[SustainableTompkins] GATES/ROCKEFELLER AFRICA PLAN vs. FOOD SOVEREIGNTY

[Tony Del Plato]

TCSustainers:
If you're not familiar with the work & writing of Peter Rosset, he is one of
most lucid and bright thinkers about food issues today. He was also a long
time director of Food First, a food justice organization in CA. The
following article below contrast sustainable agriculture with the big $$$
approach to resolving global food issues.
enjoy,
Tony Del Plato

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Peter Rosset <rosset at globalalternatives.org>
Date: Sep 22, 2006 7:04 PM
Subject: [Geactivists] GATES/ROCKEFELLER AFRICA PLAN vs. FOOD SOVEREIGNTY
To: GEAN <Geactivists at geaction.org>

 *NOTE: THIS ARTICLE CONTRASTS THE BILL & MELINDA GATES AND ROCKEFELLER
FOUNDATIONS' APPROACH TO HUNGER IN AFRICA, WITH THE 'FOOD SOVEREIGNTY'
APPROACH TO BE DEBATED IN A WORLD FORUM SPONSORED BY THE VIA CAMPESINA AND
OTHERS IN MALI IN FEBRUARY OF 2007* (http://www.nyeleni2007.org).


SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/286029_gatesplan22.html
 *Gateses' approach to African hunger is bound to fail*

September 22, 2006

PETER ROSSET*

GUEST COLUMNIST

The teaming up of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation with the Rockefeller
Foundation to bring a "new" Green Revolution to Africa sadly ignores the
lessons of the failures of the first Green Revolution ("Gates and
Rockefeller attack hunger in Africa," Sept. 13,
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/284913_greengates13.html, and see
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/09/13/news/aid.php).

In the first Green Revolution, the Rockefeller and Ford foundations exported
industrial-style agriculture -- based on chemicals and "high-response" seeds
-- to the Third World, with the paradoxical outcome of greater production of
a few food crops, accompanied by even worse hunger, and by environmental
degradation. Pesticides and chemical fertilizers eventually degraded the
soil, leading to declining productivity, and the high cost of those inputs
deepened the divide between rich and poor farmers, swelling the ranks of the
hungry.

The Gateses' apparent naiveté about the causes of hunger have led them to
make private investments in genetically engineered seeds and to launch this
$150 million altruistic offensive to promote technology packages that use
irrigation, fertilizer and, not surprisingly, new seeds. Unfortunately, the
likely results are higher profits for the seed and fertilizer industries,
negligible impacts on total food production and worsening exclusion and
marginalization in the countryside.

Today's rural Africa has been devastated by 25 years of free trade and
anti-peasant policies imposed on the continent's governments by the World
Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the WTO, the United States and the
European Union. The forced privatization of food crop marketing boards --
which, though flawed, once guaranteed African farmers minimum prices and
held food reserves for emergencies -- and rural development banks, which
gave farmers credit to produce food, have left farmers without either
financing to grow food or buyers for their produce.

Free trade agreements have made it easier for private traders -- the only
buyers and sellers of food left now that the marketing boards are largely
gone -- to import subsidized food from the U.S. and the European Union than
to negotiate with thousands of local farmers, driving local farm prices
below the costs of production. Faced with this negative panorama, peasant
families across the continent have abandoned agriculture in search of
low-wage jobs in urban slums and in the international migrant stream.

Understanding this reality is critical to addressing hunger in Africa.
Under such circumstances, what difference could a new "technology package"
make? Farmers still could not afford the inputs, or sell what they grow, or
make a living as farmers -- not to mention the severe environmental and
human health risks of genetic engineering technology.

In contrast, the global alliance of family farm and peasant organizations,
Via Campesina (http://www.viacampesina.org), will hold a world conference in
Mali in February 2007 on "Food Sovereignty," an approach far more likely to
reduce hunger in Africa. Delegates from across Africa and around the world
will debate the changes that are needed to truly reverse the policy-driven
collapse of food production in Africa and other continents. Those policies,
including a step back from free trade extremism and market fundamentalism,
plus increased supports for family farmers, improved access to farmland for
the poor, and ecological farming methods, are together called Food
Sovereignty.

Without such changes, no farming technology can truly address hunger. In
contrast to the Gates/Rockefeller guaranteed-to-fail approach, creating such
a favorable policy environment for family agriculture would make it possible
for the hungry to feed themselves using sustainable, ecologically sound
farming methods.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Peter Rosset, Ph.D.* is the author of "World Hunger: Twelve Myths" (Grove
Press, 1998), "Food is Different" (Zed Books, 2006) and "A New Green
Revolution for Africa?" (Food First Books, forthcoming). He is a visiting
scholar at the University of California at Berkeley.

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