Grain

African civil society organisations are up in arms about the new corporate and donor initiatives to 'help' Africa. They have launched an appeal against the plans of the G8, AGRA, and others to drive corporate agriculture into the continent. Read and support their appeal online. (also in French and Portuguese)

[Read the full article] — [Download PDF Version]

In the last 15 years only two GM crops have been authorized for cultivation in Europe. This was a result of public rejection and successful opposition by the environmental, social and farmers movements. However, we are still faced with around 25 GM crops in the pipeline that are close to getting approved, many of them resistant to (multiple) herbicides, and Bt-crops. Therefore, we are launching a new campaign on Monday 18 March to stop new GMO approvals for cultivation in the EU: Stop the Crop!

[Read the full article]

A Technical Expert Committee appointed by the Indian Supreme Court wants all open GMO field trials stopped and calls for a re-examination of biosafety data on all GM crops already in the field and a whole series of limitations to planting GM crops in the country. Here is a note from Nature.com that gives a summary.

[Read the full article]

Twenty-eight African organisations issue statement denouncing the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) for imposing a corporate-controlled seed and chemical system of agriculture on smallholder farmers.

[Read the full article]

Thanks to the US’s 2009 Global Food Security Act, food aid policy for the first time mandates the use of genetic modification technologies. Nidhi Tandon looks at how this legislation helps biotechnology companies monopolise the seed industry at the expense of farmers, and explores some of the dubious links between these corporations, the Gates Foundation and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa.

Good update and overview article

[Read the full article]

Researcher Manuel Milz takes an in-depth look at the “green revolution” programme that the Government of Rwanda launched in 2007. Milz finds that the programme's coercive transformation of agriculture has failed to improve the lives of the vast majority of the country's peasants, while dramatically increasing the use of pesticides and chemical fertilisers.

[Read the full article] — [Download PDF Version]

The Financial Express reports on how farmers in Bangladesh are dumping hybridrice because of the poor sale price and says the burgeoning seed industry faces a crisis.

[Read the full article]

A good overview of how the global food supply chain has developed over the past decades. By 3D

[Read the full article]

An Oxfam America project concludes that “transgenic crops offer enormous possibilities". The open letterr, co-signed by GRAIN, expresses concern.

[Read the full article]