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Consequences of Agro-Commodity Speculation
by Debs is Dead
lifted from a comment
with additions by b
Incidentally one of the innumerable talking heads that have been
popping up to give their take the economy, the universe and everything
of late did have one interesting contention.
That the flight from the dollar has caused spec- sorry investors,
(his words not mine) to move into commodities such as cereal and grain
when they pull outta the dollar.
This bloke pulled a number of between 20% and 25% of the value of food
and other essentials all of which have increased in value by at least
100% in the last year, saying well nearly a quarter of the value is an
increase as a result of ‘investors’ not speculators, he said buying
into essential commodities as they look for alternatives to the $US
that are stable.
If that is true then the world’s problems are going to get worse that even our dire predictions.
The flow across to essential commodities will increase as ‘investors’
report better earnings from investing in food, but any attempt to
reverse the flow, indeed any reverse of that investment may be as
catastrophic for the hungry and poor as continued speculatory
investment is (my words).
Crops as commodities are very different to oil, gold and diamonds,
the latter tend to be extracted at a very predictable rate with long
lead times (building new mines, drilling new wells) required for marked
increases in amounts of resources extracted.
This isn’t true of crops whose prices and productivity go up and down
like a whore’s drawers. The recent rise in grain prices has stimulated
production on formerly fallow land that had been ‘retired’ after
agricultural economies were forced to abolish the tariffs on heavily
subsidised imports from amerika and europe.
Countries from Haiti
to Thailand that had been net grain exporters and whose production
dropped drastically following the effects of globalisation, have begun
farming again.
If the floor drops outta the new prices because
‘investors’ have moved on to the next big thing small holders around
the world who have bet their balls and their villages’ wealth on a
return to farming will lose their shirts once more. More humans will be
driven off the land and into useless anti-human metropolises.
Even worse many small nations will lose yet another slice of economic sovereignty.
Further I’ll stick my neck out with a huge prediction. The chaos that
ensues from this evil speculation on what we humans eat could be the
disaster monsanto needs to force acceptance of it’s genetically
modified monopoly on the world’s food supply.
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b adds:
Thanks Debs – I was thinking about this today too. Below are a few excerpts from a developing discussion.
One answer to this is to abolish free trade in agriculture products. In today’s FT an unlikely proponent for less trade argued:
Africa and Latin America should adopt their own versions of Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy as a response to rising demand for food, according to Michel Barnier, France’s farm minister.
While critics of the CAP prepare to use surging food prices and threats of shortages to seek freer trade in agriculture, Mr Barnier told the Financial Times that, on the contrary, the developing world should draw inspiration from Europe and form self-sufficient regional agricultural blocs funded with a redirection of development aid.
…
“What we are now witnessing in the world is the consequence of too much free-market liberalism,” he said. “We can’t leave feeding people to the mercy of the market. We need a public policy, a means of intervention and stabilisation."
The "free traders" didn’t like that special splash of French wine. Their immediate, angry answer was an FT editorial which calls Barnier’s idea "a corker":
Food autarky is not food security. For Africa, beset by highly variable harvests and unproductive, largely rain-fed agriculture, attempting self-sufficiency today is a recipe for regular famine. Improving farm productivity, and the ability of growers to get their produce to market, is an imperative. Snatching away export markets that could reward such improvements is utterly perverse.
This is not just a bad idea. It is a potentially lethal one. It should be discarded.
The FT editors are wrong. Instead, more countries should follow the example of Malawi:
Over the past 20 years, the World Bank and some rich nations Malawi depends on for aid have periodically pressed this small, landlocked country to adhere to free market policies and cut back or eliminate fertilizer subsidies, even as the United States and Europe extensively subsidized their own farmers. But after the 2005 harvest, the worst in a decade, Bingu wa Mutharika, Malawi’s newly elected president, decided to follow what the West practiced, not what it preached.
…
Here in Malawi, deep fertilizer subsidies and lesser ones for seed, abetted by good rains, helped farmers produce record-breaking corn harvests in 2006 and 2007, according to government crop estimates. Corn production leapt to 2.7 million metric tons in 2006 and 3.4 million in 2007 from 1.2 million in 2005, the government reported.
I suspect that the answer to the current commodity speculation will be more protectionism. It is likely the correct one.
B. says “I suspect that the answer to the current commodity speculation will be more protectionism. It is likely the correct one.”.
If only he were correct. Of course a return to tariffs in agricultural imports is the best way for struggling economies to restore some equity, affordability and political control over a nation’s food supply.
But just as high school history taught that the Congress of Vienna showed the world’s leaders “you can’t turn back the clock” (in that case putting kings back on their thrones), these non G-8 nations have learned that it is impossible to re-impose tariffs.
Every sleazy banker on the planet would swoop upon any nation that tried it demanding immediate repayment of loans the fine print authorised should the borrower re-impose protectionism.
In addition all other nations would find that they were obligated to stop importing whatever it was that the G-8 bosses had previously permitted the now miscreant nation to export to others. Anyone who talks about the free market in relation to agriculture is talking out of their arse and doesn’t know how the so called ‘free market’ works. amerika’s agricultural produce has been protected at home whilst “The Global South” is bullied into getting rid of their protection so that subsidised amerikan food undersells their domestic produce, driving humans off their land into useless cities to consume useless mass produced crap as they starve to death.
That is the irony of course every 21st century victim of starvation will die listening to their i-pod because that planned obsolescent dross is more affordable than food.
To put it in a nutshell any country that tried to ‘turn back the clock’ as the bossfellas would term it, feed their population as a reasonable person would term it, would quickly find themself “Zimbabwe’d”.
Their economy would be devastated immediately. Not because that is what happens with a protected market but because that is what the WTO globalists would cause to happen so that other nations didn’t follow.
Now of course the G-8, WTO(World Trade Organisation) bosses realise they need to offer an alternative so that it doesn’t come to that.
Here is a typical example of their thinking. before you read it I had better give you a little background on the author Mike Moore who served as Director General of the WTO 1999-2002. I would be lying if I said I knew him but he was an occasional acquaintance in the early 1970’s when I was toying with the idea of “change from within” by joining NZ’s Labour Party and Moore was their up and coming “next big thing”. As far as I could discern from a few encounters I had with him there is nothing to the bloke other than ambition. He’s not even very smart. He never did quite make it although he served briefly as Party Leader and an even shorter time as Prime Minister, he was unseated by Helen Clark when the women made a move on the party.
Moore played the party pooper at all party celebrations until Ms Clark became Prime Minister whereupon Moore was offered the job he couldn’t refuse as director-general of the WTO.
In 1999 NZ was about the only country run by middle aged middle class white folks that for some weird reason had credibility with those nations who have been regularly shat upon by middle aged middle class white folks. Once it became apparent that their own nominee didn’t have legs to get up, enough “global South” countries supported Moore as a halfway decent alternative. Oh how foolish. There is a point to this tale other than straight out scuttle-butt, the Moore experience provides insight into exactly why expecting anything that could favour “the South” is a pipe-dream.
Very few politicians here get rich. NZ’s heritage has a substantial ethos of presbyterianism attached to it, so the voters, up until this point anyhow, would turn their backs on any politician who got rich while in office.
So when Mike Moore left for Switzerland, he didn’t have a brass razoo. When he came home he qualified for the NZ equivalent of Forbe’s rich list and now he has to set up education foundation’s and the like to avoid paying taxes.
He’s been pretty vague about how the change in circumstances came about. I imagine that his WTO co-workers and staff were as surprised and discomfited as his bosses were when they discovered his impecunious state.
After all as zimmerman once said “If you ain’t got nothin ya got nothin to lose” and Moore’s financial state would have worried the bossfellas. The concern would be that he might succumb to an attack of idealism. But they should have known that Moore, always a member of ‘the pragmatic right’ would never get a dose of ideals, otherwise he would never have been put up for the job. Most likely they just felt uncomfortable in the presence of a member of ‘the great unwashed’.
Whatever – since the odds of Moore turning from a dull wage earner into a multi-millionaire entrepreneur so fast is unlikely we can only presume he was given the names of a few ‘dead certs’ to back. A futures deal here ,a stock option there, and a financial moron is made rich.
Anyway my point is that WTO deals are structured to prevent turning back the clock and despite what the bossfellas may say about welfare “Creating a culture of dependence” perusal of Moore’s piece on “the global food crisis” (the cliche that has been chosen to address any of these issues) reveals that the band aids on offer are about re-inforcing that dependence eg:
” , , ,The United Nations, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, the World Trade Organisation and senior finance ministers met recently in Washington, DC and pledges were made to provide US$500 million ($639.5 million) in urgent food aid by May 1, such is the crisis.
This is important short-term action. But how can you encourage poor countries to grow food when subsidies from rich countries can drop similar products into their local market, sometimes at a third of local prices?
The medium- and long-term solution is the Doha Development Trade round, which is now at a critical stage. Unless the players at the WTO can get closer in the next few weeks, the deal will not be cut this year.
Politics in the US and elsewhere make it difficult to believe the deal could be done next year. But negotiations are closer than most believe. . .
. . .It’s urgent that food aid is directed to those who will die unless action is taken now. This must be done in a way that doesn’t collapse existing local agriculture.
Then, assist local producers by micro loans, grants of seed stock and basic guaranteed prices.
Corrupt and inefficient governments harm all forms of development. We must help build afflicted nations’ infrastructure: commercial, agricultural and administrative. Democracy helps this cause.
In the medium and long term, we must conclude the WTO’s Doha Development trade round which will return four to five times more to Africa than all the aid and loan debt forgiveness put together.
Where farmers can operate freely with secure property rights, we can see the best results.
On the surface Moore’s burble seems…nice but only to those who haven’t been paying attention.
There are few ‘dog whistles’ in there. Key phrases which may sound innocuous to the unindoctrinated but which say a great deal more than that to the initiated. eg
micro loans, grants of seed stock and basic guaranteed prices. Where to begin with those loaded phrases? micro loans are the means of introducing already impoverished farmers to the slow drip drain of getting in hock to trans-national lenders that are willing and able to pursue a borrower to the ends of the earth.
grants of seed stock many will have caught that. WILLIAM ENGDAHL’s somewhat outdated study “Seeds of Destruction: The Geopolitics of GM Food” is still up to date in it’s account of the attempts of monsanto et al to introduce ge/gm crops to “The Global South” with ‘donations’ of GM/GE seed.
“Corrupt and inefficient governments. . .Democracy helps this cause. ” Got a recalcitrant government? Well then. Anyone up for a spot of ‘Regime Change’?
Lastly (for me.- there are still plenty of other heavy hints for others to spew over)
“Where farmers can operate freely with secure property rights” Aha property rights – that old furphy. Many nations in the “Global South” have people living on land (clans tribes, villages, large townships sometimes) for which there is no paperwork. No property deeds! – centuries or millennia ago when the mob moved into that country they now call home no one was sitting on their spotty asses picking blackheads in the local lands and survey office.
No property deeds means no to a whole heap of other stuff, in particular mortgages (ie loans against the land) and no sales, no rigged sales whereby one senior but achilles heeled member of the clan is taken aside plied with intoxicants, (money, fast cars women, booze whatever) until they sign the piece of paper over to some trans national. I’ve seen that particular scam happen so often I simply don’t believe the foreign capitalists who claim to not understand that no one person has the power to determine the future of land in these ancient societies. The introduction of modern property law inevitably creates the legal circumstance for one person to sell a clan’s land but the clans never accept that law. Needless to say the clans lose when it goes to court.
Before any of these scams can occur a system of land transfer needs be instituted. Hence Moore’s call for ‘property rights’ meaning capitalist style ownership property rights. Another recipe for mass starvation as people are driven off the land that was once theirs to be replaced by machinery.
Every move made for multi-lateral trade standardisation in agriculture has increased poverty and hunger in agrarian societies while it re-inforces the power of speculators. Moore fudges the issue of amerika and Doha, which is a dead giveaway, right at the start. amerika and europe have no intention of abolishing their own agricultural subsidies (I had to laugh at the amerikan poster who tried to give europeans a hard time about CAP, when amerikan agriculture is the most subsidised and protected in the world).
The plan by the G-8 nations appears to be to try and hold out for so long picking off all of the poor countries one by one, forcing them into abolishing subsidy and protection while promising to get rid of their own in the next political cycle. The abolition in G-8 countries never happens and domestic politics is blamed.
Meanwhile the poor nations are undercut in their own markets. Maybe this time they will successfully band together. That is the only thing that could work.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Apr 29 2008 15:05 utc | 27
the biotech companies have been pushing for a “new” green revolution in africa
food first: The New Green Revolution and World Food Prices
It was just a matter of time… and not long at that. The world food crisis and the explosion of “food riots” across the globe has been turned into an opportunity. By whom? By the same institutions that created the conditions for the crisis in the first place: proponents of the new Green Revolution.
In their April 10 editorial entitled The World Food Crisis, the New York Times warns that increases of 25-50% in the price of food and basic grains have sparked unrest “from Haiti to Egypt.” The Times rightly lays part of the blame on the doorstep of northern countries’ thirst for ethanol, pointing out that the substitution of fuel crops for food crops, “[Accounts] for at least half of the rise in world corn demand in each of the past three years.” A rise in demand means a rise in price. This puts food out of reach of poor consumers.
But then confusing economic demand with actual availability, the Times jumps to a dubious solution. Quoting World Bank president Robert Zoellick, the paper calls for “[A] ‘green revolution’ to increase farm productivity and raise crop yields in Africa.” This was of course, a likely response from the World Bank, the institution that, along with the International Monetary Fund, forcibly applied the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) responsible for destroying the capacity of African nations to develop or protect their own domestic agricultural systems from the dumping of subsidized grain from the U.S. and Europe. Over the same 25 years in which SAPs were being implemented, the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) invested over 40% if its $350 million/year budget in Africa’s “Green Revolution.” The result? A big zero. Actually, it was worse, because as African marketing boards, agricultural ministries, national research programs and basic infrastructure fell under the scythe of the mighty SAPs, Africa’s agricultural systems steadily eroded. Now their entire food systems are hopelessly vulnerable to economic and environmental shock—hence the severity of the current food price inflation crisis.
How do CGIAR and other Green Revolution champions explain this debacle? The Green Revolution, they claim, ‘bypassed” Africa. If that is the case, then where on earth did CGIAR spend all that money? If not, and the Green Revolution was simply a failure, then how will more of the same solve the present food crisis?
Of course, the Green Revolution is not just one institution, and it is not static. The new genetically-engineered Green Revolution is a conglomeration of public and private research institutions, supported by both tax dollars and conditional investments from a handful of powerful seed/chemical and fertilizer monopolies. The Green Revolution is an industrial modernization paradigm, as well as a campaign for penetrating agricultural markets in the Global South. But above all, the Green Revolution is a political strategy designed to gain and keep control over the Global South’s food systems firmly in the hands of northern corporations and institutions. It is precisely this political dimension of the current food crisis that is so tacitly avoided by the New York Times, the World Bank, and other Green Revolution promoters.
pambazuka: A new Philanthro-Capitalist Alliance in Africa? AGRA—The Return of the Green Revolution
In September 2006, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation teamed up to launch “AGRA” a $150 million Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa. Echoing the claim that Africa’s last Green Revolution (originally promoted by Rockefeller) had “bypassed” the continent, Gates and Rockefeller promised that AGRA will improve the lives of the continent’s impoverished farmers by investing in appropriate technology, efficient farm practices, and a network of small shopkeepers to sell mini-packets of improved seeds and fertilizers.
Elegantly simple in its proposal and presentation, AGRA is the global face of a renewed international effort to revive Africa’s sagging agricultural research institutions and introduce new Green Revolution products across the sub-Sahara. The complex array of institutional and financial interests lining up behind Gates and Rockefeller include multilateral and bilateral aid organizations, national and international research institutes, and the handful of powerful multinational seed, chemical, and fertilizer monopolies upon which the entire financial future of the new Green Revolution ultimately rests. Gates and Rockefeller foundations are betting that AGRA can entice industry, governments and other philanthropies to invest in African agriculture. AGRA is the Green Revolution’s new philanthropic flagship leading a global campaign to attract talent, investment and resources for another go at Africa’s beleaguered food systems.
The new Green Revolution differs fundamentally from the first one introduced in the 1970-90s in that this time the private sector, rather than government, is taking the lead. This Green Revolution is concentrating on Africa’s food crops like tubers and plantains, rather than global commodities like corn, rice and wheat. This time around, the conventional crop breeding programs being built in Africa will lay the genetic and industrial groundwork for the expansion of genetically modified crops. And more importantly, the seed and chemical companies that stand to gain from the Green Revolution are fewer, and because of biotechnology, much bigger and vertically integrated, selling both seed and inputs. In fact, only two companies—Monsanto and Syngenta—control 30% of the global market in seeds.
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AGRA’s job—as so eloquently stated by Bill Gates in Davos—is to bring Africa’s poor into the international market. Here, they will consume both hybrid and genetically-modified seeds, fertilizers and agrochemicals. They will also consume the products of these seeds, making their diet dependent on the companies driving the Green Revolution. Whoever can establish these seed markets in Africa will control not only the markets, but the food, and ultimately the ground of the vast continent.
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AGRA allows the Gates foundation unprecedented influence not only in setting the national food and agricultural policies of many African governments, but in the agenda-setting of continental agreements (like NEPAD), multilateral development institutions (e.g. FAO), the strategies of agricultural research centers (e.g. WARDA), and the political economic re-structuring of Africa’s food systems in general. The Alliance for a Green Revolution for Africa is the Gates’ Foundations bold foray into big philanthropy’s latest incarnation: philanthro-capitalism.
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AGRA’s philanthro-capitalism draws the world’s attention away from local alternatives and towards global market-based “solutions” that ultimately favor those with more international market power, i.e., the seed and chemical monopolies. Though it strengthens corporate opportunities and power, it does nothing to address the weakened ministerial and regulatory capacity of the state, ignores the need to protect local markets or ensure a greater market share of the value chain for farmers. It elides land issues and does not address the eroding economic and environmental resiliency of African food systems. Worse, it diverts attention away from the role that the global markets play in creating hunger and poverty in Africa in the first place.
from a pambazuka interview w/ the director of the african center for biosafety, mariam mayet
Let’s … turn our attention to philanthropy, which Cecil Rhodes once called, philanthropy plus five-percent – which is to say that philanthropy paves way for profit making, or what others call the philanthropy-industrial complex. Can you talk a little about the role of Western philanthropy in Africa?
Philanthropy in Africa has some history especially in relation to the Rockefeller family. The Rockefeller foundation has a much longer history than the Gates Foundation for example. Gordon Conway who became one of the presidents of the Rockefeller Foundation published a book called the New Green Revolution in 1999. The Green Revolution push we are seeing in Africa is really his brainchild. Their philanthropy has come in the context of pushing a very distinct corporate agenda – to open markets for US corporations. For example in Kenya the Rockefeller Foundation has been involved in sponsoring Florence Wambugu’s sweet potato project because they want to open Africa up to GMOs. So if you give the impression that a genetically modified sweet potato can work because it is the poor person’s crop, there will be more willingness to accept GMO’s. So it is not philanthropy. It’s a form of investment, a corporatized agenda for resource extraction from Africa.
There was an expose in the LA Times on the Bill Gates Foundation where it was found that the foundation invests money in companies and corporations that cause the very same problems it is trying to solve, companies such as Shell. So the philanthropy arm is trying to save the environment, while the investment arm is making profit from its destruction…
Exactly, the Rockefellers made their money from Exon, which later became Chevron – so they have old oil money – this wrecked a whole lot of havoc environmentally and in terms of human rights.
And also the idea of telescopic philanthropy, a telescopic philanthropy that sees far but not what is under its feet – for example there are a lot problems in the United States amongst minority communities…
Yes, why didn’t they give money to Hurricane Katrina victims? Why do they feel they have to come and rescue Africa? We say that the Green Revolution is a white man’s dream for a black continent. And this dream… this savior mentality is very missionary, very colonial, and imperialistic – and yes they should leave us alone. If they take away all the developmental aid, if they take all the food aid, and the military aid – we would be like Cuba. We would struggle for a while but eventually we would find our way. We would build our own local economies and vibrancy because all these development aid is also an industry unto itself, and it feeds off itself.
Who are the world’s biggest agri-business players? Take Cargil, which owns shares in seed companies, buys the harvest from farmers and transports it all over the world – they are more powerful than some governments because they are in charge of the international prices of grains and trade in grains. You have to really understand this whole capitalist agri-business system in order to understand the logic of the green revolution.
AGRA, according to its website, is and “African-led partnership working across the African continent to help millions of small-scale farmers and their families lift themselves out of poverty and hunger. AGRA programs develop practical solutions to significantly boost farm productivity and incomes for the poor while safeguarding the environment. AGRA advocates for policies that support its work across all key aspects of the African agricultural “value chain”—from seeds, soil health, and water to markets and agricultural education. AGRA is chaired by Kofi A. Annan, the former Secretary-General of the United Nations”. They say that they are African led and now they have Kofi Annan who is serving as the chairman of AGRA – your response?
I think they are African followed because the vision was put in place by Gordon Conway from the Rockefeller Foundation. The Rockefeller Foundation brought in the Bill-Melinda Gates foundation, then started to recruit willing and compliant Africans – the coup de grace was Kofi Annan.
If it was African led we would not be asking for consultation and transparency. It would be coming from our farmers, coming from the ground-up. What is African led, are the local struggles, where people are clearly saying this is what we want. Go to speak to the people affected and they will tell you what they want – that would be African led.
Can you talk a little bit about the packaging of AGRA? You have Kofi Annan, who has UN credentials, gentle spoken yet charismatic and Bill Gates who appears harmless. There is a lot of star power and money…
The things is the Green Revolution is a very a violent package because it puts powerful toxic chemicals into Africa. It displaces and destroys local knowledge and seeds. It favors those farmers who will be able to access the system, the more powerful farmers. This will divide the African peasantry.
AGRA also creates a lot of dependency and debt. It is violent. But the geeky sexy richest man who brought us wonderful technology, and gentle Kofi Annan – this is the savior face, our last hope. It is a very strategic move to push a very agri-business, corporatized market driven package – but it will fail in Africa because they do not understand Africa.
We are a very diverse people, we need local solutions that are multi-dimensional and multi-faceted – built on local knowledge and local seeds. You need to speak to people about how they adapt to harsh climates. To have a one-size fit all solution for Africa will be disastrous for us. Even in one country we have different eco-systems, different farming communities, different cultures, different eating habits.
We do not need to grow more foods for exports. We need to build on food sovereignty principles and give people equitable access to land, allocate the water fairly, support traditional farming methods, and create local vibrant economies, before we start exporting coffee, cocoa, and grow maize for export.
We are not saying that everyone must live on the land, or farm – we are talking about a local economy that is also integrated into the national economies. You cannot have two economies. We are talking about a vibrant whole.
I have to say that we are also unhappy with the agricultural systems in Africa and this is why we are saying – that we have to stop talking about food security because this perpetuates the existing paradigms. We have to tell our governments – what the hell are you doing? You have messed up badly, and left a vacuum for the philanthropist to walk in – and take over our countries, in a way.
online copy of the book Unmasking the new green revolution in Africa: motives, players and dynamics
Since the late 1990s, the development discourse in Africa has been dominated by the idea that of a “New Green Revolution in Africa”. This call has been promoted by the United Nations, governments in Africa and beyond, funded by private philanthropic foundations, and supported by agricultural transnational corporations. This report provides a critical analysis of the key players promoting the New Green Revolution in Africa and the dynamics among them.
The paper argues that the New Green Revolution and biotechnology agenda in Africa is underpinned by a neo-liberal economic push to integrate Africa into the world market economy by creating markets for agricultural inputs and products, all in the name of freeing poor African farmers from the clutches of hunger and poverty.
The paper discusses the following:
* a background on the Green Revolution in Asia
* Gordon Conway’s “Doubly Green Revolution for Africa”
* the role of private foundations, such as the Rockefeller and the Gates Foundation in funding such initiatives
* support for the Green Revolution for Africa from UN agencies, international financial institutions, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), agriculture firms, the New Economic Partnership for Africa (NEPAD), as well as other players
Based on this analysis. the paper argues that the current excitement over Africa has not arisen spontaneously, but is guided by strategic thinking based on a particular development paradigm that has not been developed from within the African continent nor crafted by Africans.
to be continued…
Posted by: b real | Apr 30 2008 2:58 utc | 35
so far in this thread nobody has mentioned the recent final rpt put out by the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) that gathered “some 400 scientists and other specialists” as well as global institutions (world bank, FAO, WHO, UNESCO, etc), governments, representatives from civil societies and, of course, private companies. two of those private companies pulled out from the IAASTD just months ago after failing to exert their influence on the project, and, surprise surprise, they just happen to be the seed companies monsanto & syngenta.
Monsato and Syngenta have apparently pulled out of an ambitious, Sh70 million (US$10-million) agricultural project because it does not emphasise or recognise the significant contribution of modern biotechnology in agricultural development and poverty reduction.
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No public statements have been offered, but the spokesman for CropLife told Nature that the decision was prompted by the inability of its members to get industry perspectives reflected in the draft reports. One of these perspectives is the view that biotechnology is key to reducing poverty and hunger, and it is based in part on high (and rising) levels of demand for biotech crops from farmers across the developing world.
Ms Denise Dewar of Croplife International, of which Monsanto and Syngenta are members, is quoted in the Guardian stating, “We were concerned with the direction the draft was taking and that our input was not being taken appropriately. We were looking to see references to plant science technology and the potential role it can contribute.”
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A spokesman for the agriculture-industry body CropLife International told Nature, “This is a most reluctant decision.”
“If they can bring evidence forward that we have not been objective, or that the language is biased, then we could discuss that,” Watson said.
Insiders agree that the current draft is decidedly lukewarm about the technology’s potential in developing-world agriculture. The summary report, for example, devotes more space to biotechnology’s risks than to its benefits. The report says that evidence that biotech crops produce high yields is not conclusive. And it claims that if policy-makers give more prominence to biotechnology, this could consolidate the biotech industry’s dominance of agricultural R&D in developing countries. This would affect graduate education and training, and provide fewer opportunities for scientists to train in other agricultural sciences.
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The idea that biotechnology cannot by itself reduce hunger and poverty is mainstream opinion among agricultural scientists and policy-makers. For example, biotechnology expansion was not among the seven main recommendations in Halving Hunger: It Can Be Done, a report commissioned by former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan.
from a recent food first article,
The International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology (IAASTD) recently released its final report in Johannesburg, South Africa. The result of an exhaustive 3-year international consultation similar to that of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IAASTD calls for an overhaul of agriculture dominated by multinational companies and governed by unfair trade rules. The report warns against relying on genetic engineered “fixes” for food production and emphasizes the importance of locally-based, agroecological approaches to farming. The key advantages to this way of farming-aside from its low environmental impact-is that it provides both food and employment to the world’s poor, as well as a surplus for the market. On a pound-per-acre basis, these small family farms have proven themselves to be more productive than large-scale industrial farms. And, they use less oil, especially if food is traded locally or sub-regionally. These alternatives, growing throughout the world, are like small islands of sustainability in increasingly perilous economic and environmental seas. As industrialized farming and free trade regimes fail us, these approaches will be the keys for building resilience back into a dysfunctional global food system.
ips: Reinventing Agriculture
Both scientific knowledge and traditional skills were evaluated under the IAASTD, which marked the first attempt to bring all actors in agriculture together to address food security. Contributors produced five regional assessments, and a 110-page-plus synthesis report.
Amongst the 22 findings of the study that chart a new direction for agriculture: a conclusion that the dominant practice of industrial, large-scale agriculture is unsustainable, mainly because of the dependence of such farming on cheap oil, its negative effects on ecosystems — and growing water scarcity.
Instead, monocultures must be reconsidered in favour of agro-ecosystems that marry food production with ensuring water supplies remain clean, preserving biodiversity, and improving the livelihoods of the poor.
“Given the future challenges it was very clear to everyone that business as usual was not an option,” IAASTD Co-chair Hans Herren told IPS. He was speaking at an Apr. 7-12 intergovernmental plenary in South Africa’s commercial hub, Johannesburg, where the assessment findings were reviewed ahead of Tuesday’s presentation.
While global supplies of food are adequate, 850 million people are still hungry and malnourished because they can’t get access to or afford the supplies they need, added Herren — who is also president of the Arlington-based Millennium Institute, a body that undertakes a variety of developmental activities around the world. A focus only on boosting crop yields would not deal with the problems at hand, he said: “We need better quality food in the right places.”
The notion that yield can no longer be the sole measure of agricultural success was also raised by Greenpeace International’s Jan van Aken, who said that the extent to which agriculture promotes nutrition needs to be considered. A half-hectare plot in Thailand can grow 70 species of vegetables, fruits and herbs, providing far better nutrition and feeding more people than a half-hectare plot of high-yielding rice, he added.
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The plenary was marked by some disagreement over the ever-controversial matters of biotechnology and trade: indeed, during a long and fraught debate over biotechnology, the meeting very nearly fell apart. U.S. and Australian government representatives objected to wording in the synthesis report that highlighted concerns about whether the use of genetically modified (GM) crops in food is healthy and safe.
This issue, along with challenges pertaining to trade, had been thoroughly debated over the three-year IAASTD process and the final wording reflected scientific evidence. The report says biotechnology has a role to play in the future but that it remains a contentious matter, the data on benefits of GM crops being mixed; it further notes that patenting of genes causes problems for farmers and researchers.
Syngenta and the other biotech and pesticide companies abandoned the assessment process late last year.
The impasse at the plenary was broken when the two countries agreed to a footnote in the report indicating their reservations about the wording. They also agreed to accept the report as a whole, along with Canada and Swaziland: “Our government will champion this even though we have reservations on some parts,” the Australian delegate told the meeting.
The other 60 countries represented at the plenary took a stronger position, moving beyond acceptance to adopt the report.
“I’m stunned. I didn’t think it would pass,” said Janice Jiggins of the Department of Social Science at the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands, and one of the experts who worked to review the totality of agricultural know-how and the effects of farming around the world.
There was also broad endorsement from civil society.
“We have a very strong anti-GMO (genetically-modified organism) stance but agreed to accept the synthesis report findings because it was neutral,” noted van Aken. “We’re not happy with everything, but we agree with the scientific consensus in the synthesis report.”
to be continued…
Posted by: b real | Apr 30 2008 3:41 utc | 37
from an ips interview w/ robert watson, director of IAASTD
What is the significance of the IAASTD findings for global food security?
The significance of the IAASTD is that for the first time governments from the developed and developing countries, civil society, scientific authors from natural and social sciences all worked together to address the critical issue of how to get affordable and nutritious food in way that is environmentally and socially sustainable.
The IAASTD clearly states that business as usual in agriculture is not an option. Why is this the case?
The IAASTD builds on the findings from two previous assessments. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment found that 15 of the planet’s 24 natural ecosystems are in trouble or in decline, in large measure due to degradation of land and water — mainly because of agriculture. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that agriculture is a major contributor to human-induced climate change, and climate change will have a major impact on agricultural productivity.
If we only focus on boosting food production it will only come at the expense of further environmental degradation.
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Does IAASTD call for the end of large-scale monocultures?
If monocultures can be modified so they are environmentally and socially sustainable, then they’re OK. You can’t undermine agriculture’s natural resource basis — the soil, water, biodiversity and so on — because eventually it will collapse.
OTOH, the collapse of monopolies in the agricultural industrial complex is what has some biotech giants concerned.
again, africa is being viewed as the ‘final frontier’ & they are seeking multiple means of securing their interests on the continent.
one argument to propagate such was recently put forth in a book that appears, based on interviews w/ the author in lieu of reading the actual text, to be fallacious on many grounds – Starved for Science:
How Biotechnology Is Being Kept Out of Africa
In Starved for Science Robert Paarlberg explains why poor African farmers are denied access to productive technologies, particularly genetically engineered seeds with improved resistance to insects and drought. He traces this obstacle to the current opposition to farm science in prosperous countries. Having embraced agricultural science to become well-fed themselves, those in wealthy countries are now instructing Africans—on the most dubious grounds—not to do the same.
In a book sure to generate intense debate, Paarlberg details how this cultural turn against agricultural science among affluent societies is now being exported, inappropriately, to Africa. Those who are opposed to the use of agricultural technologies are telling African farmers that, in effect, it would be just as well for them to remain poor.
for an idea of what one could expect from the book, a quick read of an interview w/ the author at the website named, ironically, reason online (“free minds and free markets”) may be all that’s needed to scare a truly reasonable person away from it
Can you give an example of a genetically modified seed or organism, something in use today?
Bt crops have been engineered to contain a gene from a naturally occurring soil bacterium that expresses a certain protein that cannot be digested by caterpillars. Mammals can digest the protein with absolutely no problem, but caterpillars cannot. When the caterpillars eat the plant, they die.
What’s wonderful about this is that it’s so precisely targeted at the insects eating the plant. The other insects in the field aren’t affected. Using conventional corn instead of Bt corn, you have to spray the whole field and you end up killing a lot of non-targeted species. With this variety, you don’t have to spray.
That sounds less scary than “Genetically Modified Organism.”
The book makes the argument that the overregulation of this technology in Europe and the anxieties felt about it in the United States are not so much a reflection of risks, because there aren’t any documented risks from any GM crops on the market. I explain that reaction through the absence of direct benefit. The technology is directly beneficial to only a tiny number of citizens in rich countries—soybean farmers, corn farmers, a few seed companies, patent holders. Consumers don’t get a direct benefit at all, so it doesn’t cost them anything to drive it off the market with regulations. The problem comes when the regulatory systems created in rich countries are then exported to regions like Africa, where two thirds of the people are farmers, and where they would be the direct beneficiaries.
How pervasive are genetically modified foods in the U.S.?
Roughly 90 percent of the cotton and soybeans produced in the US are genetically modified. Fifty or 70 percent of the corn is genetically modified. If you look at the products on a retail store shelf, probably 70 percent of them contain some ingredients from genetically modified crops. Mostly corn or soybeans.
Are there documented safety risks that merit caution?
There aren’t any. It’s like the first ten years of aviation without a plane crash.
What about environmental risks? Don’t GM crops affect surrounding plantlife?
The only impacts they have different from conventional crops are beneficial to the environment. They allow you to control weeds and insects with fewer sprayings of toxic chemicals. And they don’t require as many trips through the field with your diesel tractor, so you burn less fossil fuel. And there is more carbon sequestered because you’re not tilling the soil the way you otherwise would.
There are environmental impacts; there is gene flow. The pollen from a genetically modified maize plant will flow into a neighboring field and will fertilize the crops in that neighboring field. Some of the seeds, as a consequence, will contain the transgene, but that’s no different from pollen from a conventional maize plant flowing into the next field. It’s only if you decide arbitrarily to define gene flow from genetically modified crops as “contamination” and flow from all other crops as natural. Only then does it start to become describable as an adverse effect.
the reader, by now, has probably reasoned (and not so arbitrarily) that there is more than enough manure in that interview to richly fertilize several hectares of farmland for generations. this is the kind of crap that gets thrown at africans to make them think they’re missing out on something wonderful or scare them into not trusting their own knowledge. (and it’s not like africa doesn’t already have plenty of experience w/ gmo’s, or “organic” farming, for that matter.)
from l.s. stavrianos’ global rift: the third world comes of age (1981),
The overseas extension of the American agricultural system is commonly known as the Green Revolution. In the course of the exportation of the Green Revolution the interests of Third World peasants have been disregarded as completely as have the interests of American family farmers.
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Equally disruptive has been the impact of the Food for Peace program on Third World agriculture. Close to $30 billion of food was distributed by this program to over 130 countries between 1954 and 1980. Most Americans assume that this aid represents a humanitarian enterprise in support of needy peoples. In fact, the 1954 Agricultural Trade and Development Act (Public Law 480) was designed specifically to “improve the foreign relations of the United States” and to “promote the economic stability of American agriculture and the national welfare.” Not until 1961 was the law’s statement of purpose amended to include the goal of combatting world hunger.
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But the flood of U.S. food lowered food prices in the recipient countries to the point where local farmers were unable to compete. The net result was the undermining of local food production and increased reliance on U.S. food imports.
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The success of P.L. 480 not only expanded U.S. markets at the expense of Third World self-sufficiency in food but also realised the law’s other objective – to “improve the foreign relations of the United States.” Senator Hubert Humphrey, one of the earliest champions of the Food for Pease program, explicitly recognized and lauded this achievement before a Senate committee (1957):
I have heard … that people may become dependent on us for food. I know that was not supposed to be good news. To me, that was good news, because before people can do anything they have got to eat. And if you are looking for a way to get people to lean on you and to be dependent on you, in terms of their cooperation with you, it seems to me that food dependence would be terrific.
Precisely the same viewpoint was expressed by Reagan’s Secretary of Agriculture, John Block, during his confirmation hearings (1980): “Food is a weapon but the way to use that is to tie countries to us. That way they’ll be far more reluctant to upset us.” Because of adverse publicity, Block several days later changed his terminology, if not his views, by terming food “a tool for peace.”
so will there be any non-aligned countries for the next world war?
Posted by: b real | Apr 30 2008 5:06 utc | 39
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