"And (make Him) a messenger to the Children of Israel (saying): I have come
to you with a sign from your Lord, that I determine for you out of dust the form of a bird, then I
breathe into it and it becomes a bird with Allah’s permission, and I heal the blind and the
leprous, and bring the dead to life with Allah’s permission; and I inform you of what you should
eat and what you should store in your houses. Surely there is a sign in this for you, if you are
believers." –Holy Qur’an, Surah 3, verse 48

We who follow the teaching of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and/or we who
understand the wisdom of that teaching know the importance of land and agriculture. As Minister Lee,
of Charlotte NC put it, ‘agriculture is the first culture.’ The Messenger, as the Honorable
Elijah Muhammad was and is presently known, in the book Message to the Black Man taught ‘The
acquisition of land has been the factor for more wars than any other cause. Economists agree that,
in order for any type nation or system, capitalism or communism, democracy or totalitarian or what
have you, to exist and have a degree of independence, there must be ownership of land.’ He gives
us his life, his writings and his students as examples of ‘..what you should eat and what we
should store in our houses.’ Minister Louis Farrakhan is a product of the teachings of the HEM.

Now, if you will, consider the following questions. 1) What conditions would
necessitate a Messenger to his own people ‘..what you should eat and what you should store in your
houses.’ (Necessitate means to require or to make unavoidable; to make compulsory)? 2) What
brought down the ‘great’ Islamic empires like the Ottomans, Safavids and Mughals? 3) Are 1 and 2
above connected? The answers lay not in military defeat alone, but in the takeover of the land and
control of its production.

According to The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World the Islamic
countries may be divided into four broad agro-ecological region, each defined principally by
climatic conditions, characteristic systems, and historical development. The Tropical Asia region is
a noncontiguous area comprised of Bangladesh, Malaysia, and Indonesia. The Central Asia region
includes the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrghyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and
Uzbekistan. The West Asia and North Africa region includes Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Iran, Pakistan,
Turkey, and the Arab countries. The Sub-Saharan region is the belt of countries between Senegal and
Guinea in the west to Somalia in the east, excluding Ethiopia.

The movement began in Tropical Asia, where the English and Dutch established
monopolistic trading companies that evolved into military and political traditional agricultural
sector, either as in-kind taxes or as forced deliveries of produce, but as European economies
expanded during the Industrial Revolution and market demand both grew and deepened in the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the old trading companies gave way to direct colonial
administration by European governments, and European capital directly intervened to encourage the
production of crops exclusively for export. This entailed new forms of production, particularly
capital-intensive large plantations specializing in a single crop and using hired or coerced labor.

Russian penetration of Central Asia began in the eighteenth century with military
incursions into the Kazakh khanates. By 1876 the tsar had absorbed the Khanate of Khoqand, and by
1900 the Uzbeks and Turkmens were under imperial protection. Military conquest was followed by
agricultural colonization. Vast areas of grazing land were expropriated from the Kazakh pastoralists
for the purpose of settling peasants from European Russian and the Ukraine. Agricultural settlement
was followed by industrialization under the Soviet regime, and during the same period there was the
almost complete abandonment of nomadic life and individual farming. Both were replaced by forced
state collectivization of animal and crop production.

In the agrarian history of West Asia and North Africa, the first half of the
nineteenth century witnessed European economic penetration of the old Ottoman and Persian Empires
that at least nominally ruled over most of the region, and eventually foreign commercial interest
came to control the majority of the trade with the outside world. In some areas, most notably Egypt
under Muhammad Ali Pasha, local dynasts sought to stave off foreign control by organizing
monopolistic state production, processing, and export enterprises.

In Islamic Africa south of the Sahara, agriculture changed little until the
establishment of European colonial regimes in the last decades of the nineteenth century. In the
Late 1850s, the French began to extend their control up the Senegal River and to foster local
African production of peanuts to help meet the growing European demand for vegetable oils.

So, in my conclusion, until we the Black, Red, Yellow and poor Whites, come into the
proper understanding, so that Matthew 13:16 ‘..blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears,
for they hear’ becomes fulfilled, we must support the Three Year Economic Program set up by the
HEM and the Ministry of Agriculture set up by the Honorable Louis Farrakhan. Let us get some of this
good earth to call our own and put it under cultivation for our needs. More to come, Allah willing.