NIDAN - Gates Foundation - Part 1 - AGRA

Transcription:

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the largest private foundation in the world. The primary aims of the foundation are, globally, to enhance healthcare and reduce extreme poverty.

The Foundation has embarked on a multibillion-dollar effort to transform African agriculture. It helped to set up the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, AG RA, in 2006, and since then has spent $1.3 billion on agricultural development grants.

The money is to pay for more research into hybrid seeds. The genetically engineered corn varieties would allow poor farmers increase their yields with less fertilizer.

But while it's true that African soil fertility is poor, there's a problem: the conventional wisdom is wrong. Food output per person is as high as it has ever been, suggesting that hunger isn't a problem of production so much as one of distribution.

And there's another problem. The genetically engineered seed can only be used once and that is all. This means that at the end of the season, farmers have to buy new seeds. The threat of hybrid seeds is not only that it is inorganic, but those promoting it are also advocating the use of other chemical inputs. This is a form of agriculture that is very expensive for farmers. Certain forms of traditional seeds will become scarce, threatening the biodiversity of the country and the region as well as the financial viability of farming for the rural poor.

In a number of grants, one corporation appears repeatedly--Monsanto. To some extent, this simply reflects Monsanto's domination of industrial agricultural research. There are, however, notable synergies between Gates and Monsanto: both are corporate titans that have made millions through technology, in particular through the aggressive defense of proprietary intellectual property. Both organizations are suffused by a culture of expertise, and there's some overlap between them. Robert Horsch, a former senior vice president at Monsanto, is, for instance, now interim director of Gates's agricultural development program and head of the science and technology team.

Monsanto and Gates both embrace a model of agriculture that sees farmers suffering a deficit of knowledge--in which seeds, like little tiny beads of software, can be programmed to transmit that knowledge for commercial purposes.

The International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development found that a focus on small-scale sustainable agriculture, locally adapted seed and ecological farming better address the complexities of climate change, hunger, poverty and productive demands on agriculture in the developing world. That report, the most comprehensive scientific assessment of world agriculture to date, recommended development strategies that are in large part the opposite of those backed by the Gates Foundation.

Wouldn’t it be simpler, and cheaper, to just spend some foundation money on getting locally adapted seeds into local farmers hands?

The Gates Foundation acknowledges the relevance of the reports insights. But it continues to invest heavily in biotech solutions to the problem of hunger, while african farmers advocating their own solutions to the food crisis are being marginalized.

Rarely in the history of philanthropy has one foundation, or more correctly, one man, had this kind of power.

The director of Environmental Rights Action in Nigeria, suggests that if the Gates and Rockefeller Foundations wish to extend the hand of fellowship to the African continent, they should move away from strategies that favor monoculture, strategies that leads to land grabs, strategies that tie local farmers to the shop doors of biotech seed monopolies.

But the Gates Foundation isn't a victim of poor reasoning. It actively promotes an agenda that supports some of the most powerful corporations on earth.

Africa's Green Revolution is, in other words, just another way of doing business as usual.