This article appears in the November 29, 2024 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
MOVIE REVIEW: Déjà vu: Where Past Meets Future
Globalists Who Destroyed U.S. Farming Are Now Targeting India
[Print version of this article]
Nov.14—The documentary film Déjà vu, produced by Indian filmmaker Bedabrata Pain, concerns the agricultural sectors of India and the United States, and is now circulating widely in U.S. farm states. It is well worth watching. In an hour and 10 minutes, it shows how the U.S. family farm system has been undermined for decades by transnational monopolies and global finance, and how these same interests have been targeting India in the last few years. Indian farmers led mass protests against this beginning in Fall 2020.
The film’s full name, Déjà vu: Where Past Meets Future, signifies a warning message: If the pricing and market changes in agriculture go through in India, that are demanded by the globalists—the cartel complex of transnational commodity and financial companies—the result will be a repeat, déjà vu, of the destruction of family farm agriculture that has already happened in the United States, because of the globalist dominance in Washington. “It will be déjà vu all over again, as Yogi Berra said,” states Pain near the end of his documentary.
Pain is not a farmer, but had a distinguished career as a scientist and innovator. He worked for NASA until 2008, and co-invented the CMOS image sensor; he holds over 80 patents. He then turned to film producing, directing, and screenwriting. Committed to getting out the truth, his film Chittagong (2012, in Hindi) covered the armed revolt by school youth against the British occupation of Chittagong in the 1930s. It won the National Film Award for Best Debut Film. Déjà vu was entered in the documentary film competition in The Netherlands in 2024.
Pain uses a set of more than 50 graphics throughout the video presentation, and features interviews with several farmers in India, and with 12 farmers in seven states in the U.S. Most of the U.S. farm spokesmen are people active in the network of the American group Farm Action, which specializes in reports on the degree of globalist domination in the U.S. food chain. This group was co-founded by Joe Maxwell, former state lawmaker, and lieutenant governor of Missouri, where he is a farmer and attorney.
Maxwell and others interviewed describe the process in the United States by which the transnational mega firms have been driving the local and regional producers and food processors out of business. He warned against allowing any of this in India, and called for keeping up the fight in the U.S. After a segment showing how the cartels coerce farmers, ranchers, the government and the public into submitting to cartel domination, by lies that it will be modern, money-saving, etc., Maxwell warned:
It’s only “cheaper” in the beginning. In the end, it costs everybody. It costs families their businesses. It costs farmers their farms. And in the end it costs consumers more money. And they [monopolies] just pocket it all. All the way to the bank they are laughing. And the government starts it by at first tweaking the laws, changing the policies that give them that little edge.
Globalist Assault on India’s Farmers
Déjà vu opens with footage of the mass farmer demonstration in Delhi in September 2020. The core issue was the passage in September that year—by a dead-of-night parliamentary vote—of measures that would undermine the MSP, the minimum support price, a parity-price-like mechanism. The MSP is the foundation for the continuance of the family-farm-based system in India. Additional destructive measures pushed through the government were: First, contract farming would be legalized. This would be the beginning of the end of the standing policy of government-regulated markets, to maintain support prices and arrangements for farmers, and reliable food to consumers. Private agricultural and food companies, under the new provision, could sign private contracts with farmers. Secondly, there were other “free market” measures that would be legalized, to de-regulate agriculture from government oversight.
The film shows the rhetoric used by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and others, for getting rid of the minimum support price for farm commodities, and ending government-regulated markets. They use such language as how India has to start becoming “competitive” in the world “open market.”
‘Free’ Market Destruction of U.S. Farming
The film then documents what the imposition of the free (cartel rigged) market has done in the United States. Local and regional food processing, farm supply and community institutions are gone. Instead, there are ghost towns, abandoned farmsteads, and consolidated, factory-style, mega units of production. Farmers give firsthand reports on the decay.
The device used for the film is for the viewers to follow along with an audio-visual team from India that toured the U.S. farm belt. The team took off in a car together from California, and travelled 10,000 miles, making stops in seven farm states, recording the scenes and conversations from local farmers. They went to Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa, Missouri, Minnesota, Nebraska and South Dakota.
Interspersed with this are more than 25 charts and graphics, which well illustrate the various aspects of the destructive “free market” process.
As one text image summarizes for the U.S.:
“Farm debt is at an all-time high nearing $500 billion; farm bankruptcy has trebled in the last two decades; population has declined in 80% of rural; 84% of rural counties are in persistent poverty.”
Continuing To Farm, Only with Off-Farm Income
One point which the film does not cover nor allude to, is the fact that most farmers in the U.S. have been able to continue in operation, only thanks to one or more family members working off the farm. This way they subsidize their income, while continuing to farm at a loss, keeping up production of food and fiber.
American family-run farms have typically had someone working off-farm as a teacher, nurse, school bus driver, truck driver, factory worker, construction worker, etc. Near cities, farmers try to stay in operation by doing direct-to-consumer sales through farmers’ markets, consumer coops—anything to continue farming.
However, this process of looting farm families is now at its end phase, for many reasons. In fact, overall, since 2021, during President Biden’s term, the U.S. has become a net importer of food (in money terms), an import dependency which is getting deeper every year.
It should be noted that in Europe the dynamics are similar, though with different particulars. Last Winter saw mass protests by European farmers, from Spain to Poland, and centered especially in Germany. The year before, farmers in The Netherlands led the way. In November this year, farmers in Britain had protest rallies set. The underlying conditions remain untenable to stay in farming.
High Suicide Rate in Farming
The suicide rate among farmers in the United States ranks among the highest in any sector. One farmer reports in the film that many of the sad cases you hear about of farmers suffering fatal accidents—from machinery, or falls, or tree-trimming, etc.—are not accidents, but really, suicides. The farmer sees no way out. By dying “by accident,” he wants to see that his family will get money from death insurance.
Suicide rates among farmers in India are very high. The film’s interviews address this. In the last 10 years, there have been 112,000 suicides of farmers and farm laborers under these dire conditions.
The fact that farmers are in an impossible situation is part of the backdrop to the unprecedented mass protests in Fall and Winter 2020-2021 in India. An estimated hundred-thousand farmers, family members and friends camped out and demonstrated for months. They suffered water cannon, jailings, rammings by cars, and other assaults, as well as hard conditions. Some 700 farmers died during this time. But they did not back down. The new offensive farm laws were put on hold: A victory, but only temporary. The globalist, monopoly-serving laws are not yet cancelled, only paused.
New Paradigm for Food Security
The Déjà vu film makes an important contribution to the international dialogue sorely needed, on what are the principles that must be put in practice that will provide a new, just, functional agriculture system, in a new world economic and security architecture. The film does not say positively what these principles are, but induces the viewer to think about them. The film makes clear that the international agro-food complex—like the military-industrial complex—should not be allowed to set policy for food and farming.
What are the essential principles for a sound, fair system of farming? Four points are suggested directly from the film:
1) Independent, family-scale farm operations are the most desirable mode of food production for a nation. Reasons include: commitment to food output, care for resources and the future; commitment to science, technology and education; high-skill level; and care for humanity.
2) Farm families and the rural community need a reliable income. This principle is embodied in the American System “parity” concept of pricing, and in India’s MSP—minimum support price.
3) Infrastructure for farm and rural areas is a must for a nation. This means water provision, defense against disasters, social and medical infrastructure, transportation and power systems, storage and processing, and so on.
4) National sovereignty, and nation-to-nation commitments on food and agriculture are fundamental, and in no way must ever be relinquished to transnational financial/commodity cartels.
One farm voice in the film, Mike Callicrate, a cattleman and direct-marketing businessman in Kansas/Colorado, and one of the most respected farm leaders in the United States over the decades, said of the mass protest in India:
I’m just so proud of those farmers. We don’t hardly have enough farmers left in the United States to have a protest. The farmers that we do have are so beholden to the corporate power, and the corporations that are providing their inputs and buying their outputs, they live in fear. They can’t protest for fear of retaliation, which I’ve experienced myself.
