Americas Program Biodiversity Report, May 2010   
Carmelo Ruiz Marrero
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/2442

[extracts only]

3. Syngenta + CIMMYT = GM Wheat

4. "Responsible" Soy in trouble

5. The WWF and Tree Monoculture Plantations
***

3. Syngenta + CIMMYT = GM Wheat

The European biotechnology firm Syngenta and the International Center of Research for the Improvement of Corn and Wheat (CIMMYT) announced on April 6 that they will join forces to develop varieties of wheat, both conventional and GM. Syngenta, formed in 2000 with the merger of the agricultural divisions of Novartis and AstraZeneca, is the second largest pesticide company in the world and ranks third in the global seed market (topped only by the American firms Monsanto and Dupont).

CIMMYT, located in Mexico and founded by the Mexican government and the Rockefeller Foundation in 1943, a public sector international agricultural research center that played a very important role in the so-called “green revolution”, the name given to the export of the American model of industrial monoculture to poor developing countries promoted by, among others, the World Bank, the Rockefeller Foundation, the government of the US, and the UN.

“Wheat is a key crop for Syngenta; this partnership will strengthen the company’s global presence and reinforce its position as a leader in the worldwide commercial wheat seeds market”, declares Syngenta in a media release. “This market is expected to increase in value as new technologies are introduced. For CIMMYT, the partnership will strengthen its ability to use world wheat genetic resources and cutting-edge technologies to develop robust wheat varieties for disadvantaged farmers in developing countries and public research systems worldwide”.

Syngenta was the object of harsh international criticism after guards from a private firm that it contracted shot into a camp of the Landless Movement of Brazil, wounding several occupants and killing one.  The camp, located in the Brazilian state of Paraná, was on a farm where Syngenta had been illegally growing GM wheat.

CIMMYT, for its part, has been questioned by sectors of civil society for its apparent indifference to the contamination of traditional Mexican corn with GM varieties. CIMMYT does not oppose GM crops. In fact, along with Monsanto and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, it is developing GM corn varieties resistant to drought for use in Africa Project WEMA (Water-Efficient Maize for Africa).

Source:

Syngenta. “Syngenta and CIMMYT establish industry-leading partnership to advance wheat research” http://www2.syngenta.com/en/media/mediareleases/en_100406.html

4. "Responsible" Soy in trouble

The Round Table on Responsible Soy (RTRS), an agro-industry initiative to legitimize soy monocultures in South America, is on shaky ground now that one of its key members has withdrawn and the Dutch government is reconsidering its support. The Round Table is a working group that brings together businesses and civil society groups in order to formulate criteria for environmentally sustainable and socially responsible soy production in order to achieve its acceptance in European markets. Its members include Syngenta and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

But numerous sectors of civil society and NGOs have condemned this initiative since its inception. In April 2009, 90 organizations and activist networks signed a protest letter against the RTRS in which they declared emphatically that soy monocultures can never be sustainable or responsible.
 
ABIOVE, the Brazilian Vegetable Oil Industry Association, withdrew from the Round Table at the beginning of April.  A short time later it announced the creation of its own certification scheme, called Soja Plus, which is supposedly even more favorable to industry.

Last year APROSOJA, the association of large soy producers of Brazil, withdrew due to disagreement with the Round Table’s deforestation clause. As a result, the Round Table has practically no representation in Brazil, the main soy exporting-country in the world.

The Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) reports that the Round Table received another very hard blow in April when the Dutch government decided not to invest 68 million Euros in a “sustainable business” proposal that included the RTRS.

In the meantime, one of the members of the Round Table, the Argentinean agrofuel company Patagonia Bioenergy, hired the public relations firm Burson Marsteller to exert influence on the European Union so that its sustainability criteria will be more favorable to agrofuels. Burson Marsteller represented the military dictatorship that governed Argentina during the 1970s and 1980s.

Source:

Corporate Europe Observatory. “Round Table on Responsible Soy Suffers Setbacks” April 8, 2010. http://www.corporateeurope.org/agribusiness/blog/nina/2010/04/08/setbacks-round-table-responsible-soy

5. The WWF and Tree Monoculture Plantations

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF), in addition to being the object of harsh criticism for its membership in the Round Table on Responsible Soy, is also under fire for giving its seal of approval to a United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) tree monoculture plantation certification scheme, which the World Rainforest Movement (WRM) considers fraudulent.

The WWF currently directs and coordinates a “New Generation Plantations Project” with the participation of tree plantation firms such as Forestal Oriental, a subsidiary of Finland’s UPM/Kymmene operating in Uruguay; Portucel, which has operations in Uruguay; Smurfit Kappa Cartón, an Irish-Dutch company operating in Colombia; and the Swedish-Finnish Stora-Enso, whose operations in Brazil and Uruguay are the object of controversy.

“Around the world, millions of hectares of productive land are quickly being converted to green deserts disguised as ‘forests’”, declared the Latin American Network Against Tree Monocultures in August 2009. “Local communities are displaced in order to make room for unending rows of identical trees eucalyptus, pine, oil palm, rubber trees, jatropha (physic nut), and other species which replace nearly all other forms of life in the zone. Cultivable land, crucial for the food sovereignty of local communities, is converted into monoculture tree plantations producing raw materials for export. Water resources are contaminated and exhausted by the plantations, while the earth is degraded”.

“What WWF is actually doing is to promote the expansion of tree monocultures and helping to greenwash the long and well documented history of past and present destructive activities of the companies and organizations involved in this project,” denounces the WRM. “At the same time, it is assisting the beleaguered FAO by continuing to define tree plantations as “planted forests”, thereby weakening the growing civil society demand for changing a definition that has so much served plantation companies for obscuring the true and negative nature of these monocultures.”

Source:

World Rainforest Movement, Bulletin 153, April 2010. “FAO and WWF: birds of a feather promote ‘planted forest’ together” http://www.wrm.org.uy/index.html

Latin American Network Against Tree Monoculture, “Declaración de la Red Latinoamericana contra los Monocultivos de Árboles”, August 1, 2009

http://www.wrm.org.uy/plantaciones/RECOMA/declaracion_08_09.html

Carmelo Ruiz Marrero is an independent environmental journalist and environmental analyst for the Americas Program (www.americasprogram.org), a fellow at the Oakland Institute, senior fellow at the Environmental Leadership Program, as well as founder and director of the Biosafety Project of Puerto Rico (bioseguridad.blogspot.com). His bilingual web page (carmeloruiz.blogspot.com) is devoted to global environmental and development issues.

Translated by Erin Jonasson

For more information:

Americas Program Biodiversity Report””April 2010

http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/2080

Americas Program Biodiversity Report””March 2010
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6706

Americas Program Biodiversity Report””February 2010
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6689