Editorial comment: It's clear that what the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Warren Buffet and the African Agricultural
Technology Foundation (AATF) support can not be taken as proof of integrity and reliable solutions to the problems of hunger and drought in poverty-stricken countries. Mike Ludwig makes it quite clear that there is most likely a rat in the bag.
"The Biosafety Centre accuses the AATF of essentially being a front group
for the US government, allowing USAID to "meddle" in African politics
by promoting weak biosafety regulation that makes it easier for American corporations to export biotechnology to African countries."
The first Green Revolution was anything but 'green', and the second Green Revolution threatens to be even worse. The one goal is clearly making millions and billions for the biotech companies, in particular Monsanto.
The most important point in this article: "Today's scientific evidence demonstrates that agroecological methods
outperform the use of chemical fertilizers in boosting food production
where the hungry live - especially in unfavorable environments," said
Olivier De Schutter, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food and
author of the report."
Those methods are clearly what might still save the third world from malnutrition and death from diseases related to it, NOMA [1] perhaps foremost in this scary mass of diseases that is threatening the poor countries in the world. - SON
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| Joel Mbithi (left), farm manager of the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute's Kiboko Research Station, and Yoseph Beyene, CIMMYT maize breeder, discuss experimental plots. They are developing drought tolerant top-cross hybrids as part of the Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) project. This is run by the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF) in partnership with Monsanto and CIMMYT, which supplies germplasm and expertise. (Photo: Anne Wangalachi/CIMMYT.) |
"The
World According to Monsanto", a groundbreaking documentary on this
insidious company's massive influence, was a recent Truthout Progressive
Pick of the Week. Get the DVD by making a donation of $30 or more to
Truthout!
Skimming the Agricultural Development section of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation web site
is a feel-good experience: African farmers smile in a bright slide show
of images amid descriptions of the foundation's fight against poverty
and hunger. But biosafety activists in South Africa are calling a
program funded by the Gates Foundation a "Trojan horse" to open the door
for private agribusiness and genetically engineered (GE) seeds,
including a drought-resistant corn that Monsanto hopes to have approved
in the United States and abroad.
The Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) program was launched in 2008 with a $47 million grant from mega-rich philanthropists Warrant Buffet
and Bill Gates. The program is supposed to help farmers in several
African countries increase their yields with drought- and heat-tolerant
corn varieties, but a report released last month by the African Centre for Biosafety claims WEMA is threatening Africa's food sovereignty and opening new markets for agribusiness giants like Monsanto.
The Gates Foundation claims that biotechnology, GE crops and Western
agricultural methods are needed to feed the world's growing population
and programs like WEMA will help end poverty and hunger in the
developing world. Critics say the foundation is using its billions to
shape the global food agenda and the motivations behind WEMA were
recently called into question when activists discovered the Gates foundation had spent $27.6 million on 500,000 shares of Monsanto stock between April and June 2010.
Water shortages in parts of Africa and beyond have created a market for
"climate ready" crops worth an estimated $2.7 billion. Leading biotech
companies like Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer and Dow are currently racing to
develop crops that will grow in drought conditions caused by climate
change, and by participating in the WEMA program, Monsanto is gaining a
leg up by establishing new markets and regulatory approvals for its
patented transgenes in five Sub-Saharan African countries, according to
the Centre's report.
Monsanto teamed up with BASF, another industrial giant, to donate
technology and transgenes to WEMA and its partner organizations. Seed
companies and researchers will receive the GE seed for free and
small-scale farmers can plant the corn without making the royalty
payments that Monsanto usually demands from farmers each season.
Monsanto is donating the seeds for now, but the company has a
reputation for aggressively defending its patents. In the past, Monsanto
has sued
farmers for growing crops that cross-pollinated with Monsanto crops and
became contaminated with the company's patented genetic codes.
In 2009, Monsanto and BASF discovered a gene in a bacterium that is
believed to help plants like corn survive on less water and soon the
companies developed a corn seed know as MON 87460. It remains unclear if
MON 87460 will out-compete conventional drought-tolerant hybrids, but
the United States Department of Agriculture could approve
the corn for commercial use in the US as soon as July 11. Monsanto
plans to make the seed available to American farmers by next year.
GE crops like MON 87460 can only be tested and sold in countries that,
like the US, are friendly toward biotech agriculture. WEMA's target
areas could add five countries to that list: South Africa, Uganda,
Tanzania, Kenya and Mozambique. The Biosafety Centre reports that WEMA's
massive funding opportunities pressure politicians to pass weak
biosafety laws and welcome GE crops and the agrichemical drenched
growing systems that come with them. Field trials of MON 87460 and other
drought-tolerant varieties are already underway in South Africa, where
Monsanto already has considerable political influence. Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda are expected to begin field trials of WEMA corn varieties in 2011.
The agency that is implementing WEMA is the African Agricultural
Technology Foundation (AATF), a pro-biotechnology group funded
completely by the US government's USAID program, the United Kingdom and
the Buffet and Gates foundations. The AATF is a nonprofit charity that
lobbies African governments and promotes partnerships between public
groups and private companies to make agricultural technology available
in Africa. The Biosafety Centre accuses the AATF of essentially being a
front group for the US government, allowing USAID to "meddle" in African
politics by promoting weak biosafety regulation that makes it easier for American corporations to export biotechnology to African countries.
WEMA and AATF swim in a myriad alphabet soup
of NGOs and nonprofits propped up by Western nations and wealthy
philanthropists that promote everything from fertilizer to food crops
with enhanced nutritional content as solutions to world hunger.
Together, these groups are promoting a Second Green Revolution
and sparking a worldwide debate over the future of food production. The
Gates Foundation alone has committed $1.7 billion to the effort to
date.
There was nothing "green" about the first Green Revolution of the 1950s
and 1960s. As population skyrocketed during the last century,
multinationals pushed Western agriculture's fertilizers, irrigation,
oil-thirsty machinery and pesticides on farmers in the developing world.
Historians often point out
that promoting industrial agriculture to keep developing countries well
fed was crucial to the US effort to stop the spread of Soviet
Communism.
The Second Green Revolution, which is focused on Africa, seeks to solve
hunger problems with education, biotechnology, high-tech breeding, and
other industrial agricultural methods popular in countries like the US,
Brazil and Mexico.
Africa has landed in the center of a global food debate over a central
question: with the world's growing population expected to reach nine
billion by 2045, how will farmers feed everyone, especially those in
developing countries? The lines of the debate are drawn. The Second
Green Revolutionaries are now facing off with activists and researchers
who doubt the West's petroleum and technology-based agricultural systems
can sustainably feed the world.
The African Centre for Biosafety and its allies often point to a report
recently released by IAASTD, a research group supported by the United
Nations (UN), the World Health Organization, and others. IAASTD found
that industrial agriculture has been successful in its goal of
increasing crop yields worldwide, but has caused environmental
degradation and deforestation that disproportionately affects small
farmers and poorer nations. Widespread use of pesticides and fertilizer,
for instance, cause dead zones in coastal areas. Massive irrigation
projects now account for 70 percent of water withdrawal globally and
approximately 1.6 billion people live in water-scarce basins.
Increasing crop yields is the bottom line for groups like the Gates
Foundation, but the IAASTD recommends that sustainability should be the
goal. The report does not rule out biotechnology, but suggests high-tech
agriculture is just one tool in the toolbox. The report promotes "agroecology,"
which seeks to replace the chemical and biochemical inputs of
industrial agriculture with resources found in the natural environment.
In March, a UN expert released a report showing that small-scale
farmers could double their food production in a decade with the simple
agroecological methods. The report flies in the face of the Second Green
Revolutionaries.
"Today's scientific evidence demonstrates that agroecological methods
outperform the use of chemical fertilizers in boosting food production
where the hungry live - especially in unfavorable environments," said
Olivier De Schutter, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food and
author of the report. "Malawi, a country that launched a massive
chemical fertilizer subsidy program a few years ago, is now implementing
agroecology, benefiting more than 1.3 million of the poorest people,
with maize yields increasing from 1 ton per hectare to 2 to 3 tons per
hectare."
De Schutter said private companies like Monsanto will not invest in
agroecology because it does not open new markets for agrichemicals or GE
seeds, so it's up to governments and the public to support the switch
to more sustainable agriculture. But with more than a billion dollars
already spent, the Second Green Revolutionaries are determined to have a
say in how the world grows its food, and agroecology is not on their
agenda. To them, sustainability means bringing private innovation to the
developing world. The Gates Foundation can donate billions to the fight
against hunger, but when private companies like Monsanto stand to
benefit, it makes feeding the world look like a for-profit scheme.
Note:
[1] NOMA – The Face of Poverty
The full documentary can now be seen on Youtube:
Source: Truthout
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