Seed freedom

Vandana Shiva is the Indian founder of Navdanya, which campaigns for biodiversity and against corporate control of food and seeds, says Africa is the battleground for two very different approaches to agriculture. One is the agroecological approach, based on the use of traditional seeds, diverse crops, trees and livestock, with smallholder farmers and the right to food at the core. The other is an industrial system based on monoculture, the use of fertilisers and genetically modified organisms (GMOs), where companies such as BASF, DOW, Dupont, Monsanto and Syngenta are dominant.

Vandana Shiva accuses these corporate giants of wanting to take over the world’s seed supply through genetic engineering and patents by writing the World Trade Organisation’s intellectual property rights treaty. She quotes a Monsanto representative as saying: “In writing this treaty, we were the patient, the diagnostician, the physician – all in one.” The USA will spend approximately US$1 (€0.8) billion this year on averting global hunger – but that includes supporting big farms. In 2009, the UK Department for International Development (DFID) spent about US$30 (€23) million. In the past few years, the Gates Foundation has invested more than US$2 (€1.6) billion in trying to help smallholder farmers in Africa and Asia out of poverty.

In Africa, the Foundation funds several research organisations testing GMOs, and also Alliance for a Green Revolution (Agra) in Kenya, which aims to double the income of 20 million small-scale farmers and halve food insecurity in 20 countries by 2020. Although GM crops are allowed to be grown in only three countries, this is likely to change in the next five years. The Foundation lobbies countries to accept GMO technology but is keen to see more investment in traditional breeding and staple crops such as cassava, millet and sorghum that have been largely ignored by big seed companies.

Ms Shiva considers Agra to be making an assault on Africa’s seed sovereignty: “Agra by itself would have been insignificant, but because of the Gates Foundation ability to leverage funding, Agra can have a big impact,” she says, and that Agra ambassador Kofi Annan is trying to win funding from the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

On its website, Agra insists it is not just an extension of big international philanthropies like the Gates Foundation, but an independent organisation with its own board and governance structure. “Our funding comes from a large number of international donors, but our base, approach and leadership are uniquely African,” says Agra.

Ms Shiva’s fundamental argument against GMOs is that they represent a ‘petri dish’ view that fails to take into account the complexity of the real world. “The idea that you can have everything in one gene is too crude to handle a complex living system,” she argues. “You cannot run away from systems thinking: GMOs represent an attempt to find an escape route, to think of one gene and then to move it.”

She also rejects the notion that it is possible to isolate a gene to develop a salt or drought resistant variety crop. “If for example there are 1,500 climate resistant genes and we go to the gene bank to map drought resistant genes and make a bet on 100 varieties that have the highest potential. We still do not really know what is contributing to drought resistance. It is not a reliable way of finding drought resistant varieties. Diversity has to be the approach, there is no magic bullet. Diversity has to be our partner in adaptation and resilience.”

Ms Shiva explains that farmers in India have already developed drought tolerant varieties such as Inkiri, Kalakaya and Nalibakuri, and salt tolerant varieties such as Bhundi and Kalambank. In her campaign for seed diversity, Ms Shiva is pushing for groups across the world to preserve seeds. She describes her movement as “open source seed” (a deliberate echo of open source software). For Ms Shiva, GMOs represent 20 years of failed promises and worse, leading to the emergence of super weeds and super pests. In India, Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) cotton, sold under the name Bollguard, was supposed to control the bollworm pest, but according to a Seed Freedom report last year the bollworm has become resistant to Bt cotton. In addition new pests have emerged and farmers are using more pesticides.

Climate change, argues Ms Shiva, makes biodiversity even more crucial: “In a period of climate change, the world needs a biodiverse system. The system of seeds based on monoculture is wrong and inappropriate. The biodiverse system has produced more food, and biodiversity means that seeds must be in the hands of farmers.”

Mark Tran, www.guardian.co.uk, 25 February 2013