Grain

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The world food crisis, rapidly defined by those in power as a problem of insufficient production, has become a trojan horse to get corporate seeds, fertilisers and, surreptitiously, market systems into poor countries. As past experience shows, what looks like “seed aid” in the short term can mask what is actually “agribusiness aid” in the long term. We look at what is going on.

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La crise alimentaire mondiale, hâtivement définie par ceux qui sont au pouvoir comme un problème de production insuffisante, est devenue le Cheval de Troie par lequel les semences industrielles, les engrais et, subrepticement, les mécanismes du marché, pénètrent dans les pays pauvres. Comme l’expérience passée le montre, ce qui semble être une « aide en semences » à court terme peut masquer ce qui est en fait une « aide en agrobusiness » à long terme. Nous faisons le point ici sur ce qui est en train de se passer.

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The collapse of the WTO talks has somewhat unexpectedly created a further opportunity to fight a last ditch battle against the proposed patenting of life in the TRIPS Agreement. The patenting of life is a fundamental negation of the way in which countless generations of rural communities around the world have protected their biodiversity and handed down knowledge about it. Under their stewardship biodiversity and knowledge have evolved and adapted. Privatising these precious resources would threaten the very basis on which society has sustained itself for millennia.

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For several decades now, the multinationals have been trying, one way or another, to control the way Africa uses its genetic resources, especially its seeds. Among the strategies they have used has been: to introduce chemical inputs, with all the problems these create; to sponsor national and/or regional laws, mostly copied from European models; and to implement programmes such as the US-backed African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) and the Millennium Challenge Account. Local communities, however, are resisting in a calm and dignified manner by transmitting from generation to generation their own cultural practices. Some examples gathered during a trip to south-west Benin show how communities are still able to control their seed use and to manage their genetic resources.

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Depuis plusieurs décennies, les multinationales essaient par tous les moyens de contrôler la manière dont l’Afrique utilise ses ressources génétiques, ses semences en particulier. Les stratégies qu’elles ont employées incluent l’introduction d’intrants chimiques avec tous les problèmes que cela peut entraîner, l’adoption de lois nationales et/ou régionales inspirées pour la plupart des modèles européens et la mise en place de programmes soutenus par les Etats-Unis, tels que la Loi sur la croissance et les possibilités économiques en Afrique (l’AGOA) ou le Fonds pour les défis du millénaire  (le Millennium Challenge Account ou MCA). Les communautés locales, en revanche, résistent avec calme et dignité en transmettant leurs propres pratiques agricoles de génération en génération. Des exemples relevés durant un voyage au Sud-Ouest Bénin montrent ainsi comment les communautés parviennent encore à contrôler leur utilisation des semences et à gérer leurs ressources génétiques.

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Ulrich Oslender, a political geographer at the University of Glasgow, has carried out research into social movements and spaces of resistance in Latin America. He currently works as an EU-funded Marie Curie Research Fellow investigating the forced displacement of Afro-Colombians from Colombia’s Pacific coast region, which he explains through a methodological framework he calls “geographies of terror”. Since the mid-1990s, he has conducted extensive fieldwork in Colombia and has worked closely with the social movement of the country’s black communities. He can be reached at: Ulrich.Oslender@ges.gla.ac.uk

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The latest rescue plan for Africa is another Green Revolution. GRAIN, alongside a host of others, has written and commented extensively on the Alliance for a Green Revolution for Africa (AGRA) and the impact it will have on the continent. In the meantime, this model of a Green Revolution has already been implemented for the past five years in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. It provides us with a case study and an indication of the likely outcome of such an approach in other parts of Africa.

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Le dernier plan de sauvegarde pour l'Afrique est de nouveau une Révolution verte. GRAIN, avec un grand nombre d'autres, a écrit et commenté abondamment sur l'Alliance pour une révolution verte pour l'Afrique (AGRA) et sur les impacts qu'il aura dans le continent.[1] En attendant, ce modèle de Révolution verte a déjà été mis en place ces cinq dernières années dans la province orientale du Cape en Afrique du Sid. Cela nous fournit un exemple et une indication des résultats probables d'une telle approche dans d'autres endroits d'Afrique.

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UBINIG in Bangladesh not only helps in the exchange of rice varieties, but also in the breeding of local animals such as chickens and cows.

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