From: wolda002@umn.edu
Date: Fri Aug 14 2009 - 00:02:08 EDT
Is Obama's Plan for Tackling Hunger Just Another Chance for Big Ag and
Biotech to Cash In?
By Jill Richardson, AlterNet
Posted on August 10, 2009, Printed on August 13, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/141800/
When Barack Obama's recently announced that he and other G8 nations will
commit to funding a brand new global food security effort, who could really
argue with his intentions? In his speech in Ghana, he described his plan,
saying "our $3.5 billion food security initiative is focused on new methods
and technologies for farmers -- not simply sending American producers or
goods to Africa. Aid is not an end in itself. The purpose of foreign
assistance must be creating the conditions where it is no longer needed."
Yet, despite the altruistic intent of this promise, some wonder if it may
do more harm than good. Will it really help to slash the number of hungry
people or is this really a puppet policy with big agricultural interests
pulling the strings to ensure greater profits?
One reason to question America's efforts toward global food security is its
rejection of something known as the IAASTD report, which focuses on using
agricultural technology to meet the world's food needs. The International
Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science, and Technology for
Development, a global report commissioned by the World Bank and the UN, is
described by one of its lead authors, Jack Heinemann, as "the single
largest research effort on this topic in all of human history," and "the
most authoritative statement on current knowledge." The report was written
by an intergovernmental body that involved over 400 scientists and 30
governments. When it was released last year, the United States, under the
George W. Bush administration, was one of only three nations that did not
approve it. (The other two were Canada and Australia). The U.S. rejection
came as a result of fears that the report's conclusions were
"protectionist," thus running counter to America's free-trade-at-all-costs
agenda. Furthermore, the U.S. did not like the report's rejection of modern
biotechnology as the key to solving the world's agricultural problems.
"The IAASTD calls upon rich and poor nations alike to build an agriculture
that also builds sustainable societies," says Heinemann. "To do this,
agriculture must acknowledge and reverse its true environmental and
nonrenewable energy costs, food and biomaterials produced for export from
rich countries must not be subsidized, the seeds and livestock must be
owned locally, and the technologies chosen for agriculture must be the
right ones, not just the commercially viable ones. This is a goal that we
cannot simply delegate to the private sector and will require a renewed
investment from governments that do not tie agricultural innovation to
private profit."
The report points out that solving world hunger requires more than just
producing more food or producing cheap food. In the past 50 years, growth
in food production has outpaced population growth, and food prices,
adjusted for inflation, have fallen. Yet a record number of people go to
bed hungry every night. Thus, the problem is not merely one of increasing
agricultural yields. And unfortunately, U.S. policies play a role in
undermining poor farmers in developing nations by dumping cheap commodities
on the world market, making it impossible for them to compete. Our role in
causing global warming also jeopardizes poor farmers, as Africa loses
arable farmland to rising temperatures and increasing drought. Yet changing
our agricultural subsidies or enacting meaningful global warming
legislation has not yet been politically possible in Obama's America. We
may have a genuine desire to help the hungry, but so far we are unwilling
to take steps that will actually create meaningful change for those without
enough to eat.
In its assessment of agricultural technology, the IAASTD report found that
genetically modified crops are not appropriate for subsistence farmers,
such as those Obama pledged to help in Africa, for a number of reasons.
Additionally, the report found questionable evidence of the benefits of GM
crops (increased yield, decreased pesticide use) and cited a number of
risks associated with GM crops (including safety and allergenicity). IAASTD
lead author Molly Anderson sums up their findings, saying, "Imposing
US-developed technology, including modern genetically-engineered crops, in
places that do not have the capacity to monitor its full social, economic
and environmental consequences risks repeating serious mistakes
needlessly."
Instead, the report authors found that agroecological methods (farming
methods that utilize the science of ecology, such as using cover crops or
beneficial insects) are "competitive with or superior to conventional and
genetic engineering-based methods of productivity... [and] not only lower
the environmental impacts of agriculture, they may reverse past damage."
Anderson calls for "relatively low-cost, high-return agricultural practices
and systems-such as agroforestry, polycultures and organic farming," which
she feels carry promise for raising production while improving
environmental quality and farm incomes. Anderson says, "Agricultural
support needs to target the people who have been underserved in the past:
women small-scale farmers who produce most of the food in developing
countries, landless workers, other marginalized populations, and poor
people living in places most vulnerable to environmental and social threats
such as climate change and water scarcity."
Yet, although the IAASTD report was rejected under Bush, the Obama
administration has made no efforts yet to embrace it. While Obama himself
has been vague, a look at members of his administration, like Nina
Federoff, science advisor to Hillary Clinton and outspoken advocate for
modern biotechnology, tell us what the government might be likely to do.
Clinton's State Department oversees USAID, which will carry out any plans
for food and agricultural aid in the developed world. USAID already
participates in public-private partnerships with companies like Monsanto to
develop genetically modified crops, so it's hardly a stretch to imagine
they would continue in the same direction. (Also, citizens hoping to meet
with USAID to discuss the findings of the IAASTD report were warned by a
top Capitol Hill source to avoid using the term 'agroecological' when
talking with USAID; apparently USAID is not open to the idea, even though
it was a key recommendation of the IAASTD report.)
Another indication of the direction of the U.S. government comes from the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which held a hearing in April 2009 that
used a different report -- one by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs --
as a blueprint for America's plan to help feed the developing world. The
vision of the Chicago Council report, which was written under the
leadership of Dan Glickman and Catherine Bertini with funding by the Bill &
Melinda Gates Foundation, looks far more similar to pesticide and biotech
industry talking points than it does to the IAASTD report. The pesticide
and biotech industries frequently relate solving global hunger to
increasing agricultural yield, and they claim to offer the best (if not
only) methods of increasing yield. In the hearing, witnesses and Senators
alike spoke of the need for hybrid and GM seeds, petroleum-based
fertilizer, and pesticides in Africa and South Asia. The Chicago Council
report received the endorsement of the other witnesses at the hearing,
including the anti-hunger group Bread for the World, as well as other
prominent anti-hunger groups like Oxfam. Why were these organizations so
closely aligned in their talking points to agribusiness, and why weren't
they considering the IAASTD report and its findings?
The connection between many of these groups is the Gates Foundation. Gates
provided grant money to Bread for the World and Oxfam, and it funded the
Chicago Council's report. Furthermore, Catherine Bertini is a senior fellow
at Gates. She is also a former executive director of the UN's World Food
Program. Dan Glickman, Clinton's Secretary of Agriculture and a former
Congressman (D-KS), enters the picture when you examine his role on the
board of Friends of the World Food Program where he served with the CEO of
Yum! Brands (the parent company of KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell), a vice
president at agribusiness giant Cargill, and Big Ag lobbyist Marshall Matz.
The World Food Program is basically a good program, but its success is in
delivering emergency food aid, not in changing the system so that fewer
humanitarian emergencies occur (as Obama pledges to do). Glickman also sits
on the board of the Kansas Bioscience Authority, a group devoted to
expanding the biotechnology industry in Kansas, and he is a member of the
influential Council on Foreign Relations. Previously, he sat on the
international advisory board of Coca-Cola.
Going back to Gates, the president of the Global Development Program, the
part of the foundation that leads its anti-hunger programs, is Sylvia
Mathews Burwell. She held several senior posts in the Clinton
Administration, including Chief of Staff to Secretary of the Treasury
Robert Rubin, and as Deputy Chief of Staff to President Clinton. Rubin was
famous for his belief in free trade, including policies that the IAASTD
report call out as harmful to the poor in the developing world. Both Rubin
and Burwell sit on the board of the Council on Foreign Relations, of which
Glickman, as mentioned above, is a member.
Could it be, then, that part of the impetus for the ideas put forth by the
Gates Foundation and the Chicago Council come from a worldview held by the
Council on Foreign Relations? The website TheyRule.net shows a map of each
of the directors on the Council on Foreign Relations's board and all of the
other corporate boards they sit on. Between the 14 members of the board,
they sit on 32 different corporate, academic, and institution boards,
including a nice array of financial companies (AIG, Citigroup, Fannie Mae,
Morgan Stanley), oil companies (Chevron Texaco and ConocoPhillips) and
everything in between. A look at various agribusiness companies finds that
Monsanto has a board member in the Council on Foreign Relations (George H.
Poste). Additionally, the Council has a number of corporate members,
ranging from Big Oil to Big Pharma to Big Food to Big Money (financial
companies).
What does this mean? It does NOT mean that a conspiracy is afoot, or that
the individuals involved are necessarily taking orders from corporations to
manipulate foreign policy disguised as aid to their own benefit. And,
obviously, the vast majority of corporations involved are not agribusiness
giants. The Center for Media and Democracy's Sourcwatch site notes that the
elitism of the Council on Foreign Relations "doesn't necessarily preclude
the ability to provide unbiased and useful service." However, the fact of
the matter is that the United States government -- the Senators on the
Foreign Relations Committee, if not Obama himself -- are ignoring the
recommendations of a comprehensive peer-reviewed study (the IAASTD report)
and instead taking advice that more or less maintains the status quo of our
agricultural and trade system while creating new markets for multinational
corporations in Africa and South Asia.
But the connections named above hint at the potential biases and the
motivations of the people involved. Certainly anyone sitting on a corporate
board, despite a true wish to help the world's hungry, will have good
reason not to advocate any solution to hunger that may jeopardize the
profitability of that corporation. A more direct link between the wishes of
biotech giant Monsanto and the recommendations of the Gates Foundation can
be found in Robert Horsch, the former Monsanto vice president for
international development who now holds a senior position at Gates. While
the Gates Foundation probably does have a genuine interest to help the
world's hungry, they are carrying out their agenda by privatizing the means
of food production in Africa (via technologies like genetic engineering).
The problem (for multinational corporations) with the agroecological
methods advocated by the IAASTD report authors is that they are free. It
costs nothing to save seeds, fix nitrogen in the soil with cover crops,
rely on beneficial insects and biodiversity to deal with pests, or
fertilize with manure. In addition to requiring no seeds, commercial
fertilizer, or pesticides, these technologies require no oil or banks. And
if the poor farmers of the world grow crops to eat or sell locally, then
their crops will not benefit corporations who rely on cheap commodities
sold on the world market.
At best, the individuals like Dan Glickman, Catherine Bertini, and other
leaders advocating the Chicago Council's report are guilty of poor judgment
and perhaps ignorance. Most of these people are not farmers, nor have they
studied related scientific fields like soil science or ecology.
Furthermore, perhaps they are suffering from a "bubble" effect, as they are
surrounded by other, powerful, well-educated, likeminded people. Straying
from the conventional wisdom of such a group would be risky for any one of
them. Still, it appears that the power structure is polluted by corporate
money and influence. If Obama wishes to truly help the people of the
developing world, he should take measures to avoid following corporate
interests that are not in the best interest of the people he hopes to help.
Jill Richardson is the founder of the blog La Vida Locavore and a member of
the Organic Consumers Association policy advisory board. Her first book,
Recipe for America, was just released.
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