by Rady Ananda
June 7, 2012
At
the G8 Summit held two weeks ago at Camp David, President Obama met
with private industry and African heads of state to launch the New
Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition,[1] a euphemism for
monocultured, genetically modified crops and toxic agrochemicals aimed
at making poor farmers debt slaves to corporations, while destroying the
ecosphere for profit.
And Bono, of the rock group U2, is out shilling for Monsanto on this one.[2]
It’s phase 2 of the Green Revolution.
Tanzania, Ghana, and Ethiopia are the first to fall for the deception,
with Mozambique, Cote d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso and other African nations
lining up for the “Grow Africa Partnership,” under Obama’s “Global
Agricultural Development” plan.
In “Obama Pitches India Model of GM Genocide to Africa,”[3] Scott Creighton writes:
But African civil
society wants no part of this latest Monsanto aligned ‘public private
partnership.’ Whatever will the progressives do now that their flawless
hero has teamed up with their most hated nemesis to exploit an entire
continent like they did to India not that long ago?
With a commitment of
$3 billion, Obama plans to ‘partner up’ with mega-multinationals like
Monsanto, Diageo, Dupont, Cargill, Vodafone, Walmart, Pepsico,
Prudential, Syngenta International, and Swiss Re because, as one USAID
representative says ‘There are things that only companies can do, like
building silos for storage and developing seeds and fertilizers.’
Of course, that’s an outrageous lie.
Private citizens have been building their own silos for centuries. But
it’s true that only the biowreck engineers will foist patented seeds and
toxic chemicals on Africa.
Creighton continues:
Bono says that there
has to be a ‘public private partnership’ in order to get this done and
that they are going to be using the ideas of the African people and
farmers. Really? This is what the African farmers say to that…
‘We request that:
– governments, FAO, the G8, the World Bank and the GAFSP reconsider
their promotion of Public/Private Partnerships which, as they are now
conceived, are not suitable instruments to support the family farms
which are the very basis of African food security and sovereignty.’
~African Civil Society Organizations
I wonder if that
could be any clearer. They don’t WANT the public private partnerships
involved in this process…. It’s not enough that huge mega-corporations
are bleeding the nations of Africa dry by sucking the valuable mineral
resources out of their hills. No. As Bono says about the development in
Africa:
‘They’re future consumers for the United States. The president is talking business. This is good. It’s a whole new development paradigm today. The old donor/recipient relationship… it’s over.’” ~Bono
Volatility chimed in [4]:
“The history of
corporate agriculture and its ‘Green Revolution’ is a perfect example of
the unfulfilled promises, and therefore proven lies, of corporatism.
What was the Green Revolution? With a huge one-off injection of fossil
fuels, and building upon ten thousand years of agronomy, corporate
agriculture temporarily increased yields within the monoculture
framework.”
But, in the Green Revolution, writes Volatility:
The soil is stripped
of all nutrition and zombified by ever-increasing applications of
synthetic fertilizer. Monoculture is ever more dependent on the
increasing application of ever more toxic herbicides and pesticides.
Deployment of GMOs escalates these vulnerabilities. Factory farms can
exist only with ever increasing use of antibiotics. All these systems
are extremely tenuous, vulnerable, not robust, not resilient. They’re
all guaranteed to collapse. Hermetic monoculture, and industrial
agriculture as such, is one big hothouse flower which requires perfect
conditions to survive….
[T]he Green
Revolution was a scam to use cheap fossil fuels to increase monocrop
yield, drive tens of millions off the land, and use the stolen land and
food to render food temporarily artificially cheap for Western
consumerism.
Like with Monsanto’s Bt cotton deployed
in India, at first yields improved and farmers profited. Now, however,
according to a leaked Advisory from the Minister of Agriculture obtained
by the Hindustan Times last month:
Cotton farmers are
in a deep crisis since shifting to Bt cotton…. In fact cost of cotton
cultivation has jumped…due to rising costs of pesticides. Total Bt
cotton production in the last five years has reduced.[5]
The Advisory definitively links farmer
suicides to debt-enslavement enabled by the synthetic food model spawned
by Monsanto, Dupont and other ecocidal corporations: “The spate of
farmer suicides in 2011-12 has been particularly severe among Bt cotton
farmers.”
That’s not all the harm wrought by the
petrochemical synthetic ag industry, as this 2012 superweed map by the
University of Wisconsin shows:
Over
half of US states are now plagued by agrochemically-induced
superweeds.[6] An industry sponsored study[7] of pesticide use predicts
that nearly a billion pounds of these toxic chemicals will be poured on
US soils in 2016.
Insects have also developed resistance.
As reported last August, “The Western rootworm beetle – one of the most
serious threats to corn – has developed resistance to Monsanto’s
Bt-corn, and entire crops are being lost.”[8]
In March, two dozen corn entomologists
warned regulators that the only way to defeat growing insect resistance
to genetically modified corn is to plant non-GMO seed. “Increasing
pesticide use or buffer zone size will not solve the growing problem of
rootworm resistance to corn genetically modified.”[9]
But if that doesn’t deter African
farmers, these petrochemicals have also been linked to human birth
defects. Where “Roundup Ready soy is being cultivated on a massive
scale,” reports Dr. Mercola, “widespread reports exist of immediate
illness defects from massive glyphosate spraying operations.”[10]
In fact, “Monsanto, Philip Morris and
other U.S. tobacco giants knowingly poisoned Argentinean tobacco farmers
with pesticides,” reports Courthouse News Service, “causing
‘devastating birth defects’ in their children, dozens of workers claim
in court.”[11]
The Bt toxin used to engineer cotton and
corn also kills human kidney cells, reports Dr Eva Sirinathsinghji,[12]
and the drift from aerial application of Roundup prompted the
Mississippi Rice Council to sound a national alarm over genetic damage
to natural rice, calling for severely restricted aerial application.
[13]
Newly emergent pathogens have appeared,
reports Dr. Don M. Huber, a plant pathologist who coordinates the
Emergent Diseases and Pathogens committee of the American
Phytopathological Society, as part of the USDA National Plant Disease
Recovery System. Last year, his team discovered a “self-replicating,
micro-fungal virus-sized organism which may be causing spontaneous
abortions in livestock, sudden death syndrome in Monsanto’s Roundup
Ready soy, and wilt in Monsanto’s RR corn.”[14]
Huber’s warning to the USDA to halt GM
crop approvals, and specifically, genetically modified alfalfa, was not
only ignored, but two months ago, Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack hastened the
approval process for genetically engineered crops.
“The new rules will cut the time needed
to approve biotech crops in half,” reports Dr. Mercola, “from an average
of three years, to about 13 months for new versions of already existing
crop technologies, and about 16 months for brand new technologies.”[15]
Obama’s Global Agricultural Development
plan conspires with multinational corporations to foist these ecological
and human health costs onto the public while siphoning the profits. As
Creighton says, “Socialized costs, privatized profits. All in the name
doing good and saving the people of Africa.”
Let’s hope these “public/private
partnerships” are met with firm resistance by African farmers, as
supported by this Declaration from a group of African civil society
organizations. [16] The last thing Planet Earth and all its organisms
need is more toxic industrial chemicals.
Notes:1. USAID, “New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition,” 18 May 2012. http://www.usaid.gov/press/factsheets/2012/fs120518.html
2. Kenny’s Sideshow, “Bono… again,” 18 May 2012. http://kennysideshow.blogspot.com/2012/05/bono-again.html
3. Scott Creighton, “Obama Pitches India Model of GM Genocide to Africa,” 20 May 2012. http://willyloman.wordpress.com/2012/05/20/president-obama-pitches-cfr-plan-looks-to-bring-the-india-model-of-gm-genocide-to-africa/
4. Volatility, “African Wannsee Conference; Or, Bono Parties With Monsanto,” 28 May 2012. http://attempter.wordpress.com/2012/05/28/african-wannsee-conference-or-bono-parties-with-monsanto/
5. Zia Haq, “Ministry blames Bt cotton for farmer suicides,” 26 March 2012. http://www.hindustantimes.com/News-Feed/Business/Ministry-blames-Bt-cotton-for-farmer-suicides/Article1-830798.aspx
6. Tom Philpott, “Monsanto’s ‘Superweeds’ Gallop through Midwest,” 19 July 2011. http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2011/07/monsanto-superweeds-roundup
7. Freedonia Group, “Pesticides: Industry Study with Forecasts for 2016 & 2021,” April 2012. http://www.freedoniagroup.com/brochure/28xx/2877smwe.pdf
8. Rady Ananda, “Monsanto GM Corn in Peril: Beetle develops Bt-resistance,” 24 Aug. 2011. http://foodfreedomgroup.com/2011/08/24/monsanto-gm-corn-in-peril-beetle-develops-bt-resistance/
9. Ananda, “Bug Docs Tell EPA US Should Stop Planting GM Corn,” 12 March 2012. http://foodfreedomgroup.com/2012/03/12/bug-docs-urge-epa-non-gmo-corn/
10. Joe Mercola, “The Toxin So Dangerous It’s Causing Catastrophic Birth Defects,” 13 May 2012. http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/05/13/ge-food-cause-birth-defects.aspx
11. Iulia Filip, “Monsanto and Big Tobacco Blamed for Birth Defects,” 10 Apr. 2012. http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/04/10/45469.htm
12. Dr Eva Sirinathsinghji, “Bt Toxin Kills Human Kidney Cells,” 14 March 2012.
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/Bt_Toxin_Kills_Human_Kidney_Cells.php
13. Ananda, “More problems with glyphosate: Rice growers sound alarm,” 16 May 2011.
http://foodfreedomgroup.com/2011/05/16/glyphosate-and-natural-rice/
14. Ananda, “Scientists warn of link between dangerous new pathogen and Monsanto’s Roundup,” 20 Feb. 2011. http://foodfreedomgroup.com/2011/02/20/roundup-new-pathogen/
15. Mercola, “The Dramatic New Rule Change for Genetically Engineered Foods,” 3 Apr. 2012.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/03/13/why-will-gmo-crops-get-approved-faster-with-new-rule.aspx
16. Regional Civil Society Consultation for Africa, “Final Declaration of Civil Society Organizations,” April 2012. http://kofic.s3.amazonaws.com/126/2251/African-Civil-Society-Declaration.pdf
This article was originally published at Activist Post.
http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2012/06/07/u2-bono-celeb-partners-with-monsanto-g8-to-biowreck-african-farms-with-gmos/
