Farmers clash with environmentalists

Johannesburg, 4 September - African farmers and scientists weighed in against environmentalists in the final days of the World Summit. The conference had listed action on agriculture for the poor as one of its five main goals. Yet technical solutions to the global problem of hunger were rarely discussed during the formal proceedings. Instead the arguments were confined to the summit "fringe", which heard a polarised debate between anti-GM activists on the one hand and farmers, scientists and GM company lobbyists on the other, arguing that biotechnology should be allowed to flourish without constraint by greens.Prominent Indian anti-GM activist Vandana Shiva accused farmers who wanted GM seeds of being "insincere to the lot of farmers worldwide." But angry farmers showed their opposition when they invaded a panel discussion headed by Shiva. Thembitshe Buthelezi, a cotton farmer from the Ubongwa Farmers Union in KwaZulu Natal province, South Africa, said "farmers should be left alone to decide what is best for them. Shiva and her group ought to know that some of us in Africa are just beginning to benefit from biotechnology in our cotton and maize fields, and we are not about to start listening to long tales."Behind the shouting matches, the UN Economic Commission for Africa released a new report on emerging technologies in Africa, which highlighted the importance of agricultural and medical biotechnologies for the continent. The report, Harnessing Technologies for Sustainable Development, said that GMs were "not a quick fix for Africa's hunger and poverty problems", but they were "part of a comprehensive, sustainable poverty reduction strategy."It acknowledged that "African countries are not well-equipped to address the potential risks of these technologies to human and animal health and the environment." But it warned that "the biggest risk for Africa would be to do nothing and let the biotechnology revolution bypass the continent." More countries needed to join the trio of Kenya, Egypt and South Africa, which had set up laboratories to test and licence GM products, said Jennifer Thomson, a molecular biologist at University of Cape Town.GM crops are not unknown in Africa. South Africa and Egypt have introduced Bt maize and cotton. But the trick, said the report, was to promote biotechnology research relevant to the special needs of African farmers, particularly to raise the yields and resistance to key pests of the continent's indigenous crops such as cassava, millet, sorghum and sweet potato.The debates took place against a backdrop of famine in the countries north of South Africa, where the right of countries to refuse food aid containing GM material was a topic on everyone's lips. UN agencies, such as the World Food Programme, said the maize "is not likely to present a human health risk and may be eaten." But Zimbabwe and Zambia stuck by their decision to turn back GM aid at the border.A statement released here by an industry group called "A Harvest Biotech Foundation International (AHBFI)", and claiming to be on behalf of African scientists attending the summit, called it "unethical and inhuman to play politics with the lives of people under the pretext that the food aid is unsafe because it is GM food." Monsanto, one of the prime GM suppliers on the continent, has trained many African scientists in biotechnology and donated the intellectual property rights to a series of biotechnology products for use in Africa. Its spokespeople here admitted that a prime purpose of this largesse was to influence favourably the testing and licensing regime under which GM crops will eventually be adopted across the continent.Monsanto was keen to let the local farmers and scientists do the talking. It organised the presence of Ubongwa farmers at the summit, hosting suppers with journalists. One, George Thango, explained in a prime downtown restaurant how his first crop of GM maize, harvested in July, was "far better" than the conventional crop growing alongside on his two-hectare plot. GM yields were "65 to 70 per cent greater. And we save money on pesticides which we used to have to spray two or three times," he said. This year, for the first time, he had spare maize to sell in local markets, he said.Kinyua Mbijjewe, corporate affairs manager for Monsanto in Africa, said: "I have a family background in farming and spend every opportunity on the land." She said that GM crops could fight the European corn borer, which destroys up to 40 per cent of maize on African farms like hers. And it could reduce the millions of "woman-hours" spend weeding across the continent.Such arguments don't wash with the Greens, and they see the rash of public-private partnerships being proposed here as the Trojan horse by which industry will introduce GM seeds whilst proclaiming to be pursuing the holy grail of sustainable development. Friends of the Earth claimed that an agricultural aid partnership proposal by CropLife International, a Brussels-based plant science organisation led by GM companies such as Monsanto and Syngenta, was "a serious cause for concern."

Farmers clash with environmentalists

World hunger discussion banished to fringes of World summit.

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