This month, a new project focused on the northern High Plains—mostly Montana, Nebraska, and South Dakota, was announced by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), in cahoots with the most infamous names in the world food and resources cartels: Walmart, McDonalds and Cargill. The program is named RSVP, Ranch Systems and Viability Planning, which is to be led by the WWF, for the purpose of coercing livestock ranchers in this region to conform to whatever animal husbandry practices these schemers want to impose, in the name of reducing carbon emissions, and “saving” grasslands. The initial budget is $6 million, for funding activities including cadging ranchers to sign up with the program, agreeing to have their operations monitored, conducting workshops and one-on-one training, etc.
The targeting of cattlemen is very specific. WWF’s Northern Great Plains spokesman Martha Kauffman put it, “Ranchers are the most important stewards of the grasslands of the Northern Great Plains. As managers of over 70% of the remaining intact grasslands within this region, they hold the keys to its future. The RSVP network will support ranching partners in planning and improving the resiliency of their operations, so they continue to provide habitat for wildlife, store carbon, filter clear water,” blah, blah, blah.
All the initiating cartel firms have issued press releases with gooey green statements like this. Cargill spokesman Heather Tansey said, “We believe beef cattle can be a force for good, and one of the ways we can address some of our shared challenges is by preserving wildlife and drawing down carbon. This initiative is a testament to that.”
The reality is that, under the cartel concentration that has been allowed to take place, these companies have the whip, and they are out to destroy the last remaining communities of independent family-scale food producers. Look at Cargill, for example. It is among the top four firms that control 85% of all the beef processing now in the U.S. Ranchers are faced with little or no alternatives to market their animals. Moreover, Cargill, and its cohort food control outfits, are going heavily into fake-meat and plant alternative foods, in the name of saving the Earth.
Cattle country organizations and spokesmen have been sounding the alarm on this green cartel onslaught, exposing the motivation behind it, which is to end independent family farm agriculture, and to destroy the food chain for all citizens. For example, Wyoming rancher and attorney Tracy Hunt has specialized in presenting the “chart” and pedigree of these cartel green firms, at meetings of ranchers in cattle states, such as R-CALF USA, and others.
On Sept. 6, Nicole Pfrang, Kansas Cattlemen’s Association Board Member, denounced the WWF activities in her presentation to the Schiller Institute’s international conference, on a panel with other farm and food leaders. She pointed out how anti-cattlemen propaganda is done, “with labelling. A lot of people, especially the World Wildlife Fund, animal rights people, and pretty much our own government, are saying we’re the bad people. They’re saying, we don’t know what we’re doing.” She said that the intent of the World Wildlife Fund is “the extinction of us ranchers…. A city person is going to come and tell the ranchers how to take care of their livestock.” She said that they make an issue of “sustainability,” but, “We’ve been sustainable for hundreds of years, thousands of years, and we keep getting sustainable.”
The Schiller Institute was represented in October 2019 at the annual Kansas Cattlemen’s Convention by Marcia Merry Baker, who forewarned of initiatives such as this new RSVP High Plains gambit, in her presentation, “The Green New Fraud and Big Money’s Role in the Climate Change Phenomenon.” She reported on the City of London/Wall Street operations behind the “green” front of such organizations as the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, and their intent of total food and resources control and depopulation. She identified the opposite view of manmade “natural” resources, that is possible through such projects for the arid West as the North American Water and Power Alliance. She showed, in particular, the proposed Kansas Aqueduct, which would convey surplus flood water from the Missouri River in the east of the state, across to the dry western farmlands. This has been blocked for decades by the World Wildlife Fund-allied Wall Street forces.
