Is Bill Gates Trying to Hijack Africa's Food Supply?

[multi]

By BRUCE DIXON

Genetically altered crops will rescue Africa from endemic shortfalls in food production, claim corporate foundations that have announced a $150 million "gift" to spark a "Green Revolution" in agriculture on the continent.

Of course, U.S.-based agribusiness holds the patents to these wondercrops, and can exercise their proprietary "rights" at will. Are corporate foundations really out to feed the hungry, or are they hypocritical Trojan Horses on a mission to hijack the world's food supply --- to create the most complete and ultimate state of dependency.

"Poor-washing" is the common public relations tactic of concealing bitterly unfair and predatory trade policies that create and deepen hunger and poverty with clouds of hypocritical noise about feeding the hungry and alleviating poverty. It's hard to imagine a better case of media poor-washing than the hype around the recently announced $150 million "gifts" of the Gates and Rockerfeller Foundations to the cause of reforming African agriculture, feeding that continent's impoverished millions and sparking an African "Green Revolution."

For ADM, Cargill, Monsanto and other agribusiness giants farming as humans have practiced it the last ten thousand years is a big problem.

The problem is that when farmers plant and harvest crops, setting a little aside for next year's seed, people eat, but corporations don't get paid. That problem has been so thoroughly solved in U.S. food production that chemical fertilizers and pesticides create a biological dead zone of hundreds of square miles in the Gulf of Mexico where the Mississippi, draining much of the continent's richest farmland, empties into it. U.S. law requires the registration all crop varieties, and makes it extraordinarily difficult for farmers to save and plant their own seed year to year without paying royalties to corporations who "own" the genetic code of those crops.

But until recently in the developing world, farmers still planted, plowed and harvested without paying American agribusiness anything. The first attempt to "monetize" food production took place a generation ago in Southeast Asia and India. Called the "Green Revolution" its public face was a masterpiece of pious poor-washing.

A thin layer of native academic, "experts" and local officials were bought off, and slick ad campaigns were told local farmers the road to prosperity was the use of vast quantities of pesticides, herbicides, and high-yield crops grown for international markets instead of feeding local populations.

The "Green Revolution" in India worked out well for the middlemen who sold the chemicals and lent poor farmers money to buy them, and for its wealthiest farmers. But when millions of farmers, on the advice foreign and domestic "experts" produced cotton, sugar and export crops for the world market instead of food to feed their neighbors, several nasty things happened. The prices for those export staples went down, so poor farmers wound up without the cash to repay loans for the year's seed and chemicals. Food which used to be abundant and locally grown became scarce, expensive and had to come from other regions or overseas. The chemicals killed many beneficial plants and insects, and promoted the emergence of newer, tougher pests and diseases.

Export crops needed more water than traditional ones, so wealthy farmers monopolized what water there was to feed their export crops. Man-made famines occurred. People starved or became dependent on imported foreign grain. Millions of farmers were forced to sell their land (or sometimes their children) to pay off their debts, and move to the cities.

In the tradition of the European explorers unleashed on the rest of humanity with letters from their kings entitling them to claim and seize the lands, treasure and inhabitants of all places not under the rule of white Christian princes, the U.S. patent office began in the 1990s, granting American corporations exclusive "patents" for varieties of rice produced in Asia for thousands of years, for beans grown in Mexico centuries before Columbus, and for all the products which were or might be made from trees, plants, roots and molds growing in the rain forests of Africa and Asia.

Indian courts, under pressure from their citizens, rebuffed for now American attempts to collect royalties for the production of basmati rice, which farmers in India and Pakistan have cultivated for centuries. But every developing country can't bring to the table against the U.S. the power that India, with a fifth of the world's population can.

In the U.S. media this privatization of nature is called "the biotech industry". Most of humanity outside the U.S. call it biopiracy.

In the last decade, corporate "life scientists" in the biotech industry have invented, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture has patented a perverse but profitable technology which prevents a current year's crop from producing usable seed for next year's planting. These "terminator seeds" will force farmers to return to corporate seed suppliers every year.

For the last 20 years, the U.S. has, with varying degrees of success, bullied, bribed and threatened governments on six continents to enforce its skull-and-crossbones patent laws through bilateral trade agreements --- think NAFTA and CAFTA --- through World Bank and International Monetary Fund dictates, and the World Trade Organization.

Today UN bodies and dozens of individual countries are under pressure to allow the introduction of genetically modified crops and terminator seed technologies into their food chains. Despite their poverty and need for development aid, African countries, informed by the world media (outside the U.S.) have been forced by their own citizens, scientists and farmers to stoutly resist Western efforts to undermine their food security. But the slick and shiny PR campaign around the Gates and Rockerfeller initiatives, supposedly addressed at alleviating world hunger seem to mark a new stage in the continuing scramble for African resources.

Last year, the Gates Foundation hired former Monsanto VP Robert Robert Horsch as senior robert_horschprogram officer for Africa. Monsanto is the company that invented "biotechnology" and the patenting of life forms by corporations. This is the context for the "philanthropy" of the Gates and Rockerfeller Foundations, and their expressed concern for foisting a "Green Revolution" upon Africa.

Will African farmers and their governments be forced to pay American corporations to cultivate the crops they have for centuries? Global capital and competition to control the world's remaining energy have put Africa's oil resources in the sights of America's strategic planners.

If the Gates and Rockerfeller Foundations, along with Monsanto, Cargill, ADM and other agribusiness and biotech and "life science" players have anything to say about it, Africa's food supply is up for grabs too.

[Mazer]

Um, Bill Gates doesn't own any patents on any GE crops, so whatever money his foundation donates won't come back to him at all.

What's with you lately?

[Nicobie]

Originally Posted by Mazer

Um, Bill Gates doesn't own any patents on any GE crops, so whatever money his foundation donates won't come back to him at all.

What's with you lately?

I wonder the same.

As soon as multi or any one else pitches in a BILLION or TWO to help others, I figure Gates is forgiven for the crappy OS that we all, INCLUDING multi uses.


Maybe multi thinks that Opera is doing a better job helping people in Africa?

Multi seems/is way too one sided and is not even trying to be objective with his cut and paste crap. Maybe he should just take a nap and think about Canada.

[miss_silver]

Originally Posted by Nicobie

I wonder the same.

As soon as multi or any one else pitches in a BILLION or TWO to help others, I figure Gates is forgiven for the crappy OS that we all, INCLUDING multi uses.


Maybe multi thinks that Opera is doing a better job helping people in Africa?

Multi seems/is way too one sided and is not even trying to be objective with his cut and paste crap. Maybe he should just take a nap and think about Canada.

Wish I knew what the hell, both of you, is wrong with you to begin with, too many american Idol, too many paris hilton spitting on when there is damned real issues going about such as monsanto terminator seed.

This threath is real, very real. Those seeds CANNOT be USED again for planting crops, they will not grow and this is alarming for so many reasons, what the hell will we do then when ALL OF US are slave to that single one a time seed?

How about the undoing of 10 000 years of harvesting in a single decade? How about the fact it was never ment to be my mother earth, only greedy corp type of guys, Hell, Is the doco, The Corporation playing almost every month on Sundance Channel? must be for a reason No?

For those 2 cells brainiacs, who do you think support us? The government, The corporations? Hell no, Earth, the way it evolved for millions of years do so, no one else. Because of her we are alive, we breathe and we eat and yet, we, humans are the WEAKEST of her creations by far. We are a real frigging Joke!!!

If it wasn't from our communial senses and the way our brain is haywired, we would have died a long time ago considering all babies from the kingdom can stand on their feet moments after birth while we are helpless in that area. That is what we call Natural selection while in humanity, I tend to call it unnatural selection.

Leave it to you's 2 cells braniac to actually look down on someone who do care about all of our future, yours, your kids and grand kids to come. Those seeds are an all out abomination to say the least and should be forbidden to ever reaching any soil what so ever.

Nic, why the canadian obsession?

Is it because we refused those monsanto seeds? Is it because we refused those hormones that would produce more milk in cows? Is it because we take 10 more years to test a medicine that was already approved by the FDA?

Now this one is just for you Nic, TG one posted it so if you have to give grief to someone, give it to her instead of being a troll and whoring up to her saying sorry for your reply.

Talking to Americans Part 1 & 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLXRVvA6T9k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFqzBiLBwM8

Those university teachers weren't the brightest crayon in the box


Nic, if you are so obsessed with Canadians, why not become a citizen then



Multi, many thanks for that article

[Mazer]

Hey, nobody said terminator seeds weren't a bad thing (all the same, if it lives and it grows then who are you to call it an abomination?). We're just saying that Gates' donation is just that, and not some conspiracy to enslave the farmers of Africa. You're passionate about this issue, I get that, but don't get personal just because I'm not as concerned as you are.

Anyway, we'll might be facing an agricultural crisis already with all those honeybee hives collapsing with no warning. It might not be very long before all we have to eat is corn, wheat and livestock (no bees = no fruits or vegetables), or maybe it's just a temporary problem. Either way it's worse than what you're going on about.

[Nicobie]

[quote=miss_silver;, many thanks for that article [/QUOTE]






mulri

[Nicobie]

what a silie Man.

[miss_silver]

Originally Posted by Mazer

Hey, nobody said terminator seeds weren't a bad thing (all the same, if it lives and it grows then who are you to call it an abomination?).

Who am I to call it an abomination? Only one voice out of a few millions who actually realized that if the devil does exist, it is named Monsanto. I do have to ask this, once all the natural crops are wiped my those single growing seeds, what are we to do? How much will a loaf of bread, pasta, cereals...

Originally Posted by Mazer

We're just saying that Gates' donation is just that, and not some conspiracy to enslave the farmers of Africa. You're passionate about this issue, I get that, but don't get personal just because I'm not as concerned as you are.

Hope you get it soon for your sake, might not be in the short run but it is coming, ever consider caring for the future generations? Referring about the whole earth BTW.

Originally Posted by Mazer

Anyway, we'll might be facing an agricultural crisis already with all those honeybee hives collapsing with no warning. It might not be very long before all we have to eat is corn, wheat and livestock (no bees = no fruits or vegetables), or maybe it's just a temporary problem. Either way it's worse than what you're going on about.

The latest theories as to why the honeybees are loosing their ways is mostly due to cell phone towers. Want to get those crops growing by, you'll need to convince those addicts that they will have to ditch those devices, hard to do considering of the strong lobby.

The million dollar question is...

How many people are willing to give up their wireless gadgets in order to set things back, if it's not too late already

[Mazer]

Originally Posted by miss_silver

The latest theories as to why the honeybees are loosing their ways is mostly due to cell phone towers. Want to get those crops growing by, you'll need to convince those addicts that they will have to ditch those devices, hard to do considering of the strong lobby.

Be careful where you get your information.

From Wikipedia
In April 2007, news of a University of Landau study appeared in major media, beginning with an article in The Independent that stated that the subject of the study was mobile phones and had related them to Colony Collapse Disorder. Cellular phones were in fact not covered in the study, and the researchers have since emphatically disavowed any connection between their research, cell phones, and CCD, specifically indicating that the Independent article had misinterpreted their results and created "a horror story".

If you were willing to ignore the hype in the media long enough to study the facts then maybe you wouldn't be such an alarmist. But if you're always going to dwell on the worst case scenario then you're wasting your time debating me. It's not that I'm stubborn, it's just that I'm skeptical of any argument that begins with, "The sky is falling!"

[miss_silver]

Originally Posted by Mazer

Be careful where you get your information.



If you were willing to ignore the hype in the media long enough to study the facts then maybe you wouldn't be such an alarmist. But if you're always going to dwell on the worst case scenario then you're wasting your time debating me. It's not that I'm stubborn, it's just that I'm skeptical of any argument that begins with, "The sky is falling!"

I'd better like to be an alarmist then saying later, fuck, they were right

The sky is falling?. ask Thomas when he asked to touch the christ wounds to see if he really was there.

Nice way on sidetraking about the Monsanto single seed terminator issue

I'd worry more about that issue than you worrying about thy truly being an "alarmist"

[Nicobie]

Originally Posted by miss_silver

The latest theories as to why the honeybees are loosing their ways is mostly due to cell phone towers. Want to get those crops growing by, you'll need to convince those addicts that they will have to ditch those devices, hard to do considering of the strong lobby.

The million dollar question is...

How many people are willing to give up their wireless gadgets in order to set things back, if it's not too late already

WOW!!! I sure didn't know about this!

Hahahahahahahahahahahaaaaaa

[multi]

Terminator seeds, which have already been outlawed by India and Brazil, now face similar treatment in Canada.