Food Tank

Bayer/Monsanto suffered another in a long string of setbacks in its battle to grow genetically modified (GM) corn in Mexico when the country’s highest court on October 13 refused to overturn a precautionary injunction restricting the cultivation of GM corn. In its unanimous decision, the court agreed with the citizen petitioners who sought the injunction in 2013 that cultivation of GM corn poses a credible threat to Mexico’s rich store of native corn biodiversity through uncontrolled cross-pollination.

The Conversation - Africa

Our research paper calls into question the very premises of the Green Revolution’s “theory of change”. The theory is that if seeds and fertilisers are put in the hands of small-scale farmers, their yields will double, as will their incomes from the sale of surplus crops. And they will become food secure from the crops they grow and the food they can now afford to buy. None of that has come to pass.

IPS News

AGRA seems to be living in a different world from poor, rural Africans, oblivious to the documented shortcomings of its technology-focused approach to agricultural development. AGRA leaders and donors seem unaware that the number of severely undernourished people in Sub-Saharan Africa has risen nearly 50% since AGRA was founded in 2006.

IATP Policy Brief

A review of AGRA’s 2020 Annual Report, published July 12 with a companion report on “Emerging Results 2017-21,” reveals that AGRA provides some data but no convincing evidence of progress toward these three topline goals of doubling yields and incomes for 30 million small-scale farming households in Africa while halving food security.

IATP Blog

According to an anonymous inside source, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) is preparing a campaign to raise $1 billion in the coming months to fund its promotion of industrialized agriculture through 2030. AGRA’s fund drive is sure to intensify calls from African farm, environmental and community organizations to demand that donors shift their funding from expensive Green Revolution programs to more affordable and sustainable approaches such as agroecology.

Since the Mexican government published its much-awaited presidential decree on New Year's Eve to restrict the use of the herbicide glyphosate and genetically modified corn, IATP has actively worked to defend the government against threats from U.S. agribusiness using the revised North American Free Trade Agreement, the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). Bayer/Monsanto and Mexico's National Agribusiness Council (CNA) filed for an injunction in Mexico courts to stop the glyphosate regulations.

By Timothy A. Wise and Jomo Kwame Sundaram, IPS News

Since the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) was launched in 2006, yields have barely risen, while rural poverty remains endemic, and would have increased more if not for out-migration. What went wrong? The continuing Indian farmer protests, despite the COVID-19 resurgence, highlight the problematic legacy of its Green Revolution (GR) in frustrating progress to sustainable food security. Many studies have already punctured some myths of India’s GR. Looking back, its flaws and their dire consequences should have warned policymakers of the likely disappointing results of the GR in Africa.

IPS News

José Graziano da Silva has been one of the world’s most influential leaders in the fight against hunger. After leading Brazil’s Zero Hunger program nearly twenty years ago, he was appointed Director-General of United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome, where he served from 2012 to 2019. During his tenure, he helped transform an institution known for its promotion of agricultural practices associated with the “Green Revolution” – reliance on commercial seeds, fertilizers and pesticides – into one that also welcomed the growing calls from farmer and indigenous groups for more sustainable approaches. I interviewed him by email.

Karen Hansen-Kuhn and Timothy A. Wise, American Prospect

Agribusiness giant Bayer/Monsanto claims that Mexico’s proposed restrictions on the active ingredient in its Roundup herbicide violate the country’s trade agreement with the U.S. Will the Biden administration agree?

…read the full article at American Prospect…

This opinion article was published in the Kenya Star, home to the headquarters of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). It is based on my analysis of internal AGRA documents obtained by U.S. Right to Know through Freedom of Information Act requests.
When are African governments, donors, and African farmers going to demand some accountability from the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)?

February 25, 2021

Internal evaluations carried out by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), recently obtained by the U.S. Right to Know (USRTK) campaign through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, show no new evidence that AGRA is making progress improving yields, incomes and food security for African farmers. In fact, the reports, which AGRA had previously declined to share with researchers, suggest that AGRA is only now beginning to track progress for its current programming period while providing no evidence from its first ten years of work.

IPS News, February 24, 2021

The Mexican government recently took a long-awaited step to regulate the use of the herbicide glyphosate and ban cultivation and importation of genetically modified corn by 2024. I covered the campaign against GM corn in my book, Eating Tomorrow. The action poses an immediate challenge to the Biden administration and its nominee for U.S. Trade Representative, Katherine Tai, who will be pressured by industry to challenge the measures under the U.S. Mexico Canada Agreement that replaced NAFTA.

Food Tank, February 10, 2021

A growing number of farmers, scientists, and development experts now advocate a shift from high-input, chemical-intensive agriculture to low-input ecological farming. They are supported by an impressive array of new research documenting both the risks of continuing to follow our current practices and the potential benefits of a transition to more sustainable farming informed by collaborations between farmers and scientists. The new initiatives have been met with a chorus of derision from an unsurprising group of commentators, many associated with agribusiness interests. As I argue in a new paper, “Old Fertilizer in New Bottles,” such accusations flip the innovation narrative on its head.

Excerpted from Eating Tomorrow, Chapter 4

When I saw the photo of the little girl in Mutanga, Zambia, I cried. It was the kind of image that tugs at Western bleeding-heartstrings to loosen their purse-strings. It had that emotional effect on me, which was incongruous because I’d taken the photo myself. And the girl was was one of seven children on a relatively successful small farm….

read the full excerpt on Medium

This excerpt from Chapter 6 of Eating Tomorrow: Agribusiness, Family Farmers, and the Battle for the Future of Food chronicles the failed attempt by British Sun Biofuels to make biodiesel from jatropha plants in Kisarawe, Tanzania. And the more modest and sustainable efforts by Kakute and other community organizations to harness the plant’s potential for sustainable and equitable small-scale economic development. Kakute proudly celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. Sun Biofuels dissolved in 2016. Villagers in Kisarawe are still waiting to get their land back.

Read the excerpt on Medium…

Wise’s chapter details the findings of his research on the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa’s and its failures to generate significant gains in productivity, incomes, or food security. The chapter is part of the report, “Gates to a Global Empire,” published by Navdanya International in October 2020.

If you are one of the 2,000 delegates virtually attending this week’s African Green Revolution Forum hosted by Rwanda, you wouldn’t know that heavy storm clouds hang over the gathering. A recent report assessing the impacts of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), which hosts the annual forum, show that it may be “failing on its own terms.”