GMW: When Technology Displaces the Farmer

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GMW: When Technology Displaces the Farmer

" GM WATCH " <info

Tue, 20 Dec 2005 22:21:21 GMT

 

 

 

GM WATCH daily

http://www.gmwatch.org

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1.When Technology Displaces the Farmer

2.Bankrolling mass starvation

 

Both items are on the topic of farmer displacement. George Monbiot's

article (item 2) relates to the GBP65m support of the UK's Department for

International Development for a farm restructuring programme, including

the use of GM crops, in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. This

extraordinary economic experiment would have helped to push 20 million

subsistence farmers off their land.

 

The ruling Party in Andhra Pradesh subsequently lost an election

because of their support for the proposals. The failure of Monsanto's Bt

cotton also helped rout the pro-GM ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

According

to IPS news, " Mass suicides by farmers in the state, many of them

cotton growers who had experimented disastrously with genetically

modified

seeds supplied by large multinationals, were frequently cited by

Congress party workers to blunt the Bharatiya Janata Party's 'India

Shining'

motto during the election. "

http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3464

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1.When Technology Displaces the Farmer

PANOS (London), December 19, 2005

Arnold Munthali

Hong Kong

http://allafrica.com/stories/200512200913.html

 

As the World Trade Organisation's (WTO) ministerial conference captures

global attention, a new technology standing in the wings could be about

to take centre stage: nanotechnology is already bringing a sci-fi

reality to our door and could assign many commodities to history's

dustbin,

including some produced in the poorest nations of the world.

 

The Hong Kong conference, cynics argue, has all the hallmarks of a

perfectly rehearsed act, and they point to the previous Cancun

ministerial

as the dress rehearsal. But while this meeting did not collapse like

Cancun, there have been echoes of the disagreements that marked the 2003

meeting.

 

There are those that believe trade is not being equitably practiced.

 

Others, mostly from the Least Developed Countries (LDCs), are

infuriated with the issue of subsidies in developed countries. Even

concessionary gestures from the European Union and the United States

to cut

agricultural subsidies are met with cynicism.

 

Anger over genetic engineering

 

Equally livid are groups that contend that genetic engineering

compromises their freedom of choice - quite apart from its contested

side-effects on the environment and human health.

 

" The WTO should not force anybody to eat genetically modified foods.

The WTO is the wrong place to be deciding what we eat and how we protect

our environment, " argues Meena Raman, chair of Friends of the Earth

International.

 

While delegates are negotiating for better trade, however, Jim Thomas

of the ETC Group, which campaigns on ecological issues, is of the view

that some of the agreements may be insignificant in a few years due to

the emerging realities of a new technology.

 

Nanotech threats and promises

 

Nanotechnology would revolutionise trade and people's ways of life.

 

" People might be negotiating now but five years from today, should

nanotechnology go into full swing, those deals will be rendered useless, "

Thomas says.

 

Nanotechnology works on the principle of controlling individual atoms

and molecules to manufacture items using building blocks a thousand

times smaller than other technologies permit.

 

The concept behind nanotechnology is by no means recent. It dates back

to 1959 when American Nobel laureate Richard Feynman delivered a

trail-blazing lecture entitled 'There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom' in

which he laid down the principles on which the technology is based.

 

According to Thomas, nanotechnology might become useful in producing

all kinds of commodities including 'synthetic' cotton and rubber.

 

" And if you replace cotton, what does that it mean for Africa? " asks

Thomas.

 

Cotton has been one of the sticky issues at the trade talks, with

farmers mainly from developing countries complaining about pitiful prices

offered on their crops by developed countries. The former, mostly from

West Africa, contend that subsidies offered to cotton farmers in

developed countries distort the market value of their crop.

 

Never heard of it

 

Dyborn Chibonga, chief executive officer of the National Smallholder

Farmers' Association of Malawi, says he had absolutely no idea about

nanotechnology even though some of the association's farmers grow

cotton in

their cooperatives.

 

" I'm clueless about that one but even if cotton were produced using

that technology, we wouldn't lose out, " Chibonga says, and ruled out any

attempts to lobby developed countries to halt the technology from being

used on a large scale for cotton and other crops.

 

" I don't think we're talking about something that would become

operational very soon and, moreover, we have conservatives who would

insist on

having clothes made from natural rather than the synthetic cotton, " he

says.

 

Besides, contends Chibonga, some of these fibres are mere fads which

would not last the distance.

 

" Nylon was a synthetic fibre and it used to be fashionable. But it's no

longer the in-thing and I'm sure that the same fate would befall any

fibre produced with nanotechnology. "

 

Equally sceptical is Collins Magalasi, director of policy with Action

Aid Malawi, who believes that clothes made of 'nano-cotton' would be met

by social and cultural challenges should they be produced.

 

Just fashion?

 

But with rapid consumer changes in tastes, and, according to Thomas,

many Fortune 500 companies investing in research on nanotechnology,

countries like Malawi risk producing items that have no international

market. The US government is said to be investing a billion dollars

annually

into nanotechnology.

 

" You can come up with aerogel nano-material with which you can produce

tyres that last twice as long, which is good for the environment, "

Thomas observes.

 

He says that nano-products would come in cheap, thus further closing

out markets for naturally produced materials.

 

" With nanotechnology, you can produce steel that's 100 times stronger

but six times lighter, " says Thomas.

 

However, according to the Centre for Responsible Nanotechnology, among

other dangers of nanotechnology, " stronger materials would allow the

creation of much larger machines, capable of excavating or otherwise

destroying large areas of the planet at a greatly accelerated pace " .

 

Nanotechnology may not be as well known in developing countries as

GMOs, but many of the fears associated with one ring true with the other.

 

With the costs of production significantly reduced and the safety of

the environment at stake, the question is whether Africa can afford to

bury its head in the sand and pretend that nanotechnology is another

Western fad.

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2.This Is What We Paid For

Britain's foreign aid has been used to bankroll a programme for mass

starvation

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 18th May 2004

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2004/05/18/this-is-what-we-paid-for/

 

Tony Blair has lost the election. It's true he wasn't standing, but we

won't split hairs. His policies have just been put to the test by an

electorate blessed with a viable opposition, and crushed. In throwing him

out of their lives, the voters of the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh

may have destroyed the world's most dangerous economic experiment.

 

Chandrababu Naidu, the state's chief minister, was the West's favourite

Indian. Tony Blair and Bill Clinton both visited him in Hyderabad, the

state capital. Time magazine named him South Asian of the Year; the

governor of Illinois created a Naidu Day in his honour, and the British

government and the World Bank flooded his state with money. They loved

him because he did what he was told.

 

Naidu realised that to sustain power he must surrender it. He knew that

as long as he gave the global powers what they wanted, he would receive

the money and stature which count for so much in Indian politics. So

instead of devising his own programme, he handed the job to the US

consultancy company McKinsey.

 

McKinsey's scheme, " Vision 2020 " , is one of those documents whose

summary says one thing and whose contents quite another.(1) It begins,

for

example, by insisting that education and healthcare must be made

available to everyone. Only later do you discover that the state's

hospitals

and universities are to be privatised and funded by " user charges " .(2)

It extols small businesses but, way beyond the point at which most

people stop reading, reveals that it intends to " eliminate " the laws

which

defend them,(3) and replace small investors, who " lack motivation " , with

" large corporations " .(4) It claims it will " generate employment " in the

countryside, and goes on to insist that over 20 million people should

be thrown off the land.(5)

 

Put all these - and the other proposals for privatisation, deregulation

and the shrinking of the state - together, and you see that McKinsey

has unwittingly developed a blueprint for mass starvation. You dispossess

20 million farmers from the land just as the state is reducing the

number of its employees and foreign corporations are " rationalising " the

rest of the workforce, and you end up with millions without work or state

support. " The State's people, " McKinsey warns, " will need to be

enlightened about the benefits of change. " (6)

 

McKinsey's vision was not confined to Naidu's government. Once he had

implemented these policies, Andhra Pradesh " should seize opportunities

to lead other states in such reform, becoming, in the process, the

benchmark state. " (7) Foreign donors would pay for the experiment, then

seek

to persuade other parts of the developing world to follow Naidu's

example.

 

There is something familiar about all this, and McKinsey have been kind

enough to jog our memories. Vision 2020 contains 11 glowing references

to Chile's experiment in the 1980s. General Pinochet handed the

economic management of his country to a group of neoliberal economists

known

as the Chicago Boys. They privatised social provision, tore up the laws

protecting workers and the environment and handed the economy to

multinational companies. The result was a bonanza for big business, and a

staggering growth in debt, unemployment, homelessness and

malnutrition.(8)

The plan was funded by the United States in the hope that it could be

rolled out around the world.

 

Pinochet's understudy was bankrolled by Britain. In July 2001 Clare

Short, then secretary of state for development, finally admitted to

parliament that, despite numerous official denials, Britain was funding

Vision 2020.(9) Blair's government has financed the state's economic

reform

programme, its privatisation of the power sector and its " centre for

good governance " (which means as little governance as possible).(10) Our

taxes also fund the " implementation secretariat " for the state's

privatisation programme. The secretariat is run, at Britain's

insistence, by

the far-right business lobby group the Adam Smith Institute.(11) The

money for all this comes out of Britain's foreign aid budget.

 

It is not hard to see why Blair's government is doing this. As Stephen

Byers revealed when he was secretary of state for trade and industry,

" the UK Government has designated India as one of the UK's 15 campaign

markets. " (12) The campaign is to expand the opportunities for British

capital. The people of Andhra Pradesh know what this means: they call it

" the return of the East India Company " .

 

This isn't the only aspect of British history which is being repeated

in Andhra Pradesh. There's something uncanny about the way in which the

scandals that surrounded Tony Blair during his first term in office are

recurring there. Bernie Ecclestone, the Formula 1 boss who gave Labour

pounds1 million and later received an exemption from the ban on tobacco

advertising, was negotiating with Naidu to bring his sport to

Hyderabad. I have been shown the leaked minutes of a state cabinet

meeting on

January 10th this year.(13) McKinsey, they reveal, instructed the cabinet

that Hyderabad should be a " world class futuristic city with Formula 1

as a core component. " To make it viable, however, there would be a

" state support requirement of Rs400-600 crs " (4 billion to 6 billion

rupees).(14) This means a state subsidy for Formula 1 of

pounds50million to

pounds75m a year. It is worth noting that thousands of people in Andhra

Pradesh now die of malnutrition-related diseases because Naidu had

previously cut the subsidy for food.

 

Then the minutes become even more interesting. Ecclestone's Formula 1,

they note, should be exempted from the Indian ban on tobacco

advertising. Mr Naidu had already " addressed the PM as well as the Health

Minister in this regard " and was hoping to enact " state legislation

creating

an exemption to the Act " . (15)

 

The Hinduja brothers, the businessmen facing criminal charges in India

who were given British passports after Peter Mandelson intervened on

their behalf, have also been sniffing round Vision 2020. Another set of

leaked minutes I have obtained shows that in 1999 their representatives

held a secret meeting in London with the Indian attorney-general and

the British government's export credit guarantee department, to help them

obtain the backing required to build a power station under Naidu's

privatisation programme.(16) When the attorney-general began lobbying the

Indian government on their behalf, this caused yet another Hinduja

scandal.

 

The results of the programme we have been funding are plain to see.

During the hungry season, hundreds of thousands of people in Andhra

Pradesh are now kept alive on gruel supplied by charities.(17) Last year

hundreds of children died in an encephalitis outbreak because of the

shortage of state-run hospitals.(18) The state government's own figures

suggest that 77% of the population has fallen below the poverty line.(19)

The measurement criteria are not consistent, but this appears to be a

massive rise. In 1993 there was one bus a week taking migrant workers

from

a depot in Andhra Pradesh to Mumbai. Today there are 34. (20) The

dispossessed must reduce themselves to the transplanted coolies of

Blair's

new empire.

 

Luckily, democracy still functions in India. In 1999, Naidu's party won

29 seats, leaving Congress with five. Last week those results were

precisely reversed. We can't yet vote Tony Blair out of office in

Britain,

but in Andhra Pradesh they have done the job on our behalf.

 

www.monbiot.com

 

References:

 

1. Vision 2020 can be read at

http://www.aponline.gov.in/quick%20links/vision2020/vision2020.html

 

2. Vision 2020, Page 96.

 

3. Vision 2020, page 42.

 

4. Vision 2020, page 195.

 

5. Vision 2020, page 170. This is worded as follows: " However,

agriculture's share of employment will actually reduce, from the

current 70 per

cent [of the population of 76 million] to 40-45 per cent " .

 

6. Vision 2020, page 158.

 

7. Vision 2020, page 333.

 

8. The figures have been tabulated by Tom Huppi in the document Chile:

the Laboratory Test, which can be found at

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-chichile.htm

 

9. Clare Short, 20th July 2001. Parliamentary answer to Alan Simpson

MP. Hansard Column 475W.

 

10. The full list can be read at http://www.dfidindia.org/

 

11. Government of Andhra Pradesh, ?2002. Strategy Paper on Public

Sector Reform and Privatisation of State Owned Enterprises.

 

12. Department of Trade and Industry, 6th January 2000. Byers to Help

UK SMEs Foster Export Links with India. Press release.

 

13. Government of Andhra Pradesh. Minutes of Cabinet sub-committee

meeting on 10th January 2004.

 

14. ibid.

 

15. ibid.

 

16. Clifford Chance solicitors, 3rd June 1999. Vizag - Meeting with the

Attorney-General. Fax transmission.

 

17. Eg P. Sainath, 15th June 2003. The politics of free lunches. The

Hindu.

 

18. Eg K.G. Kannabiran and K. Balagopal, 14th December 2003. Governance

& Police impunity in Andhra Pradesh: World Bank urged not to make loan.

Peoples' Union for Civil Liberties and Human Rights Forum, Andhra

Pradesh.

 

19. Government of Andhra Pradesh. Draft Report of the Rural Poverty

Reduction Task Force. Cited in D. Bandyopadhyay, March 17th 2001. Andhra

Pradesh: Looking Beyond Vision 2020. Economic and Political Weekly.

 

20. P Sainath, June 2003. The Bus to Mumbai.

http://www.indiatogether.org/2003/jun/psa-bus.htm

 

 

 

 

 

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