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Moratorium on foreclosures of family farms
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An immediate moratorium on foreclosures of family farms, given the
cartel-rigged low prices for farm products and the lack of access to
credit at reasonable rates.
Since the mid-1950s, the number of family farms in Australia has
collapsed from more than 300,000, to less than 100,000. A fraction of
this decline is due to increased efficiency, but most of it can be
attributed to high interest rates and low pricesboth of which are not
the workings of the so-called "free market", as is claimed, but of the
usurious credit policies of the banking system, and the stacked prices
set by private food cartels, whose size allows them to manipulate the
so-called free market at will. Dwayne Andreas, the head of Archer
Daniels Midlands, the 16th largest food company in the world, boasted in
August 1995, "There isn't one grain of anything in the world that is
sold on a free market. Not one! The only place you see a free market is
the speeches of politicians." Since food is a strategic resource, the
family farmer must be protected, the first step of which is halting the
exodus off the land. Prime Minister John Howard's talk about "regional
renewal", is a fraud, so long as he is not willing to take this
essential measure.
Again, in his Fremantle speech, John Curtin said:
"The difficulties confronting small woolgrowers and other primary
producers in the marketing of their products, because of lack of
finance, give the Labor Party concern; and with a view to assisting them
the general policy of the re-organised Commonwealth Bank to be laid down
by Labor legislation in the next Parliament, will provide for advances
to primary producers against their products at low rates of interest, to
prevent exploitation of their financial position by private financial
interests.
An immediate moratorium on foreclosures of family farms, given the
cartel-rigged low prices for farm products and the lack of access to
credit at reasonable rates.
Since the mid-1950s, the number of family farms in Australia has
collapsed from more than 300,000, to less than 100,000. A fraction of
this decline is due to increased efficiency, but most of it can be
attributed to high interest rates and low pricesboth of which are not
the workings of the so-called "free market", as is claimed, but of the
usurious credit policies of the banking system, and the stacked prices
set by private food cartels, whose size allows them to manipulate the
so-called free market at will. Dwayne Andreas, the head of Archer
Daniels Midlands, the 16th largest food company in the world, boasted in
August 1995, "There isn't one grain of anything in the world that is
sold on a free market. Not one! The only place you see a free market is
the speeches of politicians." Since food is a strategic resource, the
family farmer must be protected, the first step of which is halting the
exodus off the land. Prime Minister John Howard's talk about "regional
renewal", is a fraud, so long as he is not willing to take this
essential measure.
Again, in his Fremantle speech, John Curtin said:
"The difficulties confronting small woolgrowers and other primary
producers in the marketing of their products, because of lack of
finance, give the Labor Party concern; and with a view to assisting them
the general policy of the re-organised Commonwealth Bank to be laid down
by Labor legislation in the next Parliament, will provide for advances
to primary producers against their products at low rates of interest, to
prevent exploitation of their financial position by private financial
interests.
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