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Food and Agriculture

Gates Foundation Slammed for Plan to Privatise African Seed Markets

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 23 2015 (IPS) - The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) has been attacked by activists over alleged support of a plan to privatise African agricultural markets.

United Kingdom social justice organisation Global Justice Now levelled the claims at the Gates Foundation and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) on Monday, saying the two agencies were holding a “secret meeting” in London to promote a plan to help companies sell seeds in Africa, that will cut out small farmers.

“This morning in response food justice campaigners have held a demonstration outside the offices of the BMGF in London, with placards calling on the foundation to ‘free the seeds’ and handing out packets of open-pollinated seeds as a symbol of the alternative to the corporate model promoted by USAID and BMGF,” Global Justice Now said in a release.

“A papier mâché piñata representing the commercial control of seed systems was smashed by the protesters, with thousands of seeds inside being spilled over the steps of the entrance to the BMGF.”

Global Justice Now said the London meeting was in response to a study by Monitor-Deloitte, commissioned by USAID and the Gates Foundation, which examined how corporate seed producers could better penetrate African markets.

“For generations, small farmers have been able to save and swap seeds. This vital practice enables farmers to keep a wide range of seeds which helps maintain biodiversity and helps them to adapt to climate change and protect from plant disease,” Global Justice Now food sovereignty campaigner Heidi Chow wrote in a blog post on their website.

“However, this system of seed saving is under threat by corporations who want to take more control over seeds.”

The group claims such “corporate-produced hybrid seeds” bring higher harvests in initial years, but later show unpredictable growth patterns.

“This means that instead of saving seeds from their own crops, farmers who use hybrid seeds become completely dependent on the seed companies that sell them,” the blog post continued.

“Often the seeds are sold in packages with chemical fertiliser and pesticides which can lead to spiralling debt as well as damaging the environment and causing health problems.”

Chow called the plan “another form of colonialism” for forcing African farmers to depend on corporate interests for their continued survival.

“We need to ensure that the control of seeds and other agricultural resources stay firmly in the hands of small farmers who feed the majority of the population in Africa rather than allowing big agribusiness to dominate even more aspects of the food system.”

Ali-Masmadi Jehu-Appiah, Chair of Food Sovereignty Ghana, also expressed concern over the power that corporate interests would hold over farmers.

Activists worldwide are using the Twitter hashtag #FreeTheSeeds to protest the meeting and the plan.

Follow Josh Butler on Twitter @JoshButler

Edited by Roger Hamilton-Martin

 
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  • wordscanhelp

    I have been following this for a while – it is totally insidious the way it is presented, and will have deep repercussions in the lives and opportunities of the mostly female smallholders — negatively in the long term. Also the regional capabilities and knowledge of their own soil, seeds, climate and trends. All of this should be know-how developed and recorded locally – not the foreign top-down model of the Alliance of a green Africa and AGRA and the various bodies they are disguised under. They even claim to be helping women by having women own small businessess and marketing to small farmers – helping to create their dependency, loss of their seeds and knowledge and potential to improve their own seeds, and the big business of getting their money off them.

    It has been said that there is enough food, but the middle men and the institutions for marketing and selling are nonexistant, corrupt or undeveloped. Government and elites must stop collaborating with the Monsanto et al group and the foreign ‘commodity’ agriculture model to impose this on their people, often using force, and Africans who have been educated in the ‘Big AG’ model. Research and labs and innovation to imporvoe lcoal crops need to come form African initiative, and it is there if the elites and governments had the political will and integrity to harness it — there are plenty individual examples of African innovation and of good otucomes to sustainable development models.

lola pons