Food and Agriculture

Kol and Mawasi tribes of Satna MP die of hunger

2008-10-29T06:21:00.000+05:30

Frontline Volume 25 - Issue 22 :: Oct. 25-Nov. 07, 2008

DEPRIVATION

Dying of hunger

AJOY ASHIRWAD MAHAPRASHASTA
in Satna

Malnourished tribal children die because ICDS schemes are all but non-existent, and the government is in denial.

PRAMOD PRADHAN

At Hardua village in Ucchera block of Satna district, a child with Grade 3 malnourishment and suffering from skin infection.

THE final five kilometres to Ramnagar (Khokla), as the village is officially called, in Satna district of Madhya Pradesh has to be done on foot down a hill thick with shrubs and bushes. As we enter the village, eager eyes scan us for food or some other kind of livelihood support only to droop in disappointment once they learn that the wait has been in vain. The people of the Kol and Mawasi tribes who inhabit this village are a desperate lot: they have neither employment nor food, and their malnourished children are dying. In the past four months at least four children have died and those standing by the side of their elders had protruding stomachs, sunken eyes, wrinkled legs and slightly deformed heads, all symptoms of malnutrition.

N. Korea blacks out cell phone use to stop news of worsening food crisis

2008-10-25T16:17:00.000+05:30

Sat, Oct 25 2008 02:05 PM

London, Oct 25 (ANI): North Korea is clamping down on mobile phones and long distance telephone calls to prevent the spread of news about a worsening food crisis, the United Nations investigator on human rights for the isolated communist country has said.

Thai law professor Vitit Muntarbhorn, in a report to the UN General Assembly, said that its government is using public executions as a means of intimidating the population, and using spies to infiltrate and expose religious communities, The Times reported.

His report came two days after the World Food Programme said that two thirds of North Koreans do not have enough to eat, in the country's worst crisis since as many as three million people died of famine a decade ago. more

Earthworms in Agriculture

2008-10-20T17:05:00.000+05:30

Opening A Can Of Worms: Serendipitous Discovery Reveals Earthworms More Diverse Than First Thought

ScienceDaily (Oct. 19, 2008) — Scientists have found that the UK's common or garden earthworms are far more diverse than previously thought, a discovery with important consequences for agriculture.

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Plants & Animals

Earth & Climate

Reference

BBSRC-funded scientists at Cardiff University, led by Dr Bill Symondson and performed in the laboratory by postdoctoral scientist Dr Andrew King and undergraduate student Ms Amy Tibble, have found that many of the common earthworm species found in gardens and on agricultural land are actually made up of a number of distinct species that may have different roles in food chains and soil structure and ecology.

This discovery was made when efforts to develop better tools to identify earthworm DNA in the guts of slug and worm-eating beetles produced some very unexpected results.

Dr Symondson said: "When we were working to find new tools to detect earthworm DNA we started getting results that were not really what we expected to see and that indicated the presence of several new earthworm species. After investigating this further we eventually found that there are significant numbers of what we call 'cryptic species'. These different species live in the same environment and have the same outward appearance, but do not interbreed and have clearly distinct DNA sequences."

"Earthworms play a major role in the agricultural environment because they are involved in many soil processes such as soil turnover, aeration and drainage, and the breakdown and incorporation of organic matter. For this reason, they have often been the subject of research into, for example, ecology and toxicology. It is vitally important that we know exactly which species we are studying, in case they respond differently from one another – to agrochemicals or heavy metals in the soil, for example." more

Towards the ideal of a hunger-free India by M.S. Swaminathan

2008-10-02T11:01:00.001+05:30

The Hindu, October 2, 2008

Achieving the goal of nutrition security for all Indians will need a fusion of political will and action, professional skill, and peoples’ participation.

“To a people famishing and idle, the only acceptable form in which God can dare appear is work and promise of food as wages.” These were the words of Mahatma Gandhi when he was healing the wounds arising from the Hindu-Muslim divide at Naokhali in 1946. He thus stressed the symbiotic bonds among work, income and food security. Eradication of hunger and poverty is also the first among the U.N. Millennium Development Goals (MDG), which in my view represent a global common minimum programme for human security and well-being.

.............

In 1981, Indira Gandhi suggested after meeting Vinoba Bhave at the Paunar Ashram in Wardha district that the district should be converted into a “Gandhi district,” since Gandhiji spent an important part of his life there. She asked me to chair a small group to prepare a blueprint to develop Wardha into “Gandhi district.”

Our first task was to develop a definition for a Gandhi district. We defined it as one where no one is below the poverty line and no one goes to bed hungry, not because of doles but because of opportunities for sustainable livelihoods. In other words, bread with human dignity was to be the hallmark of the proposed district.

At that time, over 80,000 families were below the poverty line and hence specific suggestions were given to raise all these families above the poverty level by creating opportunities for productive and remunerative work. Unfortunately, this plan to dedicate Wardha to Gandhiji is yet to be implemented. Even now, it will be worthwhile to update the report and transform Wardha into a hunger-free and poverty-free district dedicated to Gandhiji.

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Hunger levels soar in East Africa

2008-09-20T12:10:00.000+05:30

Hunger levels soar in East Africa

Rising food prices have hit Ethiopia hard

Nearly 17 million people in the Horn of Africa are in urgent need of food and other aid - almost twice as many as earlier this year, the UN has said.

Some $700m (£382m) in emergency aid is needed to prevent the region descending into full-scale famine, it said.

Top UN humanitarian official John Holmes said food stocks were critically low in parts of Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, northern Kenya and Uganda.

The area has suffered from drought, conflict and rocketing food prices.

Global Crop Diversity Trust collects seeds from Azerbaijan to Nigeria

2008-09-19T19:51:00.002+05:30

Global Seed Vault in Svalbard, Norway. (Credit: Mari Tefre/Global Crop Diversity Trust)

Scientists Behind 'Doomsday Seed Vault' Ready World's Crops For Climate Change

ScienceDaily (Sep. 18, 2008) — As climate change is credited as one of the main drivers behind soaring food prices, the Global Crop Diversity Trust is undertaking a major effort to search crop collections—from Azerbaijan to Nigeria—for the traits that could arm agriculture against the impact of future changes. Traits, such as drought resistance in wheat, or salinity tolerance in potato, will become essential as crops around the world have to adapt to new climate conditions.

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Plants & Animals

Earth & Climate

Reference

Climate change is having the most negative impact in the poorest regions of the world, already causing a decrease in yields of most major food crops due to droughts, floods, increasingly salty soils and higher temperatures.

Crop diversity is the raw material needed for improving and adapting food crops to harsher climate conditions and constantly evolving pests and diseases. However, it is disappearing from many of the places where it has been placed for safekeeping—the world's genebanks. Compounding the fact that it is not well conserved is the fact that it is not well understood. A lack of readily available and accurate data on key traits can severely hinder plant breeders' efforts to identify material they can use to breed new varieties best suited for the climates most countries will experience in the coming decades. The support provided by the Global Crop Diversity Trust will not only rescue collections which are at risk, but enable breeders and others to screen collections for important characteristics.

"Our crops must produce more food, on the same amount of land, with less water, and more expensive energy," said Cary Fowler, Executive Director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust. "This, on top of climate change, poses an unprecedented challenge to farming. There is no possible scenario in which we can continue to grow the food we require without crop diversity. Through our grants we seek, as a matter of urgency, to rescue threatened crop collections and better understand and conserve crop diversity."

Green Revolution a failure: Prince Charles

2008-08-14T11:37:00.000+05:30

Malayala Manorama Indian Newspaper of Malayalam Language from eight places in Kerela

Green Revolution a failure: Prince Charles

London: Prince Charles, the heir to the British throne, said in remarks published Wednesday that the Green Revolution in India only worked for a “short time” and is now leading to “disasters”.

Charles, a keen environmentalist and campaigner against genetically modified agriculture, made the controversial claim about India in a newspaper interview where he described GM technology as “the biggest disaster, environmentally, of all time”.

“Look at India's Green Revolution. It worked for a short time but now the price is being paid,” Charles told the Daily Telegraph in remarks that were set to be opposed by agricultural scientists.

“I have been to the Punjab where you have seen the disasters that have taken place as a result of the over-demand on irrigation because of the hybrid seeds and grains that have been produced which demand huge amounts of water.

“The water table has disappeared. They have huge problems with water level, with pesticides, and complications are now coming home to roost,” Charles said.

The Daily Telegraph said Charles is headed for “the biggest outpouring of criticism from scientists since he accused genetic engineers of taking us into 'realms that belong to God and God alone' in 1998.”

His example of India will be particularly contested as the Green Revolution is widely thought to have helped put independent India on the course to food self-sufficiency after suffering a series of famines under the British Raj.

In his remarks, Charles also said he had been to Western Australia where he had seen “huge salination problems” arising from “excessive approaches to modern forms of agriculture”.

An Introduction to Biodynamic Agriculture

2008-08-14T09:54:00.003+05:30

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An Introduction to Biodynamic Agriculture

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An Introduction to Biodynamic Agriculture
Based on "An Introduction To Biodynamic Agriculture",

Originally published in Stella Natura.

What is Biodynamic agriculture? In seeking an answer let us pose the further question: Can the Earth heal itself, or has the waning of the Earths vitality gone too far for this? No matter where our land is located, if we are observant we will see sure signs of illness in trees, in our cultivated plants, in the water, even in the weather.

Organic agriculture rightly wants to halt the devastation caused by humans; however, organic agriculture has no cure for the ailing Earth. From this the following question arises: What was the original source of vitality, and is it available now?

Biodynamics is a science of life-forces, a recognition of the basic principles at work in nature, and an approach to agriculture which takes these principles into account to bring about balance and healing. In a very real way, then, Biodynamics is an ongoing path of knowledge rather than an assemblage of methods and techniques.

Biodynamics is part of the work of Rudolf Steiner, known as anthroposophy - a new approach to science which integrates precise observation of natural phenomena, clear thinking, and knowledge of the spirit. It offers an account of the spiritual history of the Earth as a living being, and describes the evolution of the constitution of humanity and the kingdoms of nature. Some of the basic principles of Biodynamics are:

Broaden Our Perspective

Just as we need to look at the magnetic field of the whole earth to comprehend the compass, to understand plant life we must expand our view to include all that affects plant growth. No narrow microscopic view will suffice. Plants are utterly open to and formed by influences from the depths of the earth to the heights of the heavens. Therefore our considerations in agriculture must range more broadly than is generally assumed to be relevant.

Reading the Book of Nature

Everything in nature reveals something of its essential character in its form and gesture. Careful observations of nature - in shade and full sun, in wet and dry areas, on different soils, will yield a more fluid grasp of the elements. So eventually one learns to read the language of nature. And then one can be creative, bringing new emphasis and balance through specific actions.

Practitioners and experimenters over the last seventy years have added tremendously to the body of knowledge of Biodynamics.

Cosmic Rhythms

The light of the sun, moon, planets and stars reaches the plants in regular rhythms. Each contributes to the life, growth and form of the plant. By understanding the gesture and effect of each rhythm, we can time our ground preparation, sowing, cultivating and harvesting to the advantage of the crops we are raising. The Stella Natura calendar offers an introduction to this study.

The Life of the Soil

Biodynamics recognizes that soil itself is alive, and this vitality supports and affects the quality and health of the plants that grow in it. Therefore, one of Biodynamics fundamental efforts is to build up stable humus in our soil through composting.

A New View of Nutrition

We gain our physical strength from the process of breaking down the food we eat. The more vital our food, the more it stimulates our own activity. Thus, Biodynamic farmers and gardeners aim for quality, and not only quantity.

Chemical agriculture has developed short-cuts to quantity by adding soluble minerals to the soil. The plants take these up via water, thus by-passing their natural ability to seek from the soil what is needed for health, vitality and growth. The result is a deadened soil and artificially stimulated growth.

Biodynamics grows food with a strong connection to a healthy, living soil.

Medicine for the Earth: Biodynamic Preparations

Rudolf Steiner pointed out that a new science of cosmic influences would have to replace old, instinctive wisdom and superstition. Out of his own insight, he introduced what are known as biodynamic preparations.

Naturally occurring plant and animal materials are combined in specific recipes in certain seasons of the year and then placed in compost piles. These preparations bear concentrated forces within them and are used to organize the chaotic elements within the compost piles. When the process is complete, the resulting preparations are medicines for the Earth which draw new life forces from the cosmos.

Two of the preparations are used directly in the field, one on the earth before planting, to stimulate soil life, and one on the leaves of growing plants to enhance their capacity to receive the light. Effects of the preparations have been verified scientifically.

The Farm as the Basic Unit of Agriculture

In his Agriculture course, Rudolf Steiner posed the ideal of the self-contained farm - that there should be just the right number of animals to provide manure for fertility, and these animals should, in turn, be fed from the farm.

We can seek the essential gesture of such a farm also under other circumstances. It has to do with the preservation and recycling of the life-forces with which we are working. Vegetable waste, manure, leaves, food scraps, all contain precious vitality which can be held and put to use for building up the soil if they are handled wisely. Thus, composting is a key activity in Biodynamic work.

The farm is also a teacher, and provides the educational opportunity to imitate natures wise self-sufficiency within a limited area. Some have also successfully created farms through the association of several parcels of non-contiguous land.

Economics Based on Knowledge of the Job

Steiner emphasized the absurdity of agricultural economics determined by people who have never actually raised crops or managed a farm.

A new approach to this situation has been developed which brings about the association of producers and consumers for their mutual benefit. The Community Supported Agriculture movement was born in the Biodynamic movement and is spreading rapidly. Gardens or farms gather around them a circle of supporters who agree in advance to meet the financial needs of the enterprise and its workers, and these supporters each receive a share of the produce as the season progresses. Thus consumers become connected with the real needs of the Earth, the farm and the Community; they rejoice in rich harvests, and remain faithful under adverse circumstances.

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Gmail - Taking Control of the World's Food Production - jacobthanni@gmail.com

2008-08-12T13:19:00.000+05:30

Gmail - Taking Control of the World's Food Production - jacobthanni@gmail.com
Taking Control of the World's Food Production

By Kristin Palitza
Inter Press Service

DURBAN, (IPS) - Baphethile Mntambo has been farming organically for years because she knows that avoiding chemicals will in the long-term benefit her yield. She decided not to plant genetically modified seeds because she has heard that they cannot be saved for the next season and will eventually deplete her soil.

Mntambo is one of 50 small-scale farmers in the Valley of a Thousand Hills in South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal province who have been taught how to farm organically by the non-governmental organisation Valley Trust. The farmers learn to plant seasonal crops that will provide their families both with food security and an opportunity to generate income by selling their produce at local markets.

"We decided to promote organic farming to create sustainability for small-scale farmers. We believe it is the only way to give them food sovereignty and stability," explains Valley Trust food security facilitator Nhlanhla Vezi.

The Valley Trust used to cooperate with the Department of Agriculture, according to Vezi, but the collaboration ceased when the department started to put pressure on small-scale farmers to form cooperatives if they wanted its support. "The Department makes very attractive offers to provide farming equipment, water piping and seeds, but then uses this as a strategy to push GMO because of agreements they have signed with multinational GM seed patent holders," says Vezi.

Rural farmers are often lured into planting GM seeds by the Department of Agriculture by promises of substantial bank loans and the prospect of huge earnings, agrees Lesley Liddell, director of Biowatch, an NGO promoting alternatives to GMO farming by encouraging farmers to inter-crop, use natural fertilisers and non-chemical crops. "But in the end, most farmers end up in huge debt, because they can't save seeds and are obliged to buy the matching GM fertilisers and pesticides."

Yet, small-scale farmers are often so desperate for financial support that they consider planting GMO crops against better knowledge if they are offered the seeds for free. "I know that GMO is not good in the long run, but if someone gave me these seeds I would still plant them," says Tholani Bhengu, another small-scale farmer who works with the Valley Trust. "For me, the most important thing is to bring food on the table every week. I can't afford to think now about what will happen next year."

Because small-scale farmers in rural Africa often have little or no formal education, they are generally unable to make informed choices around GMO farming. "We encourage them to attend portfolio committees that discuss GMO regulations, but the farmers' knowledge is very limited, so it's difficult for them to contribute. They understand the issues but not the legislation," says Liddell.

South Africa is the only country within the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to grow GM cash crops -- maize, cotton and soya -- commercially. Since 1997, GMO farming is regulated by the Genetically Modified Organisms Act.

"The adoption of GM crops in SA has increased over the last ten years and this has also filtered down to small-scale farmers," confirms Priscilla Sehoole, chief communications officer of the national Department of Agriculture.

"As with any other technology, there are potential risks associated with GMO technology and these include those related to human and animal health and also the environment," she admits. "Therefore, the regulation of all activities involving GMOs is subjected to a scientific safety assessment process that evaluates the potential risks."

Seehole says the South African Department of Agriculture would like to harmonise GMO policies across SADC to "eliminate some of the technical barriers that (currently) hinder trade in the region."

But anti-GMO activists, such as the African Centre for Biosafety, are opposed to this approach. "The GM industry is pushing for harmonised legislation because it will make it easier to commercialise varieties of GM crops across countries. But those concerned with biosafety very much doubt if regional harmonisation (of biosafety legislation) would be of advantage," says African Centre of Biosafety director Mariam Mayet.

"At the moment, each SADC country has its own policies and all these laws are very different from each other. This means that each GMO application has to go through the approval system and public consultation of each country, which is good for transparency and accountability " she explains.

"When South Africa passed GMO legislation in 1997, most people weren't aware of how highly contentious the technology would become. But now there is no way back. Once you're in it, you're in it," says Mayet.

South Africa's food industry is already saturated with GM, she says: "Everything is contaminated, and to make matters worse, labelling of GM content is not mandatory. We need serious policy reform and to implement a testing system that traces which foods contain GMO and which do not."

Over the past decade, South Africa has entered trade agreements with large, multi-national agricultural biotechnology corporations, such as Monsanto, which -- in an attempt to control the world's agricultural production -- promote the subsidisation of patented GM seeds. Through an incentive system supporting monocultures, small-scale farmers are systematically integrated into commercial agriculture, mainly for export, and encouraged to put together their land.

"It all looks very nice on paper, but it is actually a clever ploy to get access to people's land. Small-scale farmers who sign up for GM deals quickly lose control over seed management, production and eventually their land. This means they lose their food sovereignty," says Mayet. "GMO marginalises poor, small-scale farmers. We are in for hard times and need to fight for people's right to land and resources. But we won't give up."

Celebrate, Don't Mourn, Collapse of WTO Talks

2008-08-01T19:29:00.000+05:30

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Celebrate, Don't Mourn, Collapse of WTO Talks
By Robert Weissman
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Predictably, the cheerleaders for corporate globalization are bemoaning the collapse of World Trade Organization negotiations.

"This is a very painful failure and a real setback for the global economy when we really needed some good news," said Peter Mandelson, the European Union's trade commissioner.

Even worse, says the corporate globalization rah-rah crowd, the talks' failure will hurt the developing world. After all, these negotiations were named the Doha Development Round.

"The breakdown of these talks is bad news for the world's businesses, workers, farmers and most importantly the poor," laments U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue.

But don't shed any tears for the purported beneficiaries of the WTO talks. If truth-in-advertising rules applied, this might have been called the Doha Anti-Development Round.

The alleged upside of the deal for developing countries -- increased access to rich country markets -- would have been of tiny benefit, even according to the World Bank. The Research and Information System for Developing Countries points out that Bank analyses showed a successful conclusion of the Doha Round would, by 2015, increase developing country income in total by $16 billion a year -- less than a penny a day for every person in the developing world.

The World Bank study, however, includes numerous questionable assumptions, without which developing countries would emerge as net losers. One unrealistic assumption is that governments will make up for lost tariff revenues by other forms of taxes. Another is that countries easily adjust to import surges by depreciating their currencies and increasing exports.

In any case, the important point is that there was very little to gain for developing countries.

By contrast, there was a lot to lose.

The promise to developing countries was that they would benefit from reduced agricultural tariffs and subsidies in the rich countries. Among developing nations, these gains would have been narrowly concentrated among Argentina, Brazil and a few other countries with industrial agriculture.

What the spike in food prices has made clear to developing countries is that their food security depends fundamentally not on cheap imports, but on enhancing their capacity to feed themselves. The Doha rules would have further undermined this capacity.

"Opening of markets, removal of tariffs and withdrawal of state intervention in agriculture has turned developing countries from net food exporters to net food importers and burdened them with huge import bills," explains food analyst Anuradha Mittal of the Oakland Institute. "This process, which leaves the poor dependent on uncertain and volatile global markets for their food supply, has wiped out millions of livelihoods and placed nearly half of humanity at the brink of hunger and starvation."

Farmers' movements around the world delivered this message to government negotiators, and the negotiators refused to cave to the aggressive demands made by rich countries on behalf of agricultural commodity-trading multinationals. Kamal Nath, India's Minister for Commerce and Industry, pointed out that the Doha Development Round was supposed to give benefits to developing countries -- especially in agriculture -- not extract new concessions.

The immediately proximate cause of the negotiations' collapse was a demand by developing countries that they maintain effective tools to protect themselves from agricultural import surges. Rich countries refused the overly modest demand.

And agriculture was the area where developing countries were going to benefit.

The rough trade at the heart of the deal was supposed to be that rich countries reduce market barriers to developing country agricultural exports, and developing countries further open up to rich country manufacturing and service exports and investment.

Such a deal "basically suggests that the poor countries should remain agricultural forever," says Ha-Joon Chang, an economics professor at the University of Cambridge and author of Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism. "In order to receive the agricultural concession, the developing countries basically have to abolish their industrial tariffs and other means to promote industrialization." In other words, he says, developing countries are supposed to forfeit the tools that almost every industrialized country (and the successful Asian manufacturing exporters) has used to build their industrial capacity.

In sum, says Deborah James, director of international programs for the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Economic and Policy Research, this was a lose-lose deal for developing countries. "The tariff cuts demanded of developing countries would have caused massive job loss, and countries would have lost the ability to protect farmers from dumping, further impoverishing millions on the verge of survival," she says.

By the way, it's not as if this is a North vs. South, rich country vs. poor country issue. Although there have been multiple lines of fragmentation in the Doha negotiations, the best way to understand what's going on is that the rich country governments are driving the agenda to advance corporate interests, not those of their populations. That's why there is so little public support for the Doha trade agenda, in both rich and poor countries.

Says Lori Wallach of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch: "Now that WTO expansion has been again rejected at this 'make or break' meeting, elected officials and those on the campaign trail in nations around the world -- including U.S. presidential candidates -- will be asked what they intend to do to replace the failed WTO model and its version of corporate globalization with something that benefits the majority of people worldwide."

Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor, and director of Essential Action.

Sustainers can comment on this article here: http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/commentaries/3571

And now the second sample commentary...

WTO Talks, A Tsunami Averted
By Devinder Sharma
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It was a close call. Till the last minute, suspense became overbearing. Glued to our seats and teetering on the brink of fear, with abated breath we awaited the outcome of the last minute efforts to save an unjust an inequitable "Doha round" deal. And as news started to trickle in signaling the collapse of the WTO mini-Ministerial, a sigh of relief emerged.

After all, a tsunami has been averted.

The talks failed to bridge differences over adequate measures to protect poor farmers in developing countries against import surges. Technical dubbed as "Special Safeguard Mechanism (SSM) - the provisions that protect developing countries from the disastrous consequences of a flood of food imports - had finally driven the nail in the coffin of "Doha round."

But all is not yet over. The tyrants of the food trade will surely launch a renewed assault to arm-twist, coerce and lure developing countries into submission. US President George Bush will certainly have an uphill task before he quits. Three phone calls to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in a matter of three days failed to get India sign on the dotted line. He must be disillusioned. Perhaps he is angry. How can the two emerging economies - India and China - refuse to accept the US hegemony? Is the developing world waking up to a new dawn of economic and political independence?

I am not sure whether the developing countries have emerged from the shadows of the colonial past. But what is clearly evident is that at least some countries are picking up the courage and standing up to the two bullies - the United States and European Union. All along an impression had been given - and thanks to the western media for misguiding the world - as if the US and EU have made a huge 'sacrifice' offering drastic cuts in their trade-distorting farm subsides.

In reality, the US proposal of reducing its trade-distorting subsidies by 70 per cent (and the EU following with a promise of 80 per net cut) was simply an eye-wash. These were merely paper cuts, and behind this smokescreen, both the rich trading blocks had actually ensured provisions to double their trade-distorting subsidies. The US presently pays between $ 7-9 billion as trade distorting subsidies, and what it had offered as a 'sacrifice" was to enable it to increase these subsidies further to a maximum of $ 14.5 billion.

For making these paper cuts, the US and EU wanted the developing countries to pay a corresponding price by way of providing more market access in agriculture and industry. While the Shylocks of international trade were keen to extract their pound of flesh from poor countries, look what the United Nation says. In its latest "World Economic and Social Survey 2008," the UN makes it clear that the developing countries have already paid a price in advance at Marrakesh (where the WTO formation was agreed upon in 1994). There is therefore no need for the developing countries to open up their markets still further to imports.

Very cleverly and astutely, the developed countries had managed to divert focus from their burgeoning agricultural subsidies that have inherently distorted global trade. Apart from what is dubbed as trade-distorting subsidies, the richest trading block - the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) provides annually $ 374 billion as farm subsidies. On top of it, the latest US Farm Bill 2008 makes a provision for $ 307 billion support for agriculture in the next five years.

Unless these subsidies are removed, there is no protective shied strong enough to stop the import surges into the developing world. And if you think that import surges are not a real threat you need to rethink. These are no less devastating than the trail of human destruction left behind by a powerful tsunami. Between 1980 and 2003, the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) recorded 12,167 import surges hitting 102 developing countries. On an average, each of these developing countries experienced 120 import surges a year wherein the flood of imports exceeded 30 per cent in term of volume of imports.

To put a cap at 40 per cent in import surge volumes therefore as a SSM provision for developing countries renders the entire mechanism redundant. And this is where the talks broke down. By the time 40 per cent import surges are recorded, millions of farmers are pushed out of agriculture. It has happened in the past in numerous instances. In Kenya, for instance, flood of sugar imports between 1984 and 2004 had resulted in 32,000 job losses in the domestic sugar industry. Employment levels were reduced by a whopping 79 per cent. The impact on farm livelihoods was still worse.

In the past 30 years, and thanks to the trade liberalization polices being perpetuated, 105 of the 149 Third World Countries have turned food importers. Some 40 years ago, developing countries were actually exporting food and had a surplus of US $ 7 billion in food trade. Now the developing countries food deficit has grown to a record US $ 11 billion a year. A successful completion of the ongoing "Doha round" in its present form would turn the entire Third World into a food dump. If that is what will emerge from the successful completion of the "Doha round", the question that arises is as to whom is it going to benefit?

Whether it is Special Products - the farm products which do not require any cuts in import duties - in the name of food security, livelihood concerns and rural development or its is the provision of SSM, nothing can save developing country agriculture unless the massive domestic subsidies of the OECD countries are removed. What is conveniently forgotten are the remarks of the WTO director general Pascal Lamy at the Hong Kong Ministerial in 2005: "SP is a carrot that I am dangling before the developing countries to bring them to the negotiating table."�

Sadly, the developing countries have failed to see through the game. SP is merely a temporary measure. For India, where a total of 697 tariff lines in agriculture are being negotiated, only 84 lines can be partially covered under the SP category. Several studies have however shown that Indian agriculture will need at least 57 per cent of the tariff lines being protected. After all, each tariff line is linked to millions of livelihoods. What is therefore urgently needed is to scrap the present deal, and start afresh. Come to think of it, there is no other way out.

At a time when the world is faced with a terrible food crisis there is no escape but to refocus energies on maintaining food self-sufficiency. Food security is essentially linked to food self-sufficiency. The challenge for developing countries therefore is to resist any and every move to open up the domestic markets to a flood of cheap and highly subsidized food imports. Food imports spell death-knell for the farming communities. There is no bigger crime than to sacrifice the livelihoods of an estimated three billion small farmers in the developing world for the sake of higher profits to a handful of agribusiness companies.

Sustainers can comment on this commentary here: http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/commentaries/3570

Gmail - Food Crisis Created by WTO and World Bank - jacobthanni@gmail.com

2008-07-31T07:07:00.000+05:30

Gmail - Food Crisis Created by WTO and World Bank - jacobthanni@gmail.com

Food Crisis Created by WTO and World Bank

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Food Crisis Created by WTO and World Bank
Report Shows Export-Oriented Model Eroded Africa's Food Self-Sufficiency
Source: Food & Water Watch

Washington, DC – Despite assertions by global trade ministers, this week's World Trade Organization negotiations in Geneva will not solve the current global food crisis, according to a new report released today by U.S.-based consumer advocacy group Food & Water Watch.

The report, What's Behind the Global Food Crisis? How Trade Policy Undermined Africa's Food Self-Sufficiency, found that the steady increase in food cultivation in Africa between 1980s and early 1990s slowed after the WTO went into effect in 1995. Non-food cash crop cultivation was stagnant for the dozen years before the WTO went into effect but grew swiftly since 1995.

"Trade negotiators are using the current food crisis as a Trojan Horse at the WTO negotiations to push an agribusiness agenda on farmers and rural communities around the world," stated Food & Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter. "Agriculture should be removed from WTO negotiations until international leaders fully examine the impact on developing countries' ability to feed themselves."

The study examined 25-years of Food and Agriculture Organization data on crop acreage in Africa and found that in 2006 Africa cultivated more acres of inedible cash crops (37.3 million acres of coffee, cocoa, sugar, cotton, rubber, tobacco and tea combined) than most individual key African food staple crops like yams, sweet potatoes, rice, wheat and cassava.

The report explains that the WTO and World Bank have driven the emphasis on cash crops over food crops by promoting exporting tropical commodities as a development strategy. Cash crop commodity prices have been poor over most of the past dozen years and now countries in Africa are relying on weak cash crop export earnings to buy more expensive imported food that they could have grown themselves.

"The WTO and World Bank have created a vicious cycle that leaves developing countries constantly vulnerable to market volatility," stated Hauter. "A different set of trade rules should be established that allow developing countries to determine their own food and agriculture system."

Other key findings in the report include:

• Cultivation of staple food crops in Africa increased by nearly half (48.9 percent) between 1983 and 1994 but only increased by 13.3 percent between 1995 and 2006. Cultivated acreage in cash crops was constant in the dozen years before the WTO went into effect (falling 0.2 percent), but increased by 17.7 percent after the WTO went into effect in 1995.

• Since the WTO went into effect, Africa added nearly three new acres of cocoa beans and cotton for every new acre of corn. For every two new acres of millet, Africa added nearly three new acres of cocoa beans and cotton.

The Food & Water Watch report discusses the immediate causes of skyrocketing global food prices including worldwide crop shortages, sustained growth in demand, higher oil prices, and an increase demand for crops used to make biofuel. But the report goes further and identifies the long-term effects of the globalization model promoted by the WTO and World Bank as a significant hidden contributor to the global food crisis. These policies force governments to prioritize cash crop exports over food self-sufficiency and reduce investment in domestic farm programs.

"The WTO cannot fix a problem it helped create. The current food crisis shows the insanity of keeping food under the WTO which promotes speculation over food self-sufficiency," said Hauter.

The report, What's Behind the Global Food Crisis? How Trade Policy Undermined Africa's Food Self-Sufficiency, can be viewed at http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/press/publications/reports/behind-the-global-food-crisis/index.html

Food & Water Watch is a nonprofit consumer rights organization based in Washington, D.C. that challenges the corporate control and abuse of our food and water resources.

For more information from Food & Water Watch, click here.
http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org

http://us.oneworld.net/article/wto-cannot-solve-food-crisis-states-report
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Calory Consciousness: 9000 curry houses in the UK in danger

2008-06-30T05:33:00.000+05:30

UK finds curry fattening

Mon, Jun 30 01:25 AM

The latest finding that an Indian takeaway comprising chicken tikka masala, pilau rice and one plain naan contains 1338 calories to burn which a person needs to cycle for over five hours may well scare away many aficionados of Indian cuisine in Britain. This in turn will have a direct impact on the 9000 curry houses in the country, already feeling the pinch of the rising price of rice and the general credit crunch.

Weight for weight, naan contained even more calories than the curry swimming in oil. There were 290 calories in a 100g naan compared with 685g in 350g of chicken tikka masala curry.

Chicken tikka masala curry, popularly called CTM here and regarded as a national dish, is the mainstay of the sales in the Indian restaurants - 23 million portions a year are sold. A more serious accusation was levelled, some time ago, at chicken tikka masala: in the depths of its pink-red sauce, it may be harbouring dangerous levels of chemicals that cause hyperactivity, asthma, and even cancer.

Trading standards officers in Surrey found that more than half of the Indian restaurants it examined were using illegal and potentially dangerous levels of food dye to give the dish its distinctive colour. Their findings prompted a nationwide alert to ensure Indian restaurants everywhere adhere to legal limits on such additives.

Package Indian food makers the claim the findings were not exactly correct because only curry house which prepare cheap versions of the dish add dye. "We know that Indian curries are a bit rich but we remove fat before cooking.

Oil used has almost no fat," said Sir G.E.K. Noon, of Noon Products. "Because of turmeric and other spices, which are used in preparing meals, Indians do not get bowel cancer which affects thousands here,"said Anshuman Saksena, general manager of the popular Sitaraay, Chor Bizarre and Tmarai.

Honey bee crisis could lead to higher food prices

2008-06-30T05:19:00.000+05:30

Colony Collapse Disorder
Honey bee crisis could lead to higher food prices
By Stephanie S. Garlow, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON — Food prices could rise even more unless the mysterious decline in honey bees is solved, farmers and businessmen told lawmakers Thursday.

"No bees, no crops," North Carolina grower Robert D. Edwards told a House Agriculture subcommittee. Edwards said he had to cut his cucumber acreage in half because of the lack of bees available to rent.

About three-quarters of flowering plants rely on birds, bees and other pollinators to help them reproduce. Bee pollination is responsible for $15 billion annually in crop value.

In 2006, beekeepers began reporting losing 30% to 90% of their hives. This phenomenon has become known as Colony Collapse Disorder. Scientists do not know how many bees have died; beekeepers have lost 36% of their managed colonies this year. It was 31% for 2007, said Edward B. Knipling, administrator of the Agriculture Department's Agricultural Research Service.

"If there are no bees, there is no way for our nation's farmers to continue to grow the high quality, nutritious foods our country relies on," said Democratic Rep. Dennis Cardoza of California, chairman of the horticulture and organic agriculture panel. "This is a crisis we cannot afford to ignore."

Edward R. Flanagan, who raises blueberries in Milbridge, Maine, said he could be forced to increase prices tenfold or go out of business without the beekeeping industry. "Every one of those berries owes its existence to the crazy, neurotic dancing of a honey bee from flower to flower," he said.

The cause behind the disorder remains unknown. Possible explanations include pesticides; a new parasite or pathogen; and the combination of immune-suppressing stresses such as poor nutrition, limited or contaminated water supplies and the need to move bees long distances for pollination.

Ice cream maker Haagen-Dazs and natural personal care products company Burt's Bees have pledged money for research and begun efforts to help save the bees.

The problem affects about 40% of Haagen-Dazs' 73 flavors, including banana split and chocolate peanut butter, because ingredients such as almonds, cherries and strawberries rely on honey bees for pollination.

Katty Pien, brand director for Haagen-Dazs, said those ingredients could become too scarce or expensive if bees keep dying. It could force the company to discontinue some of its most popular flavors, Pien said.

Haagen-Dazs has developed a new limited-time flavor, vanilla honey bee, and will use some of the proceeds for research on the disorder. Burt's Bees has introduced Colony Collapse Disorder Lip Balm to "soften your lips while saving honeybees."

The House Appropriations Committee approved $780,000 on Thursday for research on the disorder and $10 million for bee research. The money awaits approval by the full House and Senate.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/2008-06-26-bees-food-prices_N.htm?csp=3

The Global Food Crisis Deepens - The Tehran Times

2008-06-24T06:44:00.000+05:30

The Global Food Crisis Deepens
The Tehran Times Daily Newspaper, Tehran-Iran

The list of countries on the brink of disaster because of the global food crisis is growing by the week. Terrorism and security experts predict widespread social and political unrest and violent conflict in the second and third worlds.

Last week the United Nations' World Food Program announced it is to provide U.S. $1.2 billion (£600 million) in additional food aid in the 62 countries hit hardest by the food and fuel crisis.

Save the Children Sunday launched an emergency appeal to help children in Ethiopia who are suffering from increasing levels of hunger. The charity said a combination of drought and escalating food prices has left 4.6 million people urgently in need of food. In scenes reminiscent of the famines of the 1980s, about 736,000 of these are children under the age of five, a group which is particularly vulnerable to the effects of malnutrition.

More so than terrorism or global warming, food security will become so critical it will change global governance and result in civil unrest and food wars.

"It is clear which countries are going to be at risk," Graham Hutchings of Oxford Analytica Daily Brief, which provides country-specific daily risk analysis to political leaders, academics, businesses and NGOs, told the Sunday Herald.

"Those who are net importers of food and those with weak governments will fall, in all likelihood. The overthrow of the leader in Haiti in April over food prices is the shape of things to come.

"Those which have come across our radar are Cambodia, parts of India, the Philippines, central Asian countries such as Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and African countries such as Senegal, Cameroon, Burkina Faso and the Ivory Coast. There have been food riots in Egypt, Yemen and Malaysia."

Hutchings warned there is a very real risk of an angry popular and political backlash against the globalization and international capitalism from the world's growing hungry. It is understood that one of the major drivers of the food crisis is financial speculation by the West. Capital flight from the subprime market into secure commodities such as wheat futures has pushed the price of food beyond the reach of the developing world.

"Food riots and political backlash against their own governments and those of the West will increase as the food crisis continues to bite," he said.

As the world runs out of food, it is those countries with weak governments and growing urban poor which will fall first. Inter-country tensions will also increase as policies of economic protectionism and stockpiling cause tensions.

"Politicians across the world will live or die by their ability to address subsistence and food inflation, which they won't be able to solve."

Professor Paul Wilkinson, an expert on terrorism and security at St. Andrews University, believes more autocratic regimes may be able to ride the wave of anger.

He said: "The food crisis will create more insecurity in the world. States with poor security are the most vulnerable and if there is anger and protest over food then more governments could fall."

Forecasting agencies, such as the world-class Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies, have researched that, unless something is done, the food crisis will continue to grow year after year and predict it will accelerate well beyond 2016.

http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=17099

Making the Poor Fools: To solve the food crisis World Bank gives subsidy to the chemical industry

2008-06-23T05:58:00.000+05:30

thenazareneway to communions@yahoogroups.com
Sun, Jun 22, 2008 at 10:22 AM

The Answer to Global Hunger

MODENA, Italy (Reuters) - Small-scale, not industrial farming, is the answer to food shortages and climate change, organic farmers argued this week.

Meeting at the Organic World Congress this week, the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements IFOAM -- www.ifoam.org -- criticized a recent U.N. food summit for touting chemical fertilizers and genetically modified (GM) crops rather than organic solutions to tackle world hunger.

The World Bank says an extra 100 million people worldwide could go hungry as a result of the sharp rise in the price of food staples in the last year.

At the U.N. food summit in Rome this month, the World Bank pledged $1.2 billion in grants to help with the food crisis.

"The $1.2 billion the World Bank says will solve the food crisis in Africa is a $1.2 billion subsidy to the chemical industry," said Vandana Shiva, an Indian physics professor and environmental activist speaking at the forum in Modena.

"Countries are made dependent on chemical fertilizers when their prices have tripled in the last year due to rising oil prices," she said. "I say to governments: spend a quarter of that on organic farming and you've solved your problems."

She said industrial farming was based on planting a single crop on vast surfaces and heavy use of chemical fertilizers, a process that used 10 times more energy than it produced.

"The rest turns into waste as greenhouse gases, chemical runoffs and pesticide residues in our food," she said.

In contrast, organic farms could increase output by 10 times by growing many different species of plants at the same time, which helped retain soil and water, she said. "In a one-acre farm in India they can grow 250 species of plants," she said.

FEEDING 9 BILLION PEOPLE

The U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization Director General Jacques Diouf said last December there was no reason to believe that organic agriculture can substitute conventional farming systems in ensuring the world's food security.

"You cannot feed six billion people today and nine billion in 2050 without judicious use of chemical fertilizers."

Shiva has began a civil disobedience campaign in India against the patenting of natural seeds, particularly of crops that resist flooding and drought and can better withstand climate change.

"We need this worldwide. Seeds are for everyone," she said.

According to IFOAM, a quarter of greenhouse gases are emitted by industrially farmed crops and livestock. The proportion rises to 40 percent when including the emissions caused by transporting commodities around the world.

IFOAM members also criticized the production of fuel from grains, citing a U.S. university study that it took 1.3 gallons of fossil fuel to make 1 gallon of ethanol from corn.

The United States and Brazil defended their use of corn and sugar cane to make ethanol to fuel cars at the UN food summit saying it was a minor factor in food price inflation.

http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/37461

The Fallacy of GM Crops

2008-06-21T07:17:00.000+05:30

The Fallacy of GM Crops
by Geoffrey Lean
20.06.08
thenazareneway to Communions

The saying goes, it's an ill wind that blows nobody any good - and the increasing hunger spreading around the globe as the world food crisis takes hold is sending the genetically modified food lobby smiling all the way to the seed bank.

Food prices may be at a record high, food reserves at an unprecedented low, and millions of the world's poorest may be struggling to scrape together a single meal a day - but the much-battered biotech industry is enjoying its biggest ever public relations bonanza.

Yesterday, Environment Minister Phil Woolas said Britain needs to look at whether GM technology could help tackle the current crisis, signaling an end to more than a decade of government scepticism over GM plants.

Suddenly, after years of being shunned by the British public, the industry and its cheerleaders are scrambling for the unfamiliar territory of the moral high ground.

Only GM can reduce world hunger, they say. Anyone churlish enough to mention the indisputable damage it does to the environment - or the worrying, if inconclusive, evidence it may endanger health - is guilty of betraying the most wretched people on earth.

It's been hard, over recent weeks, to switch on the TV or radio without hearing some variation of this theme. And it is passing from punditry into policy.

The World Bank is calling for an agricultural revolution based on biotechnology, while Neil Parish, chairman of the European Parliament's agriculture committee, avers that rising food prices will make consumers 'more realistic' about GM.

George W. Bush - declaring that modified crops ' hold the promise of producing more food for more people' - has made promoting them part of a proposed £335 million aid package to ease the food crisis.

Dissent is denounced as heresy. Britain's National Beef Association is calling for 'all resistance to GM crops to be abandoned immediately'.

And when the world's biggest ever agricultural study - the work of 400 scientists and 60 governments - concluded GM was 'not the simple answer to hunger and poverty', it was denounced by one newspaper columnist as 'a truly shocking betrayal of the world's least well fed'.

Ministers and members of the biotech industry are jumping on the band wagon of the world food crisis and using it to support the argument for GM crops

But it's all hype. The truth is GM crops do nothing to ease world hunger. Quite the reverse. They actually threaten to make it worse.

Let's start with the fallacy that GM crops are more productive. Intuitively it seems to make sense and you hear it everywhere: BBC news readers refer unquestioningly to 'high yielding GM crops'. George Bush's food aid expert, Dan Price, says: 'It is established fact that a number of bioengineered crops have shown themselves to increase yield.'

Not so. The real facts show that genetic modification not only fails to boost productivity, but often slashes it.

Dr Charles Benbrook, an agricultural scientist, reported 'voluminous and clear evidence' that modified soya crops 'produce five to ten fewer bushels per acre in contrast to otherwise identical varieties grown under comparable field conditions'.

In 1998, a study based on 8,200 trials of GM soya varieties in U.S. universities found they produced 6.7 per cent less than their nearest non-GM relatives. They yielded 10 per cent less than the best conventional soya available at the time.

Two years later, a study at the University of Nebraska came up with strikingly similar results, finding that five different Monsanto GM soyas - though more expensive - produced 6 per cent less food than their closest cousins, and 11 per cent less than the highest-yielding traditional varieties.

Other studies have shown that the productivity of soya doubled in the 70 years before the introduction of modified varieties in the mid Nineties.

At least half of this was down to the traditional way of improving crops by interbreeding them; the rest came from improved farming practices. But once GM soya became widespread, this growth abruptly stopped: yields have remained much the same since.

Cotton yields, which had multiplied five-fold since 1930, also stagnated in the U.S. as GM varieties took over 80 per cent of the crop in the late Nineties.

Modified corn did better: yields continued growing at the same rate while it was introduced, but still did not accelerate as proponents would have us believe. And studies have shown that some GM varieties suffer drops of up to 12 per cent.

Confronted by this evidence, the industry beats a hasty retreat. The question of yields is a 'sideshow', you are told, modified crops were never intended to increase them. True enough, if a long way from the hype about GM feeding the world.

All varieties now being grown were developed for two purposes, tolerating weed killers so they can be sprayed more abundantly, and resisting pests.

Yet drenching the crops with chemicals has caused the development of resistant superweeds which have been found in more than 3,250 places in the U.S. alone.

Similarly, GM cotton developed to resist bollworm has been attacked by other pests, causing an increase of spraying with insecticide.

All that is in the past, retorts the industry. What we do in the future will tackle world hunger. Earlier this month, Hugh Grant, Monsanto's chief executive, announced a 'commitment' to double yields of corn, soybeans and cotton by 2030 and, at the same time, to develop crops that will need 30 per cent less water, land and energy to grow.

Experts doubt any of this will happen, saying it is a much more difficult undertaking than developing the present modified varieties. Lester Brown, president of Washington's Earth Policy Institute, says the physiology of plants is approaching its practical limit.

For comparison, he points out how runners have only slightly improved on Roger Bannister's first four-minute mile of more than 50 years ago. As for drought-resistant crops, they have been researched for at least ten years without success.

Experts say that, at best, they are decades away from being grown. And even then the developing world would have to wait: Monsanto has previously made it clear that the miracle varieties would be used in the U.S. 'well before they become available in other countries'.

Indeed, the biotech companies are already hard at work to ensure they, not the hungry, would benefit. An investigation has found they have filed for no fewer than 532 patents around the world on genes that might confer drought resistance.

If successful, these will enable them to monopolize the seeds needed to grow crops in a warmer, drier world, charge what they like and, by ensuring the seeds are 'infertile', make farmers buy new ones every year by stopping their age-old practice of saving seeds from one harvest to sow for the next one.

These so-called 'terminator' crops would mean the poorest farmers would be driven to the wall, increasing destitution.

Studies of modified soya in Latin America and cotton in India show poor farmers and labourers are already suffering, as bigger ones take over the land and reduce their workforces.

Professor Ossama El-Tayeb, of Cairo University, condemns 'big business' for claiming that 'GM crops will alleviate poverty soon, while currently available ones mostly contribute negatively to poverty alleviation and food security, and positively to the stock market'.

This is all the more scandalous because the small farmers of the Third World really are the key to reducing hunger. They produce up to 20 times more food per acre than the biggest ones, partly because they work the land more intensively.

Big, technologically advanced farms produce more per person employed, but that is not what is needed where land is scarce and labour is plentiful. Indeed, in developing countries it is organic agriculture that offers the real promise of increasing yields.

Even some biotech chiefs seem to be admitting the truth. Hans Kast, managing director of the plant science branch of the chemical giant BASF, said: 'Genetically modified agriculture will not solve the world's hunger problem.'

How long will it be before the increasingly noisy British GM lobby display similar honesty? If I were you, I wouldn't hold your breath.

Geoffrey Lean is Environment Editor of the Independent
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk

GENETICALLY MODIFIED (GM) CROPS FAIL TO ALLEVIATE POVERTY

2008-06-13T06:43:00.000+05:30

thenazareneway to Communions

Study Reveals the Benefits of GM Crops
GENETICALLY MODIFIED (GM) CROPS INCREASE PESTICIDE USE AND FAIL TO ALLEVIATE POVERTY, REVEALS NEW REPORT

Contact: Bill Freese, Center for Food Safety, 202-547-9359
John Bianchi, Goodman Media, 212-576-2700; Helen Holder, Friends of the Earth Europe, +32 474 857 638 or +32 2 542 01 82

GM Crops Have Not Reduced World Hunger, Study Concludes

Washington D.C. - Genetically modified (GM) crops have led to a large increase in pesticide use and have failed to increase yield or tackle world hunger and poverty, a new report by the Center for Food Safety revealed today. The report coincides with the annual release of biotech industry figures on GM crop cultivation around the world.

"The biotech industry tells Africans that we need GM crops to tackle the food needs of our population. But the majority of GM crops are used to feed animals in rich countries, to produce damaging agrofuels, and don't even yield more than conventional crops," said Nnimmo Bassey, Friends of the Earth International's GMO coordinator in Nigeria.

"For years, the biotech industry has been trumpeting the benefits of GM crops, but this report shows the true emerging picture," added Andrew Kimbrell, Executive Director of the Center for Food Safety. "These crops really promote greater use of pesticides, and cause direct harm to the environment and small farmers. More and more, foundations and international aid and development organizations are recognizing the dead end that GM crops represent."

The report, "Who Benefits from GM Crops?: The Rise in Pesticide Use," finds that: GM crops do not tackle hunger or poverty.

* The vast majority of GM crops are used to feed animals in rich countries rather than people in poorer nations. South America's expanding GM soybean plantations produce soy meal for Europe's livestock industry, and have reduced food security by displacing poor farmers and reducing land area planted to food crops like corn and beans for local consumption.

* Industry claims that genetically-modified cotton (Bt cotton) has boosted cotton yields and increased small farmers' income. However, close examination reveals that cotton yield gains are attributable more to favorable weather conditions (India, the U.S) and a shift to irrigation (South Africa) than to the biotech trait.

* In South Africa's Makhatini Flats, portrayed internationally as the "success story" demonstrating the benefits of GM cotton, the number of small cotton growers has plummeted from 3229 in 2001/02 to just 853 in 2006/07.

* Not a single GM crop on the market is engineered for enhanced nutrition, increased yield potential, drought-tolerance, or other attractive traits touted by the biotech industry.

GM crops increase pesticide use and foster spread of resistant "superweeds"

* Four of every five acres of GM crops worldwide are Monsanto's Roundup Ready varieties, designed specifically for use with glyphosate, the weed-killing chemical that Monsanto sells under the name of Roundup. Weed-killers, or herbicides, are the largest class of pesticides.

* U.S. government data reveal a huge 15-fold increase in the use of glyphosate on soybeans, corn and cotton in the U.S. from 1994 to 2005, driven by adoption of Roundup Ready versions of these crops.

* Rising glyphosate use has spawned a growing epidemic of weeds resistant to the chemical in the U.S., Argentina and Brazil. Weed scientists have reported glyphosate-resistant weeds infesting 2.4 million acres in the U.S. alone.

* Increasing weed resistance to glyphosate has led to rising use of other toxic chemicals. In the U.S., the amount of 2,4-D applied to soybeans more than doubled from 2002 to 2006. 2,4-D was a component of the Vietnam War defoliant, Agent Orange. In Argentina, it is projected that 25 million liters of herbicides other than glyphosate will be needed to tackle glyphosate-resistant Johnsongrass.

Overall, GM crops do not yield more and often yield less than other crops

* Roundup Ready soybeans, the world's most widely planted GM crop, have 6% lower yield than conventional soy, according to University of Nebraska researchers

* Even the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture admits that no GM crop on the market has been modified to increase yield. The main factors influencing crop yield are weather, irrigation, soil fertility, and conventional (non-biotech) breeding for increased yield.

GM crops benefit the biotech industry and some large growers, not small farmers

* Biotech companies benefit by selling more herbicides, charging more for GM seeds, and by seed patents, which make seed-saving illegal and thereby increase seed sales.

* Some large-scale growers in North and South America benefit from a "convenience effect" - reduced labor needs and increased flexibility in the timing of herbicide applications, though resistant weeds are beginning to erode these benefits.

* Thousands of U.S. farmers have been forced to pay Monsanto tens of millions of dollars for the "crime" of saving and replanting the company's patented seed.

Malnutrition Kills Toddlers in Indonesia

2008-06-12T18:01:00.000+05:30

Malnutrition Kills 21 Indonesia Toddlers
Malnutrition kills 21 toddlers in eastern Indonesia, thousands more at risk
JAKARTA, Indonesia June 12, 2008 (AP)
The Associated Press

U.N. warns that failed harvests and drought mean risk of another famine.

At least 21 toddlers have died of malnutrition in eastern Indonesia in recent months due to a food shortage that threatens the lives of thousands more children, a local health official said Thursday.

An additional 116 youngsters have been admitted to clinics and hospitals in critical condition, said Stephanus Bria Seran, who heads the health department in East Nusa Tenggara province.

"We urgently need medicine and nutritional foods to save the children," he said. "We are racing against time because they need nutritious food within 30 days if we want to save their lives."
Related
G-8 Finance Chiefs to Tackle Oil, Food
Hunger in Ethiopia Now Spreading to Adults
PHOTOS: Ethiopia on Verge of Major Famine

The food shortages have been caused by flooding and drought. Farmers fear the next harvest may also fail due to excessive rainfall and landslides.

Children's diets began lacking sufficient nutrients, causing diseases, hospitalizations and deaths over the past six months, he said.

In the same period, nearly 85,000 children have been registered as malnourished in the province, one of the country's least developed.

The figures show a sharp jump from the whole of 2007, when 10 toddlers died out of 68,000 registered as malnourished in the province.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

The Patenting of the Worlds Food Supply

2008-06-11T19:48:00.000+05:30

thenazareneway to Communions

The Patenting of the Worlds Food Supply
Biotech Giants Demand a High Price for Saving the Planet
From: , Organic Consumers Association,
Published June 10, 2008 10:24 AM

Biotech Companies 'profiteering' as they attempt to patent crop genes

Giant biotech companies are privatising the world's protection against climate change by filing hundreds of monopoly patents on genes that help crops resist it, a new investigation has concluded.

The study - by the authoritative Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration (ETC Group), based in Ottawa, Canada - has found that nine firms have filed at least 532 patents around the world on about 55 different genes offering protection against heat, drought and floods. If granted, the companies would be given control of crucial natural raw material needed to maintain food supplies in an increasingly hungry world.

Last week, as world leaders met in Rome to discuss the food crisis, GM companies promoted their technologies as the answer to hunger. On Thursday, Monsanto - the biggest and most controversial firm - announced a "commitment" to increase food production, partly by developing crops that need less water.

"Together we must meet the needs for increased food, fibre and energy, while preserving the environment," said the company's head, Hugh Grant. "These commitments represent the beginning of a journey that we will expand on and deepen in the years ahead."

The ETC Group calls this "an opportunistic public relations strategy", adding: "Monsanto's business is selling patented seeds for industrial agriculture - not addressing a humanitarian food crisis."

The report of its investigation shows that Monsanto and BASF - which last year announced a $1.5bn "collaboration" to develop new GM crops, including "ones more tolerant to adverse environmental conditions such as drought" - have between them filed patents for 27 of the 55 genes. Others had been filed by companies such as Bayer, Syngenta and Dow.

The reports says some of the applications are sweeping. One would cover more than 30 crops from oats to oil palms, triticale to tea, and potatoes to perennial grass - "in other words, virtually all food crops".

It says the "corporate grab on climate-tolerant genes" means that "a handful of transnational companies are now positioned to determine who gets access to key genetic traits and what price they must pay".

Small farmers in developing countries will be particularly hard hit by such "climate-change profiteering". Patenting will make the crops expensive and ensure that poor farmers have to buy them every year, by prohibiting them from saving seeds from one harvest to grow for the next.

According to the report, conventional, non-GM breeding techniques are making remarkable progress in developing crops that can tolerate heat, floods and drought. A new Asian rice, due to go on the market next year, can stand being submerged for two weeks without affecting yields, while a new African one flowers early in the morning, escaping the heat of the day.

But, it says, "the patent grab is sucking up money and resources that could be spent on affordable, farmer-based strategies for survival".

It concludes: "These patented technologies will ultimately concentrate corporate power, drive up costs, inhibit independent research and further undermine the rights of farmers to save and exchange seeds".

But Croplife, which represents the world's plant-science industry, retorts; "Patenting is very important. That is how we protect intellectual property and ensure we continue to bring new innovations to the marketplace." It denies that biotechnology companies are seeking to monopolise the worlds food supplies.

Cuba's Urban Farming Program a Stunning Success

2008-06-10T07:03:00.000+05:30

Cuba's Urban Farming Program a Stunning Success
With Food Prices Soaring, Cuba's Urban Farms Could Be A Model For The World
By NIKO PRICE Associated Press Writer
HAVANA June 8, 2008 (AP)
The Associated Press

For Miladis Bouza, the global food crisis arrived two decades ago. Now, her efforts to climb out of it could serve as a model for people around the world struggling to feed their families.
Farmers work in an onion field at a hydroponic farm which uses specialized irrigation methods to... Expand
Farmers work in an onion field at a hydroponic farm which uses specialized irrigation methods to grow vegetables in smaller, non-rural areas, in Havana, Thursday, May 15, 2008. The future of urban farming in Cuba is looking brighter than ever. Now that Raul Castro is president, many expect him to expand the program he began as an experiment in the early 1990s.

Bouza was a research biologist, living a solidly middle-class existence, when the collapse of the Soviet Union — and the halt of its subsidized food shipments to Cuba — effectively cut her government salary to $3 a month. Suddenly, a trip to the grocery store was out of reach.

So she quit her job, and under a program championed by then-Defense Minister Raul Castro, asked the government for the right to farm an overgrown, half-acre lot near her Havana home. Now, her husband tends rows of tomatoes, sweet potatoes and spinach, while Bouza, 48, sells the produce at a stall on a busy street.

Neighbors are happy with cheap vegetables fresh from the field. Bouza never lacks for fresh produce, and she pulls in between $100 to $250 a month — many times the average government salary of $19.

"All that money is mine," she said. "The only thing I have to buy is protein" — meat.

Cuba's urban farming program has been a stunning, and surprising, success. The farms, many of them on tiny plots like Bouza's, now supply much of Cuba's vegetables. They also provide 350,000 jobs nationwide with relatively high pay and have transformed eating habits in a nation accustomed to a less-than-ideal diet of rice and beans and canned goods from Eastern Europe.

From 1989-93, Cubans went from eating an average of 3,004 calories a day to only 2,323, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, as shelves emptied of the Soviet goods that made up two-thirds of Cuba's food. Today, they eat 3,547 calories a day — more than what the U.S. government recommends for American citizens.

"It's a really interesting model looking at what's possible in a nation that's 80 percent urban," said Catherine Murphy, a California sociologist who spent a decade studying farms in Havana. "It shows that cities can produce huge amounts of their own food, and you get all kinds of social and ecological benefits."

Of course, urban farms might not be such a success in a healthy, competitive economy.
A farmer works at a hydroponic farm which uses specialized irrigation methods to grow vegetables in... Expand
A farmer works at a hydroponic farm which uses specialized irrigation methods to grow vegetables in smaller, non-rural areas, in Havana, Thursday, May 15, 2008. The future of urban farming in Cuba is looking brighter than ever. Now that Raul Castro is president, many expect him to expand the program he began as an experiment in the early 1990s. (AP Photo/Javier Galeano) Collapse
(AP)

As it is, productivity is low at Cuba's large, state-run farms where workers lack incentives. Government-supplied rations — mostly imported from the U.S. — provide such staples as rice, beans and cooking oil, but not fresh produce. Importers bring in only what central planners want, so the market doesn't correct for gaps. And since most land is owned by the state, developers are not competing for the vacant lots that can become plots for vegetables.

Still, experts say the basic idea behind urban farming has a lot of promise.

"It's land that otherwise would be sitting idle. It requires little or no transportation to get (produce) to market," said Bill Messina, an agricultural economist at the University of Florida in Gainesville. "It's good anyway you look at it."

And with fuel prices and food shortages causing unrest and hunger across the world, many say the Cuban model should spread.

"There are certain issues where we think Cuba has a lot to teach the world. Urban agriculture is one of them," said Beat Schmid, coordinator of Cuba programs for the charity Oxfam International.

Other countries have experimented with urban farming — Cuba's initial steps were modeled after a green belt surrounding Shanghai. But nowhere has urban farming been used so widely to transform the way a country feeds itself.

"As the global food crisis receives attention, this is something that we need to be looking at," Murphy said. "Havana is an unlikely, really successful model where no one would expect one to come from."

Now that Raul Castro is president, many expect him to expand the program he began as an experiment in the early 1990s.

One of the first plots he opened was the "organoponico" on Fifth Avenue and 44th Street in the ritzy Havana neighborhood of Miramar. The half-block farm — owned by a government agency — is surrounded by apartment buildings and houses, but also offices of foreign companies, a Spanish bank and the South African Embassy.

Long troughs brim with arugula, spinach, radishes and basil, and few of the 20,000 square feet are wasted.
A farmer works at a hydroponic farm which uses specialized irrigation methods to grow vegetables in... Expand
A farmer works at a hydroponic farm which uses specialized irrigation methods to grow vegetables in smaller, non-rural areas, in Havana, Thursday, May 15, 2008. The future of urban farming in Cuba is looking brighter than ever. Now that Raul Castro is president, many expect him to expand the program he bagan as an experiment in the early 1990s. (AP Photo/Javier Galeano) Collapse
(AP)

One technician tends compost that serves as natural fertilizer, while another handles natural protection from pests, surrounding delicate spinach shoots with strong-smelling celery to ward off insects. Such measures have ecological benefits but were born of necessity: Neither commercial fertilizer nor herbicide is reliably available.

Three workers tend the crops and another three sell them from a brightly painted stall.

Key to the operation is something once unheard of in Cuba: 80 percent of the profits go straight to the workers' pockets, providing them an average of $71 a month.

"Those salaries are higher than doctors, than lawyers," said Roberto Perez, the 58-year-old agronomist who runs the farm. "The more they produce, the more they make. That's fundamental to get high productivity."

Customers say the farm has given them not only access to affordable food, but also a radical change in their cuisine.

"Nobody used to eat vegetables," said David Leon, 50, buying two pounds of Swiss chard. "People's nutrition has improved a lot. It's a lot healthier. And it tastes good."

———

Associated Press Writer Andrea Rodriguez contributed to this report.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

The Food Crisis and Genetically Modified Seeds

2008-06-10T06:11:00.000+05:30

The Food Crisis and Genetically Modified Seeds
By Robert Marquand | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor / June 6, 2008 edition
thenazareneway to Communions

Opposition to genetically modified (GM) foods, still strongest in Europe, is starting to erode in the face of the global food crisis. But the pressure for change, so far, is more economic than political.

Indeed, it was the political fighting over biofuels, farm subsidies, and trade policies, that threatened to undermine the efforts of 40 world leaders seeking a solution to soaring food costs at a UN summit in Rome that ended last Thursday.

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) asked governments to provide at least $20 billion a year to revive world agriculture research, to help feed nearly 1 billion hungry people, and to spark a new "green revolution." But what advocates describe as a promising solution to hunger – GM foods – did not get much play in Rome, save its promotion by US Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer.

Partly this is because genetically modified crops are not regarded as an immediate answer to farming problems in poor regions; partly it is because genetic alteration remains controversial. Europe bans most of the use and growth of crops whose seeds have been modified with genes of other organisms to make them more resilient.

Yet the economics of the food crisis may already be forcing changes in Europe, and in smaller farm nations, experts say. For the first time, Japan and Korea are allowing snack and drink manufacturers to quietly start using GM corn, after prices for non-GM corn doubled last year.

In Europe, growing numbers of farmers and corporations (such as BASF in Germany, which has a genetic potato ready to introduce) are pushing the European Union – including threats of legal action – to ease restrictions on using GM produce.

Legislators in France, Europe's No. 1 farming nation, nearly came to blows May 22, when a bill to allow GM crops passed by a single vote; yet France will now only allow GM crops once the EU accepts them, a position that has vacillated for years, despite a green light by the EU food safety agency.

Genetically modified foods are commonplace in the US, China, Brazil, and Argentina – in processed foods, oils, and corn syrup. In US farming states, such as Minnesota last year, harvests of GM soybeans and GM corn made up 92 and 86 percent of those crops, according to the US Department of Agriculture.

By comparison, last year GM crops covered less than 1 percent of the farmland in France.

But views of genetic modification vary across Europe. Eurobarometer, a European Commission periodical, said in March that 58 percent of Europeans are opposed to the use of GM crops. But opinion in The Netherlands and Britain is less strident. Some Spanish farms are using engineered seeds. European farmers themselves (like those in Australia recently) are starting to say that tangible profits resulting from GM crops are changing their minds. A recent poll shows Italian farmers are willing to try them.

US officials and farmers alike express irritation over cases of food aid rejected in hungry African states – by local authorities worried about the contamination of crops by GM grains, making them unfit for sale in lucrative non-GM -food European markets.

South Africa is the only African nation that has approved planting a GM crop, though Burkina Faso may be close to approving a cotton strain, following its widespread use in India, and Egypt is looking at GM maize, according to the Financial Times.

At the summit in Rome, the FAO took no position on genetic modification or GMOs (genetically modified organisms). The organization takes a neutral position allowing choice by each nation. "Traditional farming techniques can close the yield gap between developing and developed nation farming, which is sometimes double," says FAO spokesman Ali Gurkan. "But new research into GM seeds that have no harmful impact on the environment and strengthen plants in drought areas – this could greatly help."

The GM dispute, complicated enough at a technical level, goes far deeper than food. It reveals profound clashes over science and culture, and over fundamental views about how to live in and organize the modern world, experts say.

"There's a deep divide over the role of technology in agriculture, and GMOs are the key," says an FAO official who was not officially cleared to speak. But he said that when GM and non-GM crops are studied side by side, the GM crops have consistently cost less to produce and brought greater "effective" yields, "which is how much you get after the bugs have stopped chewing on them," he says.

For advocates, GM crops mean fewer harmful pesticides sprayed on crops, less fertilizer, greater harvest yields, and no ill- health effects. Biotech promises a future of drought resistant crops and cheaper, less vulnerable harvests.

For skeptics, mixing the genes of unlike species is a usurping of nature, the creation of Frankensteins in the food chain, and a concession to giant agribusiness. Genetic manipulation has unknown and untested effects on people and other living things, they argue, and can harm everything from soil and friendly insects to other crops. It also smacks of the blind faith in technology that brought global warming, poisonous rivers, and choking pollution. A UN report in 2005 found that "assessment mechanisms were faulty" in the testing of GMOs.

"GM foods have not lived up to the promises we heard about 10 years ago," says Helen Holder of Friends of the Earth in Brussels. "They have not alleviated poverty and hunger, and their environmental and health impacts are not understood. In Europe, we will pay more for safe food, and we reject GM."

In the US, China, and Brazil, there are now roughly two generations of genetically modified crops. The first generation, marketed for a decade, includes most of what is actually grown on mass scale. This includes corn, soy, rapeseed (for canola oil), and cotton. First-generation GM crops consist mostly of plants modified to produce "internal toxins" that deter the pests that threaten crops, experts say.

While few scientists will absolutely guarantee the safety of genetic foods, they point out almost no side effects to human health. It is the effects on other plant species – that may be dominated and replaced in the natural world by GM crops – that concern some ecologists.

GMO and Cross-Breeding

Conventional plant breeding alters the genes of a plant or animal by selectively mating an organism with desirable characteristics using a species' natural reproductive processes.

Genetic engineering alters a plant's genes using techniques that directly insert new genetic material, which may come from another species, into a plant cell to create new or modified traits. Scientists first discovered the technique in 1973 and genetically modified food crops first became commercially available to farmers in the mid-1990s.

Source: Wire reports, Consumers Union.
– Compiled by Christine Chronopoulos

http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/2008/06/06/food-crisis-softens-resistance-to-genetically-modified-gm-food/

The Failure of the U.N. Food Crisis Summit

2008-06-06T20:49:00.000+05:30

The Failure of the U.N. Food Crisis Summit

thenazareneway to Communions

The global food crisis summit hosted by the United Nations has failed to reach any formal agreement on combating hunger threatening over a billion people.

Delegates from 183 countries at the three-day talks in Rome were supposed to issue a declaration Thursday on "eliminating hunger and securing food for all."

But bickering over trade barriers, the use of genetically modified crops and geopolitics has raised the prospect of the summit being a complete failure.

The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization called the meeting to seek ways to secure food supplies in the face of poor harvests, rising fuel costs and rising demand, especially from rapidly developing Asian countries.

Commodity prices have doubled over past few years and put 100 million people at risk of joining the 850 million already going hungry, according to the World Bank.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer said Wednesday he doubted the U.N. food crisis summit in Rome would yield a "positive agreement" as countries squabbled over wording of a joint declaration.

What was supposed to be an emergency conference on food shortages, climate change and energy turned into a global podium for powerful politicians to grandstand mostly about economic issues in their own countries and political priorities, the New York Times reported.

"Everyone complained about other people's protectionism - and defended their own," Andrew Martin and Elisabeth Rosenthal wrote.

Many representatives of poorer countries expressed frustration at the tenor of the meeting.

"We believe the problem is much more political than everything else," Walter Poveda Ricaurte, agriculture minister of Ecuador, told the Times. "We have to differentiate between the countries who are really affected by the food crisis and those who are seeing it as an economic opportunity."

Despite repeated urgings at the summit to stop talking about hunger and take action, it was the wording of the final document that threatened to undermine the talks' success.

"We mustn't give in to panic ... to surrender to the temptation for short-term solutions, even if we have to respond to a situation of distress," European Union aid commissioner Louis Michel told the summit, according to Agence France-Presse.

Biofuels were the most contentious issue at the summit, with the United States and Brazil defending their use of maize and sugarcane, respectively, to produce fuel. Washington acknowledges this contributes to food inflation, but says the impact is marginal.

The final declaration was likely to appease both sides with talk of the "challenges and opportunities" of biofuels, which U.S. agriculture official Schafer called "acceptable".

The wrangling over diplomatic language came after U.N. officials announced almost $3 billion of new aid to help ease the food crisis.

Those new pledges were welcomed, but U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon warned that up to $20 billion a year would be needed. "We simply cannot afford to fail," he told the summit.

Differences over GM

The unacknowledged new world empire - that of the USA - is flexing its muscles on the GM food issue.

The biggest divisions at the Rome conference are over two issues - genetically modified crops and biofuels - and, on both, the US stands on the side of the new technologies. It believes GM food to be safe and is subsidising the planting of biofuel crops. Within 10 years, 40% of US maize production will go on biofuels

Africa's resistance to growing GM food is in large part led by resistance in Europe. If African countries cannot export food to Europe, then they want no part of the new technology.

But that is not the whole story.

One of the most hi-tech GM laboratories in the world is in Uganda.

When I visited it, the technicians were looking for a cure for a blight called "banana wilt", which devastates growth of the large green bananas that are a big source of protein in East Africa.

In a laboratory, under bright artificial sunlight, thousands of tiny banana trees were being injected and dissected by white-coated lab assistants, who were all Ugandan, as was the management.

But the funding was all from the USA, rolling out its technology where it legally can.

'Strings attached'

Here in Rome, Kenya's agriculture minister said that this was the kind of technology that Africa needs.

Finding a solution to the problem of feeding nine billion people... will take more than the dynamism of empires to achieve. But it comes with strings attached. GM crops require fertilisers and other specialised products to keep them going and they all come from the USA.

And crops that need planting every year, like wheat and rice, need to have all of their seed replaced annually by new seed and that too comes from the USA.

That would be a major change in practice for small farmers, who up to now have always retained part of their harvest to replant during the following season.

A UN scientific examination of the way forward in agriculture earlier this year concluded that, where new technology is tried, it needs to be both sustainable and appropriate, building on what is known in Africa, rather than imposing solutions that may depend on US technology.

Biofuels versus Food

With land scarce, food is increasingly competing against biofuels, once thought to be a magic solution to reducing the world's dependence on oil and coal, but now causing more questions to be asked, because of the amount of energy needed to convert the plants to fuel.

Three-quarters of the increase in US maize production last year went on biofuels.

And the growth in planting crops for biofuels worldwide last year has been identified by the report on the table at this conference as one of the main causes of the runaway rise in food prices during the first 3 months of this year.

African countries are asking why their hungry people are having to pay more for food when the USA is subsidising growth of crops for biofuels.

The talks this week have been taking place amid the ruins of another empire, that of ancient Rome, which began its decline and fall when the demand for grain to feed a city of more than a million people became impossible to sustain.

---- Compiled from wire reports and other media sources

The Food Crisis and Genetically Modified Rice

2008-06-05T05:27:00.000+05:30

The Food Crisis and Genetically Modified Rice
4 Jun, 2008, 0218 hrs IST, REUTERS

(thenazareneway to Communions )

LOS BANOS-PHILIPPINES: Some rice-producing nations may drop their reluctance to use genetically modified (GM) seeds to help offset a crisis that has forced millions to go hungry, a top expert said.

"If we consider the challenges that face us, I think we would be very foolish and actually irresponsible to not invest in the development of GM crops," said Robert Zeigler, director general of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) on Tuesday, adding "I think that governments will take a hard look and say why again are we dragging our feet in adopting GM technology?".

World leaders may discuss GM organisms at this week's food crisis summit in Rome but they are unlikely to be presented as part of the solution to soaring food prices amid opposition by some environmental groups to what they see as "Frankenfoods".

GM crops, which use genes from other plants and other organisms to effect special traits, are widely grown in North America and parts of South America, including cotton, a source of vegetable cooking oil, as well as corn and soy beans.

But European and Asian states have largely held off embracing GM technology for food amid skepticism about its safety. As yet, no GM rice is grown commercially but Zeigler said that could change, at the earliest two years from now, with the world's top two producers, China and India, likely leading the charge.

"I will be very interested in seeing how China reacts over the next year. They have a transgenic insect-resistant rice that's ready for release. They have been delaying that because of pressures from the anti-GM lobby. I will be interested to see how they respond," he said, adding "There are also a number of transgenic crops coming up in India. The furthest along is the eggplant. Rice is also coming along."

China and India have already adopted Bt cotton, which is engineered to resist certain insects and earlier this year, South Korea started purchasing GM corn for food.

Zeigler dismissed anti-GM groups' arguments about safety.

"We have seen no adverse effects on human health or the environment anywhere that have been demonstrated with any scientific credibility."

The Philippines-based IRRI hopes to make its own GM Golden Rice, enriched with Vitamin A, available to farmers by 2011. IRRI kick-started the so-called Green Revolution in the late 1960s with the development of high-yielding rice seeds which multiplied harvests of Asia's food staple and enabled countries such as Thailand and China to industrialize.

With international rice prices nearly tripling this year due to rising demand and export curbs by producer nations, Zeigler believes a second Green Revolution is necessary.

Nearly half the world's population depend on rice to survive and demand for the grain, which is eaten for breakfast, lunch and dinner in parts of Asia, is expected to jump 50% by 2030.

In addition to improving crop management, post-harvest technologies and irrigation, Zeigler also believes that GM technology is part of the solution.

He admits, however, that like others in the scientific community, he has been reluctant to sing GM's praises too loudly for fear of a backlash from anti-GM groups. "We are all very wary of being misquoted as saying that GM is a single bullet magic solution for all the world's food ills. None of us believe that."

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/Economy/Food_crisis_may_open_the_door_to_GM_rice/rssarticleshow/3097634.cms

Terminator Seeds "Grossly Immoral" Say Theologians

2008-06-03T06:02:00.000+05:30

Terminator Seeds "Grossly Immoral" Say Theologians
LONDON - May 2008

(courtesy:thenazareneway to Communions)

Three widely respected theologians have condemned Terminator seed technology which produces genetically engineered plants with sterile seeds as "grossly immoral".

Writing in a new publication, commissioned by Catholic development charity Progressio, Jesuit Priest Roland Lesseps, Father Sean McDonagh and Father Donal Dorr say the controversial GM technology offers "no benefit for farmers and consumers" and would have "long-term consequences for the environment".

Biotechnology companies claim that 'Terminator' seeds would be used to produce GM crops and trees which are engineered to stop GM traits spreading to other plants by inserting a 'suicide' gene. But Father Sean McDonagh, writing in the new publication, says: "There is simply no such thing as a safe and acceptable form of Terminator".

Instead, the theologians warn that the technology could have catastrophic effects on the poorest farmers in the developing world. Presently, 1.4 billion farmers rely on the practice of seed-saving to grow food to feed their families. If Terminator technology is commercialised, farmers' food security would be under threat. "Since poor farmers cannot afford to buy seed every year, they will go hungry", writes Roland Lesseps.

The theological argument against Terminator is equally striking, say the report's authors. "Terminator technology attacks the very principle of life itself", writes Lesseps. "Destroying the life principle in an organism is not a right relationship with creation which should be received as a gift from God to be shared by all."

The new publication, entitled "Unless the grain of wheat shall die", has been produced to coincide with the meeting of the UN's Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), where the current UN ban on Terminator technology is likely to be discussed. The CBD has the power to lift the ban completely.

Progressio also launches its new report on Terminator technology, Against the Grain, today. The report urges the UK and EU to voice their support for the current UN ban on the technology and ensure it is upheld. The new report is available online at: http://www.progressio.org.uk

Progressio is a UK-based Catholic charity working to tackle poverty and injustice in developing countries. It has been campaigning against Terminator technologies since 2005 and is a founding member of the UK Working Group on Terminator technology and its current Chair. Progressio is also a member of the UK Food Group.

© Independent Catholic News 2008

Does US MakeSeed Saving Illegal in Iraq?

2008-06-02T05:26:00.000+05:30

US Makes Seed Saving Illegal in Iraq
Here is a very disturbing news iem circulated by the
thenazareneway to Communions. If it is true, we got some clue to the real interests of US neo-colonial global imperialism.

show details 4:22 PM (3 hours ago)

US Makes Seed Saving Illegal in Iraq
From: THE AGRIBUSINESS EXAMINER

For generations, small farmers in Iraq operated in an essentially unregulated, informal seed supply system. Farm-saved seed and exchange of planting materials among farming communities has long been the basis of agricultural practice. This has been made illegal under a new law.

The only seeds farmers are now allowed to plant are "protected" crop varieties
brought into Iraq by transnational corporations in the name of agricultural
reconstruction --- and will be the property of the corporations. While
historically the Iraqi constitution prohibited private ownership of biological resources,
the new U.S.-imposed patent law introduces a system of monopoly rights over seeds.

Inserted into Iraq's previous patent law is a whole new chapter on Plant
Variety Protection (PVP) that provides for the "protection of new varieties of
plants." PVP is an intellectual property right (IPR) or a kind of patent for
plant varieties which gives an exclusive monopoly right on planting material
to a plant breeder who claims to have discovered or developed a new variety.

So the "protection" in PVP has nothing to do with conservation, but refers
to safeguarding of the commercial interests of private breeders (usually
large corporations) claiming to have created the new plants.

To qualify for PVP, plant varieties must comply with the standards of the
UPOV Convention, which requires them be new, distinct, uniform and stable.
Farmers' seeds cannot meet these criteria, making PVP-protected seeds the
exclusive domain of corporations. The rights granted to plant breeders in
this scheme include the exclusive right to produce, reproduce, sell, export,
import and store the protected varieties.

These rights extend to harvested material, including whole plants and parts
of plants obtained from the use of a protected variety. This kind of PVP
system is often the first step towards allowing the full-fledged patenting
of life forms. Indeed, in this case the rest of the law does not rule out
the patenting of plants or animals.

The term of the monopoly is 20 years for crop varieties and 25 for trees and
vines. During this time the protected variety de facto becomes the property
of the breeder, and nobody can plant or otherwise use this variety without
compensating the breeder.

This new law means that Iraqi farmers can neither freely legally plant nor
save for re-planting seeds of any plant variety registered under the plant
variety provisions of the new patent law. This deprives farmers what they
and many others worldwide claim as their inherent right to save and replant seeds.

The new law is presented as being necessary to ensure the supply of good
quality seeds in Iraq and to facilitate Iraq's accession to the WTO. What it
will actually do is facilitate the penetration of Iraqi agriculture by the
likes of Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer and Dow Chemical --- the corporate giants
that control seed trade across the globe.

Eliminating competition from farmers is a prerequisite for these companies
to open up operations in Iraq, which the new law has achieved. Taking over
the first step in the food chain is their next move.

The new patent law also explicitly promotes the commercialisation of
genetically modified (GM) seeds in Iraq. Despite serious resistance from
farmers and consumers around the world, these same companies are pushing GM
crops on farmers around the world for their own profit. Contrary to what the
industry is asserting, GM seeds do not reduce the use of pesticides, but
they pose a threat to the environment and to people's health while they
increase farmers dependency on agribusiness.

In some countries like India, the 'accidental' release of GM crops is
deliberately manipulated, since physical segregation of GM and GM-free crops
is not feasible. Once introduced into the agro-ecological cycle there is no
possible recall or cleanup from genetic pollution.

As to the WTO argument, Iraq legally has a number of options for complying
with the organisation's rules on intellectual property but the US simply
decided that Iraq should not enjoy or explore them.

Iraq is one more arena in a global drive for the adoption of seed patent
laws protecting the monopoly rights of multinational corporations at the
expense of local farmers. Over the past decade, many countries of the South
have been compelled to adopt seed patent laws through bilateral treaties.
The U.S. has pushed for UPOV-styled plant protection laws beyond the IPR
standards of the WTO in bilateral trade through agreements for example with
Sri Lanka and Cambodia.

Likewise, post-conflict countries have been especially targeted. For
instance, as part of its reconstruction package the U.S. has recently signed
a Trade and Investment Framework Agreement with Afghanistan, which
would also include IPR-related issues.

Food sovereignty is the right of people to define their own food and
agriculture policies, to protect and regulate domestic agricultural
production and trade, to decide the way food should be produced, what should
be grown locally and what should be imported.

The demand for food sovereignty and the opposition to the patenting of seeds
has been central to the small farmers' struggle all over the world over the
past decade. By fundamentally altering the IPR regime, the U.S. has ensured
that Iraq's agricultural system will remain under "occupation" in Iraq.

Iraq has the potential to feed itself. But instead of developing this
capacity, the U.S. has shaped the future of Iraq's food and farming to serve
the interests of US corporations. The new IPR regime pays scant respect to
Iraqi farmers' contributions to the development of important crops like
wheat, barley, date and pulses.

While political sovereignty remains an illusion, food sovereignty for the
Iraqi people has already been made impossible by these new regulations.

http://www.organicconsumers.org/patent/iraq111704.cf

Save the Seeds

2008-05-27T06:17:00.000+05:30

Saving the Seeds
courtesy:
thenazareneway to Communions

Saving the Seeds

Until the early part of this century, most produce was locally grown. Vegetables and flowers were primarily selected for their flavor, ability to perform well in a specific environment and for local adaptability. It was also important for crops to ripen over a long season so harvests could be extended. Many people grew their own produce, saved the seeds for the next season and put up much of the harvest for winter.

Industrial areas in cities were supplied with produce from the outlying areas. Vegetables were all open pollinated. End users that purchased vegetables generally had a relationship with the growers with perhaps only a corner store in between. The goal of a grower was quality first and foremost because her/his livelihood depended on this relationship continuing.

During World War II, the United Stated made a concerted effort to ship large quantities of produce to devastated Europe. After the war was over, for the first time there was the infrastructure in place to ship food over long distances. The commercial sector began to use this structure to raise produce where it could be done most cheaply and get it to markets world wide.

Today, if you go into your local supermarket to buy produce, you will find primarily produce grown far away from you unless you live in a vegetable belt (California or Florida). Much of this produce is raised in near laboratory conditions. This set of growing methods brings a severely different set of selection criteria than did vegetable production pre WWII. Now, most vegetable varieties are selected for their mechanical harvesting and shipping ability, uniform ripeness, and ability to perform well in a chemical environment. Flavor and health enrichment are often secondary. Most seeds now used are hybrid.

About Seeds

* Hybrids: First generation hybrids (F1 hybrids), have been artificially-pollinated, and are patented, often sterile, genetically identical within food types, and sold from multi-national seed companies.

* GMO: A second kind of seed are genetically engineered or modified organisms. Bioengineered seeds are fast contaminating the global seed supply on a wholesale level, and threatening the purity of seeds everywhere. In a GMO seed, the DNA of the plant has been changed. A cold water fish gene for example was spliced into a tomato to make the plant more resistant to frost.

*Heirloom: A third kind of seed are called heirloom or open-pollinated seeds. These are genetically diverse seeds that have been passed on from generation to generation. For example, with heirloom seeds there are 10,000 varieties of apples, compared to the very few F1 hybrid apple types.

Here are some sources for finding heirloom seeds from seed saving organizations. These organizations represent a movement of several thousand backyard gardeners who are searching the countryside for endangered vegetables, fruits and grains and maintaining their integrity.

The Seed Savers Exchange

The Seed Savers Exchange (SSE), is a nonprofit tax-exempt organization that is saving old-time food crops from extinction.

Kent and Diane Whealy founded SSE in 1975 after an elderly relative bestowed three kinds of garden seeds brought from Bavaria four generations earlier.

The Whealys began searching for other "heirloom varieties" (seeds passed down from generation to generation) and soon discovered a vast, little-known genetic treasure.

SSE's members are maintaining thousands of heirloom varieties, traditional Indian crops, garden varieties of the Mennonite and Amish, vegetables dropped from all seed catalogs and outstanding foreign varieties. Each year hundreds of members use SSE's publications to distribute such seeds to ensure their survival.

Each winter SSE publishes a 304-page Seed Savers Yearbook which contains names and addresses of 900 members and 6,000 listings of rare vegetable and fruit varieties that they are offering to other gardeners. Seeds are obtained by writing directly to the members who are listing those varieties.

http://www.seedsavers.org

Native American Seeds

Native seeds/SEARCH (NS/S) is a nonprofit seed conservation organization working to preserve the traditional native crops of the U.S. Southwest and Northwest Mexico. For centuries Native American farmers have grown corn, squash, beans and other crops under a variety of growing conditions.

The NS/S Seedbank houses, for future generations, the seeds of crops and wild plants traditionally used as food, fiber and dyes by prehistoric and more recent cultures inhabiting the arid southwestern U.S. and northwestern Mexico.

NS/S encourages the continued use of these plants in their native habitats, and also distributes them widely to home gardeners, researchers and free of charge to Native American farmers. Wild relatives of crops - such as wild beans, chiles, gourds and cotton - are included in Native Seeds/SEARCH's conservation efforts.

NS/S's informative annual seed catalog lists more than 200 varieties for sale. Each crop listing includes seed saving information as well as culture and folklore.

http://www.nativeseeds.org/v2/default.php

Southern Exposure Seed Exchange

Southern Exposure Seed Exchange is a wonderful source for heirloom seeds and other open-pollinated (non-hybrid) seeds with an emphasis on vegetables, flowers, and herbs that grow well in the Mid-Atlantic region.

They support seed saving and traditional seed breeding and do extensive germination and purity testing of seeds and nursery stock to ensure the highest quality seed possible.

Browse their mail-order site to find heirloom tomatoes, peppers, ginseng, potato onions, okra, naturally colored cotton, southern-style greens, and much more.

http://www.southernexposure.com/index.html

The Mayan word `gene' means "spiral of life." The genes in heirloom seeds give life to our future. Unless the backyard gardeners and organic farmers keep these seeds alive, they will disappear altogether. This is truly an instance where one person –a lone gardener in a backyard vegetable garden–can potentially make all the difference in the world.

Brothers and Sisters, support seed saving organizations. Visit their web sites and order their catologes. In these times, you must know how to grow your own food, save seeds and can fruits and vegatables. It does not matter how small of a garden you have. Become a member of an heirloom seed exchange. It is up to YOU to save the seeds.