Colin Todhunter on the Countercurrents website reviews the
latest report on the Gates philanthropy in Africa. He highlights one criticism
- the foundation’s promotion of industrial agriculture across Africa, pushing
for the adoption of GM, patented seed systems and chemical fertilisers, all of
which undermine existing sustainable, small-scale farming that is providing the
vast majority of food security across the continent.
According to the report, the BMGF is promoting a model of
industrial agriculture, the increasing use of chemical fertilisers and
expensive, patented seeds, the privatisation of extension services and a very
large focus on genetically modified seeds. The foundation bankrolls the
Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) in pushing industrial
agriculture.
A key area for AGRA is seed policy. The report notes that
currently over 80 per cent of Africa’s seed supply comes from millions of
small-scale farmers recycling and exchanging seed from year to year. But AGRA
is promoting the commercial production of seed and is thus supporting the
introduction of commercial seed systems, which risk enabling a few large
companies to control seed research and development, production and
distribution.
In order for commercial seed companies to invest in research
and development, they first want to protect their ‘intellectual property’.
According to the report, this requires a fundamental restructuring of seed laws
to allow for certification systems that not only protect certified varieties
and royalties derived from them, but which actually criminalise all
non-certified seed.
The report notes that over the past two decades a long and
slow process of national seed law reviews, sponsored by USAID and the G8 along
with the BMGF and others, has opened the door to multinational corporations’
involvement in seed production, including the acquisition of every sizeable
seed enterprise on the African continent.
At the same time, AGRA is working to promote costly inputs,
notably fertiliser, despite evidence to suggest chemical fertilisers have
significant health risks for farm workers, increase soil erosion and can trap
small-scale farmers in unsustainable debt. The BMGF, through AGRA, is one of
the world’s largest promoters of chemical fertiliser.
Some grants given by the BMGF to AGRA have been specifically
intended to “help AGRA build the fertiliser supply chain” in Africa. The report
describes how one of the largest of AGRA’s grants, worth $25 million, was used
to help establish the African Fertiliser Agribusiness Partnership (AFAP) in
2012, whose very goal is to “at least double total fertiliser use” in Africa.
The AFAP project is being pursued in partnership with the International
Fertiliser Development Centre, a body which represents the fertiliser industry.
Another of AGRA’s key programmes since its inception has
been support to agro-dealer networks – small, private stockists of
transnational companies' chemicals and seeds who sell these to farmers in
several African countries. This is increasing the reliance of farmers on chemical
inputs and marginalising sustainable agriculture alternatives, thereby
undermining any notion that farmers are exercising their 'free choice' (as the
neo-liberal evangelists are keen to tell everyone) when it comes to adopting
certain agricultural practices.
The report concludes that AGRA’s agenda is the biggest
direct threat to the growing movement in support of food sovereignty and
agroecological farming methods in Africa. This movement opposes reliance on
chemicals, expensive seeds and GM and instead promotes an approach which allows
communities control over the way food is produced, traded and consumed. It is
seeking to create a food system that is designed to help people and the
environment rather than make profits for multinational corporations. Priority
is given to promoting healthy farming and healthy food by protecting soil,
water and climate, and promoting biodiversity.
Recent evidence from Greenpeace and the Oakland Institute
shows that in Africa agroecological farming can increase yields significantly
(often greater than industrial agriculture), and that it is more profitable for
small farmers. In 2011, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food (Olivier
de Schutter) called on countries to reorient their agriculture policies to
promote sustainable systems - not least agroecology - that realise the right to
food. Moreover, the International Assessmentof Agricultural Knowledge, Science
and Technology for Development (IAASTD) was the work of over 400 scientists and
took four years to complete. It was twice peer reviewed and states we must look
to smallholder, traditional farming to deliver food security in third world
countries through agri-ecological systems which are sustainable.
Colin Todhunter concludes Bill Gates “is spearheading the
ambitions of corporate America and the scramble for Africa by global
agribusiness.”
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