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Food and Agriculture

This page updated on-line at http://www.africafocus.org/intro-ag.php.

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Talking Points

  • International agencies agree that small farmers are key to addressing poverty and food insecurity in Africa. But commercial monopolization of seeds and land grabs by both foreign and domestic investors make a mockery of international pledges to help small farmers. This replicates the takeover of land and agriculture by agribusiness in the United States and other rich countries.

  • Studies have found that attention to small farmers can be the most effective strategy for increasing food production and providing income to the rural population. But there are few effective controls on the rush of investment into land by speculators and commercial enterprises. Farmers who lose their land wait in vain for promised replacement jobs. In South Africa and Namibia, the issue of land distribution remains unresolved.

  • At the same time, multinational companies such as Monsanto, which monopolize the supply of commercial seeds and fertilizer, erode the independence of small farmers by pressuring governments to outlaw traditional practices of seed saving and sharing. The companies' monopolistic strategies are supported by public and private international donors, such as USAID and the Gates Foundation.

U.S.-based Monsanto is one of the largest global agribusiness companies. Its business relies on expanding commercial control over rights to seeds.

 

Most recent bulletins on food and agriculture

August 3, 2020  Africa/Global: Preventing the Next Pandemic http://www.africafocus.org/docs20/zoo2008.php
    “COVID-19 is just one example of the rising trend of diseases – from Ebola to MERS to West Nile and Rift Valley fevers – caused by viruses that have jumped from animal hosts into the human population. … The rising trend in zoonotic diseases is driven by the degradation of our natural environment – through land degradation, wildlife exploitation, resource extraction, climate change, and other stresses.” - Press release from UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Nairobi, July 6, 2020

July 29, 2019  Africa/Global: Agribusiness vs. Agroecology http://www.africafocus.org/docs19/ag1907.php
    “It is not surprising, of course, that those with financial interests in the current input-intensive systems are responding to growing calls for agroecology with attacks on its efficacy as a systematic approach that can sustainably feed a growing population. What is surprising is that such responses are so ill-informed about the scientific innovations agroecology offers to small-scale farmers who are being so poorly served by ´green revolution´ approaches.” - Timothy A. Wise

May 27, 2019  Africa/Global: World Bank Ramps Up Attack on Small Farmers http://www.africafocus.org/docs19/land1905.php
    “Enabling the Business of Agriculture,” promoted by the World Bank, and now enhanced with a new sub-indicator on land policy, is presented as a way to advance agricultural development, particularly in Africa. In reality, notes a new report from the Oakland Institute, it gives an additional push to a “land rush” by mostly foreign corporate interests. This trend, notes Harvard land tenure scholar Pauline Peters, “marks the most radical shift in the distribution and tenure status of land since colonial times.”

August 15, 2018  West Africa/Europe: From Cocoa to Chocolate http://www.africafocus.org/docs18/choc1808.php
    "Cocoa growing communities, particularly in West Africa, are facing poverty, child labour and deforestation that have been made worse by a rapid fall in prices for cocoa. Widely touted efforts in the cocoa industry to improve the lives of farmers, communities and the environment made in the past decade are having little impact. In fact, the modest scope of the proposed solutions does not even come close to addressing the scale of the problem." - Cocoa Barometer, April 2018

May 8, 2017  Africa: World Bank Financing Land Grabs http://www.africafocus.org/docs17/land1705.php
    "The World Bank Group has indirectly financed some of Africa's most notorious land grabs, according to a report by a group of international development watchdogs. The World Bank's private-sector arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), is enabling and profiting from these projects by outsourcing its development funds to the financial sector." - Oakland Institute

February 20, 2017  Africa/Global: Agribusiness Giants on Merger Path http://www.africafocus.org/docs17/ag1702.php
    "If the Bayer-Monsanto merger is approved, the new merged company will control almost 30% of the global commercial seed market and 25% of the agrochemical market - making it the world's largest supplier of seeds and chemicals. In South Africa, it would control about 30% of both markets. Already today, Monsanto is one of two companies in South Africa that employs 80% of the private sector breeders in maize and 100% of the breeders in soybean and sunflower breeders. " - African Centre for Biodiversity

January 19, 2016  Africa: Stealth Assault on African Seeds http://www.africafocus.org/docs16/seed1601.php
    "There is a renewed and stronger assault on seed ... based on legal systems that permit exclusive rights over seeds on the spurious contention that plant varieties were 'discovered' and improved on. But these 'discovered' varieties are the product of the whole history of collective human improvements and maintenance carried out by peasants. To assert exclusive rights over the whole on the basis of small adjustments is nothing short of outright theft." - SouthSouth Dialogue, Durban, South Africa, November 2015

February 18, 2015  Africa: Privatizing Land and Seeds http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/ag1502.php
    "The G8 New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition was launched in 2012 by the eight most industrialised countries to mobilise private capital for investment in African agriculture. To be accepted into the programme, African governments are required to make important changes to their land and seed policies. ... [for example] Despite the fact that more than 80% of all seed in Africa is still produced and disseminated through 'informal' seed systems (on-farm seed saving and unregulated distribution between farmers), there is no recognition in the New Alliance programme of the importance of farmer-based systems of saving, sharing, exchanging and selling seeds." - Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa and GRAIN, January 2015

July 31, 2014  Africa/Global: Talking Points on Common Issues http://www.africafocus.org/docs14/tp1407.php
    As African leaders and corporate CEOs gather to meet with President Obama and U.S. government officials, a wide variety of civil society activists will also be meeting in Washington, some in officially recognized side events, others in alternative venues. Many more will be issuing statements and communicating their views, some appropriating the twitter hashtag #AfricaSummit used by U.S. government officials, thus inserting their views as well into that hashtag stream.

March 17, 2014  Africa/Global: The Right to Food http://www.africafocus.org/docs14/food1403.php
    "The right to food is the right of every individual, alone or in community with others, to have physical and economic access at all times to sufficient, adequate and culturally acceptable food that is produced and consumed sustainably, preserving access to food for future generations. ... Because of the various channels though which access to food can be achieved, the creation of decent jobs in the industry and services sectors plays an essential role in securing the right to food, as does the provision of social protection."- Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Final Report

November 9, 2013  Africa: Monopolizing Maize http://www.africafocus.org/docs13/food1311.php
    According to a new report from the African Centre for Biosafety, in South Africa, "Monsanto's Bt maize, MON810, has failed hopelessly in South Africa as a result of massive insect resistance, after only 15 years of its introduction into commercial agriculture." Yet the same variety is being promoted in other African countries by projects supported by Monsanto. And South Africa's supply of maize, a staple food, is dominated by a few large companies and consists almost entirely of GM crop varieties.

June 12, 2013  Africa: Underdeveloping African Agriculture http://www.africafocus.org/docs13/ag1306.php
    "These interventions from AGRA [Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa] and the G8 are, first and foremost, about opening markets and creating space for multinational corporations such as Yara, Monsanto and Cargill, to secure profits. ... As world leaders speak in philanthropic terms about 'ending hunger', behind the scenes Africa's seed and trade laws are being 'harmonised' to the whim of agri-business giants. The efforts of Africa's farmers over millennia stand to be privatised and expropriated, while traditional and vital practices such as seed saving and sharing stand to be criminalised." -- Francis Ngang, Secretary General of Inades-Formation (http://www.inadesfo.net/)

Complete listing of bulletins on food and agriculture, 2003-present