Stuck in the mud, trucks carrying supplies to Gueckedou, Guinea Conakry. Mali, neighboring country, yesterday confirmed a new case of Ebola and reported that evaluates two other possible infections

I heard serious diseases such as malaria or dengue fever were caused by poverty. Whenever I heard that, whoever said it tended to send us a charitable message, saying we help these poor people, to end their misery or the unhygienic conditions that sicken them. Instead, I listened hard to explain who and what caused such poverty.

I heard, in cases like mad cow or swine flu, administrations apologizing for companies and the agribusiness model, saying that without them the planet could not be fed. But it happened that, in tracing the origin of mad cow disease, it turned out that on the farms where where these herbivorous animals were fed, it was with feed made of very cheap meat. As when we investigated the flu, we came to the pig farms that Smithfield multinational had relocated to Mexico, where sanitary requirements are less stringent for raising many animals in so little space.

But recently I read that American authors such as Robert G. Wallace (University of California, Irvine) work and advocate for the urgent need to address the origin of diseases, pulling the thread of the circuits of capital. Because in many cases the answer does not appear in treaties or medical libraries: the trigger for the existence, expansion and difficulty of controlling many diseases experienced in our civilization is greed: the need to accumulate capital.

And in an article I read by Jean Batou in Viento Sur, describing studies that have been presented regarding the Ebola pandemic, he reaches the same conclusion: its origin is related to the implementation of an agricultural model designed to generate premiums for the market rather than high quality, safe food for the population. In the words of Batou, when it comes to the transmission of Ebola in wildlife and people, the virus is linked to qualitative transformations in the environment of the region, caused by deforestation, the hoarding of natural resources, land grabbing and the explosion of monoculture for export.

On the one hand, we already knew from other diseases that impoverishment generated by the expansion of industrial, export-oriented monoculture farming in the affected countries, with consequent food shortages and limited public health ccapacities, are the basis of the difficulties in controlling the spread of Ebola. On the other hand, this is the great novelty here: changes in the ecosystem of the area, comprised of a mosaic of small family farms and great biodiversity, the creation of uniform monocultures and impoverished people are the factors that favored the spread of the virus among both wildlife and people.

Specifically, those who have followed the trail of Ebola have discovered places where people are surrounded by oil palm plantations, from projects supported by the relevant governments and driven by international investors (Italian conglomerate Nuove Iniziative Industriali and the US Farm Land of Guinea, Guinea Conakry, the Sime Darby company, Malaysia, Liberia, Addax, Switzerland, in Sierra Leone. A Spanish government cooperative development fund ended up being used by a Canadian company to develop palm plantations in the Congo. And this kind of palm oil monoculture is known to especially attract fruit bats from the forest that are hosts of the virus, which can then transmit it to people through their urine, droppings or saliva.

We can only pose further questions to complete our understanding of the Ebola circuit. Why in these African countries and elsewhere is this approach being allowed, depriving thousands of families of their land, where they raise their traditional crops? Why are state-owned or foreign companies taking over these lands, often accompanied by interventions of the army or the police to neutralize the strength of the people — a phenomenon that is taking on spectacular dimensions? What business are involved in the production of palm oil?

Indeed, the palm oil that is so beloved by bats produces mana of another sort, the fuel that drives all businesses: gasoline.

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