If you are one of those people who believes the axiom that Monsanto is the farmer’s friend (and the corollary, that its climate-ready, bio-fortified GMOs can save the world from hunger) you will not be surprised, disappointed, or find any conflict of interest in this investment.

But if you are part of the growing population who gets their information about GMOs from scientists who are not beholden to corporate funding, has a problem with anti-trust issues, or is getting queasy about the increasing monopoly power of philanthropy capital… it’s time to say the Emperor has no clothes.

Under the guise of “sustainability” the Foundation has been spearheading a multi-billion dollar effort to transform African into a GMO-friendly continent. The public relations flagship for this effort is the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), a massive Green Revolution project. Up to now AGRA spokespeople have been slippery, and frankly, contradictory about their stance on GMOs.

The first Director of AGRA was Gary Toenniessen, a career program officer for Rockefeller Foundation. He said AGRA was not ruling out GMOs and if and when they were introduced it would be with all the appropriate “safeguards.” After AGRA was criticized for not having any Africans, Kofi Anan was named Chairman in 2007. He first said GMOs were out of the picture, the next day he recapitulated. Last Spring, Joe DeVries, who runs the AGRA seed program was asked by a Worldwatch blogger if they were engaging in genetic engineering. “Read our lips,” said Joe DeVries. “We are not promoting or funding research for GMOs (genetically modified organisms)…” In fact, in Kenya alone AGRA has used funds from the Gates Foundation to write grants for research in genetically modified agriculture. Nearly 80% of Gates’ funding in Kenya involves biotech and there have been over $100 million in grants to organizations connected to Monsanto. In 2008, some 30% of the Foundation’s agricultural development funds went to promoting or developing genetically modified seeds (See Ending Africa’s Hunger)..

More to the point is that–as Monsanto and Gates are fully aware–to establish a healthy GMO industry one first needs a strong conventional breeding program in place: labs, experiment stations, agronomists, extensionists, molecular biologists… and farmer’s seeds. All of which Gates, Rockefeller, Monsanto and AGRA are actively lining up.

They also need the power of U.S. government funding. That is where the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Casey-Lugar come in. USAID is now headed up by former Gates employee Rajiv Shah. The Casey-Lugar Global Food Security act ties foreign aid to GMOs. When the Gates Foundation places a bet, they like to hold all the cards.

Africa’s seeds are a potential windfall investment for Monsanto. Regardless of the philanthropic side of its intentions, cloaked in the sheep’s clothing of AGRA, the Gates Foundation is moving stealthily opening African seed market to global corporations. When the research, extension, and U.S. foreign aid is all in place Monsanto will swoop in for the feast.

Seed and chemical giant Monsanto and friends have lately been conducting all-out re-branding campaigns, seeking to present themselves as the answer to world hunger and the actualization of sustainability.  As an extension of this tight message control, Oxfam is hosting a panel discussion at the Asia Society in New York tomorrow at 8:30 am called “The Global Food Crisis – Time for Another Green Revolution?“  But the discussion seems like it will be rather one-sided.

Taking part are Kevin L. Eblen, Vice President, Public Policy and “Sustainability Lead” at Monsanto, as well as Rajiv Shah, Director of Agricultural Development at the Gates Foundation and Dr. Robert Zeigler, Director General, International Rice Research Institute (The institute that conducted the research for the original Green Revolution).

Perhaps this group is convening to pat each other on the back for their role in bringing forth a similar Green Revolution to what we have seen before.  In any case it is clear there will not be a considered critique of the role genetically modified seeds have played in increased farmer debt, and by extension, farmer suicides worldwide; the increase dependence on international food aid due to a reliance on monocropping (growing one single, usually inedible-before-processed crop — or worse, growing something like BT Cotton, which is totally inedible); and not to mention, a stripping of the fertility of the land, contributing to desertification and climate change; and waning GM crop yields that have resulted in the face of proven increased productivity of organics over time.

Tom Philpott pointed out the lopsided nature of the panel on Comfood:

If Oxfam wants a real debate or even a robust discussion, where are the agro-ecologists, the organic ag folks on this panel? Has Oxfam never heard of the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), which — under the aegis of the World Bank, of all institutions — took an extremely skeptical position viz. patented transgenics as a solution to climate change-related ag problems in the global south? Or the recent UN report finding vast potential for low-tech organic ag in Africa?

The debate is on for whether we actually need a new Green Revolution, and if so, what that should look like.  I spoke with Raj Patel a few months back for a piece about our perceptions of GM seed.  He spoke then about his discussion with panelist Rajiv Shah that was quoted in the New York Times Magazine, and he had this to say:

“I absolutely think we need a sustainable Green Revolution.  But it has to be with the kind of technology that Vandana [Shiva]‘s working with, or Via Campesina is working with.  An agroecological revolution is one that isn’t just about what chemicals and what genes to use in the fields, but changing our relationship with the earth. That’s not something that the Gates folk are ready to hear (we’ve tried). Moreover, though, there’s something very wrong about a private foundation doing something that should be government policy – and the only reason it isn’t government policy is because governments have been prevented in the past 30 years from doing this sort of agricultural work and research. I’d say if something is to be sustainable in Africa, shouldn’t Africans be involved, rather than the passive recipients for US largesse (which hasn’t worked out very well).”

Apparently, we are not the only ones scratching our heads about plans for the new Green Revolution.  Seemingly preemptive to the meeting at the Asia Society tomorrow, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) released a study on Tuesday called the “Environmental Food Crisis: Environment’s Role in Averting Future Food Crises,” which suggests that we begin to think more ecologically about food waste and infrastructure.  UN Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner: “We need to deal with not only the way the world produces food but the way it is distributed, sold and consumed, and we need a revolution that can boost yields by working with rather than against nature.”

They suggest “managing and better harvesting extreme rainfall on continents such as Africa, alongside [giving] support to farmers for adopting more diversified and ecologically-friendly farming systems – ones that enhance the ‘nature-based’ inputs from pollinators such as bees as well as water supplies and genetic diversity.”  The report also speaks rationally about water scarcity, organic production capacity, re-organizing the food market structure and removing crop subsidies.  Check out this great article from Inter Press Service about the report for more perspective.

Needless to say, I will be present at the discussion in the morning, looking forward to (and a bit freaked out about) standing up for all of those voices who have no say in how their land is developed under the auspices of philanthropy, by those whose pockets have the potential to be lined by this little experiment.  Please join me at th Asia Society, I will be outside at 8:00am, somehow making myself known (Late twenties with an iPhone addiction, and I won’t be bothered if you approach me — unless you are a Monsanto exec), and will be livetweeting the event on my twitter feed, featured in the right-hand side panel on Civil Eats.

UPDATE: Doug Gurian-Sherman, a Senior Scientist of the Food & Environment Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) is speaking tomorrow at the Asia Society panel, instead of Rajiv Shah.

Image: Monsanto’s recent ad campaign

The New York Times ran a special food-themed issue of its Sunday magazine a week back. It was kicked off by a fine piece by Mark Bittman, who observed quite rightly that the conversation being had in the magazine’s pages reflects America’s new, and healthy, interest in what they’re eating.

Indeed, just a few years ago, it would have been difficult to imagine this sort of interest, and even harder to imagine that the New York Times would countenance the sorts of politics espoused in Michael Pollan’s Farmer in Chief essay, or David Reiff’s subtle dissection of the Gates Foundation’s African Adventures.

I like David’s piece a great deal, not just because I appear in it as a reasonable person, but because he captures exactly what’s wrong about the Northern do-gooder in Africa. For the record, a mistake crept in to the piece – I’ve never actually met Raj Shah – but the piece certainly captures how I feel about the Alliance for a New Green Revolution in Africa.

And yet, despite all that, the issue had one or two gaping holes. Labour didn’t really get a look in and, most important, the entire issue was almost wholly silent on the issue of gender. One doesn’t have to look far to see women food producers and food-makers taking on the inequities of the modern food system. Just today, from their meeting in Maputo, the women of Via Campesina released this declaration. And Dan Moshenberg, who sends much of the finest material to me for this blog, took the lead in writing this letter to the editor which, alas, the editor decided not to print.

Dear Editor

The New York Times Magazine October 12th Food Issue is a measure of how far the debate around agriculture has come. A few years ago, it would have been inconceivable that Sunday’s glossy section could be devoted to a mosaic of pieces about the politics of food, from belly to bourse, from private purchases to public policy. We still, however, have far to go. One neglected element would have brought coherence to the disparate pieces: women.

Certainly, women were mentioned in the issue. Mark Bittman noted that cooking is no longer the exclusive purview, burden, or task of those called `housewives’. With women pressured or choosing to enter the waged labor force, men are encouraged or forced to cook for themselves and even, occasionally, for others. In her discussion of the ethical kashrut movement, Samantha M. Shapiro recalls the cultural and religious traditions of her own family, in which men would slaughter, skin and butcher animals, and women would purchase the meat, soak and salt it, and prepare it for the family. Michael Pollan urged the next President of the United States to expand the WIC program for low-income women with children.

There’s much to admire in, and much to debate over, these descriptions of women. But women are more than contemporary household cooks (since they are still a minority among paid chefs), more than the stories of how it was done in our family in the good old days, and more than the recipients of government handouts.

In much of the world, and in particular in the Global South, women are the primary toilers of the earth, even if they are a minuscule portion of the owners of land. For example, while women produce the majority of food consumed in the Global South, the OECD has noted that women own 1% of the land mass of Africa. If that seems a little far away, there are plenty of examples of women producing food closer to home – consider the fate of Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez, a farmworker who died of heatstroke in May this year while harvesting grapes in California, the latest in a long line of women casualties in our modern food system.

Women aren’t only central to understanding how food is produced – it’s hard to tell the full story of food distribution and food consumption without them either. The food crisis discriminates against women – 60% of those going hungry are women and girls. Michael Pollan almost touched on this when he noted that in recent months more than 30 countries have experienced food riots which are, more often than not, protests that result from planned and coordinated action by women.

All of these stories, and the big story they add up to, is a story of women. Women farmers, women care providers, women wives, women mothers, women daughters, women aunts, women heads of households, women consumers, women workers, everywhere in the world. If food matters, as we certainly agree it does, then women must be accounted for because, when it comes to food, women count. Perhaps in the next food issue, the Times might move a little further to doing this particular piece of arithmetic.

Sincerely
Dan Moshenberg
Raj Patel

Photo: sajla1, women of Chhattisgarh

[Cross-posted from www.stuffedandstarved.org]