Rallyround the Flag

""We in the alliance will not incorporate GMO's in our programmes. We shall work with farmers using traditional seeds."

By Trevor Wells

The Farmers' Legal Action Group-South Africa welcomes the first firm announcement that the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) will not fund Genetically Modified seeds by the new Chief Executive of AGRA, Kofi Annan

The announcement today,17-July-2007, was reported in Business Daily (Kenya), in an article by Allan Odhiamo headlined "Annan rules out the use of GMO's in the war on hunger in Africa."

The former United Nations General-Secretary said "Poor pricing of commodities, and not type of seeds, keeps African growers away from their farmlands despite spiraling food insecurity and poverty on the continent."

This is complete turn around by the Gates/Rockefeller Foundation who up to now have been hell bent on forcing GM seeds down the throats of the African people.

The previous Green Revolution was severely criticised for removing peasant farmers off their heritage lands to be replaced by huge agrobusiness farms in third world Countries. It was hailed as a huge success in first world countries which reaped the benefits of cheap food from the south. Apologists for the system claimed that they had raise levels of employment.

This announcement comes in the wake of the South African Government applying due diligence in rejecting an application by the African Biofortified Sorghum(ABS) Consortium to do trials in South Africa with an American patented sorghum gene. The Consortium claimed it was a truly African Sorghum. According to the ABS website "the consortium comprised nine – seven African and two American - institutions led by Africa Harvest Biotech Foundation International(AHBFI). Africa Harvest's communication activities have been supported byCropLife, a global federation 'representing the plant science industry' and led by companies like BASF, Bayer CropScience, Dow AgroSciences, DuPont , Monsanto and Syngenta. According to the AHBFI Funding Statement they are a well-resourced and highly professional lobbying operation. The US$18.5 million project was funded as part of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's Grand Challenge in Global Health program."

The rejection by the South African Government was based on the results of scientific research funded by US-AID and done by Dr Gurling Bothma of the Agricultural Research Council (ARC) in Roodeplats.The research proved conclusively that all native African relatives of sorghum including Sudan Grass would be adulterated by the American patented gene. Being an African, Kofi Annan, fully understands the spiritual connection between the land, the seeds,and the ancestors.

Kofi's inaugural speech in Cape Town can be read on the new Agra-alliance.org website launched to coincide with the official announcement of his appointment.

The website confirms that the Alliance "Programe for Africa's Seed Systems" (PASS) is funding African-led initiatives that use conventional breeding to develop new varieties of maize, cassava, beans, rice, sorghum, and other crops resistant to diseases and pests."

Credible community based farmers organisations with the links to AGRA are sadly missing from their website.
The list is still overweighted with international and African organisations who have no standing or legitimacy at grassroots community farming level in the African context. This however is a legacy of the past largely due to funding by biotech industry fronts, the World Bank and US-AID. What is pleasing is that the usual biotech brigade and industry front organisations have been very wisely, surgically cleansed from the list. It is clear that with the disastrous record of smuggling, bribery and racketeering which some of them are burdened with, would prove to be the kiss of death for AGRA.

Concerned African environmental groups and communal farmers have been monitoring behind the scenes, top level, negotiations for some months. The clear, unequivocle announcement not to finance GM0's together with the appointment of former UN-Secretary General Kofi Annan as the Chairperson of AGRA sends out a clear signal that good faith negotiation with a view to building long term relationships is the way forward.

Farmers' Legal Action Group- South Africa
www.flag-sa.org/blog/rallyround.html