Seed and Fertilizer Controllers

In the previous post I wrote about Rwanda’s Green Revolution, highlighting how it could be seen as unjust and not as successful as some would at first make it appear. Here I’m continuing to look at Rwanda’s green revolution and examine one of its biggest partners, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).

Starting in 2006, Rwanda was AGRA’s first major project, a pilot scheme for testing their revolution strategies (Ansoms 2020). They have invested US$9M into Rwanda’s agriculture industry, helping to switch farmers to new modern seeds and chemical fertilizers. The current president for the organisation, Dr Agnes Kalibata, was previously the minister of Agriculture and Animal Resources for Rwanda between 2008-14. She helped implement Rewanda’s green revolution and is now taking that strategy to 10 other African countries. To date they have invested US$1.4bn across 11 countries in Africa, ‘reaching’ 25.1million smallholder farmers. The Video here (below) shows there approaches to attaining their green revolution, in which they claim to be working with small holder farmers point of view.

Youtube link: https://youtu.be/21YYiBJOjn8

 

Their sleek highly polished business plans are shown to be nothing short of perfect. They have swept up funding from a wide range of western money powers including amongst others:

The Gates foundation helped set up AGRA, and since AGRA’s start up in 2006 they have invested $666million (Wise 2020). AGRA’s core principles: research and marketing of seed technology, opening up of African food markets and a coordination of food policies throughout Africa, are in line with the gates foundation Agricultural development programme. The Gates foundation invests more than most countries into food development and hunger alleviation, earlier this year they announced a 5 year, $922 million plan to advance global nutrition. This foundation does not have the same ‘red tape’ that countries have when investing capital, the end result is that the foundation is less accountable and doesn’t receive the same level of scrutiny (Wise 2020). In 2010 they invested $23 million into Monsanto to breed GM Products and support a call for uniform seed laws (Thompson 2012).  Sam Dryden the head of the Gates foundation agriculture section, arguably one of the most powerful people in African agriculture, in a interview with the Guardian global development (also supported by the same foundation) confirmed their lobbying of countries to accept GM technologies. Still AGRA claims to have nothing to do with GM crops:

“AGRA has never and does not work with or promote the use of GMOs. The organization has been falsely accused by some critics of doing so, even as they lack any evidence of the same.”

Yet one of its main backers, and partners in Inclusive Agricultural Transformation in Africa, is an advocate for GM technologies.

Another link in this corporate world are the chemical fertilizer and pesticide xompanies that work with AGRA. AGRA’s private ownership and patenting of seeds requires farmers to rebuy seeds every year, as opposed to saving seeds for next generation growing or trading. Farmers have in this way have lost their seed sovereignty (Vandana Shiva 2013). Each year they have to spend more on seeds and the accompanying fertilizers and pesticides that are required to reach the seeds advertised potential (Thompson 2012). Suddenly chemical companies' sales, which have been failing to sell their products to African farmers, are now skyrocketing (Thompson 2012). One could argue this is from subsidising of products, but also its from their monopolisations of the seed markets. In 2012 the 4 largest chemical companies owned 58% of the global seed market, the largest of which Monsanto, in 2018 bought up buy Bayer, owned 27% (ETCGroup 2011, pg22). Bayer is another funding partner of AGRO, and naturally the seeds developed require their fertilizers (agro.org).

AGRO, and other seed research companies e.g ICRISAT and CGIAR, which also linked by funding from the Gates foundation have all partaken in privatisation and patenting of seeds. Seed breeders require a source of genetic diversity to sustain the viability of a crop, which has historically been done by seed sharing. This means corporate seed companies are required to return to the wild diverse gene pool (Thompson 2012). This is being done in Africa, which for these companies is a ‘free’ source of rich genetic diversity, then through privatisation and patenting of resulting seeds, they can charge ‘royalties’ for their use. With the monopoly which they hold, they can charge high prices (Thompson 2012). This goes against the International Treaty for plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, which promote the fair and equitable benefits of plant genetics. The companies are not giving any recognition back to the cultivators of the genetic diversity that has been going on for centuries. Its daylight Biopiracy!

Thompson (2012) summed up his thesis on the subject by putting all this into African context: for 300 years the continent has been robbed of men and women as slaves for the wealth of others, for 200 years the continent has been robbed of mineral wealth, for the wealth of others. Now in the 21^st Century cultivated genetic wealth is being stolen to be sold for the benefit of others.