FAO IN GUADALAJARA, MEXICO
1.GM contamination at the FAO
2.USDA research chief concerned about 'safety of organic food'
3.It is an Act of Aggression for the FAO to Meet in Mexico to Promote GMOs

NOTE: As Greenpeace in Mexico have pointed out, "more than $900,000 will be spent on [this] conference "to whitewash the image" of a technology that "contaminates (native crop varieties), increases the use of pesticides and, through patents, eliminates traditional agriculture."

EXTRACT: "Have you noticed how successful they have been? In 1996 [when commercial GM crops were first introduced] there were 400 million hungry people. Last year, during the last food summit, there were a billion hungry people."
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1.GM Contamination at the FAO
"No maize no humanity", according to Executive Director of ETC Group
Real World Radio, 3 March 2010
http://www.radiomundoreal.fm/GM-Contamination-at-the-FAO

The FAO is "GM contaminated" due to its closeness with international seed companies, and that can be considered a "tragedy" for humanity.

This is what Pat Mooney, Executive Director at the ETC Group said yesterday in Guadalajara, at the activities parallel to the Conference on Agriculture Biotechnologies in Developing Countries.

Mooney stated that over the last few months, 1500 social organizations around the world wrote to the FAO to warn on the “crime against humanity” suffered by Mexico with GM maize crops, and the answer of the FAO was that they couldn´t intervene in a "national issue".

"And then the FAO comes to Mexico, comes to Guadalajara and has a conference on biotechnology on crops", the activist regretted. In addition, the FAO prevented Mexican organizations, such as the National Union of Regional Peasant Organizations, to participate.

Mooney also talked about how world crises are an opportunity for big industries, for Public-Private Partnership and an opportunity for transnational corporations to control the sector.

"Over the last 35 years, since the last food crisis, we´ve gone from about 7000 different seed companies in the world, providing seeds to farmers, down to four companies than control more than half of the world seed market", Mooney said. The top ten companies control two thirds of the global commercial seed market and the most important chemical companies went from 65 to 9, which today control 90 per cent of the global pesticides market. "And in the same way, big companies have taken control of the veterinary medicine market, taken control of livestock genetics", he added.

"Have you noticed how successful they have been? In 1996 there were 400 million hungry people. Last year, during the last food summit, there were a billion hungry people. They have been very successful.", Mooney said ironically. Mooney believes that if Mexican farmers lose the fight in defense of maize, the consequences would be fatal. "If you lose this fight in the centre of diversity of maize, then we will lose the centres of diversity around the world. You are not just fighting in defense of maize, you are not just fighting Monsanto, you are fighting the new 'biomasters'. We all depend on you", he concluded.
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2.That's just Beachy
USDA research chief concerned about 'safety of organic food'
Tom Philpott
GRIST, 2 Mar 2010
http://www.grist.org/article/usda-research-chief-concerned-about-safety-of-organic-food/p

GUADALAJARA, MEXICO - In another post, I'll explain why I'm in Mexico for the next two weeks, and how I came to attend a conference sponsored by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, titled "Agricultural biotechnologies in developing countries: Options and opportunities in crops, forestry, livestock, fisheries, and agro-industry to face the challenge of food insecurity and climate change."

For now, I want to report on a fascinating interaction I had there with Roger Beachy, director of the USDA’s newly formed National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

First, a little context. NIFA, as it is known, is essentially the USDA's research wing - it sets the agenda for the kind of research the agency funds. Meaning NIFA may have a pretty substantial effect on the kind of food system we'll have in the future, because today's research shapes tomorrow's farming.

As I and others have reported before, Beachy ascended to the NIFA post from a long-time perch at the Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, which he led from 1999 until last year. The Danforth Center, a non-profit research institute associated with Washington University in St. Louis, describes itself like this:

"The Danforth Center was founded in 1998 through gifts from the St. Louis-based Danforth Foundation, the Monsanto Fund (a philanthropic foundation), and a tax credit from the State of Missouri."

The Danforth Center's ties to GMO seed giant Monsanto run deep; Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant sits on Danforth's board of directors, along with several others associated with the agrichemical giant.

It seems safe enough to call Danforth Monsanto's not-for-profit research wing; and to describe Beachy is an industrial-ag man through and through. His performance at the FAO conference did nothing to dispel that notion.

From what I can tell, the confab, which took place at a sterile Hilton in a nondescript section of Guadalajara, hinges on the notion that GMO seeds are the only hope for the future of human existence on planet Earthm - and that farmers in "developing countries" are pining to use them. In other words, for Roger Beachy, head of NIFA, the question isn't whether patent-protected biotechnology is appropriate for small-scale farming in the global south; but rather how best to establish it there.

Ironically, as I'll show in a later post, farmers - most glaringly Mexican farmers - were all but banned from attending. (This small farmer was waved in after flashing his Grist business card.)

Earlier today, I approached Beachy after a breakout session he moderated on how best to train developing-nation scientists in the techniques of biotechnology.

I introduced myself and handed him my business card. "Oh, we know Grist," he said affably. "Don't you guys have an interesting take on improved crops?"

"We try to have an interesting take on everything," I replied with a grin. "Including quote-unquote improved crops." I then asked if he would be available to take a few questions on the record.

At this point, a woman named Rachel Goldfarb moved into our conversation. Identifying herself as Beachy's chief counsel, she informed me that he couldn't give interviews without the approval of the USDA's communications department. I replied that I would happily initiate that process in hopes of a future interview, and we exchanged business cards.

But then Beachy and I proceeded to have a short, cordial back-and-forth anyway. He said he was only interested in conducting interviews that directly pertained to science; he wasn't keen to hash out people's "spiritual objections" to GMOs.

I replied that I was mainly interested in hearing about NIF'’s research priorities. In certain parts of the USDA bureaucracy””I was thinking about Deputy Commissioner Kathleen Merrigan, but didn't mention her - organic agriculture is taken quite seriously. Would NIFA be funding research for organic ag?

Beachy' s reply stunned me - and it also, I think, stunned his chief counsel. "I'm concerned about the safety of organic food," he said. Come again? "I'm concerned about the issue of microbial contamination with organic”¦."

At this point, Goldfarb cut him off. "This is just the sort of thing he should not be discussing without approval," she said. This conversation, she indicated, was over. We then shook hands and took our leave.

"Microbial contamination" of organic food ... I assume Beachy was referring to the fact that organic farmers rely on manure (along with nitrogen-fixing cover crops) for fertility, whereas conventional farmers rely mainly on synthetic nitrogen. And manure, I surmise, carries microbes, so, watch out for organic!

There's an irony here. Beachy's agency, the USDA, oversees organic standards; and the rules are very strict about how manure can be used in crops systems. To put it briefly, manure can't be applied unless it's a) well-composted, which destroys pathogens; or b) has been aged in the field for at least 120 days before harvest.

By the way, in areas near concentrated-animal feedlot operations (CAFOs), conventionally managed cropland gets routinely doused by raw manure as a fertilizer””and regulation of this practice is notoriously lax.

Irony aside, I got the impression from Beachy that NIFA won't be directing much research cash at organic ag. But I still hope to get that interview, and will proceed through the proper channels in hopes of making it happen.
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3.It is an Act of Aggression for the FAO to Meet in Mexico to Promote GMOs
La Via Campesina North America, 2 March 2010
http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=876:it-is-an-act-of-aggression-for-the-fao-to-meet-in-mexico-to-promote-gmos&catid=22:biodiversity-and-genetic-resources&Itemid=37

Guadalajara, 1 March 2010.  La Via Campesina groups together organizations of peasants, family farmers, indigenous peoples, farm workers, women and rural youth from some 70 countries worldwide, representing about 500 million families of women and men of the land. We are those who produce the majority of the food consumed in this world, despite facing ever worse conditions for our work, while the conditions allowing for unimpeded profits by a few transnational corporations are ever more favorable, without any regard for the impacts on people or on the Mother Earth.

We take it as an act of aggression, as a profound lack of respect, and as an affront, that the Food & Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has decided to meet in Mexico with governments and the private sector, under the false argument that "biotechnology can benefit peasants in poor countries" - as stated today in a deceptive official press release (http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/40390/icode/).

They use the word "biotechnology," an intentionally vague and broad term, when we all know that the real purpose is to promote genetically modified (GM) crops, which have never benefitted farmer families, and never will.  It is an act of aggression against, and a provocation of, the Mexican people and the peasant and indigenous families of the world, to come to Mexico to promote GMOs, when it is precisely in Mexico that there is an intense struggle to stop the contamination of our ancestral maize varieties with GM pollen. This contamination puts the center of origin and center of biodiversity of a crop that is so important to our culture and to humanity, at risk.

Coming here with a pro GMO message, just when the Mexican organizations and people are trying to defend their maize from the "Monsanto Law" and the authorization of open-field experimental plantings of GM maize, makes it absolutely clear to all of society that the FAO serves the interests of Monsanto, a corporate criminal, and the interests of the bad government, rather than the interests of our peoples.  We repeat, it is an act of aggression to come here and takes sides in this conflict here in Mexico.

How is it possible that an international conference "for the benefit of peasants" has only invited and credentialed one single representative of La Via Campesina, and he only with the status of "observer"?    If the desire to benefit peasants is real, why not have met instead with peasant and indigenous peoples' organizations, to find out from us what we want in order to be better able to carry out our role in society, which is to grow food and protect the Mother Earth?  If they did that, we would tell them in no uncertain terms that GM maize is one thing we definitely do NOT want.  But they are not interested in knowing what we think, we do not interest them, we are of no importance to them, and therefore we reject them.

The world today is in crisis, a financial, food, climate, energy, environmental, political and spiritual crisis.  The crisis is the product of the greed that is inherent in the capitalist system. In the face of this crisis, we are witnessing a worldwide conflict between two models of food and agriculture.  The "model of death," of industrial monocultures, agrochemicals and GMOs, feeds financial speculation and feeds automobiles - via agrofuels -- rather than feeding people, who face ever worsening hunger.

It is no coincidence that in recent years we have seen the confluence of record levels of hunger - despite record harvests - with record levels of corporate profits for the transnationals of death, like Monsanto, Syngenta, Cargill, ADM, Maseca and Walmart.  This model diminishes and privatizes the genetic biodiversity of our crops, just when the world needs more genetic biodiversity, and it constitutes the theft of our heritage as rural peoples, which is our seeds.

We defend the other model of food production, the model of sustainable peasant, indigenous and family farm agriculture, that conserves and augments biodiversity, and that protects the Mother Earth.  Multiple scientific studies prove that this "model of life" is more productive than industrial agriculture, and as part of food sovereignty, is more than capable of feeding the world without threatening human health or the environment.

While one model worsens the various faces of the crisis, like climate change (by releasing greenhouse gasses), and also financial speculation - which together with corporate hoarding of food stocks is a fundamental cause of the food crisis -- the other models offers solutions.  Food sovereignty based on sustainable peasant and family farm agriculture takes food out of the circuits of speculation and free trade, and drastically reduces climate impacts.  We must expel transnational corporations from our food system, and put food back under the control of our peoples.
Our food, produced by peasants, family farmers and indigenous people using ancestral knowledge and the principles of agroecology, is healthy, while an ever  greater number of scientific studies demonstrate the multiple risks to human health posed by GMOs.

GMOs have no place whatsoever in our vision of agriculture.  GMO maize is NOT equivalent to native maize, in any sense, regardless of what the FAO may say.  GMOs are a way to privatize life, and they put our native varieties at risk of genomic degradation when they are contaminated by transgenes.  In our view, GMOs are a fundamental part of a global campaign against peasant, indigenous and family farm seeds.  More and more neoliberal laws prohibit the exchange of non-certified seeds, while only corporations can certify, and a range of technologies from hybrid seeds to Terminator are designed to make it impossible for us to save our own seed for future planting. The corporations, with the complicity of the FAO and governments, want to make us completely dependent upon them.

We can only conclude that, rather than feeding the hungry, they are only interested in feeding their own greed.  But as Gandhi said, "the Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed."

For us farmers, the act of planting our native maize, and defending it, is an act of resistance, and an act of rebellion against an unjust system.  But is also an act of hope.  Hope because we know that solutions to the crisis are to be found in food sovereignty and sustainable peasant, indigenous and family farm agriculture, and we know that these seeds of rebellion that we plant, are also the seeds of that other and better world we want.

We reject the promotion of GMOs by the FAO.
No to GM maize!  Monsanto Out!
Food Sovereignty Now!

1 March 2010, Guadalajara, Mexico

Delegation (Mexico, United States, Canada) of La Via Campesina, North America Region, upon the inauguration of the FAO Conference on Agricultural Biotechnologies in Developing Countries

www.viacampesinanorteamerica.org
www.viacampesina.org

For more information:
Jessica Roe: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Jesus Andrade: +52-1-967-114-7282 (Español)
Peter Rosset: +52-1-967-118-5093 (English)