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IATP blog
It has now been nine months since I first asked staff at the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) for data on its beneficiaries and impacts for my background paper for the July 10 report, “False Promises.” They refused then, and now three months after that report showed limited yield improvements, continued high poverty and rising food insecurity, AGRA is still refusing to provide any evidence to refute the report’s findings.
Read moreBy Million Belay and Timothy A. Wise (IPSNews)
As COVID-19 threatens farming communities across Africa already struggling with climate change, the continent is at a crossroads. Will its people and their governments continue trying to replicate industrial farming models promoted by developed countries? Or will they move boldly into the uncertain future, embracing ecological agriculture?
Read moreIf 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.”
Read moreAfrican organizations are demanding answers after a recent report found that Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) strategies have failed spectacularly to meet its goals of increasing productivity and incomes for millions of small-scale farming households by 2020 while reducing food insecurity on the continent. The theme for the tenth annual African Green Revolution Forum, a virtual weeklong event hosted by Rwanda that opens September 8, is “Feed the Cities, Grow the Continent.” Based on the findings of a recent report on the host, AGRA, a more appropriate theme would be “Failing Africa’s Farmers, Starving the Continent.”
Read moreSci.Dev.net
Large agricultural development programmes have done little to reduce hunger while pushing farmers into debt, food security experts say, as they warn that such schemes risk failure if they do not move away from industrial fertilisers and seeds.
Read moreIt’s been nearly fifty years since Frances Moore Lappé reminded us in her seminal work, Diet for a Small Planet, that hunger is not caused by a scarcity of food, it is caused by a scarcity of power. Economist Amartya Sen won a Nobel Prize more than twenty years ago for showing that famine was rarely caused by a lack of food. Yet here in 2020, with the world well aware of the twin dangers of hunger and malnutrition, there was Agnes Kalibata, the leader of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), telling an online audience that poor, hungry countries can’t think about diet diversity, “it’s a luxury.”
Read moreBy Stacy Malkan, The Ecologist
Billions of dollars spent promoting and subsidising commercial seeds and agrichemicals across Africa have failed to fulfill their promises to alleviate hunger and lift small-scale farmers out of poverty, according to a new white paper published by the Tufts University Global Development and Environment Institute.
Read moreFormer UN Food and Agriculture Organization economist Jomo Kwame Sundaram, citing “False Promises” report on failures of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, calls out AGRA head Agnes Kalibata for downplaying nutritional diversity in fighting hunger. Extreme hunger has increased more than 40% in her home country of Rwanda.
“Even progress in addressing dietary energy undernourishment in the world has been uneven, with Africa projected to overtake South Asia in a decade as the region with the most hungry people, rising to 433 million in 2030 from a quarter billion. The report False Promises argues that despite improved understanding of malnutrition, a narrow focus on increasing caloric supply, at the expense of both crop and dietary diversity, is being promoted by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)….”
Read moreBy Stacy Malkan, US Right to Know
Massive investments spent promoting and subsidizing commercial seeds and agrichemicals across Africa have failed to fulfill their purpose of alleviating hunger and lifting small-scale farmers out of poverty, according to a new white paper published by the Tufts University Global Development and Environment Institute. A report based largely on the research, “False Promises,” was published July 10 by African and German nonprofits that are calling for a shift in support to agroecological farming practices.
Read moreIATP Policy Brief: To the Green Revolution, African farmers say: Time’s up. You’ve had your chance to show what difference you can make. As we face climate change and rising hunger from the COVID-19 pandemic, it is time to take a different path. The future is agroecology. (Also available in French.)
Read moreThe U.N.’s focus on nutritious and affordable diets is welcome given the prevalence of diet-related disease and micronutrient deficiencies in the developing world. But the U.N. missed a key opportunity by focusing only on making nutritious food more affordable, ignoring the reality that the biggest segment of the hungry is farmers. What they most need is crop diversity, which improves their diet diversity. A new report from a broad coalition of non-governmental organizations highlights how policymakers are actively undermining that diversity with programs such as the billion-dollar Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).
Read moreAnn Garrison interviews Timothy Wise on why US-style corporate agriculture pushed by billionaire Bill Gates has been disastrous for Africa.
Read moreMy blog from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy summarizes the results of the report, “False Promises: The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa,” based on my research paper, “Failing Africa’s Farmers: An Impact Assessment of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa.” The results: “We found no evidence that productivity, incomes or food security were increasing significantly for smallholder households.”
Read moreI was part of an engaging three-person Zoom panel on all that is undervalued in food and agriculture markets, with Paula Daniels of Good Food Purchasing and Barbara Gemmill-Herren of Prescott College. I cautioned us all to avoid commodifying everything by trying to put prices (costs) on things that are truly priceless, like agricultural biodiversity. You can watch it here, with the panel discussion starting around 16:00 (I come in around 22:00). May 22, 2020
Read moreNorman Borlaug, Milk Strikes, and the Green Revolution
Excerpted from Eating Tomorrow, pp. 111–114, New Press, 2019
Read full article.
By Jomo Kwame Sundaram, IPS News
Timothy A. Wise argues that many millions of dollars spent on fertilizers and seed subsidies in Africa – and favoured by African politicians seeking rural votes – have not delivered their promised outcomes.
Read more(Originally published by Yes! Magazine)
The headquarters of the world’s largest charitable foundation stretch along an entire block near downtown Seattle. There’s a plaza at the entrance, and to one side, a wall embossed in elegant gold lettering proclaims “The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.” (Read full article on Yes! Magazine)
Read more(Originally published by Tufts Daily)
The Tufts Environmental Studies Program held its first Hoch Cunningham Environmental Lecture of the semester on Jan. 16, featuring Tim Wise and the findings of his new book titled “Eating Tomorrow: The Battle for the Future of Food in the Climate Crisis”
Read more(Originally published by U.S. Right To Know)
Scholar Timothy A. Wise, shows the world already has the tools to feed itself, without expanding industrial agriculture or adopting genetically modified seeds.
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