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Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - Court ruling on GMO case: Why we intend to appeal - 0 views

www.pambazuka.net/...96021

monsanto gmos agriculture soybean

shared by Arabica Robusta on 15 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • It is the contention of FSG that modern biotechnology is a potent and novel technology that presents unique risks. This means that whatever the perceived benefits seen in advances in biotechnology, they must be developed and used with adequate safety measures for the environment and human health. This is why international conventions such as the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (CPB), and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) regulating its safe use need to be respected, hence our application for the injunction.
  • The "confined field trials" for the Bt cowpeas and the genetically modified rice did little to respect the provisions of Advance Informed Agreement under the Protocols; that advance informed consent includes public awareness and participation in the decision-making processes leading to the intentional release of living modified organisms into the environment.
  • The other fact that we intend to contest is the interpretation of the applicability of the CPB and the CBD. Even assuming that the use and handling of internally generated GMOs has nothing to do with transboundary movements, how can a GMO that has been imported from Australia not be a transboundary issue? Is that not what we normally call import and export? Is this an internal matter?
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  • There is sharply divided opinion in the scientific community, even among molecular biologists, that genetically engineered crops are "safe". The recent email scandals showing the big influence of the biotechnology industry on the scientific community adds yet another twist to where the scientific consensus would swing without the corrupting influence of the industry. Hence the only avenue available to them to legally approve any genetically engineered crop must be to follow the Advance Informed Agreement (AIA) Procedure under the Protocol. There is no other way around it and this has not been respected.
  • One important point to keep in mind and that is rarely spoken of is that there is no science that demonstrates GMOs are safe to eat. There is only industry designed testing designed to demonstrate what industry wants us to think. GMOs were approved in the US on the basis of substantial equivalence as claimed by Monsanto here, without any independent testing. That is the model USAID is pushing.
Arabica Robusta

TRADE: UNCTAD "Forgets" Real Risks Faced by African Farmers - IPS ipsnews.net - 0 views

www.ipsnews.net/news.asp

food security international development agriculture agribusiness foodsecurity crisis

shared by Arabica Robusta on 10 Jul 10 - Cached
  • "The greatest enemies of the small African farmers are the agro-industrial sector; unsteady prices for food at the world markets caused by speculation; and so-called free trade agreements," Hoering told IPS.
  • "All these factors drive agriculture at the local and the global level in the opposite direction as the one the UNCTAD calls for – towards monocultures, and towards more private seed patents and other expensive farming inputs."
  • In a joint report, the German bureaux of the humanitarian organisations Oxfam and Food First Information and Action Network (FIAN) complained that three years after the start of the world food crisis, "the agro-industrial sector (in the industrialised countries), with the help of governments, continues to powerfully push the liberalisation of international food markets and the acceptance of genetically modified agriculture (GMA)." The survey, titled "Grenzenlos und billig" ("Borderless and cheap"), shows that the food industry in the developed countries uses the stalemate in the international trade negotiations to advance bilateral trade agreements with the developing countries in order to gain access to new markets for their food goods.
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  • "Instead of promoting food export (towards developing countries), the industrialised world should be supporting fair trade," Marita Wiggerthale, expert on agriculture at Oxfam in Germany, told IPS.
Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - Profits before people: The great African liquidation sale - 0 views

pambazuka.org/...60010

gmos foodsecurity food genetically modified agriculture africa pambazuka international development crisis agribusiness security

shared by Arabica Robusta on 07 Nov 09 - Cached
  • it was all summed up clearly for me by members of COPAGEN, a coalition of African farmer associations, scientists, civil society groups and activists who work to protect Africa’s genetic heritage, farmer rights, and their sovereignty over their land, seeds and food. All these knowledgeable people have shown me that the answer is quite straightforward: many of those imported mistakes, disguised as solutions for Africa, are very, very profitable. At least for those who design and make them.
  • These monetarist schemes have helped to make Africa poorer and even more dependent on foreign donors and capital, and thus more vulnerable to still more of the big plans, so that now, even as Africans struggle to confront the perfect storm of the global food crisis, financial crisis and climate change – all of which are the offspring of the unfettered free-market financial system – the same big planners are at it again with more sweeping solutions (profitable ones) for the problems they themselves caused.
  • So what do the world’s great investors have their eyes on in Africa, in addition to the usual natural resources – minerals, petroleum and timber – that they’ve always coveted? In a word, land. Lots of it. The land-grabbing 'investors' are purchasing or leasing large chunks of African land to produce food crops or agrofuels or both, or just scooping up farmland as an investment,
    • Arabica Robusta
      Arabica Robusta on 07 Nov 09
       
      Biofuels as an "export crop": immoral.
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  • At the moment, the grabbing of Africa’s land is shrouded in secrecy and proceeding at an unprecedented rate, spurred on by the global food and financial crises. GRAIN, a non-profit organisation that supports farm families in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems, works daily to try to keep up with the deals on its farmlandgrab.org website.[vi]
  • Apart from the African governments and chiefs who are happily and quietly selling or leasing the land right out from under their own citizens, those who are promoting the new wave of rapacious investment include the World Bank, its International Finance Corporation (IFC), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and many other powerful nations and institutions. The US Millennium Challenge Corporation is helping to reform new land ownership laws – privatising land – in some of its member countries. The imported idea that user rights are not sufficient, that land must be privately owned, will efface traditional approaches to land use in Africa, and make the selling off of Africa even easier. GRAIN notes the complicity of African elites and says some African 'barons' are also snapping up land.
  • another big plan is buffeting Africa’s farmers. It’s the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), which claims it is working in smallholder farmers’ interests by 'catalysing' a Green Revolution in Africa. Green Revolution Number Two.
  • Arabica Robusta on 07 Nov 09
     
    "it was all summed up clearly for me by members of COPAGEN, a coalition of African farmer associations, scientists, civil society groups and activists who work to protect Africa's genetic heritage, farmer rights, and their sovereignty over their land, seeds and food. All these knowledgeable people have shown me that the answer is quite straightforward: many of those imported mistakes, disguised as solutions for Africa, are very, very profitable. At least for those who design and make them."
Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - Successful African alternatives to corporate 'green revolutions' - 0 views

www.pambazuka.org/...71991

food security international development agriculture crisis agribusiness foodsecurity pambazuka biofuels biopiracy

shared by Arabica Robusta on 03 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • AGRA proposes exactly the kind of agriculture the panel of agricultural experts (from South Africa, Nigeria, Uganda, Morocco, Brazil, Mexico, Japan, China and more) rejected: Monoculture of one or two crops with the goal of increasing yields through the high use of fossil fuels, chemicals (fertilisers, pesticides) and biotechnology (patented genetically modified seeds).
  • As the demand for agrofuels seems to be insatiable, global corporations are noticing Africa for its extensive land masses, while not seeing the hungry. Calling Africa the ‘green OPEC’, they assert that 15 countries in Africa have a total combined land area greater than all of India ‘available’ for agrofuel production, not bothering to explain what ‘available land’ means in the context of a food deficit continent.[2]
  • the amount of plant material needed is massive. Lester Brown offers the comparison that the amount of grain required to fill the 90-litre petrol tank of a 4 × 4 vehicle once with maize ethanol could feed one person for a year. The grain it takes to fill the tank every two weeks over a year would feed 26 people.[3]
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  • Exporting crops for overseas consumption while Africans go hungry is a historical pattern all too familiar on the continent. It is certainly not the hope of 21st century African agriculture.
  • Both Namibia and South Africa are moving towards expropriation of land as a necessary means to correct this economic apartheid. Southern Africa is learning from the negative experience of land grabs in Zimbabwe, yet the commodity market approach can be similarly inequitable and destructive of livelihoods.
  • ‘Agroecology [sustainable mixed cropping] is a knowledge-intensive approach. It requires public policies supporting agricultural research and participative extension services. States and donors have a key role to play here. Private companies will not invest time and money in practices that cannot be rewarded by patents and which don’t open markets for chemical products or improved seeds.’[7]
  • There are about 18 recognised farming systems in Africa that can be grouped as a maize-dominated system, a cereal/root crop system, a root crop system and an agro-pastoral millet/sorghum system, all within overall mixed cropping. Part of Africa's food heritage, this genetic wealth offers important contributions towards making Africa a well-nourished continent.
  • Stories of stolen genetic treasures echo across the continent. Like traditional story tellers, when a botanist or agronomist ends his or her account of the latest theft, another joins in to give yet another account, often in voices of anguish and despair.
  • Today, the North American Tuli Association promotes the breed as follows: ‘NATA intends to expand their activities by spreading the benefits of the Tuli cattle to many countries within the Western hemisphere….the Tuli breed can provide the missing link to bridge the gap in cattle genetics, the gap being adaptation to heat and nutritional stress combined with carcass merit.’[10] Neither the government of Zimbabwe nor the foreign cattle associations consulted with the local communities or recognised their contribution in any way. NATA has even usurped the name of ‘tuli.’
  • A major discussion in the process of domesticating farmers' rights will be determining the relationship between individual rights of private property and social rights of farmers.
  • The WTO gives no recognition to social rights, only to private property rights, while the CBD, the ITPGRFA and the AU Model Legislation all recognise the rights of groups (farmers and communities) as equal to those of individuals (persons and corporations).
  • The AU model legislation also directly addresses the issue of biopiracy, such as the Tuli cattle case, by adopting the CBD principle of prior informed consent (PIC)
  • Because the wealth of the existing biodiversity is the basis for the future of agricultural Africa, it is essential that those who care about this wealth, and work toward improving its potential for use, are acknowledged.
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