Ceres in Cancer Within Cardinal Grand Cross and the Loss of Food Sovereignty in Canada

Agriculture-related dwarf planet Ceres stationed retrograde at 3 degrees Cancer on October 31 within a cardinal Grand Cross with Venus in Libra, Uranus in Aries, and Pluto in Capricorn.

This configuration brings issues related to food (Ceres) security (Cancer) to prominence, particularly as they relate to increased corporate globalization (Pluto in Capricorn).

Cancer is a sign related to the local, the home-based, the regional, and the natural. Our home turf. It's family and babies and all things precious. Cancer is a nurturing and security-conscious sign, a sign that both protects and requires protection. With Ceres here, there is a need to protect local, regional, and national agriculture and food production, and this comes into tense relationship with increased control by supra-national agriculture corporations (Pluto in Capricorn).

The Ceres in Cancer square to Uranus in Aries indicates an acute directional point involving intensified moves by agricultural mega-corporations into the uncharted, technology-based territory of genetically modified seeds/foods and other synthetic additions like growth hormones. Adding the Pluto in Capricorn element indicates an effort to make the bizarre, the synthetic, and the dangerously untested into the "industry standard."

Within this context, the Ceres-Uranus and Ceres-Venus squares indicate the necessity to take new, independent, and somewhat radical directions as individuals and like-minded groups take control of their own food supplies, making them autonomous and outside the corporate models.

To break the corporate stranglehold driving us into assembly-line and synthetic foods, food production needs to go smaller, natural/organic, and regional. The influence of Venus in Libra indicates relationships need to be built and strengthened between customer and farmer, and the relationship to food, in general, needs to be made closer and stronger. This breaks form from global agriculture corporations, which have no real home country and only vague connections to any regional area.

Canada is a Cancer Sun nation, and agriculture is big business here.

Canada's Uranus-Sun conjunction at 8 degrees Cancer has been in tight cardinal t-square with transiting Uranus in Aries and Pluto in Capricorn since June 2012. The first of the seven Uranus-Pluto squares on June 24, 2012 fell at 8 degrees Aries/Capricorn, drawing Canada's Uranus-Sun in Cancer into an exact t-square formation. This indicated the nation would be a primary test subject in the ongoing process of souped-up corporate globalization and integration of Global Governance.

Canadian agriculture is currently experiencing a shady, warp-speed deregulation process and restructuring led by a Conservative majority government headed by Bilderberg-approved Global Governor extraordinaire Stephen Harper.

In late 2011, the Conservatives started the semi-legal dismantling of the Canadian Wheat Board. The Wheat Board was set up after the Great Depression - incidentally, the last time the Uranus-Pluto square series occurred - with the idea that there was power in numbers for farmers. The Wheat Board sold all the wheat and barley in Canada, providing a stable and guaranteed price from year-to-year.

But with Goldman Sachs and the rest of the global financiers entering the grain market post-2008, stable and guaranteed prices for grain were not going to work. It's only a destabilized grain market and the wild fluctuations in price fed by stock market speculation on derivatives that pay off big.

The Wheat Board was akin to a union for farmers. What Harper and the gang did was bust the union.

With the Wheat Board dismantled and profits on grain potentially wide open, Canada's major grain handling company, Viterra, was quickly snapped up by Swiss-based Glencore. The sale was announced in July, just after the first Uranus-Pluto square.

In October 2012, news broke about some ecoli cases linked to the major Canadian beef processing plant XL Foods in Brooks, Alberta.

The use of media to manipulate and shape public perception related to agriculture, food policy, and commodities prices has been a strong theme since a Ceres-Vesta-Jupiter conjunction on the Gemini South Node in July 2012.

The ecoli story absolutely blew up in the media. It involved less than 20 people becoming sick, and no one died. More people die from tainted broccoli or spinach every year. But the story was everywhere. And when a story is everywhere, covered on every media channel, over-saturated to the max, you know something's up.

Within a couple weeks of the ecoli stories breaking, the largest meat packing corporation in the world, JBS, had taken over management of the Canadian plant. It has now announced its plan to purchase XL Foods.

JBS is a company owned 30% by the Brazillian government, but, again, this is a supra-national mega-corporation with no real concrete ties to anywhere. It operates in Brazil, the United States, Argentina, Uruguay, China, Russia, Australia, Italy, and Mexico.

If the sale of Canadian-owned and operated XL Foods to JBS goes through, two foreign-owned companies - Cargill and JBS - will own 80% of Canadian beef processing. Combine that with the Swiss takeover of Viterra, and in the span of one year, Canada will have lost sovereignty over the majority of its food system, offering up control on a silver platter to the highest corporate bidder.

The situation at XL Foods indicates that the huge, mega-corporate assembly line route does not work with animals and meat processing. There have been problems, including poor working conditions and poor treatment of workers, for years. But instead of moving into a more soulful, regionally-based treatment of animals and butchering, the next step seems to be to get even bigger, even more corporate, even more decentralized, with Canada giving up control of its beef supply altogether.

The Canadian Cattleman's Association supports the sale of XL Foods to JBS. Like lambs to slaughter.

But the United States-based Ranchers and Cattleman's Action Legal Fund is asking the U.S. Department of Justice to initiate an antitrust investigation of JBS and block the sale. The group believes both ranchers and citizens have been exploited by monopolistic practises in the beef industry, and the sale of XL Foods would eliminate yet more competition for JBS. JBS was threatened with an antitrust lawsuit in 2009 when it attempted to purchase National Beef Packing in the U.S.

The Canadian National Farmers Union is also calling for a government review of the JBS takeover of XL Foods. The problem there is that the loss of control of Canada's food supply in favour of global corporate interests is completely sanctioned - even planned and furthered - by the Conservatives led by Stephen Harper.

Under a "free" market mentality, nothing is sacred. Food is not sacred. Water is not sacred. Shelter is not sacred. Health care is not sacred. Everything under the increasingly globalized corporate system is wide open, unprotected, exposed to the (highly manipulated) "free" market, where maximized profit is really the only concern.

Cancer relates to soul. Ceres in Cancer indicates a necessity for nourishment from food that has soul. Home-grown. Local farmers. Regional comfort food.

Pluto relates to hidden sources of poison, including, in Capricorn, the poisonous influence of the corporate system.

Ceres and Pluto, with a long and brutal history between them, oppose each other, indicating a highly tense interplay of themes into early June, 2013.

The directions we take or do not take during the cardinal square years determine our fates for decades afterward. Individuals have a great deal of power now, and this has to be reinforced. Their decisions and directions have major ripple effects.

The food-related themes come to a head yet again next spring. Ceres will re-enter Cancer April 4, forming a cardinal t-square May 5-7, 2013 that will still be in effect as Uranus and Pluto form their third exact square at 11 degrees Aries/Capricorn on May 20.


Background:

From March 8, 2012: Canada's Uranus-Sun in Cancer in T-Square Lock Down within the Uranus-Pluto Square Series

From March 16, 2012: Canada's Uranus-Sun in Cancer in T-Square Lock Down within the Uranus-Pluto Square Series Part Two

From June 15, 2012: Oh, Canada: Officially at the Line in the Sand at the First Uranus-Pluto Square

All mundane astrology articles on Canada