Cameroon is on the path to introduce genetically modified organisms (GMO’s). This would be overseen by the Cameroon Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with the National Biosafety Committee, if the Cameroon Cotton Corporation successfully implements a three-year test cultivation of cotton.

The introduction of GMOs is seen by many as a measure to improve Cameroon’s agricultural yields and guarantee food security, despite health risks.

“Genetically modified organisms will help Cameroon solve many problems which researchers of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development have not been able to solve using conventional selection and cross breeding. It will definitely guarantee food security and safety,” Dr. David Akuroh Mbah, Chief Research Officer at the Cameroon Academy of Sciences, told IPS.

He says though Cameroon hasn’t begun using genetic engineering to modify food crops and livestock, “There are a good number of them which will be modified to increase yield. Some health problems will equally be solved. A lot of drugs and pharmaceutical products are produced by genetically modification of organisms, either plants or animals.”

According to Dr. Mbah, insulin which is required almost on a daily basis by a good proportion of the Cameroon population is now produced by use of bacteria and animals. “If it is done in Cameroon, it would be cheaper,” he said.

To further his point, Dr. Mbah cites examples such as the African swine fever, bird flu and a toxic element in cassava tubers which he says can all be eliminated through genetic modification.

“When we introduce this technology, we would be able to introduce genes that will eliminate the toxins in cassava which is currently being consumed heavily by a majority of Cameroonians. Genetic modification has been developed to eliminate the spread of bird flu virus among humans, while increasing the production of chickens. GMO chickens are more resistant to the virus. A technique has also been discovered to make pigs immune to the African swine fever virus, but this is only done out of Cameroon for now,” he said.

The country held its first national forum on GMOS from September 8 to 10, 2015 bringing together biotechnologists, academics, government officials, businessmen and experts from research institutions to brainstorm and pave the way for an effective introduction of use of bioengineering in the country’s agro sector.

Emmanuel Mbonde, the country’s Minister of Mines, Industry and Technological Development says that participants’ contributions to the forum will later on enable the government to take needed measures to guarantee the security of its economic, social, cultural and environmental space and to make prudent decisions in the face of challenges of modern biotechnology.

A 2014 report by the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications, (ISAAA), shows Cameroon is among seven African countries (which include Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Malawi and Egypt) engaged in test cultivation of GMOs.

Dr. Mbah says besides the forum, Cameroon had already adopted a law in 2003, to control modern biotechnology, genetic engineering or DNA technology and cloning.

“Now that the text of the application for the law has been signed, a National Biosafety Committee has been set up to guide the Ministry of Environment, Nature Protection and Sustainable Development on what type of biotechnology to authorize or prohibit.”

The Cameroon Academy of Science and the National Biosafety Committee would examine applications of private companies vying to use GMOs in Cameroon’s agriculture and livestock sectors.

Cameroon is currently testing the use of GMOs on cotton in three localities in the northern part of the country. The first phase of the testing was carried out in 2012, unannounced to the public. According to Celestin Klassou, a researcher at Cameroon Cotton Development Corporation, cotton produced during the first phase was resistant to pest and disease, and produced higher yields.

“There is a gene which is genetically engineered into the cotton. It is an experimental stage being carried out by the Cameroon Cotton Development Corporation in accordance with the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety and the Cameroon law,” said Dr. Mbah.

He equally notes that the same procedure would be used to improve agricultural production, adding that “people who are protesting against this system have insufficient information. We would not import GMOs from abroad. We will develop them here. However, there is a law which obliges traders to label products in shops so that citizens can choose freely between GMOs and natural products.”

Dr. Mbah also told IPS GMOs would be introduced widely in Cameroon if the three-year-long second phase which is on-going in three localities in the northern region is successful. The cotton corporation also produces edible cotton oil for commercialization.

Professor Vincent Titanji, a Cameroonian biotechnologist and Vice Chancellor of the Cameroon Christian University Institute, reaffirms that the benefits of GMOs are greater than any negative affects they might have in future.

“Remember that fire was discovered. It is both useful and harmful. ICTs are the same. I have been in the domain of bioengineering for over 30 years and none of the predicted effects have materialized. It was predicted that weeds will invade the entire ecosystems of countries like Brazil, the US, South Africa and China which produce GMOs massively. Even the toxic substances predicted, have not materialized,” said Proffessor Titanji.

The bio-technician urges Cameroonians to embrace the technology and master it, in order to be able to make the best out of it, and to effectively and efficiently handle any effects which may come up in future.

He says GMOs have been used on crops like maize, soya beans, sorghum, rice and cotton and that the trials on cotton in the north of Cameroon have proven to be better yielding and resistant to pest.“One or two negative effects such as a possible allergy should not scare people away from biotechnology.

Samson Tetang, Coordinator of a Cameroon-based NGO, Sustainable Society International says GMOs are needed for the development of agriculture and livestock. He however insists there must be a mechanism for bio-surveillance put in place to follow the risks. “Food shortage can be fought through the use of GMOs, but serious health hazards could be registered if no one monitors the plants and animals,”he said.

Marcel Moukend, an agro-engineer in charge of a National Support Program for Maize producers at the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development tells IPS that the introduction of GMOs in Cameroon is not an emergency solution to food crisis.

He argues that there are programs at the Ministry of Agriculture which can guarantee food security.

“In our program, farmers only need to show us their land and we provide maize seeds to them free of charge. We provide natural composite seeds which yield between five to six tons per hectare and imported improved hybrid seeds which yield between eight to ten tons per hectare. There are programs for other crops,” he argued.

Some of the programs, such as a national program to strengthen solanum potato sub sector, was introduced in 2008.

The program aimed at helping farmers increase and maintain a high quality production of solanum potatoes only went functional this year and was effective, according to reports from the agriculture ministry.

The program targets 250,000 farming families in the West, North West, Adamawa, Far North and South West regions of Cameroon.

The Ministry of Economy, Planning and Regional Development launched 9 billion FCFA-worth agricultural programs this year, the programs dubbed, ‘Agropoles’, cover 17 projects which include the production of avocados, rice, pork, soya-bean oil as well as chicken in the Center, West, South, North and Littoral regions.

Emmanuel Mbom, Monitoring Officer at Counterpart International, told IPS that figures from the National Institute of Statistics show Cameroon is a food deficient country where one third of children under the age of five suffer from chronic malnutrition.

Mbom whose NGO is implementing a U.S government sponsored program which provides food to some 74,000 school children in underprivileged regions of Cameroon, insists yearly food shortages are growing and represent a threat to children and their communities.

In relation to the use of GMOs, to fight hunger and poverty in Africa, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which once owned shares in Monsanto, a top GMO producer, states in its annual letter African farmers could theoretically double their yields using new farming innovations such as the use of high yielding seeds resistant to droughts and disease.

It adds that “With the right investments, we can deliver innovation and information to enough farmers in Africa to increase productivity by 50 per cent for the continent overall.”

UNICEF says hunger is a great problem in Sub-Saharan Africa, where Cameroon is found, despite the fact that the region is home to abundant cultivatable land. It says 70 per cent of the population in the region practice farming but ironically the prevalence of hunger is highest in the world with one in five people underfed. Forty per cent of children under the age of five (25 million children) suffer from stunted growth due to malnutrition.

But in the face of these nutrition problems, some conservatives and civil society activists in Cameroon still believe traditional methods of farming used over the years can be a solution.

Joshua Konkankoh, founder of the Better World Cameroon NGO tells IPS “GMOs account for a great deal to the loss of food sovereignty in Africa and in no way can become a solution.”

He shares the school of thought that the introduction of GMOs is an initiative of private seed companies to kill off Africa’s seed systems. He equally believes GMOs threaten the livelihoods of millions of small-scale farmers who rely on recycling seed for their livelihoods.

During the opening of Cameroon’s first national forum on GMOs in September 2015, civil society leaders stormed the venue of the meeting with placards.

Led by Bernard Njonga, a politician and former president of a farmers association, l’Association Citoyenne de Défense des Interest Collectives, (in French) they carried messages suggesting GMOs are cancerous herbicides and a threat to small scale farmers. Dr. Mbah however dismissed their claims, saying that they are not scientific and emanate from baseless presumptions.

While the debate on the introduction of GMOs in Cameroon is still going on with researchers urging farmers to dialogue with experts and understand the initiative before jumping to unscientific conclusions, a study by Dr. Wilfred Mbatcham, a biotechnology researcher, reveals 25 per cent of imported goods in Cameroon contain GMOs.

The Chief Research Officer at the Cameroon Academy of Sciences tells IPS that the National Biosafety Committee is yet to confirm such reports and identify importers of these products.

(End)

There is no papal bull on transgenic crops in Laudato Si, the second encyclical of Pope Francis, “on the care of our common home” – planet earth. Credit: Norberto Miguel/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Aug 11 2015 (IPS)

A few centuries ago, the biotechnology industry would have been able to buy a papal bull to expiate its sins and grant it redemption. But in his encyclical on the environment, “Laudato Si”, Pope Francis condemns genetically modified organisms (GMOs) without leaving room for a pardon.

In his second encyclical since he became pope on Mar. 13, 2013 – but the first that is entirely his work – Jorge Mario Bergoglio criticises the social, economic and agricultural impacts of GMOs and calls for a broad scientific debate.

Laudato Si – “Praise be to you, my Lord” in medieval Italian – takes its title from Saint Francis of Assisi’s 13th-century Canticle of the Sun, one of whose verses is: “Be praised, my Lord, through our sister Mother Earth, who feeds us and rules us, and produces various fruits with colored flowers and herbs.”

It is the first encyclical in history dedicated to the environment and reflecting on “our common home” – planet earth.“In many places, following the introduction of these crops, productive land is concentrated in the hands of a few owners due to ‘the progressive disappearance of small producers, who, as a consequence of the loss of the exploited lands, are obliged to withdraw from direct production’.” – Laudato Si

The encyclical, which was published Jun. 18, acknowledges that “no conclusive proof exists that GM cereals may be harmful to human beings.” But it stresses that “there remain a number of significant difficulties which should not be underestimated.”

“In many places, following the introduction of these crops, productive land is concentrated in the hands of a few owners due to ‘the progressive disappearance of small producers, who, as a consequence of the loss of the exploited lands, are obliged to withdraw from direct production’,” it adds.

As a result, says the first Latin American pope, farmers are driven to become temporary labourers, many rural workers end up in urban slums, ecosystems are destroyed, and “oligopolies” expand in the production of cereals and inputs needed for their cultivation.

Francis calls for “A broad, responsible scientific and social debate…one capable of considering all the available information and of calling things by their name” because “It sometimes happens that complete information is not put on the table; a selection is made on the basis of particular interests, be they politico-economic or ideological.”

Such a debate on GMOs is missing, and the biotech industry has refused to open up its databases to verify whether or not transgenic crops are innocuous.

According to the encyclical, “Discussions are needed in which all those directly or indirectly affected (farmers, consumers, civil authorities, scientists, seed producers, people living near fumigated fields, and others) can make known their problems and concerns, and have access to adequate and reliable information in order to make decisions for the common good, present and future.”

Miguel Concha, a Catholic priest who heads the Fray Francisco de Vitoria Human Rights Centre in Mexico, said this country “is already a reference point in the fight for the right to a healthy environment, due to the determined efforts of social organisations. This encyclical reinforces our collective demand,” he told Tierramérica.

The priest said the encyclical warns of the social, economic, legal and ethical implications of transgenic crops, just as environmentalists in Mexico have done for years.

In a local market in Mexico, María Solís shows the different colours of native maize that she grows. Native crops are threatened by attempts to introduce large-scale commercial planting of GM maize in the country. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

The document holds special importance for nations like Mexico, which have been the scene of intense battles over transgenic crops – in this country mainly maize, which has special cultural significance here, besides being the basis of the local diet.

That is also true for Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica, which together with southern Mexico form Mesoamérica, the seat of the ancient Maya civilisation.

The pope is familiar with the impact of transgenic crops, because according to experts his home country, Argentina, is the Latin American nation where GMOs have done the most to alter traditional agriculture.

Soy – 98 percent of which is transgenic – is Argentina’s leading crop, covering 31 million hectares, up from just 4.8 million hectares in 1990, according to the soy industry association, ACSOJA.

The monoculture crop has displaced local producers, fuelled the concentration of land, and created “a vicious circle that is highly dangerous for the sustainability of our production systems,” Argentine agronomist Carlos Toledo told Tierramérica.

Just 10 countries account for nearly all production of GMOs: the United States, Brazil, Argentina, Canada, India, China, Paraguay, South Africa, Pakistan and Uruguay, in that order. Most of the production goes to the animal feed industry, but Mexico wants GM maize to be used for human consumption.

In July 2013, 53 individuals and 20 civil society organisations mounted a collective legal challenge against applications to commercially plant transgenic maize, and in September of that year a federal judge granted a precautionary ban on such authorisations.

Since March 2014, organisations of beekeepers and indigenous communities have won two further provisional protection orders against commercial transgenic soybean crops in the southeastern states of Campeche and Yucatán.

On Apr. 30, 2014, eight scientists from six countries sent an open letter to Pope Francis about the negative environmental, economic, agricultural, cultural and social impacts of GM seeds, especially in Mexico.

In their letter, the experts stated: “…we believe that it would be of momentous importance and great value to all if Your Holiness were to express yourself critically on GM crops and in support of peasant farming. This support would go a long way toward saving peoples and the planet from the threat posed by the control of life wielded by companies that monopolise seeds, which are the key to the entire food web…”

Laudato Si indicates that the pope did listen to their plea.

“The encyclical is very encouraging, because it has expressed an ecological position,” Argelia Arriaga, a professor at the University Centre for Disaster Prevention of the Autonomous University of Puebla, told Tierramérica. “It touches sensitive fibers; the situation is terrible and merits papal intervention. This gives us moral support to continue the struggle.”

But legal action has failed to curb the biotech industry’s ambitions in Mexico.

In 2014, the National Service for Agri-Food Health, Safety and Quality (SENASICA) received four applications from the biotech industry and public research centres for experimental planting of maize on nearly 10 hectares of land.

In addition, there were 30 requests for pilot projects involving experimental and commercial planting of GM cotton on a total of 1.18 million hectares – as well as one application for beans, five for wheat, three for lemons and one for soy – all experimental.

SENASICA is also processing five biotech industry requests for planting more than 200,000 hectares of GM cotton and alfalfa for commercial and experimental purposes.

“This is an economic and development model that ignores food production,” said Concha, the priest who heads the Fray Francisco de Vitoria Human Rights Centre.

The participants in the collective lawsuit against GMOs, having successfully gotten federal courts to throw out 22 stays brought by the government and companies against the legal decision to temporarily suspend permits for planting, are now getting ready for a trial that will decide the future of transgenic crops in the country.

Arriaga noted that the focus of the encyclical goes beyond GM crops, and extends to other environmental struggles. “For people in local communities, the pope’s message is important, because it tells them they have to take care of nature and natural resources. It helps raise awareness,” the professor said.

This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

In the Philippines, 22 percent of children under the age of five are underweight, and 32 percent of children are stunted. Credit: Kara Santos/IPS

By Diana Mendoza
MANILA, Mar 20 2015 (IPS)

When Tinay Alterado’s team from ARUGAAN, an organisation of women healthcare advocates, visited Eastern Visayas, a region of the Philippines devastated by Typhoon Haiyan in November 2013, they noticed that the relief and rescue sites were flooded with donated milk formula, which nursing mothers were feeding to their babies in vast quantities.

Milk formula was one of the hundreds of relief items that streamed into the affected region in the aftermath of the strongest recorded storm to ever hit land.

“No one knows if GMOs are safe to eat, but there is mounting evidence that they pose dangers to human health." -- Angelina Galang, head of Consumer Rights for Safe Food (CRSF)
“We intervened because we knew from what we saw that we had to teach women how to breastfeed and how important it is for them, their babies and their families,” Alterado told IPS.

ARUGAAN, which in Filipino means to nurture or take care of someone, is a home centre organised by mostly poor, urban working mothers who care for babies up to three-and-a-half months old and advocate for healthy lifestyles, especially exclusive breastfeeding.

“We informed the women that they can and must breastfeed, and it should be for [up to] six months or even longer,” Alterado said.

Her group’s emergency response in the typhoon-affected areas took more time than planned, as they had to teach women how to induce milk from their breasts through a process called ‘lactation massage’ and how to store the milk for their babies’ next meal.

Alterado said her colleagues have doubled their efforts to spread awareness on this crucial aspect of motherhood, which is not ingrained in the country’s culture. Few people connect the act of breastfeeding with its associated economic and environmental benefits, such as reducing trash or easing a family’s financial woes.

In a country where 22 percent of children under the age of five are underweight, and 32 percent of children are stunted, women’s role in fighting hunger and malnutrition cannot be underestimated.

According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), “An overreliance on rice, low levels of breastfeeding and […] recurring natural hazards, connected to and amplified by […] poverty, means that children do not eat enough” in this archipelago nation of just over 100 million people.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) estimates that the Philippines is devastated by an average of 20 typhoons every year that severely damage crops and farmlands, adding another layer to the thorny question of how to solve the country’s food issues.

Last year, the Philippines joined a list of some 63 developing countries to meet the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target of halving the number of hungry people ahead of the 2015 deadline. Still, the country has one of the highest malnutrition rates in the world, contributing to Asia-Pacific’s dubious distinction of being home to 553 million malnourished people as of 2014.

As government officials and international development organisations struggle to come to terms with these numbers against the backdrop of impending natural disasters, women across the Philippines are already leading the way on efforts to combat hunger and ease the burden of malnutrition.

Ancient wisdom to tackle modern lifestyles

Alterado’s crusade is no different from that of Angelina Galang who heads Consumer Rights for Safe Food (CRSF), a coalition of organisations pushing for consumers’ right to know, choose, and have access to safe and healthy food.

For Galang, the struggle starts at home. When her grandchildren visit every weekend, she doesn’t serve them the usual soda, junk food or take-out pizza favored by so many young people. Instead, she gives them fruits and healthy, home-cooked snacks like boiled bananas.

She said the children didn’t like it at first but after many months, they have become used to weekend visits with their grandma that do not feature Coke and hot dogs. “Hopefully, they will learn and adopt that kind of lifestyle as they grow up,” she told IPS.

Galang said teaching the ‘fast food generation’ about the right kinds and quantities of food is a challenge, especially since many young people are taken in by corporations’ attractive marketing tactics.

But the problems do not end there. CRSF is also challenging the Philippine government to conduct better research on genetically modified crops and to label food products that are known to have genetically modified organisms (GMOs), which alter the genetic makeup of crops to enhance their appearance, nutrient content and growth.

“No one knows if GMO foods are safe to eat, but there is mounting evidence that they pose dangers to human health,” Galang asserted.

“Consumers are the guinea pigs of GMOs,” she said, adding that eight GMO crops have been approved by the Philippine government for propagation and 63 for importation.

The movement against genetically modified crops recently coalesced around the government’s attempts to plant the genetically engineered ‘golden rice’, a strand fortified with beta-carotene that the body converts to Vitamin A.

The government claimed its experiment was designed to address the country’s massive Vitamin A deficiency, which affects 1.7 million children under the age of five and roughly 500,000 pregnant and nursing mothers, according to the Philippines-based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI).

Activists and concerned citizens say that GMOs will worsen hunger, kill diversification and possibly contaminate other crops. Women like Galang also contend that until long-term, comprehensive studies are done, “It is better to eat and buy local, unprocessed and organic foods.”

Educating the youth

Experts say the first step in the health food movement is to educate children on the importance of eating local and organic.

Camille Genuino, a member of the Negrense Volunteers for Change Foundation based in Bacolod City, is witnessing this first hand. Her four-year-old child, who attends a daycare centre, is learning how to plant herbs and make pasta and pizza from the fresh produce harvested from their little plot.

“Educating children and exposing them to the benefits of farming is good parenting,” said Genuino, whose non-governmental advocacy group produces the nutritious Mingo powder – an instant formula that turns into a rich porridge when mixed with water – which is distributed in disaster-stricken areas.

Her child’s daycare centre is based in Quezon City, a poor, urban area located close to a waste disposal facility where residents have installed farms on their roofs so they can grow their own food. The centre conducts regular feeding programmes for 80 to 100 children in the area.

It is a humble effort in the greater scheme of things, but similar initiatives across the Philippines suggest a growing movement, led largely by women, is at the forefront of sparking changes in the food and nutrition sector.

Monina Geaga, who heads Kasarian-Kalayaan, Inc. (SARILAYA), a group of grassroots women’s organisations, believes that independent efforts to ensure a family’s nutrition can go a long way.

“People should know how to plant vegetables – like tomatoes, eggplant, pepper and string beans – in pots, and recycle containers for planting,” she said. “This would at least ensure where your food comes from because you source your meals from your own garden.”

More than 200 farmer-members of SARILAYA – mostly across Luzon, one of the three major islands in the Philippines – practice organic agriculture, believing it to be the best guarantee of their families’ health in the era of processed foods, GMOs and synthetic products.

Geaga said Filipino women, including the ones staying at home and raising their children, are at the forefront of these consumer and environment advocacy efforts.

Citing studies by the Food and Nutrition Research Institute and the University of the Philippines, she pointed out that poor families spend 70 percent more on purchasing infant formulas than other needs in the household and that youth in the 16-20 age-group consume fast food products heavy in fat, cholesterol and sodium on a daily basis.

Such statistics are not just numbers on a page – they are the reason scores of women across the Philippines are doubling up as scientists, farmers and activists so that they and their families can be a little healthier, and perhaps live a little longer.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

“There is no doubt that African small-scale producers need much greater support in their efforts, but GM seeds which are designed for large-scale industrial production have no place in smallholder systems”. Credit: La Via Campesina/2007/Creative Commons

By Haidee Swanby and Mariann Bassey Orovwuje
JOHANNESBURG, Mar 1 2015 (IPS)

The most persistent myth about genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is that they are necessary to feed a growing global population.

Highly effective marketing campaigns have drilled it into our heads that GMOs will produce more food on less land in an environmentally friendly manner. The mantra has been repeated so often that it is considered to be truth.

Now this mantra has come to Africa, sung by the United States administration and multinational corporations like Monsanto, seeking to open new markets for a product that has been rejected by so many others around the globe.“It may be tempting to believe that hunger can be solved with technology, but African social movements have pointed out that skewed power relations are the bedrock of hunger in Africa”

While many countries have implemented strict legal frameworks to regulate GMOs, African nations have struggled with the legal, scientific and infrastructural resources to do so.

This has delayed the introduction of GMOs into Africa, but it has also provided the proponents of GMOs with a plum opportunity to offer their assistance and, in the process, helping to craft laws on the continent that promote the introduction of barely regulated GMOs and create investor-friendly environments for agribusiness.

Their line is that African governments must adopt GMOs as a matter of urgency to deal with hunger and that laws implementing pesky and expensive safety measures, or requiring assessments of socio-economic impacts, will only act as obstructions.

To date only seven African countries have complete legal frameworks to deal with GMOs and only four – South Africa, Burkina Faso, Egypt and Sudan – have approved commercial cultivation of a GM crop.

The drive to open markets for GMOs in Africa is not only happening through “assistance” resulting in permissive legal frameworks for GMOs, but also through an array of “philanthropical” projects, most of them funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

One such project is Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA), funded by the Gates Foundation in collaboration with Monsanto. Initially the project sought to develop drought tolerant maize varieties in five pilot countries but, as the project progressed, it incorporated one of Monsanto’s most lucrative commercial traits into the mix – MON810, which enables the plant to produce its own pesticide.

Interestingly, MON810 has recently come off patent, but Monsanto retains ownership when it is stacked with another gene, in this case, drought tolerant.

WEMA has provided a convenient vehicle for the introduction of Monsanto’s controversial product, but it has also used its influence to shape GM-related policy in the countries where it works.

The project has refused to run field trials in Tanzania and Mozambique until those countries amend their “strict liability” laws, which will make WEMA, and future companies selling GMOs, liable for any damages they may cause.

WEMA has also complained to governments about clauses in their law that require assessment of socio-economic impacts of GMOs, saying that assessment and approvals should be based solely on hard science, which is also often influenced or financed by the industry.

African civil society and smallholders’ organisations are fighting for the kind of biosafety legislation that will safeguard health and environment against the potential risks of GMOs, not the kind that promotes the introduction of this wholly inappropriate technology.

About 80 percent of Africa’s food is produced by smallholders, who seldom farm on more than five hectares of land and usually on much less.  The majority of these farmers are women, who have scant access to finance or secure land tenure.

That they still manage to provide the lion’s share of the continents’ food, usually without formal seed, chemicals, mechanisation, irrigation or subsidies, is testament to their resilience and innovation.

African farmers have a lot to lose from the introduction of GMOs – the rich diversity of African agriculture, its robust resilience and the social cohesion engendered through cultures of sharing and collective effort could be replaced by a handful of monotonous commodity crops owned by foreign masters. 

There is no doubt that African small-scale producers need much greater support in their efforts, but GM seeds which are designed for large-scale industrial production have no place in smallholder systems.

The mantra that GMOs are necessary for food security is hijacking the policy space that should be providing appropriate solutions for the poorest farmers.

Only a tiny fraction of farmers will ever afford the elite GM technology package – for example in South Africa, where over 85 percent of maize production is genetically modified, GM maize seed costs 2-5 times more than conventional seed, must be bought annually and requires the extensive use of toxic and expensive chemicals and fertilisers.

What is more, despite 16 years of cultivating GM maize, soya and cotton, South Africa’s food security continues to decline, with some 46 percent of the population categorised as food insecure.

It may be tempting to believe that hunger can be solved with technology, but African social movements have pointed out that skewed power relations – such as unfair trade agreements and subsidies that perennially entrench poverty, or the patenting of seed and imposition of expensive and patented technology onto the world’s most vulnerable and risk averse communities – are the bedrock of hunger in Africa.

Without changing these fundamental power relationships and handing control over food production to smallholders in Africa, hunger cannot be eradicated.

A global movement is growing and demanding that governments support small-scale food producers and “agro-ecology” instead of corporate agriculture, an agricultural system that is based on collaboration with nature and is appropriate for small-scale production, where producers are free to plant and exchange seeds and operate in strong local markets.

Edited by Phil Harris    

The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

This opinion piece was originally published by Common Dreams.

Excerpt:

Filipino rice farmers claim that national heritage sites like the 2,000-year-old Ifugao Rice Terraces are threatened by the looming presence of genetically modified crops. Credit: Courtesy Diana Mendoza

By Diana Mendoza
MANILA, Nov 26 2014 (IPS)

Jon Sarmiento, a farmer in the Cavite province in southern Manila, plants a variety of fruits and vegetables, but his main crop, rice, is under threat. He claims that approval by the Philippine government of the genetically modified ‘golden rice’ that is fortified with beta-carotene, which the body converts into vitamin A, could ruin his livelihood.

Sarmiento, who is also the sustainable agriculture programme officer of PAKISAMA, a national movement of farmers’ organisations, told IPS, “Genetically modified rice will not address the lack of vitamin A, as there are already many other sources of this nutrient. It will worsen hunger. It will also kill diversification and contaminate other crops.”

Sarmiento aired his sentiments during a protest activity last week in front of the Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI), an office under the Department of Agriculture, during which farmers unfurled a huge canvas depicting a three-dimensional illustration of the Banaue Rice Terraces in Ifugao province in the northern part of the Philippines.

“We challenge the government to walk the talk and ‘Be RICEponsible’." -- Jon Sarmiento, a farmer in the Cavite province in southern Manila
Considered by Filipinos as the eighth wonder of the world, the 2,000-year-old Ifugao Rice Terraces represent the country’s rich rice heritage, which some say will be at stake once the golden rice is approved.

The protesting farmers also delivered to the BPI, which is responsible for the development of plant industries and crop production and protection, an ‘extraordinary opposition’ petition against any extension, renewal or issuance of a new bio-safety permit for further field testing, feeding trials or commercialisation of golden rice.

“We challenge the government to walk the talk and ‘Be RICEponsible’,” Sarmiento said, echoing the theme of a national advocacy campaign aimed at cultivating rice self-sufficiency in the Philippines.

Currently, this Southeast Asian nation of 100 million people is the eighth largest rice producer in the world, accounting for 2.8 percent of global rice production, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO).

But it was also the world’s largest rice importer in 2010, largely because the Philippines’ area of harvested rice is very small compared with other major rice-producing countries in Asia.

In addition to lacking sufficient land resources to produce its total rice requirement, the Philippines is devastated by at least 20 typhoons every year that destroy crops, the FAO said.

However, insufficient output is not the only thing driving research and development on rice.

A far greater concern for scientists and policy-makers is turning the staple food into a greater source of nutrition for the population. The government and independent research institutes are particularly concerned about nutrition deficiencies that cause malnutrition, especially among poorer communities.

According to the Philippines-based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), “Vitamin A deficiency remains a public health problem in the country, affecting more than 1.7 million children under the age of five and 500,000 pregnant and nursing women.”

The vast majority of those affected live in remote areas, cut off from access to government nutrition programmes. The IRRI estimates that guaranteeing these isolated communities sufficient doses of vitamin A could reduce child mortality here by 23-34 percent.

Such thinking has provided the impetus for continued research and development on genetically modified rice, despite numerous protests including a highly publicised incident in August last year in which hundreds of activists entered a government test field and uprooted saplings of the controversial golden rice crop.

While scientists forge ahead with their tests, protests appear to be heating up, spurred on by a growing global movement against GMOs.

Last week’s public action – which received support from Greenpeace Southeast Asia and included farmers’ groups, organic traders and consumers, mothers and environmentalists – denounced the government’s continuing research on golden rice and field testing, as well as the distribution and cropping of genetically-modified corn and eggplant.

Monica Geaga, another protesting farmer who is from the group SARILAYA, an organisation of female organic farmers from the rice-producing provinces in the main island of Luzon, said women suffer multiple burdens when crops are subjected to genetic modification.

“It is a form of harassment and violence against women who are not just farmers but are also consumers and mothers who manage households and the health and nutrition of their families,” she told IPS.

Geaga said she believes that if plants are altered from their natural state, they release toxins that are harmful to human health.

Protestors urged the government to shield the country’s rice varieties from contamination by genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and instead channel the money for rice research into protecting the country’s biodiversity and rich cultural heritage while ensuring ecological agricultural balance.

Though there is a dearth of hard data on how much the Philippine government has spent on GMO research, the Biotechnology Coalition of the Philippines estimates that the government and its multinational partner companies have spent an estimated 2.6 million dollars developing GM corn alone.

Furthermore, activists and scientists say GMOs violate the National Organic Law that supports the propagation of rice varieties that already possess multi-nutrients such as carbohydrates, minerals, fibre, and potassium, according to the Philippines’ National Nutrition Council (NNC).

The NNC also said other rice varieties traditionally produced in the Philippines such as brown, red, and purple rice contain these nutrients.

Danilo Ocampo, ecological agriculture campaigner for Greenpeace Philippines, said the “flawed regulatory system” in the BPI, the sole government agency in charge of GMO approvals, “has led to approvals of all GMO applications without regard to their long-term impact on the environment and human health.”

“The problem with the current regulatory system is that there is no administrative remedy available to farmers once contamination happens. It is also frustrating that consumers and the larger populace are not given the chance to participate in GM regulation,” said Ocampo.

“It is high time that we exercise our right to participate and be part of a regulatory system that affects our food, our health and our future,” he asserted.

Greenpeace explained in statements released to the media that aside from the lack of scientific consensus on the safety of GMOs on human health and the environment, they also threaten the country’s rich biodiversity.

Greenpeace Philippines said genetically modified crops such as corn or rice contain built-in pesticides that can be toxic, and their ability to cross-breed and cross-pollinate other natural crops can happen in an open environment, which cannot be contained.

Last week saw farmer activists in other cities in the Philippines stage protest actions that called on the government to protect the country’s diverse varieties of rice and crops and stop GMO research and field-testing.

In Davao City south of Manila, stakeholders held the 11th National Organic Agriculture Congress. In Cebu City, also south of Manila, farmers protested the contamination of corn, their second staple food, and gathered petitions supporting the call against the commercial approval of golden rice.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Typical agricultural landscape of Ukraine, Kherson Oblast. Credit: Dobrych (Flickr)/CC-BY-SA-2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

By Frederic Mousseau
OAKLAND, United States, Aug 12 2014 (IPS)

Mostly unreported as the Ukraine conflict captures headlines, international financing has played a significant role in the current conflict in Ukraine.

In late 2013, conflict between pro-European Union (EU) and pro-Russian Ukrainians escalated to violent levels, leading to the departure of President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 and prompting the greatest East-West confrontation since the Cold War.

Frédéric Mousseau

A major factor in the crisis that led to deadly protests and eventually Yanukovych’s removal from office was his rejection of an EU association agreement that would have further opened trade and integrated Ukraine with the European Union. The agreement was tied to a 17 billion dollars loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Instead, Yanukovych chose a Russian aid package worth 15 billion dollars plus a 33 percent discount on Russian natural gas.

The relationship with international financial institutions changed swiftly under the pro-EU government put in place at the end of February 2014 which went for the multi-million dollar IMF package in May 2014.

Announcing a 3.5 billion dollars aid programme on May 22, World Bank president Jim Yong Kim lauded the Ukrainian authorities for developing a comprehensive programme of reforms, and their commitment to carry it out with support from the World Bank Group. He failed to mention the neo-liberal conditions imposed by the Bank to lend money, including that the government limit its own power by removing restrictions that hinder competition and limiting the role of state control in economic activities. “The stakes around Ukraine's vast agricultural sector, the world’s third largest exporter of corn and fifth largest exporter of wheat, constitute a critical factor that has been overlooked. With ample fields of fertile black soil that allow for high production volumes of grains, Ukraine is the breadbasket of Europe”

The rush to provide new aid packages to the country with the new government aligned with the neo-liberal agenda was a reward from both institutions.

The East-West competition over Ukraine, however, is about the control of natural resources, including uranium and other minerals, as well as geopolitical issues such as Ukraine’s membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

The stakes around Ukraine’s vast agricultural sector, the world’s third largest exporter of corn and fifth largest exporter of wheat, constitute a critical factor that has been overlooked. With ample fields of fertile black soil that allow for high production volumes of grains, Ukraine is the breadbasket of Europe.

In the last decade, the agricultural sector has been characterised by a growing concentration of production within very large agricultural holdings that use large-scale intensive farming systems. Not surprisingly, the presence of foreign corporations in the agricultural sector and the size of agro-holdings are both growing quickly, with more than 1.6 million hectares signed over to foreign companies for agricultural purposes in recent years.

Now the goal is to set policies that will benefit Western corporations. Whereas Ukraine does not allow the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in agriculture, Article 404 of the EU agreement, which relates to agriculture, includes a clause that has generally gone unnoticed: both parties will cooperate to extend the use of biotechnologies.

Given the struggle for resources in Ukraine and the influx of foreign investors in the agriculture sector, an important question is whether the results of the programme will benefit Ukraine and its farmers by securing their property rights or pave the way for corporations to more easily access property and land.

By encouraging reforms such as the deregulation of seed and fertiliser markets, the country’s agricultural sector is being forced open to foreign corporations such as Dupont and Monsanto.

The Bank’s activities and its loan and reform programmes in Ukraine seem to be working toward the expansion of large industrial holdings in Ukrainian agriculture owned by foreign entities.

Amid the current turmoil, the World Bank and the IMF are now pushing for more reforms to improve the business climate and increase private investment. In March 2014, the former prime minister ad interim, Arsenij Yatsenyuk, welcomed strict and painful structural reforms as part of the 17 billion dollars IMF loan package, dismissing the need to negotiate any terms.

The IMF austerity reforms will affect monetary and exchange rate policies, the financial sector, fiscal policies, the energy sector, governance, and the business climate.

The loan is also a precondition for the release of further financial support from the European Union and the United States. If fully adopted, the reforms may lead to significant price increases of essential consumer goods, a 47 to 66 percent increase in personal income tax rates, and a 50 percent increase in gas bills. These measures, it is feared, will have a devastating social impact, resulting in a collapse of the standard of living and dramatic increases in poverty.

Although Ukraine started implementing pro-business reforms under president Yanukovych through the Ukraine Investment Climate Advisory Services Project and by streamlining trade and property transfer procedures, his ambition to mould the country to the World Bank and IMFs standards was not reflected in other realms of policy and his allegiance to Russia eventually led to his removal from office.

Following the installation of a pro-West government, there has been an acceleration of structural adjustment led by the international institutions along with an increase in foreign investment, aimed at further expansion of large-scale acquisitions of agricultural land by foreign companies and further corporatisation of agriculture in the country.

The experience of structural adjustment programmes around the developing world foretells that it will increase foreign control of the Ukrainian economy as well as increase poverty and inequality. As Western powers get ready to impose sanctions on Russia for its transgressions in Ukraine, it remains unclear how programmes and conditionalities imposed by the World Bank will improve the lives of Ukrainians and build a sustainable economic future.

Excerpt:

While Sophie Mabhena may be embracing the South African government’s policy to implement biotechnology in farming by growing genetically modified maize, anti-GM experts caution that this does not necessarily lead to food security. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
MASOPANE, South Africa, Jan 27 2014 (IPS)

On a family farm tucked between the rolling hills of Masopane, 40 km outside of South Africa’s capital, Pretoria, 35-year-old Sophie Mabhena is dreaming big about her crop of genetically modified (GM) maize.

“This is my dream and I know that I am contributing to food security in South Africa,” she told IPS.

Debate is raging here over the government’s policy to promote the cultivation of GM crops.

This month, South Africa launched a new bio-economy strategy, which the government says will boost public access to food security, better health care, jobs and environmental protection.

The new policy promotes multi-sector partnerships and increased public awareness on the benefits of biotechnology – including the use of GM crops.

Mabhena is growing GM maize on part of her family’s 385-hectare Onverwaght Farm because she says the transgenic maize has saved her 218 dollars a season in dealing with pests and weeds.

“Growing stack maize has reduced my costs in terms of pesticides and labour, but the major benefits are the good yields and income from growing this improved variety of maize,” Mabhena said from Onverwaght Farm where, this season, she expects to harvest up to seven tonnes of maize per hectare.

In-built insect resistance (Bt) maize has been grown in South Africa for the last 15 years, but not without opposition from anti-GM activists.

The benefits of GM maize that Mabhena speaks of are not shared by Haidee Swanby, research and outreach officer at the Africa Centre for Biosafety (ACB), which has been on the forefront of spirited campaigns against GM food in South Africa.

Swanby said that GM technology fits into a concentrated farming system, which requires large volumes based on economies of scale, but does not provide livelihoods or healthy, accessible food for ordinary South Africans.

“We need to take a step back and look at our food system in its entirety and decide what system is equitable, environmentally sound and will provide nutritious food for all,” Swanby told IPS.

“The system in which genetically modified organisms [GMOs] fit can’t do that. Apart from the technological failure – for example, the development of resistant and super weeds – adopting this technology leads to the concentration of power, money, land in the hands of the very few and does not necessarily lead to food security.”

Swanby said it was deeply ironic that controversial research on GM maize by Professor Gilles Eric Seralini from France’s University of Caen was ripped apart by regulators, while approvals to allow GMOs in the South African food system have been based on what she calls “un-peer reviewed science that is very scant on detail.”

A 2012 study by Seralini and his research team linked GM maize to cancer. The study has since been dismissed for failing to meet scientific standards by the European Food Safety Authority, a body responsible for reviewing the use and authorisation of GMOs.

“Very rarely do we see information on how many animals were used, for how long, what they were fed and a full analysis of the results. Why has Monsanto’s [an agricultural company and manufacturer of GM maize] research not been submitted to the same kind of scrutiny as Seralini?”

ACB’s recent report, “Africa Bullied to Grow Defective Bt Maize: The Failure of Monsanto’s MON810 Maize in South Africa”, states that Monsanto’s Bt maize failed hopelessly in South Africa as a result of massive insect resistance only 15 years after its introduction into commercial agriculture.

“Today, 24 percent of South Africans go to bed hungry … but the biotech industry has habitually used yield as an indicator of success and this is too narrow and very misleading,” Swanby said.

The ACB argues that the safety of stacking genes is a new area of science whose long-term sustainability remained questionable and states that Bt technology was approved in South Africa before regulatory authorities had the capacity to properly regulate it.

But Dr. Nompumelelo Obokoh, chief executive officer of AfricaBio, a biotechnology association based in Pretoria, told IPS that the GMO Act was passed in 1997 and before then GM crops were regulated under the Agricultural Pests Act.

“Farmers are business people. If it is so difficult or unprofitable to grow Bt maize why is almost 90 percent of our maize based on biotechnology? Surely, if South African farmers found GM maize so difficult to manage why haven’t they rushed back to the old maize varieties of the past?” asked Obokoh.

In 2011 and 2012, 2.3 million hectares and 2.9 million hectares, respectively, of GM crops were grown in South Africa by both small-scale and commercial farmers.

“Food security is a prime right and biotechnology offers one of the many available solutions,” Obokoh said. “While South Africa is without doubt food secure as a country, we still suffer from food insecurity at household level because of high costs of food and poor incomes. This is where biotechnology is complementing and not competing against conventional farming.”

Anti-GM activist and the executive director of the Institute for Responsible Technology, Jeffrey Smith, told IPS via email that bundling herbicide-tolerant GM crops with herbicide use was in conflict with farming. He cited the diversion of much-needed research dollars into development of expensive GMOs and away from more appropriate technologies

“The GMO advocates have also promoted the myth that crop productivity, by itself, can eradicate hunger,” said Smith, arguing that key international reports over the last 15 years describe how economics and distribution are more fundamental to solving this problem.

However, in November the African Science Academies urged African governments to invest heavily on biotechnology, declaring that biotechnology-enhanced tools and products can help Africa break the cycle of hunger, malnutrition and underdevelopment.

Protesters outside the offices of agriculture giant Monsanto who were rallying as part of a "national day of solidarity." Credit: Daniel Lobo/cc by 2.0

By Matthew Charles Cardinale
SEATTLE, Washington, U.S., Oct 17 2013 (IPS)

The northwestern state of Washington could become the first in the U.S. to require labeling of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) on foods and food packages, after a similar measure in California failed last year.

Over 353,000 Washingtonians signed on to a petition creating Initiative 522, which will appear on the Nov. 5 ballot statewide. It notes that such labeling is fast becoming the international norm."The 'no' side has corporations that are all bankrolling their campaign." -- Elizabeth Larter of Yes on 522

“Forty-nine countries, including Japan, South Korea, China, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Russia, the European Union member states, and other key United States trading partners, have laws mandating disclosure of genetically engineered foods on food labels,” the text of the initiative states. “Many countries have restrictions or bans against foods produced with genetic engineering.”

Last year, Washington and Colorado voted to legalise marijuana altogether. Washington also legalised same-sex marriage.

“We have a history of leading on issues. We were first to label fish if they’re farm-raised,” Elizabeth Larter, a spokeswoman for Yes on 522, told IPS. “We really like to have the freedom to do what we want to do, when we want to do it. We believe in having those freedoms.”

Since the initiative was written, the number of countries with GMO labeling has grown to 64. Some are now bypassing U.S. markets because of concerns about genetic engineering, supporters of the measure warn.

However, Dana Bieber of the No on 522 campaign told IPS there are several differences between the initiative and GMO labeling requirements overseas.

“Proponents are talking about entire countries or continents,” she said. “With 522, it’s one-fiftieth of the country. Under 522 our farmers [in Washington] would have to live under a regulatory system and in a litigation climate that no other farmer in the entire U.S. would have to comply with – that puts them at a huge competitive disadvantage.”

While gridlock on the issue continues at the federal level, states are increasingly becoming more independent in terms of public policy.

The Yes on 522 campaign is seeing widespread support, with over 12,000 donors and hundreds of volunteers making phone calls every week. Donations are averaging 25 dollars each.

Support for the initiative has come from across the state, not only the progressive city of Seattle, Larter said. “This is a bipartisan effort,” she said.

However, the labeling campaign faces the same challenge that California did: millions of dollars in corporate money to pay for advertising aiming at convincing voters to reject the measure.

Corporate opposition

Corporations spent 46 million dollars last year to defeat California’s labeling referendum. So far, they have raised 17.1 million to defeat I-522 in Washington.

“The ‘no’ side has… corporations that are all bankrolling their campaign. Washingtonians… don’t want to be kept in the dark by these… out of state corporations,” Larter said.

The biggest donor to the No on 522 campaign is the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), which includes such members as Coca-Cola, General Mills, Kellogg’s, Kraft, McDonald’s, Pepsi, and Starbucks. It is not immediately clear which of these companies are funneling money through the GMA to the campaign.

The Yes on 522 campaign also has some smaller corporate donors, including Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps, Organic Consumer Fund Committee to Label GMOs in WA State, Mercola.com Health Resources LLC, Presence Marketing Inc, and Nature’s Path Foods USA Inc.

“The ‘no’ side is desperate right now, in a desperate scramble to raise funds. The GMA plowed in five million dollars,” Dave Murphy, founder of Food Democracy Now, and a member of the Yes on 522 steering committee, told IPS.

“They have to drown us out with negative ads to add to voter confusion on the issue. They’re really concerned how this is impacting their brand now,” Murphy said.

He expects the measure to pass in Washington, noting that it is a smaller media market than California, and thus easier for the Yes on 522 campaign to deal with. He notes that agriculture and fishing are important to the economy, and that GMO wheat recently mysteriously appeared in nearby Oregon, causing damage to some of the region’s main exports.

Pending applications for GMO apples and salmon have increased public alarm, he notes.

Additionally, Larter notes that the popular health food market Whole Foods has pledged to phase in a GMO labeling requirement at its stores, further raising public awareness.

The most recent poll shows 66 percent of likely voters in Washington support the measure, 21 percent against, and 13 percent undecided, according to Murphy.

“We had high numbers last year [in California]. The other side knows – this really is a marketing campaign. They know labeling, agriculture, and genetic engineering is a complex issue. They’re spending millions of dollars to confuse voters about what’s really at stake,” Murphy said.

Bieber told IPS that  even though I-522 only requires labeling and does not ban GMOs outright, the stigma will force companies to switch from GMOs to what she says are more expensive natural ingredients, thus causing consumers’ grocery bills to go up by hundreds of dollars.

Murphy says the No campaign is lying. He notes that this increase did not happen in other countries where labeling has been required.

The No campaign also argues the bill is poorly written and confusing, and that it unfairly exempts meat from animals who consumed GMOs from having to be labeled.

Larter says it’s not a loophole. She says that an animal which consumes a GMO is not a GMO.

“I think ultimately the ‘no’ side is false in their claims. They’re completely misleading voters. They need to do that in order to be successful,” Larter said.

Consumer advocates and environmentalists this week are taking advantage of an industry conference to highlight concerns over the U.S. government’s pending approval of a genetically modified eucalyptus tree.

Technician Christine Berry checks on futuristic peach and apple “orchards”. Each dish holds tiny experimental trees grown from lab-cultured cells to which researchers have given new genes. Credit: USDA Agricultural Research Service

The project proposal is currently being weighed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). If approved, it would constitute the first time that a bioengineered tree has been authorised for commercial production in the United States.

On Tuesday, activists at the International Union of Forest Research Organization (IUFRO) Tree Biotechnology Conference, taking place throughout the week in North Carolina, engaged in what organisers say is the largest protest ever carried out against genetically engineered (GE) trees.

According to demonstrators, the public currently has a potent opportunity to weigh in on the issue.

“Given that this project hasn’t been approved yet for commercial release, we still have a chance to prevent the contamination of our forests,” Tom Llewellyn, a coordinator with REAL Cooperative, a North Carolina-based advocacy group, told IPS.

“This is really important in part because it’s very different from the genetically engineered foods that we’re already subject to here in the U.S. In this situation, we actually have a chance to stop something before it’s too late.”

The proposal, by a company called ArborGen, is for a eucalyptus tree that has been genetically modified to be resistant to colder temperatures. If the government allows for its commercialisation, the plan is for the tree to be grown on plantations in the southeastern United States and subsequently burned for “biomass” electricity production.

The use of GE trees for biomass production is a central focus of this week’s IUFRO conference, aimed at “addressing the growing need for sustainable, renewable sources of biomass, in the face of climate change”, according to the event website. (Further clouding the issue, scientists have pointed out that biomass can be as carbon-intensive as coal-fired electricity production.)

The result, ArborGen says, would be a renewable energy source in line with evolving commitments towards mitigating human-caused climate change. Indeed, such an aim would also be directly in line with a new plan, released by the U.S. government last year, to significantly bolster the U.S. “bioeconomy”, with a central priority placed on genetic engineering.

“It is important to note that this international conference has brought together some of the most prominent scientists in the world to discuss the concerns of an increasing global demand for wood, fuel and fibre,” an ArborGen spokesperson told IPS.

“ArborGen sees great promise in eucalyptus as a hardwood species to mitigate the pressure to harvest our natural forests. As we go through a very stringent federal regulatory process, we are confident that the science has and will show this tree can be a useful tool for landowners to help meet this demand.”

Cross-pollination

ArborGen explains that it chose a Brazilian species of eucalyptus because it is fast growing and yields a relatively massive amount of wood per hectare. The tree is not native to the United States, however, and had been unable to withstand frosts in most of the country.

Critics of the plan have pointed out that eucalyptus trees are known to be invasive, water-intensive and a notorious fire hazard. Beyond this, however, the project has reignited longstanding worries about whether farmers or plantation managers can actually keep genetically engineered products permanently separated from other areas.

“Many people are particularly concerned about the transmutation of our forests, as we’ve already seen this with GE food crops, particularly annual crops like corn and soy,” Llewellyn says. “Now, the idea of doing the same around forests is very concerning.”

While accidental cross-pollination would not be a concern for the U.S. with non-native eucalyptus, Llewellyn says that other GE projects currently under development are seeking to modify native trees, including poplar and pine. These modifications would seek both to make the trees resistant to certain chemical pesticides and to include natural pesticides within the trees.

“What this means is that every cell of that tree would become a pesticide, and that includes the pollen,” he says.

“We estimate that a GE poplar tree could cross-pollinate with other trees 100 miles away, so the potential for contamination would be very high. In turn, this could have a significant impact on insects and on birds eating those insects. While the ultimate effect is not certain, the potential for harm would seem to be very high.”

The difficulties of maintaining control over the “contamination” of natural plants due to cross-pollination with GE products was recently given a surprising boost. On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that an Oregon farmer found growing in his field a type of GE wheat that has never been commercially released.

The leak is reportedly still being investigated. But media reports suggest that the wheat’s manufacturer, Monsanto, carried out field tests of the product in Oregon between 1999 and 2001.

“This outbreak … confirms our concerns that GE crops cannot be controlled,” Janet Cotter, a scientist with Greenpeace International, an advocacy group, said Thursday.

“This is the latest in a long line of incidents involving the contamination of our food supply with GE crops not approved for human consumption. The only way to protect our food and environment is to stop the releases of GE crops to the environment – including a ban on field trials.”

99% rejected

Around a quarter-million of ArborGen’s eucalyptus trees have been planted in field tests since 2010, after a lawsuit by a coalition of environmental and public safety groups failed to halt the process. While the USDA has issued multiple assurances on the trees’ safety to both humans and environmental systems, it is now weighing whether to allow the trees to become commercially available.

Though relatively little is known of public opinion on this issue, the USDA’s own certification process has suggested widespread opposition. The USDA received over 37,580 comments to the ArborGen petition by the end of the comment period on Apr. 29. Only four of the comments were supportive of the release of GE eucalyptus trees.

Of course, the public discussion here on genetically modified products has been far more active around food products. According a 2010 poll, just one in five people in the United States feel that genetically modified foods are safe, while a recent public comment period on whether the U.S. government should approve GE salmon garnered some 1.5 million responses.

Meanwhile, the USDA has not yet released a timeframe on when it will decide on ArborGen’s frost-resistant eucalyptus, but observers expect a verdict by the end of the year.

Vandana Shiva, a scientist and environmental activist, presents plants to schoolchildren as part of the campaign "Gardens of Hope". Credit: Silvia Giannelli/IPS

By Silvia Giannelli
FLORENCE, May 20 2013 (IPS)

As the global agricultural sector is faced with ever-greater challenges, the question of how to reform and improve the sector is a controversial and difficult one. So Terra Futura, a three-day exhibition and conference on agricultural good practises held annually in Florence, brought the debate back to its roots: seeds.

Terra Futura (Future Earth) has been held for ten years as a network for institutions, associations and civil society, which gather in Florence and exchange ideas and experiences for alternative and sustainable environmental, economical and social development.

Vandana Shiva, a scientist and environmental activist, presented a series of initiatives to defend the survival of local and traditional seeds. The initiatives connected land, food sovereignty, biodiversity and environment.

Shiva presented the “law of the seed”, a campaign targeting intellectual property and patents claimed by agribusiness giants. The project aims to reaffirm the centrality of biological and natural rules against the logic of the agribusiness sector, which relies on genetically modified organisms (GMOs), monocultures and intensive agriculture.

“What we intend to achieve is to overturn the logic behind the criminalisation of ordinary seeds and protect the right of farmers to breed their own seeds,” Shiva told IPS.

Yet the current trend seems to be running in the opposite direction, with multinational companies trying to impose the use of patented, genetically modified seeds, with disastrous consequences for local farmers, especially in the third world.

“We have already seen what the entry of Monsanto [a multinational company in agricultural biotechnology and leader of genetically engineered seeds], has done to the cotton sector in India,” Shiva explained.

She added that “95 percent of cotton seed is currently owned and controlled by Monsanto, causing farmers to get into deep dept to pay the royalties”.

Staving off GMOs

According to Beppe Croce, the head of the non-food agriculture section of Legambiente, Italy’s biggest environmental organisation, Europe has managed so far to keep the cultivation of GMOs outside its borders. “From a legislative point of view, the local production is protected,” he said.

The problem lies instead in what European countries import from abroad, as Croce explained to IPS. “Most of our animal feed is integrated with imported products, such as soy and maize. More than half of the total maize cultivated in the world is transgenic,” he said. “This is why we need to strengthen and uniform the tracking system of imported products throughout Europe.”

Giovanni Fabris, national coordinator of Altragricoltura, a national farmers’ movement for food sovereignty, is similarly critical of Europe’s importation policies. During a workshop on access to land in Italian agriculture, he noted, “Europe is focusing on guaranteeing its citizens with the cheapest food possible, regardless of where it comes from.”

According to Fabris, this policy is undermining the production system of countries like Italy, which “have to face the competition of agroindustrial systems outside Europe that are obviously cheaper than ours”.

Under such circumstances, the odds of GMO cultivation not entering Europe seem all but impossible.

“The argument is always the same: the population is growing and we need GMOs to meet the future food demand,” Croce pointed out. “The truth is that production cannot be boosted indiscriminately everywhere, and most of all, it does not need to be done via GM techniques.”

But the lobbying efforts of agribusiness companies are finding new ways of breaking through. On May 6, the European Commission drafted legislation that prevents farmers from producing their own seeds.

“This draft is an example of criminalising the alternative to GMO,” Shiva told IPS. “They would like only patented seeds, all royalties flowing, farmers having no freedom to choose what to grow and consumers having no freedom to choose what to eat.”

People power

But citizens are rediscovering the value of good food, as demonstrated by phenomena and movements such as Slow Food, solidarity-based purchasing groups, and urban gardens. After a half-century of industry control, “people are experimenting [with] new solutions to have more control [over] what they eat,” Shiva said.

Another initiative, “Seeds of Future, Gardens of Hope”, is moving in the same direction. It is being promoted by Shiva’s non-profit organisation, Navdanya International. Through it, children in Florence’s primary schools are given plants of local species to grow in their gardens.

“We are not just talking about education. We are talking about them being the custodian,” Shiva told IPS.

“But everyone is a child in this matter,” she added. “Farmers have been made into children in the sense that they have been made to forget they are savers and breeders of seeds. Consumers have been made to forget that food begins with seed. So, in a way, this it is education for all, education for life.”

Just five countries grow nearly 90 percent of all biotech crops. Credit: Bigstock

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, May 14 2013 (IPS)

A consumer protection group here is accusing U.S. diplomats of engaging in a concerted and at times forceful advocacy campaign on behalf of genetically modified seeds and even specific biotechnology companies, particularly aiming to influence governments in developing countries.

In a report released Tuesday, Food & Water Watch (FWW) offers new research suggesting that the U.S. State Department over the past decade has offered centralised directives to U.S. embassies to promote biotech products and respond to industry concerns.“Biotech is such a controversial policy...why would this be a central tenet of U.S. development and foreign policy?” -- Darcey O’Callaghan of Food & Water Watch

U.S. diplomats were reportedly told to work to change negative public perceptions on biotechnology – going so far as to target high school students in Hong Kong – and to push governments in developing countries to create laws friendly to the industry.

“Between 2007 and 2009, the State Department sent annual cables to ‘encourage the use of agricultural biotechnology,’ directing every diplomatic post worldwide to ‘pursue an active biotech agenda’ that promotes agricultural biotechnology, encourages the export of biotech crops and foods and advocates for pro-biotech policies and laws,” the report notes.

“The State Department views its heavy-handed promotion of biotech agriculture as ‘science diplomacy,’ but it is closer to corporate diplomacy on behalf of the biotechnology industry.”

The conclusions come after researchers looked through a sampling of diplomatic cables from 113 countries dating from 2005 to 2009, released as part of the WikiLeaks 2010 data dump. According to a survey of nearly a thousand cables, FWW reports that the number of diplomatic missives discussing biotechnology rose each year, from 106 references in 2005 to 254 in 2009.

“Biotech is such a controversial policy – even here in the United States, where campaigns are currently underway in over 20 states to require labelling of foods with genetically modified ingredients,” Darcey O’Callaghan, the international policy director at Food & Water Watch, told IPS.

“In such a situation, why would this be a central tenant of U.S. development and foreign policy?”

She notes that little change in policy took place after President Barack Obama’s administration took over.

Feeding the future

More than a decade and a half after genetically engineered (GE) crops were first introduced in the United States, during the mid-1990s, by last year just five countries are said to have been growing nearly 90 percent of all biotech crops. That’s a potentially lucrative market for the industry.

“Although the U.S. commodity crop market is nearly saturated with biotech seeds, most of the world remains biotech-free,” the report states. “The seed companies need the power of the U.S. State Department to force more countries, more farmers and more consumers to accept, cultivate and eat their products.”

The State Department says it has not yet reviewed the new report.

“It is important to note that the State Department works to ensure market access for all U.S. agricultural products, including organic, conventional and GE crops,” a spokesperson told IPS. “We work in partnership with agencies across the federal government to promote biosafety regulatory systems in developing countries to enhance access to new agricultural technologies.”

The department says it supports the adoption of transparent and science-based regulations in other countries, which it suggests works to increase market access for U.S. products while also promoting innovation in developing countries.

In addition, U.S. policy currently sees biotechnologies as an important tool for making strides against global hunger.

“Agricultural production will need to increase by 60 percent or more by 2050, as the global population goes from seven billion to nine billion people,” the spokesperson said.

“New technologies are critical to achieving this goal in a more sustainable manner, using less land, less water, less fertiliser and fewer pesticides. The challenge is enormous if we are to feed a growing world with fewer inputs in the midst of climate change.”

Yet critics have long held that the use of genetically modified seeds yokes farmers to agribusinesses, requiring ongoing purchases of company-specific inputs.

“An overwhelming number of farmers in the developing world reject biotech crops as a path to sustainable agricultural development or food sovereignty,” Ben Burkett, president of the National Family Farm Coalition, an advocacy group, said Tuesday.

“The biotech agriculture model using costly seeds and agrichemicals forces farmers onto a debt treadmill that is neither economically nor environmentally viable.”

In addition, FWW points to evidence that GE products do not necessarily deliver on the promises made by their promoters.

“Biotech agriculture is uniquely unsuited to the farmers of the developing world,” the report states. “[But] there are a host of promising, lower-impact agricultural approaches that have been shown to increase productivity, maximize economic return for farmers and enhance food security.”

Aid firewall

None of the WikiLeaks cables used in the FWW research were secret. Further, the State Department’s focus on biotechnology is already fairly well known, while the agency’s mandate to promote U.S. interests abroad is an inherent responsibility.

Rather, critics’ concerns revolve around the seemingly forceful use of U.S. diplomatic strength to push narrow interests on an issue that not only has potentially lasting implications but also remains under intense debate. Consumers in the European Union, for instance, have been repeatedly found to oppose genetically modified crops, and E.U. countries have been at the forefront of requiring the labelling of foods with GE ingredients.

Indeed, FWW points to a State Department memo that specifically aimed to attempt to “limit the influence of EU negative views on biotechnology.” (In 2006, the World Trade Organisation backed the United States in ruling that an E.U. ban on the import of GE foods was illegal.)

Further, while legislative action has lagged in most developing countries, broad-based civil society opposition has been widely documented. Late last year, Peru and Kenya both imposed bans on the import of genetically modified foods, while Nigeria was reportedly considering following suit, citing lack of scientific consensus on the long-term impact of GE materials.

In November, some 400 civil society organisations urged the African Union to impose such a ban on a continent-wide basis.

FWW’s O’Callaghan says the new evidence highlights a “conflict of interest” in the State Department, which is tasked with promoting U.S. interests abroad while simultaneously housing USAID, the government’s main foreign aid agency.

“USAID is ostensibly a development organisation,” she says. “But when you put those two interests – development and corporate priority – side by side, which do you think will win out?”

FWW is urging the imposition of a “firewall” around U.S. development efforts, warning that pushing a “pro-corporate agenda in the guise of foreign policy is misguided and undermines the U.S. image abroad.”

A new act will require the USDA to issue temporary permits allowing farmers to continue planting genetically modified organisms. Credit: Peter Blanchard/CC by 2.0

By Matthew Charles Cardinale
ATLANTA, Georgia, Apr 28 2013 (IPS)

Food safety advocates are outraged over revelations that U.S. Congress and President Barack Obama approved an act that includes a provision purporting to strip federal courts of the ability to prevent the spread of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

The provision in the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act of 2013 requires the U.S. Department of Agriculture to issue temporary permits allowing the continued planting of GMOs by farmers, even when a court rules that the agency erred in its environmental impact review of the GMOs.

The provision, which activists call the Monsanto Protection Act, is one for which the multinational corporation Monsanto has been lobbying Congress for at least a year. The legislation passed the U.S. House of Representatives on Mar. 6, 2013 and the Senate on Mar. 21, with Obama signing the legislation five days later on Mar. 26.

Revelations of the provision, which was buried in the 587-page spending bill (HR 933, under Division A, Title VI, Section 735), have increased public awareness and interest in the issue of GMOs in the United States.

The provision states that if “a determination of non-regulated status…is or has been invalidated or vacated, the Secretary of Agriculture shall, notwithstanding any other provision of law, upon request by a farmer, grower, farm operator, or producer, immediately grant temporary permit(s) or temporary deregulation in part”.

Industry control

U.S. Senator Jon Tester, a Democrat from Montana and one of the only family farmers in Congress, spoke out against the provision on the floor on the Senate. Once again, agribusiness multinational corporations [are] putting farmers as serfs

“The United States Congress is telling the Agricultural Department that even if a court tells you that you’ve failed to follow the right process and tells you to start over, you must disregard the court’s ruling and allow the crop to be planted anyway,” Tester said.

“Not only does this ignore the constitutional idea of separation of powers, but it also lets genetically modified crops take hold across this country, even when a judge finds it violates the law,” Tester said, describing the issue as “once again, agribusiness multinational corporations putting farmers as serfs”.

Meanwhile, activists are holding Senator Barbara Milkulski, a Democrat from Maryland, partially responsible, as she was the committee chair who allowed the amendment and could have addressed the provision in Congressional hearings

In a statement, Mikulski’s spokeswoman, Rachel MacKnight, defended her. “Senator Mikulski understands the anger over this provision. She didn’t put the language in the bill and doesn’t support it either.”

“As Chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Mikulski’s first responsibility was to prevent a government shutdown. That meant she had to compromise on many of her own priorities to get a bill through the Senate that the House would pass,” MacKnight said.

Because the provision is temporary, it will likely come up for reauthorisation in September 2013, an opportunity for public opposition that activists are relishing.

“The USDA has working mechanisms in place to allow for partial deregulation for those crops,” Colin O’Neil, director of government affairs for the Centre for Food Safety, noted in an interview with IPS.

“At best, it’s unnecessary and duplicative. At worst, it takes oversight away from the USDA and puts it in the hands of the industry,” O’Neil said of the provision.

The centre has concerns about how the USDA has used temporary deregulation in the past, such as with genetically modified sugar beets. Both genetically modified alfalfa and sugar beets have been held up in court in the past over National Environmental Policy Act challenges.

“While we have argued that the USDA isn’t adequately protecting farmers and the environment, the rider will essentially prevent the USDA from safeguarding farmers and the environment because it forces the agency to comply with industry demands,” O’Neil said.

Future benefits

Monsanto has proposals for numerous GMO crops in the pipeline that could be affected by this rider.

“I think the Monsanto Protection Act and how it was passed and how it was slipped into law is just another example of how this company operates, how they manipulate our democracy, and they buy off our elected officials,” Dave Murphy, founder of Food Democracy Now, told IPS.

“This is another example of how…they choose to operate within the rules of a democratic society. They’re like the mafia, they go in and write the rules the way they want them to be,” Murphy said.

“Monsanto really did themselves a major disservice by slipping this into a continuing resolution,” he said.

Monsanto, which does derive benefit from the provision, responded in a statement, saying its critics have an “interesting narrative, worthy of a B grade movie script”.

“Virtually none of the people protesting actually read the provision itself. Those who did, found a surprise: It contains no reference to Monsanto, protection of Monsanto, or benefit to Monsanto. It does seek to protect farmers, and we supported the provision,” Monsanto wrote.

Senator Roy Blunt, a Republican from Missouri, inserted the provision, or “rider”, into the spending bill, according to Politico. Monsanto is based in St. Louis, Missouri.

By Busani Bafana
JOHANNESBURG, Nov 29 2012 (IPS)

South African smallholder farmer Motlasi Musi is not happy with the African Centre for Biosafety’s call for his country and Africa to ban the cultivation, import and export of all genetically modified maize. “I eat genetically modified maize, which I have been growing on my farm for more than seven years, and I am still alive,” he declared.

Musi, 57, a maize farmer in the Fun Valley area of Olifantsvlei, outside Johannesburg, and a beneficiary of South Africa’s Land Redistribution for Agricultural Development programme, has embraced the science of biotechnology with gusto.

“What have changed are my yields and my income.” He said that he earned about 225 dollars more per hectare for his GM maize crop than he did when farming ordinary maize.

He is also a member of The Truth About Trade, which describes itself on its official website as “a nonprofit advocacy group led by American farmers – narrowly focused, issue specific – as we support free trade and agricultural biotechnology.”

“For me it has largely been the exposure to biotechnology issues. They are not a seed company and the issue we are talking about here is GM seed so I do not see how that means I am influenced by them and in my views.”

He said that he was helping reduce food insecurity in South Africa by growing and selling GM maize.

“Biotechnology has a very big role in food security,” Musi told IPS. “The climate has changed and I know that with drought-tolerant seed I have a tool to fight climate change. I cannot guarantee that the rain will come and I if plant crops which are not drought tolerant, I could get into debt and lose my farm.”

South African smallholder farmer Motlasi Musi is not happy with the African Centre for Biosafety’s call for his country and Africa to ban the cultivation, import and export of all genetically modified maize. Courtesy: Busani Bafana

A report in April 2012 by the Climate Emergency Institute titled “The Impact of Climate Change on South Africa” said the country is experiencing a gradual, yet steady, change in climate with temperatures showing a significant increase over the last 60 years. Temperatures in South Africa are predicted to rise in costal regions by one to two degrees Celsius by 2050.

But the ACB does not believe that GMOs can deliver food security on the continent, specifically in South Africa, a leading African producer of GMOs.

The organisation is behind an African Civil Society statement calling for a ban on GM maize in South Africa and on the continent, which it hopes to submit to African governments. To date 656 signatures have been collected on the online statement, including those of 160 African organisations.

“We have sent an open letter to our minister of agriculture in October to ban GM maize in South Africa,” Haidee Swanby, an officer with ACB, told IPS.

“We (South Africa) have been cultivating, importing and exporting GM crops for 14 years with absolutely no impact on food security whatsoever. In fact, a bag of mealie meal is 84 percent more expensive than it was four or five years ago due to international prices and the extensive use of maize for biofuel production.”

Swanby said there was a need to improve access to food, by addressing poverty, unemployment and issues around land tenure, service delivery, infrastructure, access to markets, and unfair global trade practices.

“Genetically modified food has never been labelled in South Africa so there is no way to know if it is causing health problems,” Swanby said, calling for a rigorous scientific study into the health implications of GM food.

“If someone is getting sick, how are they going to trace it back to GMOs when they don’t know they’re eating them? We want more science, not less!”

The ACB has a supporter in Friends of the Earth International, which is also lobbying for a GMO-free Africa.

The organisation’s coordinator Nnimmo Bassey told IPS that GMOs do not deliver on the promises made by the biotechnology industry. He argued that hunger in Africa is used as an excuse to contaminate and erode genetic diversity on the continent.

Bassey said that GM crops are neither more nutritious nor better yielding nor use fewer pesticides and herbicides. And he said they are unsafe for humans and for the environment.

“It is all about market colonisation,” Bassey told IPS. “GM crops would neither produce food security nor meet nutrition deficits. The way forward is food sovereignty – Africans must determine what crops are suitable culturally and environmentally. Up to 80 percent of our food needs are met by smallholder farmers. These people need support and inputs for integrated agro-ecological crop management. Africa should ideally be a GMO-free continent.”

Friends of the Earth International cites failed GMO experiments in Africa with Bt cotton (a strain of cotton that had the Bacillus thuringiensis bacterium inserted into its genetic code) in Burkina Faso and South Africa where they had been touted as the crops to pull smallholder farmers out of poverty.

Global developer and supplier of plant genetics, including hybrid seed, DuPont Pioneer, said that the effect of switching from saved seed to hybrid seed is dramatic.

The company’s vice president responsible for Asia, Africa and China, Daniel Jacobi, told IPS that of the 24 million hectares of maize planted annually in sub-Saharan Africa, about a third was hybrid seed.

Furthermore, farmers get a fuller yield from hybrid seeds by using fertiliser and agronomic practices, reducing post-harvest losses and getting the crop to market, he maintained.

“We can spend a long time and gain a lot of productivity in sub-Saharan Africa by doing all those things without ever getting to the introduction of GMOs,” Jacobi said following a tour of the DuPont Pioneer facility in the Midwestern U.S. state of Iowa.

“I think we tend to get wrapped up in the debate about GMOs and how multinational companies are forcing GMOs down the throats of local farmers. I think we ought to be focused on helping farmers do the best job they can do today by using hybrid seed and let us not let those priorities get lost in the big philosophical debate about GMOs.”

AfricaBio, a biotechnology stakeholder association formed in 1999, says a vast majority of the South African population are struggling to meet their daily needs and GM products offer a proven solution.

“For 14 consecutive seasons, South Africans have planted and consumed foods and food products derived from approved GM crops as part of their diet and no confirmed cases of harm to consumers of GM foods have been reported,” AfricaBio chief executive officer Nompumelelo Obokoh told IPS.

Meanwhile, Musi remained unhappy about the call to ban GM maize. “Africans should come to a realisation that all this is happening in the name of contraceptive imperialism. Africa missed out during the Green Revolution – we must not miss the Gene Revolution. Let Africans decide for Africa,” he said.

(*Adds information that Musi is a member of The Truth About Trade. Story first moved on Nov. 23, 2012)

Local and state campaigns have become a moneyed battleground this year for corporations and special interest groups hoping to sway the results of elections for local and state offices on Nov. 6.

From California to Texas to Florida, global businesses as well as ideological organisations and extremely wealthy groups have helped channel more than 1.6 billion dollars through political action committees and into local campaigns and issues this year, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that analyses state campaign-spending reports.

Some of the cash went into campaigns of local lawmakers. Other amounts supported campaigns for judges. More than 6,000 legislators are running for election Tuesday, according to the National Council of State Legislators, with most relying on private funding.

Campaign money can be difficult to track, since states set their own campaign finance laws, and money flows in and out of state and federal political parties, political action committees and non-profits and into campaigns and issue advocacy.

“Money is access, and it definitely influences the outcomes of elections,” Judy Nadler, a government ethics expert at Santa Clara University in California, told IPS. In some states, “huge amounts of money [go] unreported and unregulated.”

This “outside spending” increased 38 percent between 2006 and 2010, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics. Spending by candidates increased 19 percent during that time, it found.

Large chunks of special interest money also were directed at state ballot measures, which are decided by voters in individual states. This year, 38 states have ballot measures, according to the National Council of State Legislatures.

From coast to coast

A national overview of money spent per state on election campaigns and committees. Credit: National Institute on Money in State Politics/Creative Commons

Nowhere is the impact of moneyed interests more obvious than in California, where 570 million dollars have been spent leading up to Tuesday’s elections. Of that amount, 421 million dollars have gone to groups arguing for or against ballot measures, including those related to tobacco and genetically modified foods.

A California proposal to raise taxes on a package of cigarettes by one dollar was voted on and narrowly defeated earlier this year during the state’s primary election. Pro-health groups spent 18.2 million dollars advocating for the measure, but tobacco companies, including global giants Philip Morris and Reynolds, spent 46 million dollars to bolster their pro-tobacco stance through advertisements.

A measure to label genetically modified foods has pitted consumers, organic farmers and businesses, who have ponied up 8.2 million dollars, against well-armed agricultural corporations and supermarkets, which have spent 48.7 million dollars.

The biotechnology giant Monsanto has contributed 7.1 million dollars to defeat the labelling proposal, followed by Dupont (4.9 million) and Pepsico, (2.1 million), among many others.

“We have been shut down by biotech on this issue,” Grant Lundberg, CEO of Lundberg Family Farms, an organic rice grower and processor, and co-chair of the Non-GMO Project, told IPS. “They have had a big impact. They have gotten their lies out and confused people. We have limited resources.”

In Texas, where donations to this year’s candidates exceeded 113 million dollars, some individuals and businesses stood out for their especially large contributions to the electoral process.

Bob Perry, the Houston real estate mogul who helped bankroll presidential candidate Mitt Romney, mainly by donating more than 10.7 million dollars to the Super PAC Restore Our Future, is one, according to the Centre for Responsive Politics, a Washington NGO that analyses campaign finance reports. This year, Perry has made a mark of 2.4 million dollars on Texas politics.

More than 72.5 million dollars were dumped into Florida campaigns for 2012, where pro-business special interests figured prominently. The utility company Progress Energy gave the most money – 709,000 dollars – to candidates, about 90 percent of them Republican.

Other major corporate donors include private health insurance company Blue Cross Blue Shield, which gave 648,000 dollars, and the Walt Disney Company, which donated 497,000 dollars. Multi-billionaire conservative Sheldon Adelson, a Las Vegas casino magnate, also got involved in Florida politics; he gave 250,000 dollars to the state Republican Party.

“What we shouldn’t have is corporate financing of elections. Corporations are not people. They don’t vote and should not be involved in selecting our government,” said Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy NGO in Washington, DC.

Influential PACs

Political action committees (PACs) and political non-profits also are influencing politics in Florida, as they do in many other states.

Three Florida Supreme Court justices are at risk of being unseated by conservative groups angry about the justices’ support for President Barack Obama’s 2010 healthcare law. According to an investigation by the Centre for Public Integrity, the attack against the judges is being waged largely by two well-funded ultra-conservative political organisations, Restore Justice 2012 and Americans for Prosperity, funded by the conservative billionaire Koch brothers. A third politics group, Defend Justice from Politics, is backing the judges.

How much money is involved in the judges’ re-election campaigns is unclear, however, due to Florida’s murky reporting requirements.

Grassroots efforts to expel money from politics are underway in a number of states, including New York. And a number of states including Arizona, Connecticut and Maine have already tightened up their campaign finance rules, mostly due to citizen efforts. A sweeping law to reform relaxed campaign finance rules in Massachusetts was passed by citizens in 1998, but was repealed by lawmakers.

Some candidates are taking matters into their own hands by refusing corporate money or in the case of one candidate running for the Massachusetts state house, refusing money altogether.

Mike Connolly, also known as No Cash Mike, told IPS that “money in the political system gets in the way of actual progress”. He added, “94 percent of the time the candidate who raises the most money wins. When a few individuals can have a profound impact on an election and on the direction of government, that really cuts against the essence of democracy.”

Soybean harvest in the U.S. state of Michigan. Credit: Public domain

By Zoha Arshad
WASHINGTON, Sep 20 2012 (IPS)

Researchers are warning that RoundUp, a popular herbicide produced by the U.S. agro-giant Monsanto and which is used heavily on U.S. corn and soybeans, cause tumours, liver and kidney failure in rodents.

The researchers, led by Gilles-Eric Seralini of the University of Caen in France, found that levels of the herbicide believed to be safe can cause mammary tumours and multiple organ damage, and in some cases led to premature deaths, in laboratory animals.

The study, the first peer-reviewed, long-term animal study of a genetically modified food, spanned two years, a relatively long period for such research. The results have been approved by CRIGEN, a group against the practice of genetically modifying organisms.

Researchers tested female and male rats, both of which reportedly developed abundant tumours when exposed to the herbicide. Most rats had two to three tumours before they died.

The study, which has been published in the peer-reviewed Food and Chemical Toxicology Journal, also shows that female rats were more at risk than the male rats, with 93 percent of the females developing tumours.

The rats were fed a diet of commercially available seeds that have been genetically modified to be tolerant of Round Up. They also drank water that had U.S. government-approved levels of RoundUp in it.

Discussing the findings with journalists on Wednesday, Seralini pointed out that these rats died before the rats in the control group, which were fed a normal diet. There was again a gender difference between the rats’ death rates, with 70 percent of female rats dying prematurely compared to 50 percent of the male rats.

These numbers were significantly higher than those of the control group, in which 20 and 30 percent of males and females, respectively, died prematurely. The livers of the males were found to have been particularly affected.

On Wednesday, Seralini called on the U.S government to take note of the study – and take action. He said he found it preposterous that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had not already tested for these issues.

“It is abnormal that the FDA hasn’t requested for more tests on pesticides and the like affecting mammalian health,” Seralini said. “These results can parallel human health.”

Critics, however, are sceptical of the study, and some scientists have pointed to what they believe are statistical inaccuracies. A major criticism is a lack of data regarding the portions fed to the rats.

Some have also wondered publicly why there aren’t more human cases to back up the study’s rodent findings.

Reuters reported that Monsanto spokesman Thomas Helscher said the company would review the study, but that, “Numerous peer-reviewed scientific studies performed on biotech crops to date, including more than a hundred feeding studies, have continuously confirmed their safety, as reflected in the respective safety assessments by regulatory authorities around the world.”

Still, the study has been grist for groups in favour of labelling genetically modified food, a longstanding debate in the United States.

California Right to Know, a group that has been pushing for the labelling of such foods, is pointing to the study as proof that action must be taken. A spokesperson for the group, Stacy Malkan, claims that “this is the first available long-term study on GMO” despite the fact that such foods have been in the supply “for the better part of 20 years”.

Indeed, other countries have been quicker to take a precautionary approach. The French government has ordered an investigation into crop-growing methods in direct response to the study’s release.

In the United States, whether the FDA will take heed of the study and launch its own investigation is unclear at the moment, but pressure groups have already started urging the concerned authorities concerning these findings.

For Seralini, the matter is simple. “GMOs are problematic for human, mammalian health,” he says – and he has no qualms in drawing parallels between the rodents that were tested and the humans of which he speaks.