The Farm Kill Project: Brought to You by Tax-Exempt Trust-Funders Who Would Just As Soon You Starve THOMAS J SHEPSTONE Does my title alarm you? Do think it’s over the top provocative
It’s being led by spoiled brat trust-funders who believe there are far too many of us around. Worse, they're financing their project through tax-exempt foundations, meaning they’re doing it partly our
The Farm Kill Project: Brought to You by Tax-Exempt Trust-Funders Who Would Just As Soon You Starve
SEP 16, 2024
Does my title alarm you? Do think it’s over the top provocative click bait? Are you thinking I may have lost it? Well, I forgive any reader for letting these thoughts enter their head. Skepticism is always warranted. After all, It’s my duty to convince you I might be onto something. I assure you, though, there is an effort to kill farming and it’s being led by spoiled brat trust-funders who believe there are far too many of us around. Worse, they're financing their project through tax-exempt foundations, meaning they’re doing it partly our dime.
What I'm talking about is this story in AgricultureDive.com. Here are the important parts (emphasis added):
Over 100 climate groups unveiled a concerted effort to pressure JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and other private banks to stop financing global meat and dairy companies, saying the institutions’ lending activities undermine their environmental commitments.
An open letter led by Friends of the Earth to some of the world’s largest lending institutions called to halt new financing that expands or perpetuates industrial livestock production and to add requirements that meat, dairy and feed clients disclose their climate action plans. Banks’ lending activities to companies connected with livestock production have increased over the past few years, allowing what environmental groups say are some of the world’s largest emitters to grow operations — and their emissions…
“Industrial livestock companies are incompatible with a safe future for our planet, so it is time for banks and investors to turn off the taps and stop providing the finance that is enabling them to grow,” Martin Bowman, senior policy and campaigns manager at Feedback Global, said in a statement.
Food systems make up about one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions, with livestock production responsible for half of that total. Livestock emissions have declined in recent years, in part because of smaller cattle herd numbers and other financial constraints that make it difficult for ranchers to expand production.
However, to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement to keep warming within 1.5 degrees Celsius, emissions from livestock production must drop 61% by 2036, according to a study from Harvard University and three other schools.
The bolded statements couldn’t make it more clear; this is an effort to destroy commercial agriculture on the scale needed to feed the world. And, just to reinforce this point, consider the following from the letter to the bankers:
Thus, we call upon all banks to treat industrial livestock as a high-emitting sector — and to immediately set, publish, and implement agriculture sector-specific 1.5°C targets and action plans. At a minimum, this includes:
Halting all new financing that enables the perpetuation or expansion of industrial livestock production.
Requiring meat, dairy, and feed clients to disclose third party verified 1.5°C targets and action plans that align with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2022 (IPCC22) or an equivalent science-based sectoral pathway.
Addressing the additional social and environmental harms from industrial livestock production…
Further research in a study by Friends of the Earth U.S. (FOE U.S.) and Profundo titled Bull in the Climate Shop: Industrial Livestock Financing Sabotages Major U.S. Banks’ Climate Commitments reveals that of the US$134 billion in loans and underwriting from U.S.-based banks to the meat, dairy, and feed corporations examined, more than half can be attributed to Bank of America, Citigroup, and JP Morgan Chase (the “Big Three”).
The Big Three’s lending to meat, dairy, and feed corporations results in approximately 11% of greenhouse gas emissions linked to the banks’ financing. However, these corporations represent just a tiny fraction (0.25%) of the banks’ portfolios — a 44X difference. Thus, by eliminating their financing of high-emitting corporations involved in meat, dairy, and feed production — a relatively small change in how they allocate their capital — these big banks can affect a sharp emissions reduction. The biggest emitters among the Big Three’s meat, dairy, and feed clients include Cargill, ADM, Bunge, and Nestlé…
Investing in industrial livestock production is not aligned with safeguarding the stability of life-sustaining systems. Industrial livestock companies’ operations are structurally at odds with a sustainable future — they are hardwired to pursue growth in the unsustainable mass production of meat and dairy.
Therefore, banks simply cannot achieve their climate commitments without a significant reduction in their financing to meat, dairy, and feed corporations. Halting bank financing of industrial livestock production would immediately and significantly improve banks’ emissions equation, demonstrate a commitment to addressing climate and nature-related impacts, and deliver benefits to the planet, people, and the banks.
Subscribed
Notice how the letter attempts to make the issue about “industrial livestock production” as if there were some difference between how much CO2 a cow on a family farm burps and farts versus one on a 5,000 cow California dairy farm. That’s, of course, because everyone (including me, who grew up on one) loves family farms. But that’s completely beside the point in this case because all that milk and beef is going somewhere and if we eliminated big corporate farms, the food would still have to be produced somehow, somewhere. The word “industrial” is nothing more than a lure into accepting the falsehood that this effort is about anything other than killing farms and precipitating a food crisis.
But, you're probably saying, no one would really want to do that! Oh, yes, they would. Take a look at the list of 105 groups signing onto the letter. Most are silly outfits of no consequence created or rounded up by the major entities to make it appear there is a groundswell of support for what is a profoundly far-left extremist program. It’s a classic Leninist tactic. One, believe or not, is the Stray Dog Institute, and here’s what it all about:
Stray Dog Institute is a private operating foundation that seeks to reduce, reform, and replace the use of animals in the food system.Through trust-based philanthropy, thought partnership, and collaborative projects, we cultivate a powerful and inclusive movement for a just and sustainable food system based on plants and alternative proteins. Our allies encourage plant-forward eating, oppose industrial animal agriculture, and advance alternatives to animal-based food systems.
The big players include Friends of Earth and Greenpeace, the latter of which I devoutly hope will be sued out of existence. Another significant, but less well known, outfit is the Center for Biological Diversity. It is a large operation ($20 million or so) and got that way by suing the government and collecting donations from trust-funder run NGOs. You can read about its nefarious activities here and here. The latter tells who the funders are, and they include the usual suspects opposed to both fossil fuels and nuclear energy, which means no reliable energy at all.
The list of Hidden State funders including several donor-advised funds intended to hide exactly who funds what, as well the Rockefeller family in the form of the Sustainable Markets Foundation. The Patagonia hustlers who sell vinyl jackets to wealthy idiots opposed to the natural gas required to make the jackets is on the list, too. So, are the money-laundering Tides Foundation, Henry Wallace's descendants (Woodtiger Fund) and Trout Unlimited.
What’s most interesting and revealing about the Center for Biological Diversity, though, is a former donor known as Fred Stanback, Jr., a now-deceased heir to the Stanback's Headache Powders fortune. Here are a few insights into what were his passions in life:
Fred Stanback, Jr., is a North Carolina billionaire and a major donor to organizations that promote abortion access (such as Planned Parenthood South Atlantic), left-leaning environmental policies (such as Sierra Club Foundation) [and] population control (such as Population Connection, formerly known as Zero Population Growth)…
…Stanback has been credited as a significant donor in media accounts, annual reports, and publicly available documents regarding dozens of promoters of left-leaning environmentalism, abortion, population control … and left-leaning public policy/politics.
He has given a minimum of $1 million to each of the following organizations: the Southern Environmental Law Center, the Sierra Club Foundation, Planned Parenthood Health Systems, Planned Parenthood South Atlantic the National Parks Conservation Association, the Rocky Mountain Institute and the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.
Similarly, the following groups have each received donations in excess of $100,000 from Stanback: Clean Air Carolina, Wilderness Society, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Environmental Working Group, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Waterkeeper Alliance, the Defenders of Wildlife, and the Center for Reproductive Rights…
The Guttmacher Institute and Appalachian Voices both credit him at their highest donor level, the Nuclear Information and Resource Service [an anti-nuclear-energy advocacy group] calls him a “substantial” supporter, the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association identifies him as a major funder, the South Carolina Environmental Law Project ranks him as a top contributor, and Earth Justice lists him as part of its “Earthjustice Council.”
He has been reported as a regular donor to the Natural Resources Defense Council, which has received $80.6 million through Foundation for the Carolinas, nearly 4 percent of FFTC’s total giving from all donor accounts during the 1999-2017 grant years…
Population Connection lists him as part of its “president’s circle,” and he is also credited as a contributor by the Population Media Center and Population Action International. Population Media Center and Population Connection have received more than $53 million through the Foundation for the Carolinas.
Other confirmed recipients of Stanback donations include Greenpeace, the now-defunct Earth Policy Institute, Friends of the Earth, EcoAmerica, the Rainforest Action Network, the Woods Hole Research Center, the National Wildlife Federation, Democracy North Carolina, the Project on Government Oversight, the North Carolina Public Interest Research Group (NCPIRG) Education Fund, the North Carolina Coastal Federation, the North Carolina Conservation Network, and American Rivers.
So, Stanback, was yet another trust-funder type seeking to be one of the masters of the universe, and was obsessed with fighting population growth, fossil fuels and nuclear energy. He was also a financier of every left-wing degrowth special interest imaginable. It was his philosophy that undergirds this kill the farm initiative today and it's integrally related to a desire that there be less of us, so there's more for elites. A food crisis would be just fine with such people as it would, as they say, "reduce the surplus population.”
#Banks #Farms #Agriculture #Climate "CenterforBiologicalDiversity #Stanback
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Why can’t they just leave us alone?