The past predicts the Future: GM crops and Africa's farmers

– GM crops and African Farmers

Devlin Kuyek *

Africa has become the latest target for empire-building biotechnology companies. What will the introduction of GM crops mean for Africa, and its small farmers in particular? Is there any reason to believe that the new ‘gene revolution’ will be any more successful than the failed ‘green revolution’ in Africa? This edited version of a new GRAIN briefing looks at the forces behind the push for Africa, asks whether GM crops are safe and questions the supposed benefits that some African farmers are anticipating.

Genetic engineering has made a rapid entry into agriculture. In less than a decade since the commercial introduction of the first genetically modified (GM) crops, more than 50 million hectares have been planted to GM crops around the world.¹ Proponents claim that the new transgenic crops will improve yields, reduce pesticide use and increase food security in developing countries—a promise that these countries desperately want to believe.  It is also widely claimed that the ‘newÂ’ global economy will be built on genetic engineering, and any country that stands on the sidelines will lose its future competitiveness. These claims have influenced policy-making circles in Africa. In a letter to then President Bill Clinton of the US, Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi wrote, “While the Green Revolution was a remarkable success in Asia it largely bypassed Africa. Today the international community is on the verge of the biotechnology revolution which Africa cannot afford to miss.” ²

Amidst the enthusiasm for genetic engineering, there has been little space for critical reflection. Is this new technology appropriate for African agricultural systems and what are the implications if it is taken up?  The experience of other countries shows that leaping towards genetic engineering brings with it a wide range of biosafety issues and broader socio-economic impacts. It requires the acceptance of intellectual property rights on living organisms, the privatisation of public research, and expensive research and development to the detriment of farmer-based innovation. What will this mean for Africa and its small farmers in particular?  Moreover, is there any reason to believe that the new ‘gene revolution’ will be any more successful than the failed ‘green revolution’ in Africa?

Lessons from the Green Revolution

The green revolution was not the complete success in Asia that President Arap Moi suggests. Productivity did increase (in terms of kilos of a single crop per hectare) but gains were mostly confined to irrigated lands with access to chemical inputs. While green revolution rice varieties could achieve yields of 10 tonnes per hectare (t/ha) at research stations, in practice most farmers only got 3-6 t/ha.³Â  Production gains in a particular monoculture crop were also offset by production losses of other staples, vegetables and fodder crops. Even where gains were achieved, the green revolution varieties were beset by disease and pest troubles that had previously not posed a problem. By demanding the widespread planting of genetically uniform crops under monoculture conditions, the green revolution rapidly displaced local varieties, which had much greater genetic potential to resist diseases.⁴ 

The major difference between the African experience of the green revolution and the Asian experience is that Africa had far fewer areas with suitable conditions for the green revolution technologies. The green revolution technologies were not developed for local conditions: rather, local conditions were expected to adapt to the technologies. Throughout most of Africa, this was simply too much to ask. The technologies did not bypass Africa: they were available but unpopular and ineffective. For example, fertiliser use increased substantially from the 1970s onwards in Sub-Saharan Africa, while per capita agricultural production fell. The green revolutionÂ’s high yielding varieties fared no better. In Malawi, despite the widespread release of hybrid maize, the average maize yield remains about what it was in 1961.⁵ Yield increases were also low or stagnant across Africa in other important crops such as cassava, yams, rice, wheat, sorghum, and millet.⁶ Even the Rockefeller Foundation admits that AfricaÂ’s experience raises serious questions about the green revolution approach: “Lingering low yields among African farmers for crops such as maize and rice, where adoption of improved varieties has been appreciable, call into question the overall value of the improved germplasm to local farmers.”⁷

Two major lessons can be drawn from this failed green revolution. For one, ‘breakthroughÂ’ technologies, brought in from the outside, can only have a limited success in AfricaÂ’s complex ecology. African soils are generally unsuitable to intensive, monoculture production because of insufficient or excessive rains, high incidences of pests and diseases, and other factors.⁸  Proper agricultural management requires a much more complex approach, as farmers across Africa know only too well.  Secondly, the social, economic, and political conditions throughout Africa are as ill suited as the ecology to ‘breakthroughÂ’ technologies. The World Bank estimates that half of its agriculture projects in Africa failed because the planning process did not take into consideration domestic infrastructure limitations.⁹ Farmers in Africa lack access not only to markets, but also to infrastructure, research extension services, and all other forms of support. Moreover, women, who constitute the majority of farmers in Africa, are often left to manage their farms with few resources, as the men look for wage labour far from home.

Technology is a relatively insignificant constraint in African agriculture. If farmers had the incentives and conditions to allow them to concentrate their energies on farming, Africa could easily take care of its food security for generations to come. According to researchers Ezumah and Ezumah, the African continent only produces 0.8% of its potential agricultural yields. They argue that the “main obstacles to increased crop production are socio-economic.”

A local approach to biosafety in Zimbabwe The Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG), an NGO active in Zimbabwe, has developed an “impact assessment methodology of GE organisms on the livelihoods of resource-poor people.” It helps communities to assess technologies by comparing the technology with sustainable agriculture methods. The exercise consists of six steps: Step 1: Introduction of the programme, with group discussions on farming systems Step 2: Group information sharing on GM crops and sustainable agriculture. Step 3: Farmers' response, questions and clarifications about the technologies Step 4: Assessment of the technology under a Sustainable Livelihoods Framework. Step 5: Overall assessment by farmers. Step 6: Feedback on the communication approach and process. In one training with farmers, participants discussed fertility requirements, weevil resistance, and environmental impacts. They wanted to know whether the toxin that kills maize stalk borers would not also affect them in the long term. They also wondered how Bt crops might affect soil structure, how resistance in pests could build up, and how Bt seed would be priced. There were also concerns about health, religion and power-relations. Participants expressed a general feeling of powerlessness in the face of agribusiness marketing and the lack of government services. According to one participating farmer, “We may be given seed, or sold it cheaply by companies for a while, but then the subsidy may be withdrawn and we've all lost the varieties we used to use.” Another farmer mentioned the difficulties of controlling GM crops, “We could talk to our neighbours to try and reduce contamination by keeping the maize varieties separated from each other…but without bylaws we can't make decisions as a community on excluding varieties”.1 1 Jessamijn Miedema, “Discussing genetic engineering with communal farmers in Zimbabwe,” in Michel Pimbert, Tom Wakeford and PV Satheesh, Citizens' juries on GMOs and farming futures in India: http://www.ids.ac.uk/ids/env/GMOsIndia.pdf

To be fair, most proponents of biotechnology do not claim that GM crops can resolve all of Africa’s agricultural problems. They say genetic engineering is only one tool among many that will help. But genetic engineering is more than “one tool among many.”  It presents a whole range of social and economic concerns and new biosafety risks, which require considerable resources to manage. It shifts control over agricultural research and development towards foreign transnational corporations (TNCs) and constrains the collective nature of plant breeding that has existed since time immemorial. And, perhaps most importantly, it gives a second wind to the green revolution model, at a time when many farmers and scientists are looking at agricultural models that go in a completely different direction.

Who are the crop pushers?

Like the green revolution before it, GM crops have come to Africa from developments in the North. Struggling transnational pesticide corporations believe that genetically engineered crops will resolve certain profit constraints and open the door to new markets and previously unimaginable profits. For this reason they have invested massively in agricultural biotechnology, buying up seed companies and securing control over research and development. Industry is now interested in bringing its technology to Africa. South Africa, with its large commercial farming sector and accommodating policy environment, was the first and continues to be the most popular destination for GM seeds. The first GM crop, Bt cotton, was approved for commercial release in 1997 and by 2001 more than 200,000 ha were planted with GM crops. Industry is now trying to introduce GM crops in other African countries. Its major targets are the commercial maize and cotton-growing areas, since these crops already have well-established commercial market structures. For the same reasons, applications to introduce GM fruits and flowers for export are probably not far off.

The market potential in Africa for GM seeds is relatively small and, in the near term, the public sector will remain the most significant actor in formal sector plant breeding. This means that public scientists and institutions have a particularly influential role to play when it comes to the introduction of GM crops in Africa. Box 1 lists some of the research and development activities taking place in public and private institutions across Africa. As public scientists become more involved in research on GM crops, a cascade effect is created.  Commercialisation is usually a project objective of GM research projects. The project then creates a whole set of needs: scientists must have access to laboratory facilities, the country must have the capacity to manage biosafety concerns, and the foreign companies and institutions call for intellectual property rights legislation. In this way, a few minor biotechnology projects can exert significant influence over national positions on biotechnology. As pointed out by the late Stephen Dazie of the African Centre for Technology Studies: “The development of biotechnology in Eastern and Southern Africa is not based on specific policies that governments have put in place but as a result of interests of individual scientists and some donor agencies.”¹⁰  

Who says itÂ’s safe?

With GM crops either already in the field or on their way into the fields in a number of African countries, there is reason for concern. These are new technologies that have not been subjected to extensive independent study on their impact. Genetic engineering has created a set of unknowns that researchers and decision-makers have not had to consider previously. Each GM crop is the result transferring genes believed responsible for a particular trait in one organism to another organism, where the trait will hopefully be reproduced. The transfer of the genes can produce unintended consequences, as it is impossible to predict exactly how the inserted gene will behave in the new organism.¹¹ Studies have shown that certain plants cross pollinate more readily when they are genetically engineered but scientists cannot explain why.¹² But such changes are not considered in the regulation of the crops. As noted by Sally McCammon, science advisor to the US Department of Agriculture: “The ecological questions donÂ’t even get touched. In fact, itÂ’s illegal to touch them.”¹³

It is essential that the risks and the benefits are carefully taken into consideration and that those who stand the most to lose – farmers – are actively involved in the decision-making process. Moreover, GM crops bring with them potential socio-economic risks, such as patents and biological mechanisms for companies to control the seed supply. These have profound impacts on agriculture and should be considered in the evaluation of the risks and benefits. Given the clear risk of GM crops, a precautionary approach to their release should be implicit, but often is not. 

The problem begins with the overall lack of information about GM crops. In South Africa, the GMO Act was finalised in 1999 without a process of public consultation. Two years later, the National Biotechnology Strategy was announced without consultation with NGOs, farmers, trade unionists, or social scientists. According to Biowatch South Africa: “The ‘public consultation processÂ’ consisted of a series of unannounced phone calls, asking a few questions of participants on biotechnology.”¹⁴ Poor communities have the hardest time accessing information and decision-makers, as their lack of resources and the bureaucratic hurdles make it practically impossible.¹⁵

The lack of information is compounded by the increasing collusion between governments and the seed industry lobbies. Instead of information, the public gets propaganda, not only from overt lobby groups like the US-based International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA) in Kenya or Africa Bio in South Africa, but from government departments and public research institutes as well. Nevertheless, in many countries in Africa there are genuine efforts underway to establish effective biosafety regulations. This is no small task given that most African countries are desperately short of the resources needed to effectively regulate GM crops. The recent GM food aid issue (see p 14) has added momentum to such iniatives. In October 2002, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) set up an advisory committee to investigate the potential dangers of GM crops. The committee will draw up guidelines on food safety, contamination of genetic resources, ethical and trade-related issues, and consumer concerns.

Seed TNCs have taken advantage of the current loose regulatory environment to avoid scrutiny. In Zimbabwe, Monsanto field tested its GM cotton before national regulations were in place without notifying the authorities. When the government found out, the crops were quickly destroyed. But, even with regulations, the government may not have the capacity to ensure safety. According to a member of ZimbabweÂ’s Biosafety Board, one Monsanto application for a Bt crop was more than 1,000 pages long.

The Biosafety Protocol of the Convention on Biological Diversity that was adopted in January 2000 was supposed to help resolve some of these biosafety difficulties. The Protocol created a funding mechanism for building national biosafety capacity in developing countries and established an Advance Informed Agreement that obliges parties exporting GM seeds destined for agricultural purposes to give the importing country written notification. Yet, there is no obligation on exporting parties when it comes to GM crops destined for processing or direct human or animal consumption. This leaves Africans without control over the GM crops entering their countries, especially when it comes as food aid from the US and other exporting countries looking to unload the surplus production that Europe and Japan will not accept (see p 14). As the President of Kenya recently said about US food aid entering the country: “Our confidence was established in the fact that if Americans are eating it, it should be safe for our starving people.”¹⁶

The situation leaves African biosafety vulnerable to a range of interested parties. The most active is the seed industry, which is pushing African countries to harmonise biosafety regulations with the US. Mark Condon of the American Seed Trade Association recently told a gathering of seed industry representatives and politicians in Africa: “If we are to be successful in feeding a growing world population, seed and biotechnology needs (sic) to move freely regionally and globally without being restricted by national regulatory obstacles.”¹⁷ The World Bank is helping the seed industry out in this realm. Under its seed policy guidelines for Africa, the Bank ensures that governments receiving money from the Bank “work with international organisations to establish laws and regulations that allow: (a) sale of products from transgenic plants, (b) testing of transgenic plants, (c) introduction of transgenic plants, and (d) patenting of genes.” Bank representatives meet regularly with seed TNCs to check if the companies have any problems introducing transgenic varieties. If problems exist, “it is reasonable to withhold money for public research until governments allow private technology transfer, which demonstrates an appreciation of modern agricultural technology.Â’^”8 In Zimbabwe, one NGO is taking a very different approach. It is helping to take biosafety decisions directly to the affected farming communities (see box below).

Bt Cotton and biosafety

MonsantoÂ’s Bt cotton or Bollgard Cotton was the first commercial GM crop released in Sub-Saharan Africa and AfricaÂ’s experience with it reveals much about the problems of biosafety on the continent. Currently, all officially approved production of Bt cotton in Africa takes place in South Africa, where it is grown on 100,000 ha by 1,530 commercial farmers and 3,000 small-scale farmers. Monsanto also has applications pending in Kenya, Zimbabwe and Uganda. Bt cotton presents significant ecological threats in the region, given its rich diversity of cotton varieties. ²⁰ Bt cotton has not been approved in Zambia but it has been planted in the country nevertheless. A cotton operation run by a US company called Dunavant recently provided Bt cotton to farmers participating in its out-grower schemes without informing the farming community or other stakeholders.²¹ Besides Zambia, there are unconfirmed suggestions that the Bt cotton has found unofficial routes into Malawi and Swaziland. 

Bt cotton is likely to be the flagship for opening seed markets to GM crops in a number of African countries. MonsantoÂ’s promotion of Bollgard cotton in Africa is based on the supposed success of its Bt cotton project in the Makhatini Flats in KwaZulu-Natal province, South Africa. According to one of the small farmers participating in the project, Bollgard increased his yield by 27%, reduced insecticide applications by 80%, and increased his income by US$150 per hectare. In his community, 410 small scale farmers plant Bollgard on 750 hectares, and the numbers keep increasing even though the technology fees that Monsanto charges are quite high.²² What explains the apparent success?  For one, in this particular setting the technology appears to work, at least in the short term. But, more importantly, the Bt cotton is made available through a collaborative project between the National Department of Agriculture, the South African Land Bank, Monsanto, and VUNISA Cotton, a private company that contracts out production of cotton to local farmers.²³ The joint effort offers farmers easy access to markets and credit to purchase inputs.

But the early success rests on a fragile foundation. The Bt cotton farmers are not the only farmers in the area. Most of the Bt cotton production is handled by the Ubombo Farmers Association, which successfully lobbied the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry (DWAF) to release water in the nearby dam a few weeks early, since Bollgard has a short maturation period. The normal flooding period is arranged to suit the needs of local farmerÂ’s subsistence crops, mainly maize and beans. When the water was released early, these farmers lost their crops.²⁴ Bt cottonÂ’s success came at the expense of other small farmers.

Success for the cotton farmers themselves is also fragile. Cotton is a cash crop and success is not only measured by productivity but by the market price. South Africa is in the midst of liberalising its cotton market, imports over half of its cotton. This makes the country increasingly vulnerable to price fluctuations. In 2000, the largest cotton crop in 10 years in China flooded the world market and, even though other areas were undergoing slumps in production, global prices fell sharply.²⁵ The supposed success of the small-scale cotton farmers in Makhatini rests on a guaranteed market and the privileged provision of credit and infrastructure support, such as the regulation of the dam.²⁶ If this support disappears as cotton prices fall, losses will be severe for the farmers. Even MonsantoÂ’s lead cotton researcher in South Africa wonders how small farmers will cope.²⁷

But the quick fix appeal of Bt cotton is very enticing. In the Makhathini Flats, the Bt technology proved so popular in the 2000/2001 growing season that around 95% of the 4,000 smallholder farmers were predicted to adopt the same Bt cotton variety in the subsequent season.²⁸ Already, 55%-60% of all cotton sold in South Africa is Bt cotton.²⁹  This is setting the stage for a disaster, especially given that resistance management strategies are not enforced. In China, where MonsantoÂ’s Bt cotton has also been rapidly introduced, farmers have found that there are other problems associated with Bt cotton, such as its susceptibility to the fungal disease Fusarium wilt.³⁰  In three major states in India in 2002, the first crop of Bt cotton was completely wiped out leaving farmers in crisis. Not only the new pests and diseases emerged, the Bt cotton has failed to even prevent bollworm attack for which it has been designed.³¹ With the rapid adoption of Bt cotton in South Africa, it is only a matter of time before an epidemic wipes out the crop.

Bt cotton may provide a small amount of relief to small farmers in the near term, but it threatens to make matters worse in the end. Rather than a technology fix, small farmers in South Africa and other African countries need the support of rural development strategies that give farming communities control over their own resources and build local knowledge and technology systems. Farmers must be able to choose to avoid a cycle of debt and dependency. Bt cotton may reduce pesticide use in the short term, but agronomic and economic dependence remains. There are other, more sustainable ways. Farmers involved in organic cotton projects in Senegal and Tanzania produce equal yields to those in conventional production without using costly inputs.³² But, to make this step to sustainable agriculture, farming communities need the socio-economic conditions that will allow them to manage their crops effectively. The solution is ultimately political, not technological.

Food security, not stockholder security

Despite all the money, research and advertising that have been devoted to their development, GM crops offer remarkably little in the way of benefits for small farmers. The Biotechnology Trust of Zimbabwe (BTZ), for instance, was initially established to identify problems facing smallholder farmers that could be addressed with biotechnology. It sent some researchers into the field to talk with small farmers to identify the most pressing problems and come up with proposals for biotechnology research. But none of the researchers identifed genetic engineering applications - all the proposals were for non-transgenic research and development. As a result, BTZ had to revisit its definition of biotechnology to include non-GM crops.³³

Most, if not all, of the GM crops that are being developed for African agriculture are not oriented towards the needs AfricaÂ’s small farmers. The push for GM crops is part of a shift towards corporate-led agricultural research and development that is spreading to Africa. GM crops bring a range of new elements into agricultural research and development, most notably patents, that have given TNCs more control over public research and the worldÂ’s seed supply. With the patents they hold on GM crops, corporations can prohibit farmers from saving seed from year to year. Once a farmer chooses to plant GM crops, it becomes very difficult to rethink that choice, particularly in the face of aggressive marketing and sales campaigns by the manufacturers and the widespread endorsement of such crops by government agencies.³⁴  TNCs, not farmers, will then be able to determine what crops are grown and how. The example of Bt maize highlights the implications of these emerging issues as collaboration between public and private research increases with the development of GM crops.

Bt Maize: serving big farmers

Maize is AfricaÂ’s second most important food crop and is grown across the continent in a wide variety of ecological conditions. Small and medium-scale farmers on less than 10 hectares are AfricaÂ’s most important maize producers, accounting for 95% of total production.³⁵  Their efforts are constrained by a number of environmental factors, including stemborers, the larval stage of certain moths can cause the loss of about 20 to 40% the potential yield of a maize crop. Stemborers have been a major target for the pesticides industry in recent years. Bt maize, was planted on 5.9 million ha in 2000³⁶, has received the most attention as the stemborer solution. In Africa, Monsanto, Pioneer Hi-Bred and Pannar are selling Bt maize in South Africa, where it was planted on 50,000 hectares in 1999.³⁷

The Bt maize sold by the seed TNCs is not designed for small farmers. The varieties available in South Africa have only been incorporated into varieties developed for commercial farms. The lack of research into maize for small farmers is not confined to South Africa or to GM maize. Both the private sector and the public sector have done a miserable job producing hybrid varieties suitable to small-scale farming. In 1993, Rashid Hassan of the International Centre for Maize and Wheat (CIMMYT) told his fellow researchers that only two new varieties of maize have been produced over the last thirty years for the mid-altitude environment in Kenya, where small farmers produce 40% of KenyaÂ’s maize. KARI had not produced a single variety for that environment since 1970. The situation is similar throughout Africa, and it is therefore not surprising that hybrids account for only 20% of the maize grown on the continent.³⁸

This history does not appear to deter CIMMYT. With support from the Novartis Foundation, CIMMYT is working with KARI and the Zimbabwe Biotechnology Research Institute to develop Bt maize varieties for small farmers in Africa. According to the Director General of CIMMYT: “By developing borer resistant varieties, we put more maize into the harvest basket of those farmers and their families who are too poor to purchase pesticides.”³⁹ But the technology has many hurdles to cross over before it can be of any potential benefit to small farmers in these two countries, where markets are the big problem, not technology. As noted by the Kenyan National Farmers Union, “The major problem facing farmers in Kenya is that there are no markets and the middlemen are taking all the money.”⁴⁰

There are alternative means to deal with stemborers that avoid the complications of markets, intellectual property rights, biosafety testing, and enormous laboratory expenses. Farmers have developed ways to reduce infestation through cultural control techniques.⁴¹ Scientists at the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) have introduced the little wasp Cotesia Flavipes Cameron, which tracks down the stemborer larvae deep inside the stem and lays its eggs into the pest. These hatch and consume the borer from within. The wasp reduced stemborer infestation by 53% at the sites where it was introduced.⁴²

ICIPE scientists have also developed a “push-pull system” that not only prevents stemborer infestation, but also crop losses from striga – a weed that can cause losses of between 20% and 80%. Working with farmers, ICIPE scientists identified local varieties of grasses that the stemborers would feed on. These grasses (which are also important fodder crops) are grown outside the maize field to attract the stemborers while inside the field farmers plant molasses grass or silver leaf desmodium, which repel the stemborers by their smell. In tests, the use of molasses grass reduced maize crop losses from 40% to 4.6%. Desmodium intercrops perfectly with maize because as a legume it binds nitrogen and thus enriches the soil. It also keeps the soil moist, reduces erosion and can be used as fodder. But most important, it suppresses the growth of Striga by a factor of 40 in comparison to monocropping of maize.⁴³ According to ICIPEÂ’s Bill Overholt: “The interesting thing about the push-pull system is that it already exists and the farmers use it. It was developed together with the farmers. With the push-pull method, we have an integrated solution for the problems of the stemborer and striga. We have protein-rich fodder, nitrogen fertiliser and good protection against soil-erosion. All this within one field. ItÂ’s a system thatÂ’s enhancing justice and sustainable agriculture.” ⁴⁴

But from the perspective of the industry, there is just one problem with the practices that Bill Overholt and African farmers are so happy with: there is no money to be made from them. And that is precisely why the corporations (and the scientist that work for them) are solidly pushing for genetic engineering. With the proper legislation and infrastructure in place, they can monopolise and control genes, privatise biodiversity, and spread their technologies under monoculture conditions throughout much of Africa. The gene as a commodity – and genetic engineering as the technology – perfectly serve the interests of industrialists, but do not address the needs of that vast majority of people in Africa.

Green, gene or farmer revolution?

The mistakes of the Green Revolution are being repeated all over again. With the Green Revolution and genetic engineering the focus is on trying to develop the perfect set of genes. The problem is that the ‘perfect’ plant needs the perfect conditions to be successful: which is entirely impossible for poor African farmers to duplicate, farming under the enormous range of ecological conditions and socio-economic constraints that they do. This approach brings disaster for farmers: pest and disease epidemics, low market prices, crop failures, health and environmental effects from pesticides, and so on. Moreover, it takes attention away from the more fundamental problems affecting small farmers.

Instead of resolving the problems of the Green Revolution, genetic engineering threatens to accentuate them. The environmental and health risks of GM crops are poorly understood and they are particularly dangerous in Africa where there are few resources for research into public safety and the enforcement of regulations. AfricaÂ’s farmers, like all small farmers around the world, will be affected most directly by any consequences. Social and economic risks from GM crops are equally weighty. They will increase dependence on outside technologies, marginalise farmers from research and development, and consequently exacerbate the social and economic difficulties already affecting AfricaÂ’s small farmers.

If governments are serious about addressing the needs of small farmers, they need to look elsewhere – at land distribution, market constraints, and affordable technologies and practices that work with on-farm resources, such as soil and water management, biodiversity conservation strategies, and mixed cropping. African farmers are skilled and knowledgeable and are responsible for the vast majority of agricultural innovation that has succeeded in Africa. The low levels of productivity that are often cited in reference to African agriculture are the result of poverty, displacement, war, colonialism, and environmental challenges. Africa’s small farmers do not need the false promises of genetic engineering; they need concrete measures that will attack the root causes of poverty and enable them to farm according to their capabilities.  

Devlin Kuyek Devlin Kuyek is an activist and researcher residing in Montreal, Canada. He has worked extensively with GRAIN and other organisations and social movements inside and outside Canada, studying the implications of trends in agricultural research and development. His most recent publication is The Real Board of Directors: The Construction of Biote-chnology Policy in Canada, 1980-2002 (see Resources on p 40). For other GRAIN publications he has written visit the GRAIN website. Devlin can be contacted at

 

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¹ Clive James, Global Status of Commercialised Transgenic Crops: 2001,” ISAAA Briefs, No. 24.

² Letter from President Moi to US President Bill Clinton: www.biotech-info.net/Moi.html

³ International Rice Comm-ission, Country Rice Facts, FAO, December 1999.

⁴ For a case study see Devlin Kuyek, BB Rice: IRRIÂ’s First Transgenic Field Test, Biothai et al, May 2000: http://www.grain.org/publications/bbrice-en.cfm

⁵Joseph Rusike and Melinda Smale, “Malawi”, in Michael Morris, ed., Maize Seed Industries in Developing Countries, CIMMYT, 1998.

⁶ Humphrey Ezumah and Nkoli Ezumah, “Agricultural development in the age of sustainability: Crop production,” in George Benneh, William B. Morgan, and Juha I. Uitto (eds), Sustaining the Future: Economic, Social and Environmental Chenge in Sub-Saharan Africa, United Nations University, 1996. http://www.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/80918e/80918E0q.htm

⁷ Joseph DeVries and Gary Toeniessen, Securing the Harvest: Biotechnology, Breeding and Seed Systems for African Crops, CABI Publishing: UK, 2001, p.50.

⁸Ezumah and Ezumah, op cit.

⁹ André de Kathen, Pre-print version of report for the Federal Environmental Agency (Germany).

¹⁰ Stephen Dazie, Jnr., “Biotechnology in Sub-Saharan Africa,” ACTS Science and Technology Policy Paper, No. 1, 2001, p. 17.

¹¹ Barry Commoner, “Unrav-elling the DNA myth: The spurious foundation of genetic engineering,” HarperÂ’s Magazine, Vol. 304, No. 1821, February 2002.

¹⁴ Biowatch SA, letter to Dr. Rob Adam, DACST, 23 October 2001.

¹⁵ Personal communication with Environmental Justice Network Forum, Gauteng, June 2001.

¹⁶ Robert Paarlberg, “Poli-cies towards GM crops in Kenya” in Governing the GM Crop Revolution: Policy Choices for Developing Countries. 2020 Vision Food, Agriculture, and the Environment Discussion Paper 33, December 2000.

¹⁷ “ASTAÂ’s Vision for an African Seed Trade Association,” Presented at the Preparatory Meeting for the Establishment of an African Seed Trade Association, Lilongwe, Malawi, 8-10 April 1999.

¹⁸ SSASI Team, World Bank, “Initiatives for Sustainable Seed Systems in Africa,”

http://www.fao.org/ag/AGP/AGPS/Abidjan/Paper12.htm ¹⁹ K Chinsembu & T Kambi-kambi, “FarmersÂ’ perceptions and expec-tations of genetic engineering in Zambia”, Biote-chnology and Development Monitor,2000,No.47,pp13-14.

²⁰Cotton South Africa web site:  http://www.cottonsa.org.za/history_cotton_sa.html

²¹ Chinsembu & Kambikambi, op cit.

²² T Buthelezi, “A South African farmerÂ’s experience with Bt cotton,” in JS Wafula and DM Kimoro (eds), Opportunities for Reviving the Cotton Industry in East Africa Through Biotechnology:   ABSF Doc. No.2, April 2001.

²³ Andrew Bennet, Monsanto South Africa, presentation in Pietermaritzburg, March 2002; 

²⁴ Personal communication with Elfrieda Pschorn-Strauss of Biowatch SA. 

²⁵ Cotton South Africa, Market Report for 2000: http://www.cottonsa.org.

za/economic_info.html

26 Y Ismael et al, “Farm level impact of Bt cotton in South Africa.” Biotechnology and Development Monitor, No. 48, pp 15-19, 2001. 

²⁷ Personal communic-ation with Andrew Bennet.

²⁸ Y Ismael et al, op cit.

²⁹ Claire Bisseke, “Green Light for first GM food crop to be produced in SA,” Financial Mail, December 14, 2001.

³⁰ Barbara Dinham, “GM cotton - farming by formula?” Biotechnology and Devel-opment Monitor, No. 44, pp 7-9, 2001:  

³¹ Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Eco-logy, Failure of Bt. Cotton in India September, 2002. 

³² Jules Pretty and Rachel Hine, Reducing Food Poverty with Sustainable Agriculture, University of Essex, 2001.   

³³ Personal communication with Doreen Mnyulwa, July 2001.

³⁴ M  Philipson, “Agricultural law: containing the GM revo-lution .” Biotechnology and Development Monitor, No. 48, 2001.

³⁵ Joseph DeVries and Gary Toeniessen, Securing the Harvest: Biotechnology, Bree-ding and Seed Systems for African Crops, CABI Publishing: UK, 2001.

³⁶ Clive James, “Global Review of Commercialised Transgenic Crops: 2001,” ISAAA Briefs No. 24: Preview.

³⁷ PN Mwangi  & A Ely, “Assessing risks and benefits: Bt maize in Kenya”. Biotechnology and Development Monitor, No. 48, p. 6-9, 2001  ³⁸DeVries & Toeniessen, op cit.

³⁹ “New maize variety to boost harvests,” IPS, March 3, 2001.

⁴⁰ Personal communication with Mwangi David, Nairobi, July 2001.

⁴¹ Mwangi & Ely,  op cit

⁴² Florianne Koechlin, “Natural Success Stories : The ICIPE in Kenya,” June 2000, http://www.blauen-institut.ch/Pg/pF/pfNaturalSuccess.html

⁴³ Antje Lorch, “Push and Pull: Biological control of stemborer and Striga” Biotechnology and Devel-opment Monitor, No. 43, p. 22. http://www.biotech-monitor.nl/4308.htm

⁴⁴Ibid.