ROOTS of hunger found at the germ plasm

(Editor’s Note: this piece continues a discussion started here about efforts to monitor and hopefully persuade organizations like the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa to use the expertise of local, sustainable farmers instead of allying with larger multinational agricultural companies.) “Hunger isn’t caused by a shortage of food.” This oft-repeated statement may be counterintuitive or disturbing to mainstream agro-economics, but that’s the focus of global food experts, planners, civil society and peasant farmers. “For now, the G8 and the United States continue to advocate the same disastrous policies that got us into the current mess where 1 billion people lack access to adequate food,” said Ben Burkett, an African-American farmer who has traveled around the world to support locally-based sustainable agriculture. “A right to food framework therefore goes deeper than simply the misguided obsession with yields and productivity, and more fundamentally towards questions regarding democracy and access to resources, including land, water and credit.” So instead of learning from the failures of the “first” green revolution, our own agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack purports that biotechnology will be the silver bullet to address hunger. Not surprising, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved with limited public debate the “Global Hunger Security Act,” mandating the U.S. fund genetic engineering projects in foreign agriculture research. With no real coincidence, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has invested billions into their Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa – called the second green revolution. Just surfing the Internet with hits on organic farming sites or even Wikipedia, the Green Revolution is succinctly laid out as a phenomenon that increased yields of corn, wheat and rice with seed manipulation, lots of synthetic chemical inputs, and mechanization. Irrigation engineering also increased yields from 1960 to the 1990s. Another counterintuitive truism, thanks to the first green revolution – “Increased food production can - and often does - go hand in hand with greater hunger.” So, by getting farmers “competitive” by forcing them to purchase expensive inputs, obviously, wealthier farmers will squeeze out the poor. Then, those traditional small farmers are not going to find adequate employment to compensate for the loss of farming livelihoods. India has the highest suicide rate for farmers who have been squeezed out by the agro giants and depleted aquifers. Developing countries are hurdled with millions upon millions of unemployed pastoralists, farmers, fishers looking for something, thanks to this globalization of food and farming. AGRA is pushing the bio-technology solution, which is basically Monsanto, DuPont, Novartis, and other remade chemical companies leading genetic engineering research and orchestrating propaganda trumpeting claims that “GE seeds boost crop yields and will feed the hungry.” People and organizations like Burkett, AGRA Watch, La Via Campesina and others believe these technologies have questionable benefits and documented risks. The second Green Revolution they promise is no more likely to end hunger than the first. Burket continues: “The scientific research and renewed focus on the ‘right to food’ exposes why we must move away from Green Revolution monoculture practices and instead embrace ecologically sound practices, more equitable trade rules and local food distribution systems to empower family farmers. Now the governments of the world and the Gates Foundation need to finally get the message as well.” The Union of Concerned Scientists authored a report, “Failure to Yield: Evaluating the Performance of Genetically Engineered Crops,” showing that after more than 20 years of research and 14 years of commercialization, genetic engineering has driven up costs for farmers . Yields have not risen significantly, and the environmental costs of so much plowing, spraying and large scale mono-cropping are beyond imagination. “In comparison, traditional breeding continues to deliver better results,” Burkett said. Proof is in the pudding, or in this case, sweet potato: Monsanto’s GM sweet potato has no resistance to a crop-specific virus while all the local varieties in Kenya outperformed the genetically modified one. “The U.S. approach to helping Africa should not be a top-down process that excludes the voices of African farmers who have the knowledge of their land and what food to grow,” Burkett said.