GMW: GM crops benefit big business, not hungry Africans

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GMW: GM crops benefit big business, not hungry Africans

" GM WATCH " <info

Thu, 17 Aug 2006 09:48:53 +0100

 

 

 

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http://www.gmwatch.org

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1.GM crops and DDT – connect the dots... - Glenn Ashton

2.Astroturf uncovered in grassroots protest - James MacKinnon

 

COMMENT: An edited version of this article by Glenn Ashton appeared in

the South African newspaper The Cape Times under the heading " GM crops

benefit big business, not hungry Africans " (August 16 2006)

http://www.capetimes.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=273 & fArticleId=3395428

 

The article is a response to one by the Free Market Foundation, South

Africa's very own neoliberal think-tank and one with a special talent

for exploiting the poor for ideological purposes - see item 2.

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1.GM crops and DDT – connect the dots……..

By Glenn Ashton

 

Jasson Urbach attempts, on behalf of the neo-liberal Free Market

Foundation (FMF), to make a case that genetically modified (GM) crops are

necessary to improve the food security of Africa (African farmers have

most to gain from GM crops, Cape Times, August 10, 2006).

 

This is not the first time Urbach has attempted to hoodwink the public

with pseudo-science. He recently (Cape Times, July 10) penned a paean

of support for DDT as a mechanism to reduce the incidence of Malaria in

Africa. In that article he directly compared the toxicity of DDT to

coffee, beer and peanut butter and went so far as to claim that there was

no substantial evidence to show DTT was dangerous to humans.

 

Besides the tacit admission that DDT thus does affect other living

organisms besides humans, Urbach's claim of lack of evidence of danger to

humans is incorrect. A study by the University of Berkley showed the

ability of DDT to slow childhood development. Another study by the

National Institute of Environmental Health Services showed a strong

relationship between prematurely delivered and low birth weight babies

and

mothers' blood levels of DDE, the metabolic breakdown product of DDT.

It is

not by chance that international health interests have called for its

total withdrawal.

 

In his new crusade for the adoption of GM crops for Africa, Urbach is

just as determined not to allow a few facts stand in his way. He

blithely ignores that since GM cotton was adopted in South Africa we

have lost

over 56, 000 jobs in what is a small local agricultural sector. Job

losses in the rest of our commercial agricultural market have been

equally

precipitous.

 

GM crops have been developed in order to increase the efficiency of

mechanised and chemical dependent agriculture, not to benefit African

people. While South Africa has grown GM crops since 1997, we have seen no

concurrent increase in food security in relationship to their adoption.

 

Urbachs claims that GM crops yield higher and reduce chemical use are

equally flawed. The worlds most widely grown GM crop, Monsanto's

herbicide (weed killer) resistant soy, has a demonstrably lower yield

than

most conventional varieties and since its introduction into Argentina,

the

use of this herbicide has increased from 13.6 million litres in 1998 to

over 150 million litres in 1995.

 

The free market foundation, by these and other claims, simply

demonstrates its credentials as a comprador for unfettered corporate

intervention. It is notable that both DDT and GM crops are pushed by

chemical

corporations such as Monsanto, which controls the licence on the vast

majority of GM seed sales in South Africa.

 

The FMF epitomises what President Mbeki recently referred to as `market

fundamentalism' in his notable Nelson Mandela lecture, which he hinted

at replacing with a more developmental model.

 

This is precisely what opponents of GM claim – that GM agricultural

crops were developed for intensive, industrial agricultural models. They

are absolutely the wrong solution for Africa, which needs more

people-centred, developmental state intervention for and on behalf of

local

farmers.

 

Resistance to GM crops in the Southern African region exist not simply

because of their health and environmental dangers, but equally because

they are devised in order to consolidate control of the agricultural

supply chain. State support for GM technology should be replaced by

direct support for our farmers in adoption of non-dependent, relevant

technology.

 

GM crops are not, as asserted, rejected for frivolous reasons. After

all what could be more frivolous than Urbachs claim that biosafety –

necessary for the containment and management of potential hazards of GM

crops – is not meant to avoid risks? I suppose we simply wish to manage

these unique, man-made organisms to produce more food then? Full speed

ahead and damn the torpedoes?

 

What about African heirloom maize varieties, bred for their local

vigour and pest resistance, which stand to be lost to contamination by

patented genetic traits, aggressively punted by both northern

corporate and

state interests? What about the supposed genetic 'improvement' of

sorghum, a crop endemic to Africa, facilitated by precisely the same

interest groups, echoing the same snake oil sales talk as Urbach?

 

The solution to African problems is not necessarily dependent upon the

wholesale adoption of western models of development. Contrarily, it can

be shown that these have all too often failed to achieve their aims –

look no further than the Green Revolution that failed spectacularly in

Africa.

 

The new green revolution – the supposed genetic revolution in farming –

will fail just as certainly, for its is based on the same flawed

premises and assumptions. But it will fail at far greater cost to our

people

than ever before, at a time when our people need a variety of wholesome

foods, not a glut of intensively farmed monoculture crops, devised for

commodity and export markets.

 

Africa can feed itself. Countless remarkable examples have been

demonstrated to increase food crop yields by up to 300%, simply by using

relevant and applicable technological interventions to suit local needs.

Instead of being adopted they are sidelined by this obsessive focus on GM

crops by vested interests.

 

Africa can provide for itself, but not by being taught to fish by

self-interested corporate 'welfare'. It can, and must provide for itself

using modern tools. These may include biotechnology, which Urbach yet

again dishonestly equates to GM, when GM is really a specific sub-set of

the technology, founded on outdated science, that again, just happens to

be controlled by corporate interests.

 

The FMF is a wolf in sheep's clothing if ever there was. GM crops shift

focus from real solutions to our local hunger crisis. Such simplistic

statements as " Subsistence and small-scale farmers in Africa have the

most to gain from adopting these technologies, " show how low the whores

of industry will stoop, when precisely the opposite is true. These are

the farmers that have the most to lose. Their seeds, their independence

and their self- determination. But then again, the FMF is not one to

let a few facts stand in its way.

 

 

Ashton is the Chairman of the Steering committee of SAFeAGE, the SA

Freeze Alliance on Genetic Engineering, a representative and mandated

citizens network opposed to GM technology in our food and demanding the

full labelling and identification of GM products in our diet. This

article

is written in his personal capacity.

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2.Astroturf uncovered in grassroots protest

James MacKinnon, Adbusters, August 28, 2002

http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=1149

 

The call came first thing in the morning from a local contact. A mob

was gathering at George Lea Park, a nearby locus of protest. " There's mad

police, " he said. " And riot tanks. "

 

It sounded like we were about to get our first whiff of real protest,

South Africa-style. We headed out, catching up with the demo as lines of

police forced it into an orderly column. It wasn't a huge group, but it

was vocal, and most of the marchers were poor and black. Which made it

slightly strange that the first person to approach was a

polished-looking white Londoner [in fact, an American based in

London], Kendra

Okonski, an organizer with the Sustainable Development Network. It was a

march for the rights of street hawkers and small farmers, she said. Real

people. Real struggle.

 

So why did I get a funny feeling about this rally? It might have been

the signs, such as a perfectly stencilled " Say No To Eco-Imperialism. "

It might have been the shirts with slogans like " Stop Global Whining. "

Since when are Jo'burg street hawkers, struggling to survive on $8 US

per day, hot under the collar about the growing power of Greenpeace?

Since when are small-scale African farmers jeering the " bogus science " of

climate change?

 

I approached Shadrack Mkhwashu, a man in threadbare clothes carrying a

sign reading " Greens: Stop Hurting the Poor. " The sign was just

something he picked up at the park, he said. He was a hawker from

Soweto, here

to demonstrate against a government effort to get people like him off

the street and into indoor markets where he'd have to pay about $60 US

per month in rent.

 

So what was his beef with the Earth Summit? He didn't have one; in

fact, he wished it well. He only wanted to take his message to the

African

National Congress officials hiding in the conference center somewhere

beyond the razor wire.

 

" They don't think for us any more, " said Mkhwashu. " Today, they live in

their big houses, they live in Sandton and drive big cars, Mercedes.

They don't feel for us. "

 

I spoke to a few other hawkers - Colin Baloyi, Michael Mogale, Americo

Mibasi - and the story was the same. They were members of hawkers'

organizations, some of which have been active for over a quarter-century.

These guys had cred.

 

Still, something was fishy. Alongside the street vendors were people

like Wisdom Changadeya, a sharp-dressed man holding a poster in support

of genetically modified foods (he was with AfricaBio, a group that works

closely with biotech corporations). There was a media team from Tech

Central Station, a neoliberal news site that rejects the idea of global

warming. And there were the Collegians for a Constructive Tomorrow, an

Ayn Rand fanclub from Washington, DC, that was struggling to turn the

hawkers' simple call for the right to a livelihood into a denouncement of

UN programs " wasting billions on theoretical environmental risks. "

 

It was a bizarre scene that only came clear in a discussion with Neil

Emerick, a white man hoisting a banner reading " Free Trade is Fair

Trade. " Emerick is with the Free Market Foundation, South Africa's

answer to

neoliberal think-tanks like America's Cato Institute and the Fraser

Institute in Canada. For years, he said, the foundation had supported the

hawkers' right to trade on the streets. He didn't have to explain the

quid pro quo -- terrific photo-ops with the struggling poor marching

beneath foundation banners that call for an end to every form of

restriction on economic power.

 

The rally ended at the " speaker's corner, " an intersection tucked out

of sight behind the Earth Summit mall. Among the speakers, the highlight

was Barun Mitra, director of the Liberty Institute in Delhi, India

(yes, the subcontinent has its own neocon think-tank). He was there,

surrounded by South Africa's urban poor, to award a " bullshit award "

to the

opponents of biotechnology. The award was a real beauty: two huge lumps

of what appeared to be the real deal.

 

While he spoke, I tried to make conversation with three women wearing

brand-new t-shirts with pro-biotech slogans. They smiled shyly; none of

them could speak or read English. As bullshit awards go, it was a

golden moment.

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for more on the " fake parade " and other astroturfing by biotech

lobbyists, see:

Biotech's Hall of Mirrors, GeneWatch Vol. 16, No. 1

http://www.gene-watch.org/genewatch/articles/16-2matthews.html

 

 

 

 

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