Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

This article appeared as part of a feature in the December 8, 1995 issue of 
Executive Intelligence Review. See Feature Introduction and Table of Contents.
Kissinger's 1974 Plan for Food Control Genocide
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/1995/2249_kissinger_food.html
by Joseph Brewda

On Dec. 10, 1974, the U.S. National Security Council under Henry Kissinger 
completed a classified 200-page study, "National Security Study Memorandum 
200: Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and 
Overseas Interests." The study falsely claimed that population growth in the 
so-called Lesser Developed Countries (LDCs) was a grave threat to U.S. 
national security. Adopted as official policy in November 1975 by President 
Gerald Ford, NSSM 200 outlined a covert plan to reduce population growth in 
those countries through birth control, and also, implicitly, war and famine. 
Brent Scowcroft, who had by then replaced Kissinger as national security 
adviser (the same post Scowcroft was to hold in the Bush administration), was 
put in charge of implementing the plan. CIA Director George Bush was ordered 
to assist Scowcroft, as were the secretaries of state, treasury, defense, and 
agriculture.

The bogus arguments that Kissinger advanced were not original. One of his 
major sources was the Royal Commission on Population, which King George VI 
had created in 1944 "to consider what measures should be taken in the 
national interest to influence the future trend of population." The 
commission found that Britain was gravely threatened by population growth in 
its colonies, since "a populous country has decided advantages over a 
sparsely-populated one for industrial production." The combined effects of 
increasing population and industrialization in its colonies, it warned, 
"might be decisive in its effects on the prestige and influence of the West," 
especially effecting "military strength and security."

NSSM 200 similarly concluded that the United States was threatened by 
population growth in the former colonial sector. It paid special attention to 
13 "key countries" in which the United States had a "special political and 
strategic interest": India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, Thailand, the 
Philippines, Turkey, Nigeria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia. 
It claimed that population growth in those states was especially worrisome, 
since it would quickly increase their relative political, economic, and 
military strength.

For example, Nigeria: "Already the most populous country on the continent, 
with an estimated 55 million people in 1970, Nigeria's population by the end 
of this century is projected to number 135 million. This suggests a growing 
political and strategic role for Nigeria, at least in Africa." Or Brazil: 
"Brazil clearly dominated the continent demographically." The study warned of 
a "growing power status for Brazil in Latin America and on the world scene 
over the next 25 years."
Food as a weapon

There were several measures that Kissinger advocated to deal with this 
alleged threat, most prominently, birth control and related 
population-reduction programs. He also warned that "population growth rates 
are likely to increase appreciably before they begin to decline," even if 
such measures were adopted.

A second measure was curtailing food supplies to targetted states, in part to 
force compliance with birth control policies: "There is also some established 
precedent for taking account of family planning performance in appraisal of 
assistance requirements by AID [U.S. Agency for International Development] 
and consultative groups. Since population growth is a major determinant of 
increases in food demand, allocation of scarce PL 480 resources should take 
account of what steps a country is taking in population control as well as 
food production. In these sensitive relations, however, it is important in 
style as well as substance to avoid the appearance of coercion."

"Mandatory programs may be needed and we should be considering these 
possibilities now," the document continued, adding, "Would food be considered 
an instrument of national power? ... Is the U.S. prepared to accept food 
rationing to help people who can't/won't control their population growth?"

Kissinger also predicted a return of famines that could make exclusive 
reliance on birth control programs unnecessary. "Rapid population growth and 
lagging food production in developing countries, together with the sharp 
deterioration in the global food situation in 1972 and 1973, have raised 
serious concerns about the ability of the world to feed itself adequately 
over the next quarter of century and beyond," he reported.

The cause of that coming food deficit was not natural, however, but was a 
result of western financial policy: "Capital investments for irrigation and 
infrastucture and the organization requirements for continuous improvements 
in agricultural yields may be beyond the financial and administrative 
capacity of many LDCs. For some of the areas under heaviest population 
pressure, there is little or no prospect for foreign exchange earnings to 
cover constantly increasingly imports of food."

"It is questionable," Kissinger gloated, "whether aid donor countries will be 
prepared to provide the sort of massive food aid called for by the import 
projections on a long-term continuing basis." Consequently, "large-scale 
famine of a kind not experienced for several decades—a kind the world thought 
had been permanently banished," was foreseeable—famine, which has indeed come 
to pass.