support by the state.     

Fuel,feed and the corporate restructuring of the food regime

The agrofuel boom has brought about some of the most significant transformations in the world food system in recent decades. A rich and diverse body of agrarian political economy research has emerged that elucidates the conflicts and redistributional shifts engendered by these transformations. However, less attention has been given to differences within agri-food capital. This paper contributes to the existing literature on agrofuels, by showing how one cluster of agri-food corporations and farmers within the US has benefited from soaring ethanol production at the expense of another cluster. More specifically, I delineate and chart the pecuniary trajectories of two corporate-led distributional coalitions that have vied over the course taken by the US ethanol sector: the ‘Agro-Trader nexus’ and the ‘Animal Processor nexus’. My main finding is that the US ethanol boom has been a vector of redistribution: increasing the earnings of the Agro-Trader nexus and corn growers while reducing the earnings of the Animal Processor nexus and livestock farmers. This finding points to the limits and contradictions of agrofuels capitalism and the acute tensions that exist at the heart of the corporate food regime.     

The meat of the global food crisis

The global food crisis has been widely described in terms of the volatility of grain and oilseed markets and the associated worsening conditions of food security facing many poor people. Various explanations have been given for this volatility, including increasingly meat-centered diets and rising demand for animal feed, especially in China. This is a very partial reading, as the food crisis runs much deeper than recent market turbulence; when it is understood in terms of the biophysical contradictions of the industrial grain–oilseed–livestock complex and how they are now accelerating, meat moves to the center of the story. Industrial livestock production is the driving force behind rising meat consumption on a world scale, and the process of cycling great volumes of industrial grains and oilseeds through soaring populations of concentrated animals serves to magnify the land and resource budgets, pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions associated with agriculture. These dynamics not only reflect disparities but are exacerbating them, foremost through climate change. Thus, this paper suggests that rising meat consumption and industrial livestock production should be understood together to comprise a powerful long-term vector of global inequality.     

Green Anima Farming

正China strengthens regulation on waste and pollution generated by largescale livestock and poultry production As people hoarded meat for their Chinese Lunar New Year feasts in late January,livestock and poultry farms in Feixi County,east China’s Anhui Province,were very busy.However,what occupied them was not increasing production,but preparing for moving and tackling pollution.Feixi is home to more than 530 live