GMOs and Africa

Recently the Gates Foundation, Howard G. Buffett Foundation, and the United Nations World Food Program teamed up with Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) to fund an effort intended to help farmers in poor countries increase their yield and soil quality.  This effort is focused in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Central America and will support a large number of woman farmers.

WFP is the currently largest single purchaser of food for humanitarian relief.  According to GatesFoundation.org, the Gates Foundation has given 66 million for this program to help Africa, the Buffet Foundation 9.1 million, and the Belgian Government has funded the Congo with $750,000. 

Gates has stated that GMO crops have the "potential to address farmer's challenges more efficiently than conventional techniques." In 2010 the Gates Foundation invested 23.1 million in 500,000 shares of Monsanto stock. (My December 2011 post reviews the film The Future of Food that interviews small farmers who have been exploited by Monsanto's regular practice of litigation for violating seed patents--for cross contamination caused by Monsanto GM seeds. For more about Monsanto and GMOs, see my October 2011 post "Monsanto, lies and cover up?")

An article from the online African Executive states about GM seeds, "Patenting, or claiming intellectual property rights means that farmers who buy GM seeds are forbidden from seed saving by law, and must buy new seed from the company each season...it is ironic that while GM purports to help to solve hunger and poverty in Africa, it may instead place an impossible burden on the poorest farmers...International NGOs working on food security issues are in agreement that patented GM crops present a serious threat to farmers and food rights..." (See my September 2011 post on GMOs to see what countries have already banned them.)

AGRA (Agra-Alliance.org) helps small farmers solely in Africa increase their yield with "the use of improved seeds and farm management techniques" and the improvement of soil quality through organic and inorganic fertilizer.  The Buffet Foundation has given 83 million in the past to small-scale farmers for soil improvement, participatory farm research, and the "development of drought-tolerant and virus resistant crop varieties to increase crop yields."

AGRA states that it "supports the rights of farmers to conserve and utilize their own seeds" and does not fund the development of GMOs.  However, according to Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy, "in Kenya AGRA has used funds from the Gates Foundation to write grants for research in genetically modified agriculture...nearly 80% of Gates funding in Kenya involves biotech and there have been over $100million in grants to organizations connected to Monsanto.  In 2008 some 30% of the [Gates] foundation's agricultural development funds went to promotion or developing genetically modified seeds."  (My December 2011 post reviews the documentary Bad Seed, which explains that GM cotton seeds in India produced 5x less yield than heirloom seeds, leading to the suicide of 400 Indian farmers.)


The following is an excerpt of a petition written in 2012 by the Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria, Friends of the Earth Ghana, Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy:

We the undersigned representing civil society groups are concerned about recent statements that emanated from the first Pan African Biotechnology Stewardship Conference held in Accra, Ghana on the 1st of December 2011, which called on Africans to use biotechnology to provide “poor farmers with healthier, more bountiful crops to reduce hunger and poverty in Africa"...

We are disappointed that an unproven and unsafe technology is being foisted on Africa simply because of the unfortunate continual characterization of Africa as a chronically hungry continent.
It is important to understand that, the agricultural fortunes of the continent have been adversely impacted mainly by externally generated neoliberal policies. Our agricultural systems are threatened by industries that seek to control our food and our livelihoods by destroying our agricultural systems. The move towards intensified, chemical based agriculture is set to undermine the predominant family based agro-ecological food production on the continent. The promotion and introduction of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) with intellectual property rights over seeds represents a serious threat to African farmers rights to reproduce, save and share seeds. It also threatens to erode seed diversity represents new forms of stealing, as all industrial seeds are taken from seeds cultivated, developed and preserved through thousands of years of selection and breeding by our people.

We express total disgust at the manner by which the burden for solutions to every crisis faced by the North is shifted unto Africa...

While the world is advancing towards stricter control of GMOs, it is a different situation in Africa where our leaders are covertly or ignorantly colluding with multinational agribusinesses to colonize our food systems as well as give out our arable lands through dubious land grabbing agreements.
We note that recently many countries have been taking steps to secure their agriculture from pollution through modern biotechnology and to secure the safety of national food systems. We give examples here.

1) Benin Republic has maintained a moratorium on GMOs over the past 10 years.
2) Peru approved the law banning GM production for 10 years.[3]
3) The Mexican States of Tlaxcala and Michoacán each passed legislation banning the planting of genetically modified corn to protect natural plants from further contamination of transgenes.[4]
4) China said GMO is not a priority, stemming from public debate and outcry over the safety of GMO food[5].
5) In the United States: California counties of Mendocino, Trinity and Marin have successfully banned GM crops.
6) In New Zealand: No GM foods are grown.
7) In Germany: There is a ban on the cultivation or sale of GMO maize.
8) In Ireland: All GM crops were banned for cultivation in 2009, and there is a labeling system for foods containing GM to ensure that such foods are identified as such.
9) In Austria, Hungary, Greece, Bulgaria and Luxembourg there are bans on the cultivation and sale of GMOs.
10) In France: Monsanto's MON810 GM corn had been approved but its cultivation was forbidden in 2008. There is widespread public mistrust of GMOs that has been successful in keeping GM crops out of the country.
11) Madeira the autonomous Portuguese island requested a country-wide ban on genetically modified crops last year and was permitted to do so by the European Union (EU).
12) Switzerland banned all GM crops, animals, and plants on its fields and farms in a public referendum in 2005, but the initial ban was for only five years. The ban has since been extended through 2013.
There are several other examples.
It is clear that the Genetic engineering is a technology in search of a market. “Experts in Biotechnology from around the world” and lobbyists from the genetic engineering (GE) industry are pushing the notion that Africa’s only choice is between hunger and GE crops. This is patently false and is merely an arm-twisting effort that African farmers and peoples’must resist. Hunger can be avoided without growing and eating GE crops. Studies have shown that the claim that genetically engineered (GE) crops have a higher yield than natural varieties is virtually a myth...

For these reasons we ask our governments and peoples as a matter of urgency to support ecological-friendly farming which nurtures our soil, cultivates diversity and supplies our families with safe and nutritious food. Ecological agriculture also helps to combat climate change.
We therefore resolve as follows:
1.That there are no successes stories to tell about GMOs other than tales of woes.Africans must not be used as guinea pigs for unverified technologies and the continent must no longer be used as a dumping ground for the products of the biotech companies...

In 2008, after three years of solid work, over 400 scientists, 30 governments from developed and developing countries, as well as 30 civil society organizations, concluded work under the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD). About 60 countries endorsed the report at a meeting in Johannesburg in April of that year.The report concluded that modern biotechnology would have very limited contribution to the feeding of the world in the foreseeable future. That report is an excellent blue print for action by African governments rather than getting tied to the apron-strings of speculators and neo-colonial powers whose objective is to exploit, subjugate and destroy food production systems on the African continent

Signed
Environmental Rights Action/ Friends of the Earth Nigeria
Friends of the Earth Ghana
Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy
(Add your organization's name here and reply to mariann@eraction.org and annybassi@yahoo.com on or before 30 January 2012).


To read the entire petition please go to www.foodfirst.org.  In my prior posts onGMOs, I describe their dangers to health, soil quality, as have talked about the myriad of countries that have banned them.  While some African countries have activist movements resisting them, GMO seeds are currently mandated in Iraq--part of the agreement of the post-Iraqi war.  In North America,  Monsanto's crops contaminate farmers fields, and then Monsanto sues them for patent violation.  Foodfirst.org is a great site, and hopefully awareness will be raised about GMOs to prevent their perpetuation.

A Votre Sante, (Here's To Your Health), Alix