IPS News, February 24, 2021
The Mexican government recently took a long-awaited step to regulate the use of the herbicide glyphosate and ban cultivation and importation of genetically modified corn by 2024. I covered the campaign against GM corn in my book, Eating Tomorrow. The action poses an immediate challenge to the Biden administration and its nominee for U.S. Trade Representative, Katherine Tai, who will be pressured by industry to challenge the measures under the U.S. Mexico Canada Agreement that replaced NAFTA.
Read moreFood Tank, February 10, 2021
A growing number of farmers, scientists, and development experts now advocate a shift from high-input, chemical-intensive agriculture to low-input ecological farming. They are supported by an impressive array of new research documenting both the risks of continuing to follow our current practices and the potential benefits of a transition to more sustainable farming informed by collaborations between farmers and scientists. The new initiatives have been met with a chorus of derision from an unsurprising group of commentators, many associated with agribusiness interests. As I argue in a new paper, “Old Fertilizer in New Bottles,” such accusations flip the innovation narrative on its head.
Read moreExcerpted from Eating Tomorrow, Chapter 4
When I saw the photo of the little girl in Mutanga, Zambia, I cried. It was the kind of image that tugs at Western bleeding-heartstrings to loosen their purse-strings. It had that emotional effect on me, which was incongruous because I’d taken the photo myself. And the girl was was one of seven children on a relatively successful small farm….
read the full excerpt on Medium
Read moreThis excerpt from Chapter 6 of Eating Tomorrow: Agribusiness, Family Farmers, and the Battle for the Future of Food chronicles the failed attempt by British Sun Biofuels to make biodiesel from jatropha plants in Kisarawe, Tanzania. And the more modest and sustainable efforts by Kakute and other community organizations to harness the plant’s potential for sustainable and equitable small-scale economic development. Kakute proudly celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. Sun Biofuels dissolved in 2016. Villagers in Kisarawe are still waiting to get their land back.
Read the excerpt on Medium…
Read moreWise’s chapter details the findings of his research on the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa’s and its failures to generate significant gains in productivity, incomes, or food security. The chapter is part of the report, “Gates to a Global Empire,” published by Navdanya International in October 2020.
Read moreInterview with Timothy A. Wise, Yves Raisiere,Tchak! Magazine (Belgium)
The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa... A platform funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Objective: increase agricultural productivity and farmers' income. The result ? A failure on all fronts, denounces Timothy Wise, author of the book Eating Tomorrow: the diversity of cultures is declining and the number of undernourished people is increasing. English translation of interview in French language Tchak! Magazine, Belgium.
Read the interview in English at IATP or French at Tchak!
Read moreBy Jayati Ghosh, Project Syndicate
The COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing climate change should have taught us the importance of resilience. Unfortunately, well-intentioned efforts to improve food security in Africa are instead increasing small farmers’ dependence on global agribusinesses without raising their incomes, and making farming systems more fragile.
Read moreFood Tank
When I read the news in June that Kenya was ready to allow field trials of genetically modified cassava, I called Dr. Hans Herren. Herren won the World Food Prize in 1995 for using biological controls to halt a mealybug infestation that threatened to destroy cassava crops across Africa. With cassava serving as the staple food for much of the continent, the effort saved as many as 20 million lives, by one estimate.
Read moreIATP blog
It has now been nine months since I first asked staff at the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) for data on its beneficiaries and impacts for my background paper for the July 10 report, “False Promises.” They refused then, and now three months after that report showed limited yield improvements, continued high poverty and rising food insecurity, AGRA is still refusing to provide any evidence to refute the report’s findings.
Read moreBy Million Belay and Timothy A. Wise (IPSNews)
As COVID-19 threatens farming communities across Africa already struggling with climate change, the continent is at a crossroads. Will its people and their governments continue trying to replicate industrial farming models promoted by developed countries? Or will they move boldly into the uncertain future, embracing ecological agriculture?
Read moreIf you are one of the 2,000 delegates virtually attending this week’s African Green Revolution Forum hosted by Rwanda, you wouldn’t know that heavy storm clouds hang over the gathering. A recent report assessing the impacts of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), which hosts the annual forum, show that it may be “failing on its own terms.”
Read moreAfrican organizations are demanding answers after a recent report found that Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) strategies have failed spectacularly to meet its goals of increasing productivity and incomes for millions of small-scale farming households by 2020 while reducing food insecurity on the continent. The theme for the tenth annual African Green Revolution Forum, a virtual weeklong event hosted by Rwanda that opens September 8, is “Feed the Cities, Grow the Continent.” Based on the findings of a recent report on the host, AGRA, a more appropriate theme would be “Failing Africa’s Farmers, Starving the Continent.”
Read moreSci.Dev.net
Large agricultural development programmes have done little to reduce hunger while pushing farmers into debt, food security experts say, as they warn that such schemes risk failure if they do not move away from industrial fertilisers and seeds.
Read moreIt’s been nearly fifty years since Frances Moore Lappé reminded us in her seminal work, Diet for a Small Planet, that hunger is not caused by a scarcity of food, it is caused by a scarcity of power. Economist Amartya Sen won a Nobel Prize more than twenty years ago for showing that famine was rarely caused by a lack of food. Yet here in 2020, with the world well aware of the twin dangers of hunger and malnutrition, there was Agnes Kalibata, the leader of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), telling an online audience that poor, hungry countries can’t think about diet diversity, “it’s a luxury.”
Read moreBy Stacy Malkan, The Ecologist
Billions of dollars spent promoting and subsidising commercial seeds and agrichemicals across Africa have failed to fulfill their promises to alleviate hunger and lift small-scale farmers out of poverty, according to a new white paper published by the Tufts University Global Development and Environment Institute.
Read moreFormer UN Food and Agriculture Organization economist Jomo Kwame Sundaram, citing “False Promises” report on failures of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, calls out AGRA head Agnes Kalibata for downplaying nutritional diversity in fighting hunger. Extreme hunger has increased more than 40% in her home country of Rwanda.
“Even progress in addressing dietary energy undernourishment in the world has been uneven, with Africa projected to overtake South Asia in a decade as the region with the most hungry people, rising to 433 million in 2030 from a quarter billion. The report False Promises argues that despite improved understanding of malnutrition, a narrow focus on increasing caloric supply, at the expense of both crop and dietary diversity, is being promoted by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)….”
Read moreBy Stacy Malkan, US Right to Know
Massive investments spent promoting and subsidizing commercial seeds and agrichemicals across Africa have failed to fulfill their purpose of alleviating hunger and lifting small-scale farmers out of poverty, according to a new white paper published by the Tufts University Global Development and Environment Institute. A report based largely on the research, “False Promises,” was published July 10 by African and German nonprofits that are calling for a shift in support to agroecological farming practices.
Read moreIATP Policy Brief: To the Green Revolution, African farmers say: Time’s up. You’ve had your chance to show what difference you can make. As we face climate change and rising hunger from the COVID-19 pandemic, it is time to take a different path. The future is agroecology. (Also available in French.)
Read moreThe U.N.’s focus on nutritious and affordable diets is welcome given the prevalence of diet-related disease and micronutrient deficiencies in the developing world. But the U.N. missed a key opportunity by focusing only on making nutritious food more affordable, ignoring the reality that the biggest segment of the hungry is farmers. What they most need is crop diversity, which improves their diet diversity. A new report from a broad coalition of non-governmental organizations highlights how policymakers are actively undermining that diversity with programs such as the billion-dollar Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).
Read moreAnn Garrison interviews Timothy Wise on why US-style corporate agriculture pushed by billionaire Bill Gates has been disastrous for Africa.
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