How the US Sold Africa to Multinationals
Sunday, 27 May 2012 10:53 By Jill Richardson, AlterNet | News Analysis
Driving through Ngong Hills, near Nairobi, Kenya. (Photo: Micah &
Erin) Driving through Ngong Hills, not far from Nairobi, Kenya, the
corn on one side of the road is stunted and diseased. The farmer will
not harvest a crop this year. On the other side of the road, the
farmer gave up growing corn and erected a greenhouse, probably for
growing a high-value crop like tomatoes. Though it's an expensive
investment, agriculture consultants now recommend them. Just up the
road, at a home run by Kenya Children of Hope, an organization that
helps rehabilitate street children and reunite them with their
families, one finds another failed corn crop and another greenhouse.
The director, Charity, is frustrated because the two acres must feed
the rescued children and earn money for the organization. After two
tomato crops failed in the new greenhouse, her consultant recommended
using a banned, toxic pesticide called carbofuran.
Will Obama's New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition help farmers
like Charity? The New Alliance was announced in conjunction with the
G8 meeting last Friday. Under the scheme, some 45 corporations,
including Monsanto, Syngenta, Yara International, Cargill, DuPont, and
PepsiCo, have pledged a total of $3.5 billion in investment in Africa.
The full list of corporations and commitments has just been released,
and one of the most notable is Yara International's promise to build a
$2 billion fertilizer plant in Africa. Syngenta pledged to build a $1
billion business in Africa over the next decade. These promises are
not charity; they are business.
This is par for the course for the attempted "second green revolution"
that is currently underway. The Gates Foundation and its Alliance for
a Green Revolution in Africa are working to build up a network of
private seed companies and private agro-dealers across Africa. The
goal is to increase average fertilizer use in Africa by more than a
factor of six and to decrease the distance each African farmer must
travel to reach a shop selling seeds and inputs. Those who support
this vision have heaped praise on Obama and the G8's New Alliance. In
fact, with both Republican and Democratic support, this is one of the
only things both parties agree on.
But what do actual Africans think? Not just the elite, but the peasant
farmers? Charity, for her part, is frustrated. Most of Kenya's land is
arid or semi-arid, making agriculture difficult if not impossible. But
Ngong Hills receive adequate rainfall – or they did anyway. The
climate crisis has changed the previously reliable rainfall patterns
within Kenya and even a wet area like Ngong Hills is suffering. The
stunted, diseased corn one sees there was planted from the "best"
store-bought seed and ample chemical fertilizer was applied. The crop
failure was not due to lack of inputs.
In another part of the country, about an hour from Nairobi, Samuel
Nderitu points out more failed corn crops. Corn – or maize as Kenyans
call it – has been the main staple since Kenya was colonized by the
British. But the corn growing on the demonstration farm of Nderitu's
NGO, Grow Biointensive Agricultural Center of Kenya (G-BIACK) is
healthy and thriving. So are G-BIACK's other vegetable crops and fruit
trees. Why will he harvest a successful crop when his next-door
neighbor will not?
G-BIACK is an organic farming training center, and the crops there
were grown with manure and compost instead of chemical fertilizer.
G-BIACK also saves seeds instead of purchasing seeds from the store.
The farmers in this region, near the city of Thika, farm tiny plots –
as small as one-fifth of an acre and averaging one acre. Many use
chemical fertilizer, but since it is expensive, they often fail to use
enough. "Here, in Kenya, if you plant anything without chemical
fertilizer, if you don't know anything about organic farming, it can't
grow," says Nderitu. But, as G-BIACK proves, those who do know how to
farm organically achieve great success. G-BIACK was named the NGO of
the Year in 2010 by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization and the
Government of Kenya. And its next-door neighbor with the failed crop
is now attending its trainings to learn organic farming.
About 15 km outside of Thika, a farmer named James is also thrilled he
switched to organic farming. Farming only one-fifth of an acre, he
used to require two $60 bags of fertilizer to plant his crops. Now, he
uses manure from his pigs and he is happy with the results. Like most
Kenyan farmers, James grows corn, beans, pumpkins, kale, and other
crops for family consumption. For income, he can sell a pregnant sow
for $240 or a month-old piglet for $20. Before, he would spend much of
that money on fertilizer, but now he can use it for other things. He
proudly demonstrates how to use his new well, which his increased
income allowed him to afford. Next, he plans to buy a water pump so he
doesn't have to pull the water out of the well one bucket at a time.
Organic farming in Kenya is not about hugging a tree. It's a simple
financial matter. Those who rely on purchased inputs must use their
scarce income to buy them. In Thika, where the population is
concentrated and land sizes are tiny, many women supplement their
farming income with prostitution. The area's AIDS rate is sky-high,
although it has come down from the 37 percent high it reached a decade
ago. Poverty breeds AIDS by pushing women into prostitution, but AIDS
also breeds poverty, as children are orphaned when their parents die.
Some are raised by grandparents, others live in child-headed
households. By allowing farmers to keep their money instead of
spending it on costly inputs, organic farming gives hope of breaking
this cycle. How many fewer women will need to enter prostitution if
they can instead make ends meet by farming?
Whereas chemical farming is input-intensive, organic farming requires
knowledge. A farmer relying on fertilizer and purchased seeds needs
money and the entire supply chain required to manufacture the inputs
and distribute them to a nearby agro-dealer. But knowledge is free.
Robert Mwangi learned how to farm organically from G-BIACK and soon
saw his income increase. With five acres, he was never destitute, but
now he has enough money to help family members out when they are in
need. Mwangi's neighbors have seen his success and he is helping them
adopt organic methods too. At the same time, he conducts experiments
on his land to see which methods or crops give him the best results.
As each farmer in the community conducts an experiment or two on their
land each season, they can share their results with one another and
all will benefit.
An internationally celebrated farming technique called the push-pull
method has also helped Kenyan farmers increase yields – by a factor of
3.5. The yield increase is due to elimination of an insect pest, the
stem borer, and a parasitic weed, striga, as well as an increase in
soil fertility. The farmer pulls the stem borer away from the corn by
planting a cattle feed crop called napier grass nearby. Napier grass
is more attractive to egg-laying stem borer moths than corn, but few
of the larvae that hatch on it survive.
A second cattle forage crop, desmodium, is planted between rows of
corn. Desmodium, a legume, fixes nitrogen in the soil. It also
releases chemicals into the soil causing striga seeds to "suicidally
germinate." It releases yet more chemicals into the air that repel
stem borer moths and attract parasitic wasps that prey on stem borers.
All of the crops used in the system are native, so no corporation
profits, only the farmers themselves.
Elsewhere in Kenya, not far from the home of Barack Obama's paternal
grandmother, American Amy Lint and her Kenyan husband Malaki Obado
champion native Kenyan crops that are perfectly adapted to the
region's long dry periods. To an untrained eye, the area looks
desolate and devoid of food, but the locals know better. Walking
through their rural village, the point out leafy greens, fruits and
crops used for building materials, medicine and rope, all growing
wild. These aren't a replacement for cultivated staples like corn,
cassava or sorghum, but they provide micronutrients in local diets and
improve local food security. With so much natural abundance, one must
wonder why the Gates Foundation has sunk so many millions of dollars
into creating staple crops with the full range of required nutrients
genetically engineered into them.
Across Kenya's many different ethnic groups, provinces and ecological
zones, farmers agree on what they need most, and it isn't help from
Monsanto or Wal-Mart. It's water. In arid and semi-arid areas, lack of
water has always been an issue. But at least the two rainy seasons,
the long rains between March and June, and the short rains between
October and December, were consistent. During each rainy period,
Kenyan farmers would grow a crop that had to last until the next
harvest. But, according to farmer Florence Ogendi, the rains changed
about five years ago. First the short rains became unreliable, and now
they can't even count on the long rains. In her area, the long rains
used to come in late February, but this year they did not arrive until
April.
Sometimes, water that used to be shared by all is now taken or
polluted by a powerful few. Near Kitengela, an enormous flower farm
has drilled wells to irrigate its crops, which are for export. With so
much water going to irrigate flowers, the nearby Isinya River now runs
dry. Elsewhere, Lake Naivasha suffers the same problem, also due to
flower farms. And a day after Nderitu took his goats to graze near a
local river, all five goats were dead. The autopsy revealed the deaths
were from pesticides. Nderitu blames the enormous Del Monte pineapple
plantation just across the river from where his goats grazed.
Access to land is another issue for Kenyan farmers. While farmers like
James try to coax a living from a fraction of an acre, nearby Del
Monte grows pineapples on several thousand acres. Locals report that
they pay their workers a mere $2.40 a day, less than the minimum wage,
but actually more than the $2.05 per day the other large farms in the
area pay. Mwangi, who lives within sight of Del Monte's land, feels
ill whenever they spray pesticides. The land could likely support more
farmers, and more successful farmers, if it wasn't concentrated in the
hands of a few corporations.
And one more request: Would the industrialized world please stop
wreaking havoc with the climate! Sidney Quntai, a Maasai man, says,
"In the last ten years... the climate pendulum shifted. Just took a
drastic turn." The Maasai are semi-nomadic pastoralists, relying
entirely on raising cattle, sheep and goats in Kenya's arid and
semi-arid areas. The droughts and flash floods of the last decade have
brought invasive weeds and new livestock diseases to his people, and
some families have had their herds wiped out entirely between the
droughts and diseases of the last decade.
The new G8 scheme to help African farmers does nothing to address the
problems that are at the core of hunger and malnutrition. More likely,
it will serve only to further poverty and inequality across the
continent. The elites of the first world work together with the elites
of the third world in the name of helping peasant farmers, but it
nobody consults the peasant farmers themselves. Perhaps Obama could
spend a week or two living with his Kenyan family members to find out
what they actually want and need before he suggests another program to
"help" the people of Africa.
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Received on Sun May 27 2012 - 19:16:22 EDT
