Waking Up from our Affluenza: Mass Consumption and Farmer Suicide

Is there a connection between the two?

US Photographer Chris Jordan talks about the collective impact of individual choices in our consumer culture littering the planet and our habitat with massive waste. But are we choosing? Choice requires reflection. Watch the PBS video, see the last 3 minutes a few times.

One of his images called "Prison Uniforms, 2007" depicts 2.3 million folded prison uniforms, equal to the number of Americans incarcerated in 2005. "We have the largest prison population of any country on earth. There's also no other country that has that percentage of its population in jail. And that includes all of the dictatorships that we think of as the enemies of freedom." - Chris jordan

A debt-based, usury based, fractional-reserve based monetary system keeps the system of mindless production and consumption growing exponentially. People lose their freedom of choice. All our media, academia, think tanks, political-economic institutions are feeding this mindless system without realizing it.

An independent citizens tribunal in India finds World Bank's structural adjustment policies promising alleviation of poverty have directly contributing to dislocating the lives and livelihood of millions of farmers and rural households in India, which lost its former self-sufficiency in food production. Between 2001-2007 over 137,000 poor Indian farmers have committed suicide because they cannot afford the increased cost of imported seeds, which require more irrigation water, power, fertilizer and pesticides. Poor farmers with declining access to low interest loans and government subsidies could no longer compete openly with heavily subsidized farming in Europe and the USA. See the two page report here.

Other links: Seeds of suicide: India's desperate farmers, PBS frontline

Canada lost three-quarters of its farmers between 1941 and 1996 and the decline continues. In 1935 there were 6.8 million working farmers in the US; today the number is under 1.9 million - less than the total US prison population. Suicide is now the leading cause of death among US farmers, occurring at a rate three times higher than in the general population. In Britain farmers are taking their own lives at a rate of one a week. In China an estimated 400 million farmers are in danger of losing their livelihoods entirely. Everywhere small-scale farmers are being 'disappeared'. In Australia, one farmer takes his life every fourth day.

Question: Is it possible that our centralized debt-based money system that we collectively participate in contributes to farmer suicide? When our farmers die, who are going to feed us?