Round one million of pro- GMO vs. anti-GMO battle: Colin Todhunter vs. Tony Trewavas

Pro-GMO versus anti-GMO is an epic fight that is featured in many articles on this website. One group says gene-modified crops are the salvation for Africa (and the world's) agricultural and food security issues, the other group says GMOs are causing the sky to fall. Naturally, both sides have what they consider to be absolutely iron-clad 'evidence' to back up their view. Each side heatedly accuses the other of either being too dumb and/or naive to see things properly (i.e. 'my way') or believes the other side to be evil tools of the devil.

There are no new pro or anti-GM arguments in GMOs: Where Does Science Begin and Lobbying End?, nor in the article to which it is a response, Genetic Engineering. Where does Science End and Lobbying begin? A Response to a Prominent pro-GMO scientist, which in turn is a response to,  “So You Want to Help Africa Mr Paterson? Then Stop Promoting Ideology and Falsehoods to Push GMOs.”

The antagonists are feverishly passionate in making their pro or anti arguments, but all those arguments are the standard ones that followers of the battle have been presented with over the years.

African Agriculture

AGRA meeting in Tanzania - farming at the talking level

The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) has just had its latest meeting in Tanzania.

Naturally, there have been many reports of what a smashing success it was. Easily the biggest success of the meeting was how effectively the organizers ensured that there was media which would simply regurgitate what they wanted to get across, rather than raise any of the issues about AGRA that many people involved in agriculture across Africa are concerned about.

This is not at all hard to do, unfortunately. The deep pockets of principal AGRA funder, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, mean that there are many media organizations who are happy, even eager to be megaphones for the whole effort. Much of that media finds it hard to ponder a critical, questioning approach to an ‘African-led’ effort with the good marketing sense to hire former UN secretary general Kofi Annan as its main spokesperson.

So the media was compliant, fully in the bag from beginning to end. They were there not so much to ‘report,’ but to simply broadcast what they were told, to act as a megaphone for AGRA. The stories about the meeting from media as scattered as those in Ghana, Rwanda and Tanzania itself were astonishing in their same-ness.

So congratulations are in order to AGRA for its strong public relations drive. Likewise, shame are in order for the media for failing to do basic journalism, and instead willingly allowing themselves to be propaganda tools in the pockets of the Gates Foundation and AGRA.

If anything, the gushing, unquestioning and un-analytical reportage that Gates Foundation and AGRA mandarins might be very pleased about also makes them appear as being afraid to confront the issues that make them controversial. It is a little bit like politicians not quite confident of their authority and popularity, who then purchase fawning media coverage. Very often the fawning is so overdone that the image achieved is ultimately the opposed of that intended.

But perhaps this is to be overly, unfairly cynical about AGRA’s heavy use of public relations by hired, sponsored or otherwise compromised media. Let’s hear what one report said were the accomplishments of the meeting in Arusha:

* Encourage private sector lending to agriculture, especially small scale players.

* Remove trade barriers

* Address the bottlenecks that inhibit regional markets from working effectively

* Legislatures must enact legislation that encourages private sector investment

There you have it- the much hyped African Green Revolution Forum had absolutely nothing new to say about agricultural development in Africa! It was merely farming by talking, a pest that has long plagued Africa.


African Agriculture

A contrarian view of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa

Chido Makunike

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's baby, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) has been around long enough that no one can fairly say it is not making some positive contributions to farmers in the countries where it has its projects.

At it's just ended Africa Green Revolution Forum, held in Tanzania, AGRA pulled out all its publicity and media-influencing guns to press home the contention that they are simply pure-hearted do-gooders motivated by nothing else than what is beneficial to Africa's small scale farmers.

Why then should such a noble-sounding project still be treated with such deep suspicion by many? (Gasp) Is it not almost sacrilege to doubt the good intentions of Bill Gates and Kofi Annan, to accuse them of being marketing hucksters for Monsanto?

You would not find any hint of an answer to this question in the orgy of self-congratulation that was AGRA's Tanzania meeting, nor in the breathlessly, unquestioningly lapdog style of the reports of the meeting that followed in most media. The media seemed to have been invited simply to provide cheering and adulation for whatever AGRA said. Almost none of the many similar articles that have followed the meeting have deviated from the script of AGRA as the latest of many efforts over the years to come to 'save' Africa and its agriculture.

So what exactly is the beef that many have with AGRA's claimed do-goodism?

AGRA has so swamped and bamboozled much of the African media that this is rarely asked. Any outfit that comes into Africa flashing money as a 'donor' gets a free pass, no questions asked. Strangely enough, the occasional voices one hears giving an alternative, cautionary view of the whole AGRA approach are from the United States, by various activists who are less willing than most of Africa's own media to treat the Gates Foundation's media-sponsored thrust as gospel.

AGRA has wisely chosen to downplay its support for gene modified crops, knowing that this is still a controversial subject in much of Africa, and remembering the early accusations that its main mission was helping the 'hijacking and controlling of Africa's food supply by making farmers dependent on GM seeds.'

A group of international activist organizations that coalesce under the umbrella of Friends of the Earth have been one of the most active and consistent at explaining their gripe with the Gates Foundation's AGRA.

Says a representative of Friends of the Earth Nigeria, "Donors controlling the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) are representing the interests of biotechnology corporations rather than African small farmers. It is time African Governments stop bowing to corporate donors and instead put farmers in the driver's seat."

In short, the charge is that rather than have the best interests of African small scale farmers at heart, the Gates Foundation and AGRA's primary interest is to create new markets for U.S. and European agribusiness corporations with which they are allied.

Suppose that were true. Apart from the Gates Foundation not being quite as philanthropic as they like to appear, what would be so wrong with that? Is there an inherent contradiction between fronting for seed, fertilizer and other western agribusiness companies and giving small scale African farmers a meaningful leg up?

The answer of many critics of the Gates Foundation/AGRA model of agricultural intervention is that yes, the two are incompatible, partly because of the vastly uneven bargaining powers of the two (US/European agribusiness vs. small scale African farmers.) So uneven, and so differing in their whole philosophies of life/livelihood that it is not possible to claim to be reconciling their interests, the argument goes.

Therefore, say the critics, the call of Gates Foundation/AGRA for African farmers to adopt methods of farming which will necessarily mean more dependence on products (seed, fertilizer, pesticides) that western agribusiness corporations dominate the production of is not as 'innocent' as it may sound. Once that dependence sets in, and once the built-in subsidies of AGRA-like 'projects' have fallen away, how will these farmers continue to afford these products?

In all the countless agricultural projects that Africa has been a testing ground for over decades, no one has yet been able to figure out a way for small scale farmers to increase production/income to levels that they can on their own keep up with the (ever-rising) prices of manufactured inputs. The issue of how responsible it is to devise donor-funded pilot projects to hook farmers onto inputs they simply won't be able to sustainably afford once the 'project' expires and the donor pulls out is entirely legitimate.

You would not expect this issue to be brought up at AGRA's recent Tanzania talk shop. But one would have hoped that at least a few amongst the African media from several countries that was roped into the forum would have found the courage to stick their necks out just a little bit to ask this question on behalf of their readers! That almost none of them have done so, choosing instead to be uncritically awed by Gates Foundation/AGRA propaganda, is not only shameful, it is almost criminal.

Malawi is an example of a country currently in the news for grappling with this exact problem, as have many other countries before it. Yields certainly go up when small scale farmers are availed of subsidized (by government or through AGRA-type projects of one kind or another) inputs, but (1) the subsidies are almost always short-term because of their expense and (2) it almost never happens that inputs-access and yield gains can be sustained after those subsidies are lifted.

What to do then? Abandon the AGRA-targeted farmers to their old low-yield farming methods because the Gates Foundation has shareholding in a giant agribusiness company with a poor public image like Monsanto, or because those farmers might not be able to continue buying the fancy inputs after AGRA pulls out?

The argument of AGRA critics like Friends of the Earth is that there are 'agro-ecological' methods accessible to the farmers to enable them to achieve the same yield gains as the AGRA high-inputs methods. Putting those agro-ecological methods to work in the field is far from as easy and straightforward as the activists sometimes make it sound, so amongst the many grains of truth of their arguments are also a lot of holes.

Some of the anti-AGRA activists are motivated as much by ideology as by interest or knowledge of the day to day reality of farming, so sometimes they sound shrill and unrealistically inflexible in what they say should be 'allowed' in growing crops. There are probably relatively few farmers, especially those struggling at the bottom ends of productivity and survival, who can afford or have the luxury of being as purely ideological as the activists often are. Making a living from the soil is such a hard challenge that most farmers will employ a combination of all the best methods at their disposal at any given time.

That means, for instance, that they may solely use agro-ecological methods partly because of their benefits, but also partly because they cannot afford fertilizer. If you donate or subside the fertilizer to them, most will gladly use it, usually in combination with the 'agro-ecological' methods they normally rely on, but sometimes (unfortunately) they will rely solely on the fertilizer if they are given or can afford enough of it. Are these agro-ecological or high-inputs AGRA-type farmers? These are false categories and demarcations that make sense to various flavours of activists and bureaucrats, but probably to very few farmers.

More often than not, what informs what methods a farmer uses is, 'What inputs/methods that I currently have access to will maximise my yields?,' rather than, 'Am I an AGRA-type farmer or am I a Friend of the Earth type of farmer?'

The main points of this post are to suggest that:

(1) There is nothing essentially new about the Gates Foundation/AGRA green revolution methodologies in Africa, except perhaps the new trick of a blanket propaganda effort through a surprisingly compliant African media. Increasing yields through the use of hybrid seed, fertilizer and pesticides has probably been tried in every African country at one time or another-until the subsidy money ran out, farmers could no longer afford the unsubsidised inputs and fell back to their old farming methods.

The Gates Foundation/AGRA's real 'success' will only be apparent after they pull out of the areas of their current projects. It will then become clear how long the farmers can carry on the AGRA-taught high-inputs methods when they have to purchase them on their own at full market prices. That is the green-revolution-in-Africa riddle that no one has been able to crack yet. It remains to be seen if agri-whiz kids Bill Gates and Kofi Annan have the answer that has escaped everybody else.

(2) The harsher critics of the Gates Foundation/AGRA seem to really believe them to be cynical, diabolical actors who are consciously, knowingly manipulating poor African farmers for the ultimate benefit of the Monsanto in which they (Gates Foundation) are part owners. But even if this view is unfair and extreme, and even if they are genuinely primarily do-gooders, rather than an advance marketing team-to-Africa for Monsanto et al, many of the questions about the fundamental long term and widespread workability/sustainability of the high-inputs model of farming for small holders under the economic conditions prevailing for most African farmers are entirely legitimate, and remain dodged by AGRA. No amount of positive spin they are able to buy or sponsor in African newspapers will change the day of reckoning for that previously tried and failed model.

Whether that model has worked somewhere else is only relevant if you are able to replicate the success conditions of that somewhere else. There is little that AGRA has revealed about its interventions to suggest that it has done that, or that the wide range of those conditions is even within the purview of a donor project to change.

None of this is to suggest that AGRA is 'bad' (or even evil, as some of those who ascribe to it the marketing-for-Monsanto label argue) or that there will be no long-term benefits from its investments and projects. If they are humble, flexible, willing to learn from countless previous failed projects and if they are also lucky, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa may well be able to make an incremental, evolutionary contribution to agricultural development in Africa (training of scientists, imparting of general business skills, etc,etc).

Comparing what AGRA is doing to what has been tried before all over Africa under different names makes me doubtful that there is any farming revolution at their instigation in the offing. The arrogance of not being willing to learn from and take on board the lessons of why methods almost identical to its current efforts did not work where so many other needed conditions were not in place is a needless waste of money and effort.

African Agriculture

Yet another African green revolution talk shop scheduled for Tanzania

If committment to solving a problem could be measured by the number of conferences devoted to it, Africa would have had countless 'green revolutions' in the last few decades. The continent would be bursting with crop surpluses, causing all kinds of economic and other 'revolutions.'

Alas, talk is cheap but translating it into action, not so easy.

The Bill and Melinda Gates-funded Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) is organizing a meeting for September 26 to 28 in Arusha, Tanzania.

While controversial and hotly debated, AGRA has practical projects underway in several countries. But whether yet another talk shop dominated by besuited bureaucrats (i.e. there will be few or no actual farmers in sight) adds anything at all to its efforts is debatable.

The usual formula of such conferences is of like-minded people re-enforcing and validating each others' views, ignoring or disparaging critical voices and generally congratulating themselves (awards) on how they 'get it' and nobody else does. Will this event be any different from the typical conferences put on by all shades of agricultural ideologues?

The listed topics of discussion have all been addressed in hundreds of previous conferences by an alphabet soup of organizations over the years. It will be interesting to see what new pearls of wisdom might emerge from this latest talk shop.

Not to worry though. Some positive results are guaranteed. The views around beautiful, scenic Arusha will be breathtaking as always, there will be much friendly backslapping and networking, and the beer and wine are likely to be well chilled. A good time will no doubt be had by all.

African Agriculture   

Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa unsurprisingly deeply embedded in G8 plan

It was hard not to notice how the thinking behind the G8 nations’  New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, recently announced by U.S. president Barack Obama, sounds so similar to that of the initiatives so far spearheaded by the Bill and Melinda Gates-funded Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA.)

Indeed, the G8 plan seems to have been heavily influenced by AGRA-type thinking. So it was not surprising when it was announced that AGRA ‘was given a key role in the G8's next phase of a shared commitment to achieve global food security. The Scaling Seeds and Other Technologies Partnership, part of the new initiative focused on increasing agricultural food production in Africa, will be housed at AGRA and will focus on strengthening Africa's seed sector.’

To those who believe these initiatives are a welcome addition to local initiatives to give more support to African agriculture, this is welcome pooling of resources. To those who fear that they represent a new type of corporate-led agricultural neo-colonialism, the ganging up of AGRA-like initiatives with the money and influence of the governments of G8 nations on weak, easily donor-influenced African governments is a nightmare scenario.

Seed and who controls it is a major area of ideological contestation between pro and anti-AGRA/green revolution people. It also is a huge business opportunity that remains largely untapped in most of Africa, as Monsanto, Syngenta and many others have noted. These and many other similar companies were very quick to issue sugary Press statements crowing about their eagerness to participate in the G8’s announced focus on private sector ‘investment’ in Africa’s agriculture.

‘Strengthening Africa’s seed sector’ is a deceptively innocuous phrase that can mean almost anything depending on whether you’re AGRA, Monsanto or a small scale African farmer.

The banding together of AGRA and the G8 on their vision of what Africa’s agriculture ‘needs’ is a either a cause for great celebration, or an occasion to be very afraid.

Which is it?

African Agriculture

African media's frequent failure to pose the tough questions to AGRA

‘We are set to double income of African smallholder farmers.’

That is the bold claim that makes up the heading of an article in the March 12 edition of The Vanguard (Nigeria) newspaper following a ‘phone chat’ with Joseph DeVries, executive director of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).

Among other things, DeVries talks about AGRA’s Programme in Africa’s Seed Systems (PASS) to increase the delivery of seeds to farmers in the countries in which Africa operates, although it typically, lazily, falsely refers to ‘Africa’ as if every corner of this huge continent of more than 50 countries is going to be reached by the project.

Whether it is the failure of reporters to do their job by asking for more precise information about which necessarily tiny parts of ‘Africa’ programmes like this specifically mean, or the desire of promoters of such projects to make them seem much grander than could possibly be, the loose use of ‘Africa’ is disconcerting and deeply misleading about the reach of such programmes.

We are told that a recent $56 million grant to PASS ‘will dramatically increase Africa’s capacity to breed, produce and disseminate quality seed of staple food crops such as maize, rice, cassava, beans, sorghum, millet and other staples. The programme is educating a new generation of plant breeders and seed specialists, improving extension services to share information about new alternatives, expanding seed production
facilities, and strengthening agro-dealer networks.’

These are all obviously positive things to do, although the interviewer neglects to get into whether all these wonderful things are to be accomplished by capacity building African institutions throughout the chain from seed production to delivery to the farmers, or whether it is mainly to simply set up local distribution chains for foreign seed suppliers. Ostensibly there is no difference, but in reality one has the potential to really strengthen local agriculture in the participating countries, while the other may mainly deliver millions more people involved in farming in Africa to the doors of corporates in the USA and Europe.

This gets to the crux of why not everybody sees AGRA as an ‘innocent’ philanthropic initiative, but instead as a stealth strategy for foreign agribusiness to control Africa’s seed supply.

Without at least posing questions related to this issue to DeVries, the Vanguard’s article comes off as merely another of the propaganda pieces for AGRA that much of the media all across Africa disturbingly distribute. It is free public relations on behalf of AGRA rather than real journalism by these publications for their readers.

Embarrassingly silly, softball, kindergarten questions like the Vanguard's 'Will this programme bring hunger to an end in Africa?' do not even particularly do any favors for AGRA itself, even though it may be delighted to only be asked the kind of things it can easily fend off with stock public relations mumbo jumbo phrases.

African Agriculture

Gates Foundation and Monsanto: when a non-profit gets in bed with the enemy

For opponents of GM crops in particular and of Monsanto’s business methods in general, whatever good work the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is doing in the areas of health and agriculture around the world is neutralized by its shareholding in the famous/infamous/notorious giant seed company.

 The Gates Foundation weakly argues that its philanthropic and business arms are quite separate and do not influence each other. The many anti-GM crops people who are unconvinced by this find it much more logical to see the foundation, through its Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), as part of the early work for Monsanto, a company with a generally poor image, to get a foothold in and eventually dominate the seed market in Africa, with consequences the opponents believe will be dire for African farmers.

The Monsanto-Gates Foundation link is not yet a big talking point even in the African countries where AGRA has a prominent presence. In pitifully, willfully, irresponsibly donor-dependent Africa, AGRA is just another exciting ‘donor project.’ Donor projects bring in some much-needed, hard-to-come-by money and jobs, so are therefore not to be scrutinized too closely or questioned.

'Shhhh, don't publicly express doubt about their projects; the donors might get upset and leave in a huff with their money.'

But in the home country of the Gates Foundation and Monsanto, bands of activists loudly interrogate what they consider to be an unholy alliance, as implied by the provocative heading of an article by Paul Haeder, ‘When a non-profit gets in bed with the enemy.’

He writes, ‘More than 40 people, as part of a global day of action against Monsanto, recently marched to and around the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation “campus” to deliver a letter asking the Foundation to divest from Monsanto (the Foundation has more than $23 million in Monsanto stock as part of a very odd mix of companies in their portfolio).’

Taking no prisoners, Haeder continues, ‘Trying to eradicate developing countries’ diseases, forcing genetically modified farming into Africa…are just a few of the Gates Foundation’s larger goals…’

Haeder doesn’t hide his feelings about AGRA’s godfather!

He asks, ‘What’s all the protesting about?’

And he answers, ‘According to Dena Hoff, a diversified family farmer… “The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust’s purchase of Monsanto shares indicates that the Gates Foundation’s interest in promoting the company’s seed is less about philanthropy than about profit-making. The Foundation is helping to open new markets for Monsanto, which is already the largest seed company in the world.”

To those few who may not be aware of it, Haeder helpfully points out that ‘Monsanto, who created the dioxin-leeching defoliant Agents Orange and Blue, is one of the main drivers of genetically modified foods.’

He then goes into greater detail about several now well-known criticisms of GM crops, focusing attention on what Haeder and many others see as the basic incongruity of the Gates Foundation being between the bed sheets with Monsanto.

After these two entities have finished consummating their tryst, what kind of agricultural offspring is their romp going to produce in Africa?

Even as an increasing number of Africa’s weak governments fall in line with the GM crops gospel (sugar coated with donor aid, a drug African governments are now helplessly hooked on), many more people in Africa are pondering just the sort of questions that Haeder poses.

Paul Haeder's article is long and detailed, and provides plenty of food for thought about just what the Gates Foundation, its AGRA and their friends, partners and collaborators are bringing to Africa.

African Agriculture

New criticisms of AGRA and of Bill Gates' support for GM crops in Africa

by Chido Makunike

The deep pockets of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have in a few years made the organization a powerful, impossible-to-ignore voice in thinking about agricultural development in Africa.

Knowing the strong feelings against GM crops in many parts of Africa and the suspicions that the organization was in collusion with GM seed companies like Monsanto to dominate Africa's seed supply, the Gates Foundation has been careful to downplay its support for the technology. They have instead so far focused and mainly publicized less controversial aspects of their agricultural interventions in various African countries.

However, the Gates Foundation's support for various GM research programs quietly continues, and it would not be surprising if its tactical de-emphasis of GM crops in its advocacy changes. Despite continuing opposition in many countries, it is also a fact that GM technology is gaining increasing acceptability by many African governments who were implacably opposed before.

Writing an opinion piece in the Seattle Times, the hometown paper of the Gates Foundation, Glenn Ashton faults Bill Gates' support of GM crops for Africa on two grounds. The first is the commonly made argument by GM opponents that focus on various "agro-ecological" methods is better-suited to Africa than the 'silver bullet' of biotechnology.

Ashton says GM crops have not delivered their promoters' promise of higher and yet more cost-effective yields for poor countries. Citing the Gates Foundation-supported work on drought-tolerant GM maize, he says there are local non-GM maize varieties that deliver similar or better results at less cost for poor farmers.

Ashton's second argument for opposing the Gates Foundation's support of GM crops is that, "Gates sponsors compliant African organizations whose work with multinational agricultural corporations like Monsanto undermines existing grass-roots efforts to improve local production methods."

The point about efforts like the Gates Foundation-funded Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) being 'sponsored compliant African organizations' is an interesting one. It is a charge that carries a heavy punch in an Africa that sometimes uncomfortably balances welcoming foreign assistance in various sectors, but is also historically deeply wary of control and manipulation by outsiders posing as benefactors.

Sensitive to this dichotomy and to charges of being African tools of foreign forces with intentions that may not be as noble as they claim, AGRA is careful to brand itself as 'African-led.' But its being fronted by Ghanaian former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and having many distinguished Africans on its staff cannot take away the reality that its existence depends on the largesse of foreigners with a particular ideological view of the world in general, and of how agriculture and 'development' should be structured in particular.

In such a scenario, an uncomfortable but inevitable question is who has the upper hand if and when there is a clash of views or visions between AGRA's 'African leaders' and its American financiers? It is partly a rhetorical question, but that it constantly lurks in the background illustrates how regardless of whatever successes it will claim, AGRA can never quite successfully claim to be an African initiative. That may not matter for the purposes of achieving an improvement in the agriculture of the countries in which AGRA operates, but it is centrally relevant to the issue of by who and where decisions such as whether to focus on GM seeds or not are made: in Africa by AGRA's African 'leaders;' or in Seattle, Washington, USA, by its American bank rollers?

Its opponents sometimes use its dependence on foreign funding unfairly; as a club with which to browbeat AGRA. Yet ironically, many of the African organizations that stand in bitter opposition to AGRA and the Gates Foundations' whole pro-technology agricultural thrust are themselves dependent on foreign donors. It could just as legitimately be asked how independent they are of their benefactors in what they support or oppose, and whether that foreign dependency does not also undermine grass roots, locally-driven 'development.'

AGRA's donor dependency may be a relevant issue, but it is far from unique to it. It is a wider problem that plagues activist/advocacy African organizations across the full ideological spectrum.

However, there is also no doubting the reality that through AGRA, powerful and wealthy foreigners have placed themselves at the center of a debate about agricultural development which should be led and dominated by Africans, regardless of how well-meaning the foreigners regard themselves to be. This would be less of an issue if it was clear that the foreign supporters were merely providing financial, technical backup for an agricultural agenda that the Africans were largely agreed on, in full charge of and spearheading.

In this case, there is suspicion, which AGRA has not been able to fully counter, that the Africans are not just being so 'assisted' by the Gates Foundation, but are being fundamentally directed by it as well in terms of the basic thrust. For AGRA, this is one unavoidable downside of the upside of having a generous foreign donor with deep pockets.

Unless AGRA is able to overcome its critics by showing incontrovertible evidence of the success of its various interventions, this is a suspicion that will continue to plague how it is perceived. Even then, there is unlikely to be easy agreement on how to define 'success.'

If X group of farmers in country Y increase their yields by Z percent because of an AGRA program, that is one definition of a successful outcome. But to others, if that definition of success also means those farmers must now always be sure to buy a pack of a certain hybrid or GM seed, pesticides or fertilizers, that could be regarded as at best a very flawed success, given how many previous trials in many countries have shown how difficult it is for poor farmers to sustain this kind of heavily inputs-dependent cultivation consistently, year after year.

In a letter to the Seattle Times, Stephen Bartlett criticizes "not just the methodology of Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, but the top-down mode of operation at play."

Bartlett writes that that, "The social, economic and political factors surrounding rural communities are as important to address as the specific technical issues, if not more. What Gates' AGRA, with its emphasis on so-called 'improved' seeds and access to chemical fertilizer, fails to address is the context that holds farmers back and constrains their productivity."

He continues, "Worse, the reliance on top-down 'experts' and supplies of inputs, reinforces in the minds of African farmers that what they lack is more important than what they have. It dis-empowers them and makes them dependent on suppliers. GM seeds and AGRA's close economic linking with Monsanto just reinforce to objective observers how much of this 'development' agenda is corporate driven, a closed loop between the boardrooms and the billionaire philanthropists."

These are thoughtful points. An irony that becomes apparent is that this is a debate about agricultural development in Africa, being conducted far from the African field of action in an American newspaper, and by people who are not typically thought of as Africans! It seems to emphasize the point about AGRA being very far from being 'African-led' at conceptual, ideological and policy level; even if it is largely African-staffed.

One rarely or almost never sees or hears a similar robust public debate taking place in the African countries in which AGRA has a presence, with the predominant pro and anti-voices being African, as should be the case. This may partly reflect both the inadequacy of African efforts at self-help, and partly perhaps also an unwillingness of Africa's Western 'development partners'/donors to really pay attention when the Africans do speak.

It may also be a reflection of the silencing power of a very wealthy and suddenly very influential donor, The Gates Foundation . Even where there are misgivings about AGRA, how many African governments/countries are going to risk upsetting a philanthropic organization that is prepared and willing to inject millions of dollars into their economies?

Therefore, the 'debate' between pro-AGRA/Gates Foundation thinking and their opponents is at a fundamental level very far from being that between equals. Long before they come to the debating room, one side has already significantly influenced the whole debating environment in its favor, by the sheer power of the effect of its money. This is even considering the many internal weaknesses (other than lack of money) of the groups that claim that 'agro-ecological' methods are 'the answer' for what ails African agriculture, and that Africa should be the sole continent that rejects most biotechnology solutions for its agriculture.

It is interesting and revealing that even the people giving anti-AGRA arguments are mostly non-Africans speaking on behalf of Africans, rather than Africans speaking for themselves! In this regard the pro and anti-reactions to the Gates Foundation/AGRA relationship resemble all the other innumerable Western donor/African recipient 'development partnership' relationships that have existed for decades, but with very little to show for themselves in terms of positive results for the Africans. One almost gets the impression that the Africans are considered by their foreign 'partners' as merely props in the drama of their own 'development.'

Even if there were Africans within AGRA structures who were troubled by this, does the inherent inequality of the donor/recipient relationship realistically allow them to have any voice? Could an African scientist employed by 'African-led' AGRA feel free to express an anti-GM opinion and keep his/her job, knowing the financier's support of GM technology? Or is the choice merely between zipping one's mouth or hitting the road in search of another job?

There are signs that the Gates Foundation is less cocky and more inclusive than before in its ideas about what will work best to spur agricultural development in Africa. They seem a little bit less the know-it-all they once seemed to think themselves to be on this complex, vexing subject. That attitude may have been part of the reason many groups in Africa working on agricultural and general development issues reacted so negatively to AGRA from the start.

On the other side, the opponents of the Gates Foundation and AGRA seem so implacably, emotionally opposed to them that they are unwilling to give them credit for even non-GM projects where it would seem the methods and possible benefits are non-controversial. That is part of the price AGRA has to pay for inviting itself to the African agricultural development party, in the process displacing previously entrenched and largely un-challenged activists and 'experts.'

In theory the shaking up of the debate by the rich new player should be beneficial to African agriculture, at the very least by spurring new questions and thinking. In practice, the Gates Foundation has made itself so powerful and influential in the debate about African agricultural development that alternative voices and ideas now increasingly struggle to make themselves heard.

Almost regardless of what happens on the farming fields that can be attributed to their contribution, the relatively large footprint that the Gates Foundation and its AGRA have bought themselves in Africa with their ready access to money will inevitably remain controversial and continue to spur many questions and raise many passions.

African Agriculture

AGRA project to improve farmer yields in Ghana begins to bear fruit

by James Karuga

Farmers in Tamale, Northern Ghana are beginning to enjoy the fruits of a three year breadbasket initiative launched in 2010, aimed at doubling yields, increasing the food security and incomes of around 250,000 smallholder farmers, and creating 15,000 jobs in agriculture-related sectors including agro-dealership, marketing, transport, and processing.

The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) is supporting Ghana's Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA) to implement the project at community level.

For example, farmers are being taught to plant crops for higher yields: in line and correctly spaced, rather than scattering them randomly. Farmers are also taught about manure, composting, appropriate fertilizers and the quantities to apply. Farmers involved in the initiative are required to have at least one acre of land in order to access credit facilities from the bank to acquire farm inputs, such as fertilizers and quality seed from agro-dealers.

AGRA acts as guarantor for loans and, at harvest, farmers pay for the inputs and services, like ploughing, by selling part of their yield to local traders or markets. Initially, during land preparation, AGRA also strikes a deal with local plough owners paying them directly, so they don't demand payment from farmers who can't afford the service.

When farmers harvest, but are unable to market their produce due to oversupply, they are able to pay off the loan initially advanced to them by giving AGRA part of their harvest, equivalent to the initial loan extended to them as inputs and services. If farmers get low yields and are unable to pay back the loan, either with crop or cash, AGRA doesn't demand payment.

By obtaining bank credit, with support from AGRA, farmers are able to acquire higher yielding non-subsidized seed than the indigenous, low yield varieties they traditionally grow. For example, according to one farmer, Obatampa, a new improved maize seed that's been crossbred with a local variety, yields three to four times more than local indigenous varieties, averaging twelve 90kg bags per acre. It is also fast maturing, taking 110 to 120 days compared to 150 days for local varieties.

To ensure farmers continue to have markets, AGRA is working with bodies…which have market linkages to various purchasing companies. They also provide warehouse facilities for farmer members lacking sufficient quality storage.

The initiative has suffered some setbacks. For instance, some subsidized fertilizer has been smuggled to neighboring Burkina Faso and poor feeder roads are delaying timely delivery of fertilizers.

full article…New Agriculturalist

Ghana crop research institute receives irrigation grant

The Crops Research Council in Ghana has been awarded US $289,000.00 to install an irrigation system for its activities by the The Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).

This will make it possible for the government-established research institution to conduct crop research all year round. 

AGRA is sponsoring a three-year project in cowpea, groundnut, cassava, maize and rice improvements at the CRI.

According to Dr. Hans Adu-Dapaah, the Director of the CRI, the establishment of the irrigation facility “would enable us to produce seed at the right time… and it will cut down the number of years it takes to come up with a crop variety.”

Construction of a 1.8 million dollar biotechnology laboratory at the Institute is also scheduled for completion in November this year.

more... 

Lime use improves maize harvest on acidic Kenyan soils

by Isaiah Esipisu

As the world’s worst food security crisis continues across the Horn of Africa, including in Kenya, some smallholder farmers in the western part of the country are still feeding their families with last year’s abundant harvest.

This is thanks to an agricultural programme focusing on reviving the fertility of the soil in the region.

According to David Mbakaya, a soil scientist at the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI), early findings from on going research established that the soil in Western Province was too acidic for maize production due to climatic factors and the overuse of nitrogenous fertilisers.

"From field trials we have discovered that the average pH levels in soil within the region stands at 4.5 – meaning that such soil can hardly support growing maize," said Mbakaya.

Maize can withstand mild acidity ranging from 5.5 to 6.5.

Research scientists at KARI – Kakamega branch, with funding from the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, encouraged farmers to neutralise their soil using lime - a soil additive made from pulverised limestone or chalk. It is cheaply available in Kenya.

"I tried liming my land for two seasons, and the results are astounding," said Isaac Ochieng Okwanyi, a 29-year-old father of two.

Using half of the 2.5 hectares of land he inherited from his father, Okwanyi began growing maize using the same phosphorous and ammonium fertilisers his parents had used for years before him. He harvested four 90-kilogramme bags of maize that season.

But when his farm was selected for liming trials by the KARI team, Okwanyi said, "The entire community, including myself, were very sceptical because we did not believe that what looked like cement (lime) could change anything," said Okwanyi.

"... from what I saw, I can attest that I have never seen such a big harvest in this community," he said.

From one hectare of land he harvested 32 bags of maize, which was far higher than the four bags he had harvested from the same land the previous season.

"The proof of last year’s harvest is evident. I have since moved from a tiny grass thatched house to a nice semi-permanent house," he said pointing to his new house.

Together with five other farmers who had successful harvests, Okwanyi opened a grain bank at the local Sega market, where he and the other farmers withdraw small portions of their stored grain for domestic use.

"We created this bank because of security reasons. With the biting hunger at the moment, it is possible for people to break into our semi-permanent houses in order to steal maize," he said.

He has two bags remaining for his domestic consumption, while his next harvest is only a few weeks away.

There are currently 3,000 farmers from northern Kakamega and 2,000 from Siaya in Western Province on the trial.

Western Province is one of the regions in Kenya that has a stable rainfall all year round. But according to Dr. Marin Odendo, the senior research officer at the Socio-economics and Statistics Division at KARI, the region imports food for six months of the year.

"Most of the farmers in Kakamega are smallholder farmers. Yet this should not be the case because there is growing evidence that smallholder farmers hold the key to the world’s food security," said Odendo.

He is confident that in the near future there will be a huge increase in harvests in the region.

IPS News

Gates Foundation official visits Ethiopia, answers green revolution, GMO questions

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation aims to innovate and lead in its philanthropic endeavours. With its 36.7 billion dollar endowment, the Gates Foundation is the largest charity in the world. The Foundation’s success is largely attributed to the business acumen of its founders, Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda, both of whom have introduced the notion of “philantrocapitalism.”

This is largely due to the Foundation’s underlying philosophy of being a “catalyst for change,” according to Sylvia Mathews, president of the Global Development Program.

Mathews was deputy director of the powerful Office of Management and Budget during the Bill Clinton Administration; she also served as Clinton’s deputy chief of staff. Mathews joined the Foundation in 2001, and her current responsibilities require her to design and implement programmes to combat poverty across the world through agricultural development and financial services to the poor.

But these projects are not without controversy. There are critics who allege that the Foundation wants to turn the continent into a test ground for biotech companies in the West.

While visiting Ethiopia, Mathews sat with Tamrat G. Giorgis, managing editor of Fortune, on July 17, 2011 to reflect on why the foundation is criticised for trying to do good.


Fortune: Let me go to your flagship programme, which is introducing the second green revolution in Africa. The tenet of this programme is to introduce sustainable growth in the agriculture sector by combining technology, innovation, and skill. But I understand that many people were not happy with the plan. Why?

Mathews: You may be able to understand that better than us.

Fortune: I am sure you are aware of these criticisms.

Mathews:Yes, we are aware, but we always want to hear more. I think some of the criticisms stemmed from issues with the initial green revolution. Whereas the initial green revolution saved millions of lives, it had some problems related to sustainability defined by environmental concerns. There is also a valid criticism on how the water table has been exhausted in India. We are working on all of those issues. We are probably the largest single and private donor for organic farming. We believe there are a range of solutions for the smallholder farmer that need to be examined and we are investing in a variety of them.

A second area that we, as an institution, receive criticism for is on the agricultural front; namely, on our engagement with Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). We believe that there are suitable solutions that farmers need; and when we engage in breeding, we do everything from conventional breeding to what is called marker-assisted breeding, which gives us the ability to understand what things a plant has to offer.

And then, we do transgenic, which is the part that I think many people have a problem with, but we believe it is a part of the solution. We believe it needs to be safe; that countries need to make their own decisions; and that these countries need the regulatory capability to make those decisions. We have funded Michigan State University, along with NePAD (New Partnership for Africa’s Development), to provide grants and technical assistance here in the continent of Africa for those countries which seek regulatory assistance, so that their scientists have the capability and equipment to conduct testing.

There is a third, which has to do with the question of how hybrid seeds relate to corporations and companies that sell it. But, again, we believe that choice is up to the farmer.

Fortune: Don’t you think that it is valid criticism? I understand that the Trust [Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Trust has bought 27 million dollars worth of shares in a seed breeding company, Monsanto] It has a substantial investment in one of the corporations which is involved in the seed business. Therefore, while you are promoting this project in the name of charity, there is another corporation, where you have a vested financial interest in, which sells products to farmers you support. Are you not promoting a corporate interest here?

Mathews: The intellectual property for all the works that Monsanto does on drought-resistant gene is free. The company is losing money on this effort. We keep our investments and the work of the Foundation separate. It is what we choose to do, as we believe, the Foundation should focus on the issues we are discussing here.

Fortune: You have a Trust which manages the Foundation’s endowment, investing in companies with high returns. You also have the Foundation, which is going around the world, trying to support poor people and overcome poverty. But the criticism comes when the companies your Trust invests in are doing things that undermine the wellbeing of the very poor people the Foundation is trying to help.

Mathews: In the case of Monsanto, the investment is very small relative to our portfolio. But I do not think that is actually a relevant point. The more relevant point is that, I am not sure I understand what Monsanto does in undermining the poor. It gave the intellectual property away for free, a right which costs an American farmer a tremendous amount of money, but would not cost an African farmer anything. How is Monsanto undermining the poor here?

Fortune: By making them dependent on the very product that it is selling?

Mathews: It is the farmers’ choice whether or not to buy hybrid. A farmer can use Open Pollinated Variety (OPV) maize, or use a hybrid. That should be the farmer’s choice...out of an economic rationale...

The idea that farmers become hooked is false. We believe that putting choice in the farmer’s hand is a better approach than dictating what the farmer should do.

Fortune: I read a statement made by one of your officers a while back; he said he would like to see many African companies flourish in the African seed selling market. Is the Foundation interested in supporting such companies in Ethiopia, for instance, by providing financial support? How would it work?

Mathews: Given that we are a large organization based in Seattle, most of our work is done through intermediaries. 

AGRA will be supporting the agro-dealers and the seed producers that are producing the largest volume of seed on the continent of Africa; and they are private. That would be a place where we could add value, and the support comes in a number of forms. There are direct grants that AGRA does; it also provides technical assistance to help these countries think about a concept known as the “business development portion.” AGRA will help with their financial management, set up their books, business practices, as well as give them direct cash support.

These seed companies, the agro-dealers and distributors, are springing up everywhere. In Mali, I have visited a woman who has started up a company that uses smaller seed packs, which is what farmers need in terms of their ability to pay.

Fortune: I understand the laws of Ethiopia prohibit the import and use of genetically modified food [GMO], which I see you are passionate about.

Mathews: Only six per cent of our financing goes to GMOs. The project has transgenic and non transgenic components. The benefits of these products are to the farmers. The changing lives of the poor will determine how people think about the laws. We respect the laws of the countries and that will determine what they want and where they want to be on the GMO issue. But as I said, countries will make their own choices on what is good for them.

On the importation of seeds and the ability to move products across countries, we will probably be working on our policy. For instance, eight new breeds of pigeon pea have come out from Uganda. In the next two months, they will move to South Sudan because they do not have a law prohibiting it. For South Sudan, right now, the top quality pigeon pea breeding seeds will make a very big difference.

Fortune: Are you a grant providing agency or are you also involved in the actual operations that you support?

Mathews: We are a grant making agency, but we have active partners. I am sure some of our grantees would say we may be more active than they want us to be as a partner. For instance, an example of our deep engagement is with AGRA...

Fortune: Much of the allegations from your critics come as a result of their ideological worldview. They see the alignment of forces coming together against what they say is an imposition of a neo-liberal agenda on Africa. You have international financing organizations such as the IMF and the World Bank imposing policies. You have foundations, which are somehow in line with these international financing institutions. You have corporations, which are part of the whole foundation network, because the foundations come from these corporations. The concern is that for the first time, there is an alignment of these three groups imposing the interests of the West on Asia, Africa and the underdeveloped world, in order to control resources.

Mathews: We are hopeful that our role is for more forces to come together within the country. I think Ethiopia is a very good example of what we hope can happen in the agriculture sector. We hope to contribute support to the government in developing the sector. Both the strategy and the implementation are nationally owned and our job is to provide support in developing the strategy, helping get the transformation off the ground, and bring other partners to the table to fund the Ethiopian plan. We see ourselves as part of that triangle. But what drives off the relationship is what a country needs. Then the process would be on how you drag resources against that, and support the country with tools, technologies and funding to try and make achievements.

I appreciate the Washington Consensus problems, in terms of how the IMF and other agencies were driving certain standards and certain change. I also appreciate the concerns when corporations, or other parties, come in with certain view on resources.

Fortune: How do you feel when you come with funds to support projects, and you are subjected to these criticisms?

Mathews: Criticisms usually make you stronger and better if you stop and listen. It will make you more effective. You have to come with the mindset of pausing and listening to what the criticism is all about. Even in their exaggerated forms; criticisms are words of some kind. So we stop, listen and try to get to the core of the issue.

Fortune: You seem to give a lot of emphasis on the individual farmer’s choice; on whether or not to embrace what you are trying to introduce and your interest to improve their lives. But in a situation where they may have a state that is not accountable, or refuses to be accountable, and in a situation where the governance issue has a lot to do with the inability to make individual choices, how concerned are you with the governance issue and a government’s lack of accountability in countries where you work, including Ethiopia?

Mathews: There are places where there is not enough governance, at any level. There are places that are completely unstable, and those are places where we do not do much work. We do not work in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), for instance. We actually have great sympathy, but we are not engaged in the kind of work we do with Ethiopia.

Yes, we are concerned about it in a sense that one of the things we believe about our work is creating broad ownership. It is not that government leadership is central; however it is a necessary component, but it is not a sufficient component.

I think, what we do is try to make sure that we consistently have our eyes open and embed the work with people as much as possible. We fundamentally believe that when you empower people economically, you empower change because their knowledge, desires and everything moves. That is an important part of an evolving process, one that we can contribute to good governance.

Fortune: Do you believe there is a kind of political setting in Ethiopia that allows you to make a difference towards your goals?

Mathews: We feel it is sufficient, or we would not be working here. We hope we are a part of long-term positive change for the individual on the ground in this country, that we can support them in the change, because they are the change agents, not us.

full interview...Addis Fortune

Kenya urged to accept new technology to mitigate drought

by Catherine Karongo

Kenya has been challenged to embrace new technologies in order to avert the recurrent food crises.

This comes in the wake of a controversial debate on whether the country should allow import of genetically modified (GMO) maize.

Immediate former Vice president of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) Dr Akin Adesina said that the country should not run away from new scientific technologies that could improve food security.

“If you look at Kenya today, you always have a problem with drought in the north but if you have the power of science available to KARI (Kenya Agricultural Research Institute), and they can actually get a gene that can impart drought tolerance into maize, why not? Obviously that is going to solve the problem but you need to have scientists that are well trained and let them make the decisions,” he said.

Dr Adesina who is also the newly appointed Minister for Agriculture in Nigeria said the solution to the current food crisis was through adoption of new innovations.

“In almost every technology, there are risks. Even life itself is a risk. You must be able to weigh the risks and the benefits to see whether the benefits far outweigh the risks,” he remarked.

In the past three weeks, there has been mixed reactions on an intended importation of genetically modified maize to deal with the current food crisis that has affected an estimated 3.5 million Kenyans.

“I think in this entire hullabaloo about GMO, people miss the real issue, that science has the power to do a lot,” Dr Adesina opined. “What we need to do in my view is not to run away from science but to look at it very critically in the context of the challenges of food security that we face and then use regulations to determine what comes into the country by assessing all the risks.”

Those for adoption of GMO in the country argue that it is a technology that has been tried and proven safe in other parts of the world, while those opposed term the technology as unsafe.

“We should not use emotion to determine what science is,” Dr Adesina said. “Africa cannot be the last in everything; we need to join the pack that uses science and technology to address food problems,” he proposed.

Capital FM

Kenya research institute to launch high-yielding finger millet

by James Karuga

The Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (Kari) is conducting National Performance Trials (NPT) for the three, new, superior finger millet varieties, which researchers say will guarantee higher yields, tolerance to drought, striga weed and blast disease.


The new varieties...will initially be made available to seven largely finger millet growing regions in Western Kenya, which are currently growing indigenous varieties and improved variety which was released in the 1990s. The regions have a combined population of 2.8 million people living on millet farming.

Each of the seven regions yearly commits at least 1000 hectares to finger millet cultivation, though the Teso region commits more. Across the whole country, there are 65,000 hectares under finger millet cultivation.

But there are still shortages of the crop. Processing giants like Unga Kenya Limited are processing at 50 per cent below capacity due to the lack of raw material, and are also importing millet from Tanzania to compensate for the shortfall.

The indigenous varieties that most farmers are using yield between 500kg and 700kg per hectare, although with fertiliser optimum yields can reach 1600kg. The yield of the P224 hybrid variety released in the 1990s is higher, at up to 2500 kg per hectare, but only around 10,000 farmers are using it, as many peasant farmers do not know of it.

However, the new varieties will yield 1100kg to 2900kg per hectare and are also “drought escaping and mature early,” said Dr Oduori. From planting, these three varieties take 110 to 115 days to mature, while the conventional varieties take over 130 days. They also have better malting qualities and due to their higher nutritional value are ideal for making baby foods.

The seven regions lined up for the seed launch are Gucha, Busia, Kisii, Teso, Nyamira, Marakwet and Bungoma, which have at least 700ml of rainfall, which the crop needs to grow. However, the crop has “wide adaptability,” said Dr. Chrispus Oduori, KARI’s principal research officer. It can grow in hot Coastal regions as well as the highlands.

Finger millet delivers one annual harvest, with the planting season starting from the onset of the long rains in late February and harvesting in June to July.

The project’s managers also hope the finger millet project will offer a better alternative to maize. Finger millet has better postharvest storage traits than maize. Unlike maize, once stored it doesn’t need chemicals to ward off grain borers like weevils. Dried finger millet can also be stored for over 10 years, without spoiling or requiring preservative chemicals.

The stakeholders involved in the project are Masinde Muliro University, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Kenya Agricultural Commodities Exchange, which is training farmers in marketing techniques, and the Gene Bank of Kenya, which is storing the germplasm to use in improving the traits of the finger millet.

The finger millet project is funded by Alliance for a Green Revolution (AGRA while the McKnight Foundation has funded the technology dissemination.

Business Daily Africa

Ethiopia: Loopholes in land lease contracts raise many questions

Ethiopian analysts pick apart the published details of some of the large foreign land lease deals in their country at the Ethiopian Review.


http://www.ethiopianreview.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=27925&p=152600

UK-listed Zambian agri-concern to raise funds for expansion

by Andrew Johnson

Zambeef, the first Zambian company to float on London's AIM, is planning to join the market in a listing which will help it raise £34million.

Zambeef Products is a “farm to fork” company involved in growing, processing, distributing and retailing almost everything from beef to bread, oils to eggs and pork to chickens. Using broker Renaissance Capital, the float will take place later this month.

The money will be used to buy 123,550 acres of prime farming land in Zambia, currently owned by ETC Bio-Energy. Zambeef, which also has operations in Ghana and Nigeria, wants to limit its exposure to commodity prices and “erratic supply chains.”

full article...Express

AGRA seeks $60 million loan

by David Malingha Doya

The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, a promoter of small-scale farming on the continent, is in talks with the Islamic Development Bank for an $80 million loan, said Namanga Ngongi, the president of the organization.

The funds will be used to develop its projects on the continent and add to financing it has raised from three other lenders, Ngongi said in an interview yesterday from Dar es Salaam, the commercial capital. The Islamic Development Bank funds are expected to be secured this year, he said.

“Approval has already passed management level, and it’s now the board remaining,” he said.

AGRA, as the Nairobi-based organization is known, is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the U.K.’s Department for International Development. Money raised by the group funds projects in 14 countries including seed breading, buying fertilizers, and processing and marketing produce.

In 2009, Standard Bank Group Ltd., Africa’s biggest lender, said it would provide $100 million in loans over three years to small-scale farmers under AGRA. The alliance has since secured $50 million of funding from Equity Bank Ltd., Kenya’s largest bank by market value, and $10 million from the National Microfinance Bank of Tanzania Ltd., Ngongi said.

Africa needs to invest as much as $39 billion in agriculture annually to enable the industry to grow at a rate of 6 percent, the amount needed to eliminate food insecurity on the continent, he said. African governments currently allocate about 7.5 percent of their annual budgets to food production.

Since its inception four year ago, AGRA has helped start and support 42 seed companies expected to produce 40,000 metric tons of seeds this year from 25,000 tons last year, according to Ngongi.

“We expect that by 2018, 250,000 tons of seeds will be produced, able to plant 10 million hectares,” he said.

Bloomberg

Does Gates Foundation funding of media taint objectivity?

by Sandi Doughton and Kristi Heim

Did you catch ABC's recent special on an incubator to boost preemie survival in Africa and a new machine to diagnose tuberculosis in the developing world?

Perhaps you saw Ray Suarez's three-part series on poverty and AIDS in Mozambique on the PBS NewsHour. Or listened to Public Radio International's piece on the rationing of kidney dialysis in South Africa.

Beyond their subject matter, these reports have something else in common: They were all bankrolled by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Better-known for its battles against global disease, the giant philanthropy has also become a force in journalism. The foundation's grants to media organizations such as ABC and The Guardian, one of Britain's leading newspapers, raise obvious conflict-of-interest questions: How can reporting be unbiased when a major player holds the purse strings?

But direct funding of media organizations is only one way the world's most powerful foundation influences what the public reads, hears and watches.

To garner attention for the issues it cares about, the foundation has invested millions in training programs for journalists. It funds research on the most effective ways to craft media messages. Gates-backed think tanks turn out media fact sheets and newspaper opinion pieces. Magazines and scientific journals get Gates money to publish research and articles. Experts coached in Gates-funded programs write columns that appear in media outlets from The New York Times to The Huffington Post, while digital portals blur the line between journalism and spin.

The efforts are part of what the foundation calls "advocacy and policy." Over the past decade, Gates has devoted $1 billion to these programs, which now account for about a tenth of the giant philanthropy's $3 billion-a-year spending. The Gates Foundation spends more on policy and advocacy than most big foundations — including Rockefeller and MacArthur — spend in total.

Much of the money goes to analyses of policy questions, such as the best way to finance vaccines for poor countries. But the "advocacy" side of the equation is essentially public relations: an attempt to influence decision-makers and sway public opinion. The ultimate goal is to boost funding and focus from governments, businesses and other foundations for the battle against disease and poverty — particularly now, as Congress considers deep cuts in foreign aid.

"As big as the foundation is, there is no single area we work in where we can remotely succeed without other partners and actors," said Mark Suzman, head of policy and advocacy for the foundation's global-development programs.

While the aims may be laudable, the ability of one wealthy foundation to shape public discourse is troubling to some.

"Even if we were to satisfy ourselves that the Gates Foundation were utterly benign, it would still be worrisome that they wield such enormous propaganda power," said Mark Crispin Miller, professor of media, culture and communications at New York University.

Some of the foundation's approaches are controversial, such as its embrace of genetically modified crops and emphasis on technological fixes for health problems. Critics fear foundation funding of media will muffle those debates. And with only three trustees setting the overall strategy — Bill and Melinda Gates and fellow billionaire Warren Buffett — there's something "deeply anti-democratic" about such a concentration of influence, Miller said.

"We're not dealing with a lively discussion among players. We're dealing with one gigantic entity ... that seems to be very skilled at promoting its agenda," he said.

Foundation officials say they're not out to control the way the media cover global disease and poverty, or even the foundation's own programs. They just want increased visibility for life-and-death issues that often get ignored, especially in the face of shrinking newsroom budgets.

"We're trying to do everything we can to make sure people understand not just the need, but the opportunity, to make a huge difference in the lives of millions of people around the world," said Joe Cerrell, who oversees the foundation's policy, advocacy and communications work in Europe. "For us, it's about making sure that these stories get told."

There's nothing new about powerful organizations attempting to massage media and get attention for their causes.

"It would be naive to believe big-money foundations don't play the same game that corporations and other special interests do," said Marc Cooper, assistant professor at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism. "I don't find that inherently troubling."

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof recently argued that "good people engaging in good causes" need to sell the public on the need to take action when children are starving or being stunted by preventable disease.

No charity is better positioned to take on that challenge than Gates, with assets totaling more than $60 billion (including Buffett's donation) and Microsoft's media-savvy legacy to draw upon.

The foundation's direct funding for media and media programs, which so far totals nearly $50 million, initially followed the path taken by other foundations and corporations: Money for journalist training and for nonprofits such as NPR and PBS. But rather than providing general support, Gates usually stipulates reporting on the issues it cares about most: diseases such as HIV, malaria and TB; poverty in the developing world; and education in the United States.

The International Center for Journalists got nearly $6 million for a program that pairs veteran journalists with news organizations in Africa. One collaboration helped reverse a ban on midwives in Malawi by pointing out the hazards faced by pregnant women en route to clinics, said program supervisor Jerri Eddings. 484 developing-world journalists have been trained in reporting about AIDS through a Gates grant to the National Press Foundation.

At PBS' NewsHour, Suarez said a $3.6 million Gates grant has allowed him to cover stories that would otherwise have been out of reach, such as river blindness in Tanzania and Mexican programs to improve nutrition among the poor.

Other grants include $3.3 million to Public Radio International, $5 million to NPR and $1 million to Frontline. Grumbling among media observers peaked late last year when the foundation for the first time teamed up with major for-profit operations such as ABC and the Guardian.

The foundation provided ABC $1.5 million to fund overseas travel for reports on global health and development. ABC put up $4.5 million. Neither the foundation nor the Guardian will reveal the dollar amount of the deal that helped the British daily establish an online forum on global health and development.

The Seattle Times received a $15,000 Gates grant through Seattle University for a series of stories on homelessness in 2010.

Recipients of Gates' largesse all say the foundation does not dictate the specific stories they cover.

Foundation officials did provide the NewsHour a list of potential story subjects, but no mandates, Suarez said. "The beauty of this relationship is that they trust our editorial process," he said. "It's not like we're getting calls from Washington state saying: It's time to do HIV. It's time to do malaria."

But some journalists are uneasy with the arrangements. Seattle freelancer Robert Fortner stopped writing about Gates for Crosscut after the local online news site received general support grants that total $500,000, contingent on matching funds. Guardian health Editor Sarah Boseley has said she often shies away from coverage of the foundation — positive or negative — for fear of being accused of a conflict.

Cooper, the journalism professor, finds it "laughable" when media claim Gates money doesn't influence their coverage. Every grant comes with at least one string attached, he said: the hope that the grant will be renewed. Recipients can be reluctant to bite the hand that feeds them.

Indeed, few of the news organizations that get Gates money have produced any critical coverage of foundation programs. The Guardian is an exception, with a recent blog post that blasted the foundation's associations with agricultural giant Monsanto, a leader in genetically modified crops.

"I don't know if the Gates Foundation's projects work," Cooper said. "And if the Gates Foundation is going to pay for all the news coverage around this, we're never going to know."

A larger question is whether Gates funding steers media coverage in directions that serve specific foundation goals, both humanitarian and political, diverting attention from other issues.

Some grants have indeed spelled out coverage topics, including male circumcision to reduce transmission of AIDS, and clinical trials — the latter of which are crucial for Gates-supported vaccines and drugs being tested in the developing world.

The foundation's latest media push, launched by Melinda Gates in 2010, is to shift coverage from stories of despair to stories that show problems can be solved.

"People need to hear and see these success stories," she said. "In the U.S. media, too often you hear what is not working."

There's nothing wrong with telling positive stories, said global- health expert Laurie Garrett, of the Council on Foreign Relations, which has received Gates funding. But it's important to recognize that it's also a political tactic, she pointed out. Everyone who works in international aid and development is terrified government spending will be slashed. Gates-sponsored research shows people are more likely to donate or support foreign aid after seeing hopeful news. Success stories also show that past investments haven't been wasted, the foundation's Suzman said.

To get those positive stories to the public, the foundation has launched a blitz that covers multiple bases, including the establishment of digital outlets that bypass conventional media. After commissioning a British think tank to identify development and health successes, the foundation showcased such stories in a series of videos and articles called "Living Proof."

At least one of the "Living Proof" stories touted by Melinda Gates has already found its way into the mainstream media. The use of skin-to-skin cradling called "kangaroo care" to boost newborn survival was featured recently in a New York Times column.

When ABC launched its Gates-funded global health initiative, "Be the Change: Save a Life," it mirrored that positive approach. Each segment of the inaugural program, hosted by Diane Sawyer, paired problems with possible solutions, like a low-cost incubator for premature babies.

A website encourages people to donate money. Within the first week, more than $600,000 poured in.

Foundation officials say they don't require ABC to report positive stories, though one of the grant's goals is to "inspire and motivate the millions of viewers to take action."

Another foundation grant, to California-based LinkTV, is explicit in its aim of spreading good news. The satellite network got $2 million to create a digital video library that spotlights progress in global development and health. Called ViewChange, its target audience includes bloggers and journalists, as well as nonprofits that can use the videos in their own advocacy campaigns, said general manager Wendy Hanamura.

Some news outlets present reports from Gates-funded health organizations as "news," but those reports aim to inspire people to donate money, rather than uncover facts, according to a recent analysis of global-health journalism.

And while many positive stories are valid, media observers point out that an emphasis on good news can mean less watch-dogging of programs that may not be working.

Beyond direct links to media, the foundation also supports a dizzying mix of organizations whose goals include influencing media coverage. An interested citizen might think she's getting news and information from a variety of sources, but many of them might be funded by Gates.

The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a health-care think tank, has received nearly $20 million from Gates to provide global health information and analyses. That includes media fact sheets and reporting guides, a free video library for journalists and an influential daily roundup of global health news.

Gates gives money to policy magazines such as Health Affairs and Global Health Magazine, and has funded scientific journals to publish articles on global health. Scientists trained in a Gates-funded program to "engage policy makers, thought leaders, the media and the public" brief lawmakers and write op-ed pieces that appear in newspapers and on news sites.

In the field of education, where Gates' emphasis on teacher quality and small schools has been hotly debated, a $500,000 grant to the Brookings Institution aims to "re-engineer media coverage of secondary and postsecondary education." Education Week magazine has received $4.5 million from the Gates Foundation.

These are just a smattering of the hundreds of policy and advocacy grants the foundation has issued. Gates isn't the sole funder for most of the groups, nor does Gates money mean grantees march to the same beat. But with virtually every major player in global health — and many in education — receiving Gates money, it's clear the foundation's voice is highly amplified in the media and beyond.

"It's an echo chamber," Cooper said.

Garrett, a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist, said she would prefer a more diverse set of voices. But without Gates funding and interest, long-neglected diseases and the suffering of the world's poor would receive far less attention than they do today, she pointed out.

"Back when I was covering global health, I was pretty much the only person on the beat," she said. "That's not the case anymore, and that's good news."

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Some of the Gates-funded news organizations and their projects

Link Media, Inc. | ViewChange

All Africa Foundation | AllAfrica.com

Steps International Foundation | Great stories can change our world

The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation | Kaiser Foundation global health portal

Project Hope | Health Affairs Magazine

ABC | "Be the Change: Save a Life"

PBS NewsHour | Global Health Watch

The Guardian | Global development site

International Center for Journalists | Programs for journalists in Sub-Saharan Africa

Public Radio International | Global health coverage

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Related

Graphic | Media-related grants from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Graphic | Gates Foundation: Media mogul (PDF)

The Seattle Times

Land grab fears for Ethiopian rural communities

by Ed Butler

A controversial new farms policy has led to a political clampdown in a remote lowland region of Ethiopia, the BBC has been told. Opposition activists claim that a number of arrests and the killings of 10 local farmers are as a direct result of the new policy.

"You cannot speak freely about the land issue now," one local man says, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"You can be arrested or even killed for this. "This is a dark period for all indigenous people living in the south-west of the country."

The government of Meles Zenawi is pioneering the lease of some three million hectares of land over the next five years, an area the size of Belgium.

The policy is targeting massive lowland areas mostly in the west and south-west of the country.

These are regions populated by smaller minority ethnic groups.

The government denies conducting any repression, and says instead that its policy is aimed at lifting local people out of poverty.

Foreign investors in Gambella include Chinese, Indian and Saudi firms.

The Saudis alone say they are hoping to produce as much as a million tonnes of rice per year, most of it for their own domestic market.
Continue reading the main story
African countries considering land lease
Ethiopia
Tanzania
Mozambique
Sudan
Madagascar
Malawi

Birhani Fasaha, director of the Saudi Star Corporation, says the country's planned investment in Ethiopia, as well as in a range of other African countries, is a response to Saudi Arabian fears about their own domestic food supply, following sharp rises in global food prices two years ago.

"Saudi Arabia was importing all its food from India and Asia," he says, "but the Indians withheld their rice in 2008, so the Saudis want an option."

Ethiopia is just one of a number of African countries that have been targeted by foreign agricultural investors.

Tanzania, Madagascar, Mozambique, Sudan and Mali are among the others that have received considerable interest.

Saudi Star is said to aim to lease as much as 100,000 hectares of Ethiopian land within the next four or five years, and it promises to bring clinics, schools, better roads and electricity supplies to Gambella in return.

The current rental charge for this land is about $10 (£6) per hectare per year.Ancestral land
Rural communities feel uninformed about how the land lease plans will change their lives

The Ethiopian government stipulates that foreign investors will have to satisfy domestic food needs before they can export.

It also says it is only allocating idle land for investment.

However, local protesters insist that all the land is already in use, mostly by pastoralists.

There are an estimated four million such farmers in Ethiopia, who often cross hundreds of miles a year to find fresh pasture for their cattle.

"They use the land for different purposes - for agriculture, for hunting, sometimes just to gather fruits during famine," one protester says.

"There is no empty land in Gambella without a history.

"Village areas have been cleared and villagers have been bribed to sell their own farm.

"They can't sell the land, it's not theirs. That land is ancestral land."Development opportunity

Because all land in Ethiopia's quasi-socialist economy is officially government-owned, it has the right to lease it out largely as it sees fit.

While some local farmers are being directly compensated, pastoralist farmers are not.

The government believes that only massive foreign investment can help to transform the country's rural economy, and provide the country with food self-sufficiency.

Some 13 million Ethiopians still depend on some degree of food aid.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote


Pastoralism, as it is, is not sustainable. We want to change the environment”Abera DeressaAgriculture Minister, Ethiopia

Abera Deressa, the government minister who helped design the latest agricultural development policy, says foreign investors should help boost agricultural output by as much as 40%.

He believes that rural life in these areas must change.

"Pastoralists have enough land for their cattle," Mr Deressa says, "but at the end of the day we are not really appreciating pastoralists remaining as they are.

"We have to improve their livelihood by creating job opportunities. Pastoralism, as it is, is not sustainable. We want to change the environment."

Mr Deressa says he hopes the investors would bring skills and infrastructure to some of the most neglected regions, as well as thousands of jobs for the rural population.

The minister says that opposition to the government is based on ignorance of the government's proposals.Complex problem

However, concerns about the land policy go beyond the rights of local farmers.

Environmentalists say that many of these proposed farms infringe on Ethiopia's protected game reserves, where an abundance of wildlife could now be at risk.

In Gambella, most farms are being ear-marked for rice and sugar production, two extremely water-intensive crops.

Yet the investors say no limits are being placed on the amount of water they can draw from the rivers, in regions already suffering from declining rainfalls.

The issue of land lease is a complex one and there is much disagreement on the best approach.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote


They can't sell the land, it's not theirs. That land is ancestral land”A Gambellan resident, angry about the land lease proposals

According to the World Bank, which commissioned a study into land lease, there is an estimated 45 million hectares of land that is either already under lease or has been requested for lease.

And there are both positive and negative examples to be taken.

The report's author, Klaus Deinigerm, says the initiative has had a considerable success rate in Latin America.

However, in Africa, the picture is less rosy.

"Many of these projects do not perform, and that implies that possibly the arrangements are not optimal," says Mr Deiniger.

"It's very important to make sure that governments as well as civil society have the right tools in place to ensure that the investments do not cause harm and actually improve productivity."

In Ethiopia in particular, Mr Deiniger does not believe that land lease is the best option for rural communities.

"It is an opportunity but it definitely won't be the main development opportunity for its smallholder population... it can draw in some private investment but it needs to be done in a strategic way rather than letting investors determine the government strategy," he says.

Ethiopia and other countries, he says, have ended up with a very fragmented approach to land lease that fails to provide any infrastructure benefits and is in contradiction to smallholder rights.

But back in Gambella, Ethiopia, it's the political and social cost that is most concerning many local farmers.

The ruling party, the EPRDF, is said to govern with an increasingly firm grip.

People in the country's remote south-west fear that their pastoralist traditions, which have been a way of life for generations, could now be forcibly brought to an end.

"There is a fear that there will be no more culture within the pastoralist area," says one man. "We're going to lose our culture and there will be nothing remaining for the next generation. I'm afraid this life may only be a story that we can tell our children."

BBC

Seattle-led coalition tells Gates Foundation to change approach to agriculture in Africa

by Kristi Heim

A coalition of groups led by Seattle-based activists has sent a letter and online petition to the Bill &Melinda Gates Foundation, saying its current approach to agriculture in Africa is unlikely to solve problems of hunger, poverty and climate change, and may make them worse.

The letter, signed by 100 organizations and individuals from 30 countries, was released to coincide withprotests at the UN climate talks in Cancun.

Led by the Seattle-based Community Alliance for Global Justice (CAGJ), the coalition said the foundation and its private sector partners are pushing industrialized agriculture and genetically engineered crops at the expense of small farmers and the environment.

The Gates Foundation has made agricultural development one of its priorities in recent years, launching theAlliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) with the Rockefeller Foundation in 2006.

The Gates Foundation spent about $316 million last year on agricultural development, which it says is part of a larger strategy to reduce hunger and poverty by giving small farmers tools and opportunities to boost their productivity and increase incomes.

The groups signing the letter, including environmentalists, academics and groups opposed to genetic engineering of food crops, said they're concerned the foundation's grants are "heavily distorted in favor of supporting inappropriate high-tech agricultural activities, ignoring scientific studies that confirm the value of small-scale agroecological approaches."

The Gates Foundation responded that it's working comprehensively and with many partners, including African leaders and small farmers.

"Our goal is to help poor farmers grow and sell more so they can feed their families and build better lives," foundation spokesperson Susan Byrnes said. "This is an extremely complex challenge - and there's no silver bullet."

Byrnes said approach is to support seeds, soil, farm management and effective policies. "We're in this for the long haul and only interested in long-term solutions that are sustainable for the economy and the environment."

The petition urged the foundation to redefine its funding priorities in favor of small-scale agroecological agriculture, citing the findings of the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), initiated by the World Bank and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

That report concluded that a radical transformation of world food and farming policies is needed, and reliance on technological fixes, including transgenic crops, is unlikely to address persistent hunger and poverty.

Industrial agribusiness has contributed to the erosion of food and livelihood security in the
poorest countries, it said.

Seattle Times