1.A food fight with global implications
2.Peasants Worldwide Rise up Against Monsanto, GMOs
3.Scientist wins World Food Prize for teaching Africa to feed itself
4.Gates chides critics, defends biotech crops
5.GMWatch's suggested reading for Bill Gates
NOTE: It's World Food Day today and the obscenity is that 1 billion people are going hungry every day while billions of dollars go to agribiz subsidies and into research reinforcing an outdated model of agriculture.
http://bit.ly/8yXpv
EXTRACTS: "Today, October 16, the strength of the movement is pushing the public opinion to reject Monsanto's take-over of the food system." (item 2)
"Africa is not hungry because of lack of biotechnology" - 2009 World Food Prize laureate, Gebisa Ejeta (item 3)
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1.A food fight with global implications
Jesse Lerner-Kinglake
Morning Star, 16 October 2009
http://www.waronwant.org/news/latest-news/16689-a-food-fight-with-global-implica tions
(Jesse Lerner-Kinglake is Communications Officer at the development charity War on Want)
Friday is World Food Day. It's a UN initiative to raise global awareness about food security for the world's poorest.
And the issue of global hunger has never been more urgent. For the first time in history, more than one billion people live in hunger.
Each day 25,000 people starve to death or die from an illness caused by hunger. Shockingly, many of those who actually produce the food have been hit the hardest. Three-quarters of the world's hungry live in rural areas, of whom the overwhelming majority are farmers in poor countries.
While environmental catastrophes such as drought exacerbate the plight of the rural poor, the main causes of poverty and hunger in the developing world are man-made.
The economic hardship facing many farmers can be attributed to the free trade policy prescriptions championed by the World Trade Organisation (WTO), International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. Even though they are unaccountable to the broader international community, these institutions wield enormous influence over the agricultural policies of developing nations.
To drive forward their strategy of "trade-based food security," the IMF and WTO have forced developing nations to open up their markets to food imports and reorient their economies towards an export-based system.
Exposed to direct competition from giant agribusiness, small farmers in the global south have struggled to stay afloat. And under the trade terms established by the WTO, agribusiness firms are increasingly able to sell their products to consumers in developing nations at a low price, undercutting small-scale farmers who rely on domestic markets.
As well as being thrust into competition with large farming firms, poor farmers are being squeezed by corporate sales practices. When farmers in the global south purchase seeds developed by corporations, they are often forced to sign a contract obliging them to buy fertiliser from the same firm, often at an inflated price.
Farmers have little choice but to buy crop products offered by Western firms. Under intellectual property rules written by the WTO, corporations now own 98 per cent of the patents covering vital farming inputs. Armed with patents for a vast array of seeds, livestock breeds and other essential organisms, agribusiness can dictate the terms under which local communities grow their food.
The most harmful range of farming products currently on the market are genetically modified (GM) crops. Promoted by agribusiness as a silver bullet in the fight against global hunger, GM crops are in fact more expensive to grow and produce poorer yields. Despite the harm these crops can cause, the GM revolution has gained momentum in recent years, leading to a massive boom for firms like Monsanto and Syngenta.
Although the export-based system of food production has kept millions of small farmers in poverty, world leaders have refused to try a different model. Instead, governments have invested heavily in projects that seek to train small farmers in poor countries as entrepreneurs to compete in the global marketplace.
Yet an alternative to the current approach is taking root. Across the developing world, grass-roots organisations are challenging corporate farming practices and the model of production for export.
Based on the principle of local control over resources, the food sovereignty movement prioritises the needs of small-scale farmers over the profits of big business. This new concept recognises that the key to fighting global poverty lies in community ownership, sustainable agricultural policies and workers' rights.
From Sri Lanka to South Africa, Brazil to Mozambique, these local organisations - many of them partners of War on Want - are successfully building communities of self-sufficient farmers.
A leading voice in the food sovereignty movement is La Via Campesina. With members across 56 countries on five continents, it represents millions of small farmers and gives them a political platform to challenge the corporate model for farming.
By promoting local alternatives such as community markets and farming collectives, these groups of small farmers are able to protect their livelihoods from the impossible demands of a world market whose rules are stacked against them.
They are also promoting organic methods as an alternative to destructive corporate farming products like GM crops.
Taken together, these measures will help define food as a resource to be owned and shared locally - and not as a commodity to be traded and profited from on the global market.
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2.Peasants Worldwide Rise up Against Monsanto, GMOs
La Via Campesina, 15 October 2009
http://www.viacampesina.org/main_en/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=797&Itemid=1
*La Via Campesina carries out Global Day of Action against Monsanto
(Mexico, 16 October 2009) Today, International World Food Day, as declared by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, La Via Campesina is mobilizing globally along with allies in an overwhelming expression of outright rejection of Monsanto and Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), in the name of food sovereignty.
In the United States today, protests and teach-ins against Monsanto are taking place in Maine and Wisconsin. In Brazil, Via Campesina members are carrying out actions in the headquarters of Monsanto and Syngenta. In Europe, where nine countries have prohibited GMOs, Via Campesina organized an anti-Monsanto brigade traveling throughout the region. In India, thousands of farmers and allies are carrying out hunger strikes and occupying lands. Actions are being carried out in at least 20 countries and all nine regions where La Via Campesina is present.
Meanwhile, world leaders are preparing to meet at the FAO World Food Summit in Rome in November, where the powers of global governance and agribusiness will utilize the desperation of starving nations to accelerate the expansion of GMO-based agriculture throughout the world. The Obama administration’s proposal to dedicate over a billion dollars of emergency funding to developing countries for agriculture, and the U.S. government’s Global Food Security Initiative are thinly veiled efforts to this end.
Peasants, landless workers, migrants, indigenous peoples and consumers, identified transnational corporations, especially Monsanto, which, together with Syngenta, Dupont and Bayer control over half of the world's seeds, and are thus the principal enemies of peasant sustainable agriculture and food sovereignty for all peoples. La Via Campesina is in a daily struggle to protect native seeds, patrimony of humanity, from corporations and patents. Today, October 16, the strength of the movement is pushing the public opinion to reject Monsanto's take-over of the food system.
"It's time for all civil society to recognize the gravity of this situation, global capital should not control our food, nor make decisions behind closed doors. The future of our food, the protection of our resources and especially our seeds, are the right of the people," said Dena Hoff, coordinator of Via Campesina North America.
Globalize Hope!! Globalize the Struggle!!
Interviews and information:
* Dena Hof, United States + 1 406-939-1839 (in English)
* Alberto Gomez, Mexico + 525541777846 (en español)
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3.Scientist wins World Food Prize for teaching Africa to feed itself
By PHILIP BRASHER
Des Moines Register, October 15 2009
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20091015/BUSINESS01/910150364/1029/BUSI NESS&theme=/apps/pbcs.dll/section?category=BUSINESS
Growing up poor in rural Ethiopia, Gebisa Ejeta benefitted from two imports from America: basketball and training in agriculture.
The tall young man who would become the 2009 World Food Prize laureate learned basketball well enough at a high school and agricultural college started by a U.S. university to play for the Ethiopian national team.
More important for his country, the agriculture he learned led him to a career in plant breeding, and he went on to dramatically improve yields of sorghum, a crop critical to his home country.
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Now, his goal is to spread that basic agricultural training to millions of poor farmers who need it. He said the United States and other countries lost interest in that kind of education, to the detriment of food production in Africa.
Simple agronomic practices common in the West, such as planting seeds at the right time and controlling weeds, "could revolutionize African agriculture," the Purdue University agronomist said.
Show poor farmers they can earn a decent income using those methods and they'll adopt them, he said. "Farmers, even though they are illiterate, they are not dumb."
In fact, until farmers see a value in adopting conventional farming practices, it's premature to push them toward the genetically engineered seeds now widely popular with American farmers, he said. "Africa is not hungry because of lack of biotechnology," he said.
Ejeta, 59, is heartened by the Obama administration's interest in agricultural development.
President Barack Obama has called for doubling U.S. agricultural aid funding to $1 billion a year. Funding such programs fell sharply starting in the 1980s because of opposition from U.S. farm groups that objected to helping farmers learn to compete with American growers. The bulk of U.S. aid was directed instead to donations of U.S.-grown food.
The food assistance "saved lives and stopped people from being hungry," but the aid "hasn't done much to the development of these sectors of agriculture in developing countries," he said.
"If we don't recognize the needs of the poor and the problem of agricultural development in developing countries, it really puts out a very bad image about assistance from the United States. The intent is being questioned."
Guided toward grad studies
Ejeta, who grew up in a thatched hut, wound up in agricultural science after he qualified to attend a local secondary school and then Haramaya University, both founded by Oklahoma State University.
At the college, besides becoming a center on the basketball team, he met a Purdue professor who steered him toward graduate studies in the United States.
At Purdue, Ejeta teamed with a colleague to develop varieties of sorghum, a staple crop in Ethiopia, resistant to a weed that causes an estimated $7 billion in damage annually to African crops. The researchers unlocked the biochemical means by which the parasitic weed, known as Striga, interacts with sorghum and chokes its growth. Chemicals from the sorghum or other grain crops trigger germination of the Striga plants, which then suck nutrients from the roots of the host.
Combining that resistance to weeds with earlier advancements in drought tolerance, Ejeta developed sorghum that could yield up to four times as much grain as previous varieties.
Ejeta's achievement has played a major role in improving agricultural productivity in Ethiopia, said Joachim Von Braun, director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute. Another factor: The government sent out 60,000 extension agents to assist farmers. While the advisers were poorly trained, they still made a difference, Von Braun said.
While Ethiopia still has one of the world's worst malnutrition problems, the prevalence of hunger there has dropped from 44 percent of the population to 31 percent since 1990, according to the institute.
Continuous teaching
Ejeta travels frequently to Africa for his research and also mentors African graduate students at Purdue. Because work on sorghum was aimed at farmers in Africa, his achievement went unrecognized for a long time, said the chairman of Purdue's agronomy department, Craig Beyrouty.
"Oftentimes, people in the United States don't have an understanding and appreciation for the depth and breadth of work he's involved with," Beyrouty said.
Ejeta said he will continue his research into weed resistance, but he hopes to use the $250,000 World Food Prize as a platform to work with development groups and international agencies to "push toward transformative change" in African agriculture.
"I have the energy, I have the vision for it, with the hope that agencies would join me in that fight," he said.
As for that other import from America, Ejeta didn't develop an interest in basketball by choice originally. While staying at the high school one summer, the students were told that "everybody is going to play whether you like it or not," the 6-foot 7-inch scientist said.
"They just put me under the basket and I got the rebounds. Our team won, so senior year in high school I was on the varsity."
His career peaked his senior year in college, when he was selected for the Ethiopian national team. The team's quest for the Olympics ended abruptly when the military reneged on plans to fly the players to a qualifying game in Nairobi against the Kenyan team.
That wasn't the end of the Ejeta basketball legacy.
Three of his daughters starred in the sport in the United States. One played at Duke University and two at the University of Wisconsin.
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4.Gates chides critics, defends biotech crops
Philip Brasher
Des Moines Register, October 15 2009
http://blogs.desmoinesregister.com/dmr/index.php/2009/10/15/gates-chides-critics -defends-biotech-crops/
In what was billed as his first major speech on agriculture, Gates chided critics who he said are "instantly hostile to any emphasis on productivity” and ignore the challenges to food production posed by climate change.
"They act as if there is no emergency, even though in the poorest, hungriest places on earth, population is growing faster than productivity, and the climate is changing," Gates said, giving the keynote speech at the World Food Prize symposium.
Gates said transgenic crops "can help address farmers' challenges faster and more efficiently than conventional breeding alone."
His foundation has committed about $1.4 billion to agricultural development, with about 5 percent of that targeted to biotechnology projects, including one focused on developing drought-tolerant corn for us in east Africa. Gates said the seeds would be licensed royalty free to distributors so that there won't be any extra cost to farmers. The seeds could allow farmers to increase corn production by 2 million tons a year during a moderate drought, he said.
"Of course, these technologies must be subject to rigorous scientific review to ensure they are safe and effective,” Gates said. "It's the responsibility of the governments, farmers and citizens, informed by great science, to choose the best and safest way to help feed their countries."
Gates emphasized that his foundation is trying to address the needs of poor, smallholder farmers and working with their governments and other local institutions. He said it also is important to avoid the environmental degradation linked with the Green Revolution that took place in the 1960s when increased use of fertilizer and pesticides helped increase crop production in Asia.
The next green revolution “must be guided by smallholder farmers, adapted to local circumstances and sustainable for the economy and the environment.”
But he went on to cite a climate-related Stanford University study that predicted that farmers in southern Africa will lose 25 percent of their productivity with corn if they continuing growing the same varieties they do now.
“The charge is clear,” Gates said. “We have to develop crops that can grow in a drought; that can survive in a flood; that can resist pests and disease. We need higher yields on the same land in harsher weather. And we will never get that without a continuous and urgent science-based search to increase productivity, especially in the developing world.”
After his speech, Gates took questions from the 2009 World Food Prize laureate, Purdue University agronomist Gebisa Ejeta, a native of Ethiopia who developed varieties of sorghum that are more tolerant to drought and weeds.
Gates said other technologies in addition to transgenic seeds also could be helpful to poor farmers, including milk pasteurization and animal vaccines.
“We’re trying to get these smallholders to have twice as much output at a time when the climate is going to make that more difficult for them to achieve,” Gates said.
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5.GMWatch's suggested reading for Bill Gates
"Biotech snake oil: a quack cure for hunger", Bill Freese, Multinational Monitor, Vol. 29 No. 2, Sept-Oct 2008, http://www.multinationalmonitor.org/mm2008/092008/freese.html
"Genetic engineering - a crop of hyperbole", Doug Gurian-Sherman, San Diego Union Tribune, 18 June 2008, http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080618/news_lz1e18gurian.html
"Failure to Yield: Evaluating the Performance of Genetically Engineered Crops", UCS, March 2009
http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/science_and_impacts/science/failure-t o-yield.html
"Oxfam Statement on 'Failure to Yield'", Oxfam America, April 2009
http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/food_and_agriculture/Oxfam-statement-on-F TY.pdf
"Feeding the world?", Prof Jules Pretty, SPLICE, Vol. 4 Issue 6
http://ngin.tripod.com/article2.htm
"Organic farming 'could feed Africa' - report", Daniel Howden, The Independent, 22 October 2008
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/organic-farming-could-feed-africa -968641.html
"Is ecological agriculture productive?", Lim Li Ching, Third World Network, November 2008
http://www.twnside.org.sg/title2/susagri/susagri064.htm
"IAASTD Report: GM crops not the solution to World Hunger", Fr. Sean McDonagh, SSC, Impact Mag vol.42 no.6, June 2008, http://www.scribd.com/doc/3804302/Impact-Mag-vol42no06
"Biotech has bamboozled us all", George Monbiot, The Guardian, 24 August 2000
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2000/aug/24/foodanddrink.ethicalfood