Africa: Calling for a GMO-Free Continent

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 program, 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 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.”

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 organization 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 organizations.

“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 aGMO-free Africa.

The organization’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 colonization,” 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 fertilizer 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 realization 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.

 http://www.nationofchange.org/africa-calling-gmo-free-continent-1353768992

Rady Ananda - Celeb Bono Partners with Monsanto, G8, to Biowreck Africa

At the G8 Summit held two weeks ago at Camp David, President Obama met with private industry and African heads of state to launch the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, a euphemism for monocultured, genetically modified crops and toxic agrochemicals aimed at making poor farmers debt slaves to corporations, while destroying the ecosphere for profit.

And Bono, of the rock group U2, is out shilling for Monsanto on this one.

It’s phase 2 of the Green Revolution. Tanzania, Ghana, and Ethiopia are the first to fall for the deception, with Mozambique, Cote d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso and other African nations lining up for the "Grow Africa Partnership," under Obama’s "Global Agricultural Development" plan.

In Obama Pitches India Model of GM Genocide to Africa, Scott Creighton writes:

Read More:

http://foodfreedomgroup.com/2012/05/29/u2-bono-monsanto-africa/

Thomas Mountain - The Looting of Nigeria

As western oil companies loot some $140 Billion a year of Nigeria’s black gold two thirds of the country’s 100 million people live on less than $2 a day.

Nigeria’s “official” oil production figures show about 3 million barrels a day being pumped from their oil fields into the holds of western tankers though for decades now informed observers have estimated up to one third of all Nigerian oil is actually “stolen”, secretly loaded onto oil tankers after bribes are paid to corrupt government officials.

If 4 million barrels of oil are being shipped out of Nigeria daily at $100 a barrel, times 30 days a month times 12 months you arrive at almost $150 Billion a year in potential oil revenues for Nigeria.

The problems is not just theft but the fact that the western oil companies are literally looting Nigeria’s oil, paying as little as a 9% royalty.

Do the math, 9% of $150 Billion minus the one third oil that is stolen and the Nigerian government only receives about $10 billion a year of this amount.

Simply put, at $100 a barrel the western oil companies get $91 and Nigeria only gets $9. Or more shockingly, Big Oil makes $140 billion a year vs. Nigeria’s $10 Billion.

Read More:

HTTP://WWW.COUNTERPUNCH.ORG/2012/05/22/THE-LOOTING-OF-NIGERIA/

Anuradha Mittal - Large-Scale Land Investments are Violating Human Rights and Undermine Food Security in Ethiopia

Ethiopia's Land Lease Project

May 17, 2012, Oakland, CA: On the eve of upcoming meeting at Camp 
David on May 19, 2012, with four African leaders to discuss food 
security, including Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi,  the 
Oakland Institute and the Solidarity Movement for a New Ethiopia 
(SMNE),  call upon  President Obama to address what may be the single 
largest man-made contributor to food insecurity on the continent 
today: large-scale land investments by foreign investors.

In an Open Letter to President Obama, the Oakland Institute and SMNE 
are delivering a petition signed by over 8,000 supporters of the 
indigenous and local communities of Gambella, Ethiopia - 70,000 
people in all - who are being forcibly relocated to make land 
available for investment in agriculture. There are plans to relocate 
an additional 150,000 people, most of whom are subsistence farmers 
who have been able, until now, to feed their families without 
receiving government or foreign aid over the last twenty years.

The letter points out that in addition to the many problems 
surrounding forced relocations and human rights abuses, the loss of 
ancestral lands where people farm equals the loss of their ability to 
feed themselves. Farmers and pastoralists are being turned into 
plantation workers with false promises that result in menial seasonal 
jobs that do not put food on the table or provide for their basic 
needs.

The Oakland Institute's field research in Ethiopia revealed a grim 
picture of violence, coercion, and unrealized benefits by relocated 
communities. These findings are confirmed by Human Rights Watch's 
independent study involving 100 interviews and sixteen site visits 
this year.

The burden of the Ethiopian government's objective of economic growth 
is being borne by the indigenous and local people of Gambella and the 
Lower Omo Valley, where a half million will lose their lands. This is 
too great a cost. As Ethiopia is one of the largest recipients of US 
aid (more than $1 billion a year since 2007), the US bears 
responsibility on matters of such grave consequence. The letter 
cautions that something has to be done to ensure that the United 
States is not an unwitting partner in this current tragedy.

The Oakland Institute and Solidarity Movement for a New Ethiopia are 
urging President Obama to look beyond the charade of so-called 
responsible investment that will supposedly benefit all in the long 
run, and instead, calls for the US to reassess the terms of its 
support to the Ethiopian regime.

Our hope is that President Obama will take leadership in responding 
to an international call asking him to put the brakes on this 
impending and present-day catastrophe.