GRAIN is an international non-governmental organisation which promotes the sustainable management and use of agricultural biodiversity based on people's control over genetic resources and local knowledge.

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Making a killing from the food crisis

April 2008

The world food crisis is hurting a lot of people, but global agribusiness firms, traders and speculators are raking in huge profits. The fundamental cause of today's food crisis is neoliberal globalisation itself, which has transformed food from a source of livelihood security into a mere commodity to be gambled away, even at the cost of widespread hunger among the world’s poorest people.

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Seedling April 2008

April 2008

In this issue of Seedling we publish an article (Seeds of passion) showing how terminator technology (and its variants) is continuing to be pushed by governments, including the European Union with its Transcontainer Project. Guy Kastler shows (New threat from covert GMOs) how these second-generation GMOs are being quietly brought to the fore. On the face of it, European consumers appear to be winning the battle against GMOs. However, Europe’s reappraisal only amounts to a tactical retreat. Behind the scenes, European companies are quietly developing a second generation of GMOs that will be far harder to combat. In our special issue on agrofuels in last July’s Seedling, we paid insufficient attention to India (Agrofuels in India, private unlimited), which is emerging as a leading producer of biodiesel, mainly manufactured from jatropha, a bushy tree. Our interviewee in this issue is Daycha Siripatra, a leading grassroots activist in Thailand. He talks about the farmers’ profound knowledge of seeds and plants, which means that, even without carrying out scientific tests, they realise when their crops have been contaminated by GMOs. There are more than 6,000 varieties of rice in Thailand, he says, and these varieties need to be grown in the fields where, in the skilled hands of local farmers, they can adapt to changing climatic conditions. Plus other details of upcoming events and resources available in this issue of Seedling.

Click here to view this issue of Seedling online.

You can also download the entire issue in PDF format from here .

Faults in the vault: not everyone is celebrating Svalbard

February 2008

The "Global Seed Vault" buried in a frozen island in Svalbard, Norway, is sadly the latest move in a wider strategy to make ex situ (off site) storage in seed banks the dominant approach to crop diversity conservation. The Vault gives a false sense of security in a world where the crop diversity present in the farmers' fields continues to be eroded and destroyed at an ever-increasing rate and contributes to the access problems that plague the international ex situ system.

Available here: http://www.grain.org/articles/?id=36 (includes further discussion)

And in PDF format: http://www.grain.org/articles/?id=36&pdf

Bird flu in eastern India: another senseless slaughter

February 2008

The carnage of poultry, in which 3.7 million birds were culled, in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal is a striking testament to the failure of the global response to the bird flu crisis. In a flash, one of the world’s most dynamic areas of poultry farming has been practically ruined, a priceless stock of biodiversity wiped out, and the livelihoods of millions of poor families pushed to the brink. This has been caused not so much by bird flu as by the response to it.

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Fighting FTAs - new website and book

February 2008

bilaterals.org, GRAIN and BIOTHAI have launched a collaborative publication, "Fighting FTAs: The growing resistance to bilateral free trade and investment agreements". While global trade talks at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) stagnate, governments and corporations are busy spinning a complex web of bilateral free trade and investment agreements (FTAs). "Fighting FTAs" looks at what this FTA frenzy is really about, how social movements are fighting back and strategic learnings emerging from these struggles.

Press release

Fighting FTAs website

Livestock special issue - Seedling January 2008

January 2008

In this special edition of Seedling, we take a close look at the livestock industry. Behind the scenes this global industry is going through a rapid process of concentration as it extends its control over livestock farming. As consumption of meat increases, hundreds of thousands of small farmers have been tied into production contracts mainly for the export market. Furthermore, we are heading for more diseases, more deadly types of disease, and more capacity for these diseases to spread. And yet, the international response fails to reflect the seriousness of the situation. Meanwhile traditional cultures dependent on livestock are also being further marginalised as illustrated in this issue of Seedling in Mongolia and Niger.

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Whose harvest? The politics of organic seed certification

January 2008

This new briefing provides the first global overview of regulations concerning seeds in organic farming and assesses what such regulations mean to the future of organic farming and the millions of farmers who sustain it.

Click here to read the briefing: http://www.grain.org/briefings/?id=207

We have also provided an annex table with details of what various regulatory bodies from around the world say about organic seeds: http://www.grain.org/m/?id=167