1% of farms operate 70% of world's farmland

Researchers warn land inequality is rising with farmland increasingly dominated by a few major companies

www.theguardian.com

Most legal definitions of corporate farming in the United States pertain to tax laws,[2] anti–corporate farming laws,[3] and census data collection.[4]

— Wikipedia

Since the 1980s, researchers found control over the land has become far more concentrated both directly through ownership and indirectly through contract farming, which results in more destructive monocultures and fewer carefully tended smallholdings.

Taking the rising value of property and the growth of landless populations into account for the first time, the report calculates land inequality is 41% higher than previously believed.

“In the past, these instruments were only of concern to the markets. They didn’t affect us individually. But now they touch every aspect of our lives because they are linked to the environmental crisis and the pandemic,” said Ward Anseeuw, senior technical specialist at the International Land Coalition, which led the research along with a group of partners including Oxfam and the World Inequality Lab.

Asia and Africa have the highest levels of smallholdings, where human input tends to be higher than chemical and mechanical factors, and where time frames are more likely to be for generations rather than 10-year investment cycles. Worldwide, between 80% and 90% of farms are family or smallholder-owned. But they cover only a small and shrinking part of the land and commercial production.

Over the past four decades, the biggest shift from small to big was in the United States and Europe, where ownership is in fewer hands and even individual farmers work under strict contracts for retailers, trading conglomerates and investment funds.

• Big Ag Is Sabotaging Progress on Climate Change, Wired
• How America’s food giants swallowed the family farms, The Guardian
• Trump Funnels Record Subsidies to Farmers Ahead of Election Day., NYTimes
• False Profits: Why farmers despise socialism but depend on taxpayer funded government handouts, The Milwaukee Independent
• Why farmers only get 7.8 cents of every dollar Americans spend on food, Washington Post

Netflix and Alphabet will need to become ISPs, fast

This week completely scrambled the video landscape, and its implications are going to take months to fully understand.

techcrunch.com

First is the district court’s decision to approve the merger of AT&T and Time Warner announced just moments ago. That will create one of the largest content creation and distribution companies in the world when it closes. It is also expected to encourage Comcast to make a similar bid for 21st Century Fox, further consolidating the market. As Chip Pickering, CEO of pro-competition advocacy org INCOMPAS put it, “AT&T is getting the merger no one wants, but everyone will pay for.”

But the second major story was the final (final final) repeal of the FCC’s net neutrality rules yesterday that will allow telecom companies like AT&T to prioritize their own content over that of competitors. In the past, AT&T didn’t have all that much content, but the addition of Time Warner now gives them a library encompassing Warner Bros. to TBS, TNT, HBO and CNN. Suddenly, that control over prioritization just got a lot more powerful and profitable.

The Net Neutrality Repeal Is Official. Here’s How That Could Affect You.

Net Neutrality rules that required internet service providers to offer equal access to all web content are no longer in effect as of Monday.

www.nytimes.com

BLOCKING Internet service providers could not discriminate against any lawful content by blocking websites or apps. #InternetCensorship  #FreeSpeech

THROTTLING Service providers could not slow the transmission of data because of the nature of the content, as long as it was legal. #PayToPlay

PAID PRIORITIZATION Service providers could not create an internet fast lane for companies and consumers who paid premiums, and a slow lane for those who didn’t. #FastLanes

The FCC just repealed a 42-year-old rule blocking broadcast media mergers

The move paves the way for greater consolidation in the TV and radio industries.

www.washingtonpost.com|https://www.facebook.com/brian.d.fung

One long-standing rule repealed Thursday prevented one company in a given media market from owning both a daily newspaper and a TV station. Another rule blocked TV stations in the same market from merging with each other if the combination would leave fewer than eight independently owned stations. The agency also took aim at rules restricting the number of TV and radio stations that any media company could simultaneously own in a single market.

A major beneficiary of the deregulatory moves, analysts say, is Sinclair, a conservative broadcasting company that is seeking to buy up Tribune Media for $3.9 billion.

“This has a huge impact,” said Andrew Schwartzman, an expert on media law at Georgetown University. He added that the decisions will “reduce or eliminate” the need for Sinclair to sell off many stations to receive regulatory approval for the deal.

“This merger would never have been possible without a series of actions to overturn decades-long, settled legal precedent by Chairman Pai,” Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and 14 other lawmakers wrote in a letter. The letter added that Pai has “signaled his clear receptiveness to approving the Sinclair-Tribune transaction and in fact paved the way for its consummation.”

Verizon Wireless' Great Rural Purge: Tens of Thousands Losing Cell Service ·

Nearly 20,000 rural Verizon Wireless customers in states like Maine, Michigan, North Dakota, and Montana are being notified their cell service is being terminated because they spend too much time roaming outside of a Verizon Wireless coverage area. Verizon Wireless won’t say exactly how many customers it recently sent letters to advising them that because …

stopthecap.com

Verizon Wireless won’t say exactly how many customers it recently sent letters to advising them that because they have used “a significant amount of data while roaming off the Verizon Wireless network,” their service will be terminated Oct. 17.

Verizon denies reports as many as 19,000 customers are losing service as a result of the purge, but their representatives are routinely quoting that number to customers and officials calling Verizon to complain.

Customers have no recourse and if they don’t port their number to another service provider by the termination date, their number will be disconnected and lost for good. The only good news? Verizon wants to disconnect customers so badly, they are willing to forgive the remaining owed balances for any devices financed through Verizon.

The FCC Wants to Eliminate Net Neutrality Protections. We Can't Let That Happen.

In 2015, following years of dedicated activism – including individual actions by millions of Internet users – Team Internet scored a crucial victory: clear, enforceable protections for net neutrality. The new head of the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) wants to take away those protections and allow broadband providers like Comcast and AT&T to become permanent Internet gatekeepers. The good news is we can stop him.

www.eff.org

• ISPs can throttle a user’s connection
• Give preferential treatment to services. Faster downloads for one product while slowing another
• Block specific content and services
• Charge for “fast lanes”
• Eliminate unlimited data plans

What do we get instead? ISPs have to promise, cross their hearts and hope to die, to include certain net neutrality “principles” in their terms of service.  The ISPs will doubtless jump at the chance, because they know what we know: artfully drafted pledges and promises don’t mean much when there’s no firm legal obligation to back them up.

In theory, of course, there is a way to enforce terms of service commitments. Pai’s plan would reportedly rely on the Federal Trade Commission to go after service providers that violate their promises, on the theory that any such violation would be an unfair and deceptive business practice. 

But as The Verge’s Nilay Patel, and former FCC Counselor Gigi Sohn points out, companies change their terms of service all the time, and as yet we haven’t heard of anything in Pai’s plan that would stop them from doing so. Moreover, it’s not clear that all ISPs would have to make those promises. 

As Sohn explains, “Another name for the Pai Plan might be “Just Trust Us.” Hardly a comforting thought in a market where ISPs face little competition and serve as the sole gatekeeper to the [I]nternet.”

On April 26, more than 800 startups, innovators, investors, and entrepreneurial support organizations from all 50 states joined Engine, Y Combinator, and Techstars in sending a message to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai

"People will see right through Chairman Pai's dishonest plan," said Craig Aaron, CEO of DC-based public interest group Free Press. "As they have before, they will fight back in Congress, at the FCC and in their communities. They will use the internet to save the internet—and they will remember where their leaders in Washington stood when the future of net neutrality was in jeopardy."

The inside story of Facebook’s biggest setback | Rahul Bhatia

The Long Read: The social network had a grand plan to connect millions of Indians to the internet. Here’s how it all went wrong

www.theguardian.com|Rahul Bhatia

“If you look at the literate population, which is a good proxy for how many people can be online, it’s about 700-800 million,” a Facebook employee who worked on the company’s plans for India told me. “That’s really the opportunity. If you rank countries based on opportunity, India comes out on top, and comes out on top by a big margin.” According to a Facebook executive, the company’s internal analysis projected that more than 30% of the new customers it hoped to add worldwide by 2020 would come from India.

Manzar, who is 48, had spent much of his life working to help Indians get online, and now one of the biggest tech companies in the world had thrown its weight behind his cause. “The power of Facebook as a platform, how it has motivated people to come online, generate content, get even the non-literate to become literate ... I am a great fan,” he said.

But Manzar’s optimism soured when he saw what Internet.org actually looked like: a threadbare platform that only allowed access to 36 bookmarked sites and Facebook, which was naturally the only social network available. There was one weather app, three sites for women’s issues, and the search engine Bing. Facebook’s stripped-down internet was reminiscent of old search engines that listed the early web on one page, when it was small enough to be categorised, like books in a library.

Crucially, Facebook itself would decide which sites were included on the platform. The company had positioned Internet.org as a philanthropic endeavour – backed by Zuckerberg’s lofty pronouncements that “connectivity is a human right” – but retained total control of the platform. “Their pitch about access turned into mobilisation for their own product,” Manzar said.

Manzar had never seen anything like it. He realised that if Internet.org took hold in India, Facebook would be the gatekeeper to the web for hundreds of millions who had no idea what the internet was, or what it could do for them.

In private, Facebook’s efforts began to intensify. Zuckerberg began to make personal calls to Indian internet entrepreneurs to rebuild support for Internet.org. One person he contacted was a former senior executive of NASSCOM, India’s software industry lobby. The senior executive told Zuckerberg that he would support Internet.org – but only if Facebook opened up the platform to any company that wanted to participate. Zuckerberg promised him Facebook would make this change in the future. “Can we have your support now?” the executive recalled Zuckerberg asking. “We’ll make it a feature in Internet.org 2.0.”

“I said, ‘Zuck, what are you talking about?’ In my view, it’s like the British coming in and saying, ‘While everything’s OK, we’ll come in and help you with your tax collection – and this is the percentage we’ll take.’ It’s incredible.”,  Vijay Shekhar Sharma

But Facebook panicked. The company saw the regulator’s public questions as an existential threat, and within a week, Facebook’s marketing and policy teams launched a scorched-earth campaign to rally support.

Every user in India who logged into Facebook was greeted with a special message from Facebook, which said: “Free Basics is a first step to connecting 1 billion Indians to the opportunities online. But without your support, it could be banned in a matter of weeks.” Below the message, a large purple button invited users to click and “send email” to the regulator. If this was not intrusive enough, many users complained that even if they declined to send the message, merely lingering on the page caused Facebook to send all their friends a notification indicating they had written to the regulator. Online, outrage at the heavy-handed tactics erupted. “FB just listed an uncle’s account as having signed up to support Free Basics,” one user tweeted. “He passed away two years ago.”

Facebook had succeeded, overwhelmingly, in making the larger ruling on net neutrality about itself. As Pahwa told me: “Facebook came and shoved its ass in our faces.”

On Twitter, supporters of net neutrality began to protest against companies that had partnered with Facebook. Before long, four websites withdrew their participation, and tweeted support for net neutrality on their way out.

How Elon Musk exposed billions in questionable Pentagon spending

Ten years after ULA was born, the FTC’s direst warnings have come true, along with outcomes even the skeptics did not predict.

www.politico.com

Elon Musk’s SpaceX had to sue before it got access to the Pentagon — but now, as it promises to deliver cargo into space at less than half the cost of the military’s favored contractor, it has pulled back the curtain on tens of billions in potentially unnecessary military spending.

The entrenched contractor, a joint operation of Boeing and Lockheed Martin called the United Launch Alliance, has conducted 106 space launches all but flawlessly, but the cost for each is more than $350 million, according to the Government Accountability Office. SpaceX promises launches for less than $100 million.

Yet despite the potentially more cost-effective alternative, taxpayers will be paying the price for ULA’s contracts for years to come, POLITICO has found. Estimates show that, through 2030, the cost of the Pentagon’s launch program will hit $70 billion — one of the most expensive programs within the Defense Department. And even if ULA is never awarded another government contract, it will continue to collect billions of dollars — including an $800 million annual retainer — as it completes launches that were awarded before Musk’s company was allowed to compete. That includes a block buy of 36 launches awarded in 2013.

Meanwhile, ULA is under investigation by the Pentagon for possible corrupt bidding practices and is preparing to lay off 25 percent of its workforce. Its long-term viability is in doubt.

“As evidence that we were paying too much to ULA,” he said, “as soon as there was even the threat of competition, their costs came down quite a bit. And they were obviously motivated at that point in time. Motivation matters. Financial incentives matter.”

Sen. John McCain, a vocal critic of ULA, had a tense exchange with Kendall about the matter at a hearing in January.

“Do you know of any other federal arrangement with any other defense corporation where you pay them $800 million a year simply to remain in business?” McCain asked.

How 37 Banks Became 4 In Just 2 Decades

If you were wondering how banks got “too big to fail,” here’s a good place to start. This chart shows us how, over the last couple of decades, 37 banks have became just 4 mega-banks. These same 4 mega-banks have, thus far, been immune to the consequences of any and all of their terrible decisions that places the entire world economy in jeopardy. 

Amazon offers a vast array of goods. It is easy to order from. It is inexpensive. Everything arrives promptly. Customers love it. To no one’s surprise, Amazon is now one of the 10 biggest retailers in the United States, edging out the 99-year-old Safeway grocery chain.

Things are cheap for a reason, however. Inspired by Walmart, Amazon takes a famously hard line toward the people who make the stuff it sells.

“Amazon is not evil, but it is ruthlessly, ruthlessly efficient,” said Andrew Rhomberg, founder of JellyBooks, an e-book discovery site. “As consumers, we love Amazon’s efficiency and low prices,” he said. “But as suppliers, it is a toad that is hard to swallow.”

For Hachette, which publishes under the Little Brown and Grand Central imprints, the latest proposal was more elephant than toad. Both parties have declined to say exactly what Amazon is asking; the general belief is that it wants to increase its share of revenue on every e-book to 50 percent from 30 percent.

...

Academic houses traditionally sell their books, which are labor-intensive and printed in small quantities, for smaller discounts than general publishers do. Amazon will have none of that. “I offered them a 30 percent discount, and they demanded 40,” said Karen Christensen of Berkshire Publishing, a small academic house in Great Barrington, Mass.

Amazon, as usual, got what it wanted. Then it asked for 45 percent.

“Where do I find that 5 percent?” Ms. Christensen asked. “Amazon may be able to operate at a loss, but I’m not in a position to do that.”

Ms. Christensen, like other publishers, complains that Amazon is very inventive with fees and charges that rapidly add up.

But at the same time, Amazon has made itself essential to Berkshire, which publishes a three-volume dictionary of Chinese biography that sells for $595. Amazon is responsible for about 15 percent of Berkshire’s business. Ms. Christensen feels that she can’t leave Amazon but fears what else it might ask. “I wake up every single day knowing Amazon might make new, impossible demands,” she said.

Amazon has been reported to be seeking a new concession from publishers: If a customer orders a book and it is not immediately available, it wants the right to print the volume itself. An Amazon spokesman said it does not compel publishers to use the technology but offers it as a service. The customer wants the book immediately, so this makes obvious sense. But it chips away yet again at the publisher’s role.