"To top it all, Bt Cotton made its presence today in an Ecoagricultural conference. Does it mean that all the energy that went into the conference will ultimately end up in endorsing Bt Cotton which has destroyed millions of farmers in India and elsewhere, a process we have been direct witnesses to?" P V Satheesh and Farhad Mazahar

For information about the inspiring work of PV Satheesh's Deccan Development Society see:
Genetic security in native seed-baskets
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=1222
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An International Ecoagriculture Conference and Practitioners Fair was recently held in Nairobi, Kenya (September 27th - October 1st 2004).

PV Satheesh from the Deccan Development Society reports on the role of gene and agrochemical giant Syngenta in framing the debate:

"Many of us who are individually and organizationally working on the issue of Ecological Agriculture among the rural communities for several
decades, were obviously excited to be a part of what promised to a global platform to share our experiences and co find new directions to the international search eco agriculture.

However the conference did not turn out to be what we thought it would be. First of all there was the presence of Syngenta Corporation in its new found disguise as Syngenta Foundation. More over Syngenta was a co-funder and partner of the conference.

Secondly the dialogue process which we thought was a way of confronting the duplicity of the global agrochemical majors was very quickly closed with certain conference principles which set up strong "dos and don'ts". The surprising elements of the "dos and don'ts" were the ones which asked us to "keep aside issues of philosophy and ethics" "respect each and every opinion and not challenge them".

And finally the relegation of Community Saamba (which we thought was central to the entire issue of ecoagriculture) to the background as the conference was gradually taken over by scientists, economists and professional facilitators.

This altered nature of the eco-agriculture confrence gave myself and Farhad Mazhar, who represented Deccan Development Society and UBINIG respectively and together represented South Asia Network for Food Ecology & Culture (SANFEC), no alternative but to withdraw from it completely.

We enclose the letter that we addressed to the main organisors of the conference for your kind perusal.

I hope it makes our stand very clear.

If some of you feel agitated about this, we encourage you to write to the conference organizers asking them to take Syngenta out of the copartner / funder list and in future keep the dialogue process open and transparent and retain community centrality at the core of such initiatives.

Claire Rhodes <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Mohamed Bakarr <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>

With warm regards
Yours sincerely
(p v satheesh)
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Nairobi
September 30, 2004

Dear Sara Scherr, Mohamed Bakarr, Deniss Garrity, Jeffrey McNeely, Claire Rhodes (Conference Organizing Committee)

Some of us from the SANFEC, the South Asia Network for Food, Ecology and Culture, working with millions of ecological farmers in five countries of South Asia came to the Ecoagriculture Conference with a great expectation. We thought that here we will meet with groups who can consolidate their commitment to ecoagriculture and convert it into a vibrant international movement. In fact, what you said about the community supremacy in the Community Shamba fuelled our expectations and one of us asked you whether this will remain the core of the conference. And you had kindly asked us to wait and watch till the end and come up with our own conclusion.

Dear Sara, we think that the time has come for us to express what we feel about this critical question of the community base for global ecoagriculture, as expressed in the conference. And we are a bit sad to inform you that we are disappointed. We would like to list a few reasons why we think so.

Presence of Syngenta

We were not expecting to see Syngenta Foundation as a partner, funder for the conference. We fail to comprehend why a global destroyer of ecoagriculture is interested in a conference on ecoagriculture? Has the leopard changed its spots or has it cast a spell of magic to let us believe that it has. Or are there certain other unseen agendas? We know that with European consumers firmly and finally rejecting GM foods many transnational agrochemical and biotech majors are rushing to Asia and Africa to venture into new pastures. We are also aware that very recently a Biotech centre was opened in Kenya with millions of dollars of investment. And that Syngenta is eagerly pursuing the introduction of GE maize and GE drought resistant sorghum in Africa. Is the conference the preying ground for Syngenta? Is this a place they are looking to hijack ecological terms used by communities, activists and sympathetic academicians such as yourselves for their own nefarious purposes, which they have successfully done all these years?

Whatever their reasons are, we are not able to see how was it that the conference organisers allow Syngenta to be a co sponsor of the Conference and thereby seriously compromising the credibility of the very soul of the conference.

We do believe that Syngentaís association with the conference was advertised on the conference of the website. But you will surely appreciate that people like us working in remote areas of Asia and Africa find it very difficult to access websites and study it closely to look for implications of where we are participating.

Dialogue

In spite of this, when we came in and discovered Syngentaís presence, we thought we still could dialogue in the Conference. But the Doís and dontís presented in the opening of the conference, completely dissolved this belief. We were told that We must keep aside the issues of philosophy and ethics; ìrespect every opinionî; not challenge them etc. At one stroke the basis of a dialogue had been destroyed. At one stroke the basis of community involvement in ecoagriculture had been squashed. At one stroke our faith in the conference had been dissolved.

The relegation of communties to the background

When the Community Shamba started and in spite of some heavy handed facilitation, yielded to honest community sharing, we were excited by the process. But when the real conference opened, we soon realised that the communities had been relegated to the background and the facilitators had started springing surprise after surprise and successfully distorting the deliberations and coming up with premeditated conclusions. The voices of the Bank and such powerful agencies were getting precedent over community concerns in group after group.

WE COULD CLEARLY SEE THAT AN UNSEEN HAND WAS IN OPERATION.

To top it all, Bt Cotton made its presence today in an Ecoagricultural conference. Does it mean that all the energy that went into the conference will ultimately end up in endorsing Bt Cotton which has destroyed millions of farmers in India and elsewhere, a process we have been direct witnesses to?

In the light of all the above, we can clearly see the suave hand of Syngenta in silently steering the conference.

This is unacceptable to us. AND WE WOULD LIKE TO COMPLETELY WITHDRAW FROM THE CONFERENCE AND REQUEST YOU TO KINDLY ENSURE THAT OUR NAMES AND THAT OF OUR ORGANISATIONS ARE NOT USED IN THE OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS AND WEB SITE OF THE CONFERENCE.

For which favour, we will be ever grateful to you.

With warm regards

P V Satheesh,
Deccan Development Society, India
Farhad Mazahar,
Naya Krishi Andolan/UBINIG, Bangladesh

Both representing
SOUTH ASIA NETWORK FOR FOOD, ECOLOGY & CULURE

cc. Sean Southey