My Dear Good People,
I am a very concerned person and
I want to share this observation with all of you so anyone may advice
appropriately as it deems fit:
1) Respect, dignity, value and
honor is earned over long passage of time and falling from Grace to disgrace
takes no time and your respect is thrown to the dogs.
2) A person with a vision does
not do things blindly, except he or she uses wisdom and consult widely before
they engage in doing things of great maltitude that concerns many lives
3)
If you are blessed with a brother in a foreign land, you are a blessed person
and you do not go behind their back to dig a hole in their backyard to cause
them harm, pain or backstab them or even cause them disharmony in the company of
an enemy, because a brother is a gift from God.
4)
A wise person does not go after rejects in exchange for their valuables, but
bargain over things that add credit and value in exchange; just like the pillar
that the builder abandoned or deserted is of no value or use to anyone
............. because a house built on strong foundation, shall not be shaken
even if the wind and storm pound on it.....................
Therefore,
a good manager strives to upholds the esteem and goodwill name of a Company;
likewise, a good leader must be responsible to deliver services with integrity
according to the trust of those he or she is of service..........and timing to
engage in favorable business return is of essence.
With
the above theories, I am saddened that former PM of Kenya, Raila Odinga seem to
be making desperate and dangerous moves of embarrassment coupled with high
expectation of missed opportunities.
To
embark on a journey to the US in company of some County Governors at the time of
US Government Shut-down is lacking credibility and logistics for intelligence
and was of no significance value.
Why do I say
this:
a) Washington DC is the heart of
the Government where all Government facilities operate..........with the
Government shut-down, Government facilities and utilities were all shut
down. A lot of programs and appointments were all
cancelled. Government workers were out of work. The
assumed Emerging Markets forum or conference must have been cancelled and so a
back-door skeleton of service may have been offered to Raila and Team. This begs the question
therefore, did the Government Officials invite him to discuss the March 4th
elections???
The business that brought
him to the USA therefore was definately not credible............but it was
confirming missed opportunity for unfinished business which is not
constitutional or legal in any way.........
b) The Emerging Markets of GM,
the Genetically Modified Foods to feed the world is a reject in the whole world
with just a few days world demonstration against it and the business
organizations of the GM are stranded with their reject goods and are looking for
a dumping station, the reason why they are scrambling for Africas Grabbed
land. It is only danderhead fools who will want to subject their
people to loose huge land to accommodate rejects of GM foods.
During a Government shutdown, any business deal with the Government is
unconstitutional and is illegal.............So how are these Governors going to
explain or account to their constituents after spending taxpayer money in
wasteful trip.
c)
Because GM is a reject, negotiators can only engage deals in dark corners,
during a Government Shutdown. Does this explain the type of
Emerging Market former PM Raila came to engage? Who want to engage
in failed business at the expense of taxpayer??? What are the
gains for the people who are about to loose their land under such questionable
circumstances???
d)
What about the timing of the selling of his book.......Did Raila think twice
that his business partners or advisors had actually taken him for a fool?
e)
GM is environmentally and healthwise unfit and has failed the test of feed the
world.............its business community have a host of problem and rethinking
to do..............Africa must not be made a dampting station under the guist of
Free Business...............and Raila with team must stop fooling
Africans...............it is time for Africans to stand up for their
rights..................
Raila
must stop treating President Obama as his enemy. He should stop
his negative sneering and sneaky attacks on Obama and begin to act
normal. It is important that former PM Raila slow down, that, he
is just doing himself more harm than good........that something about his
politics with business engagement of unfinished business is not going down well
in the right way. When Rift Valley and Nubians begin to run away
from him, something has seriously gone wrong.
Raila must get some
reality……..he must know that although he is agreed to be used negatively by his
business associates and partners here in the USA to stab our good President
Obama negatively, at the end of the day, he is the looser and will remain a
laughing stock……….He should know better and do something about his failed
attitudes with hopeless negativity on Obama……….Let him take a deep breath retire
from politics peacefully with dignity before the tides are high and he finds
himself sinking with the waves………………
Judy Miriga
Diaspora Spokesperson &
Executive Director for
Confederation Council Foundation for Africa
USA
email: jbatec@yahoo.com
-------------------------------------------------------
Raila Odinga tells US government officials he has
put March 4 elections behind him
Updated Wednesday, October 16th 2013 at 08:36 GMT
+3
By
GEOFFREY MOSOKU
WASHINGTON DC: CORD leader Raila Odinga on Tuesday
held talks with a number of US government officials in Washington,
DC.
Raila
held separate talks with Assistant Secretary of State for Africa ambassador
Linda Thomas-Greenfield at the US State Department in Washington, DC,
chairman of the Senate sub-committee on Africa and member of the Senate Foreign
Affairs CommitteeSenator Chris Coons of Delaware and Special
Representative forUS Global
Food Security Mr Jonathan Shrier.
Discussions between Raila, Thomas-Greenfield and
Senator Coons focused on progress in Kenya since elections, implementation of
Devolution provisions of the constitution, regional security and strengthening
of principles of democracy, the rule of law and reforming and strengthening
Kenya's key institutions including police and
judiciary.
The
Cord leader said he has put the election behind and is focusing on ensuring a
faithful implementation of provisions of the new
constitution.
“We
are also keen to work with you in deepening institutional reforms in Kenya
especially reform of the police, judiciary and other institutions of governance
and we look up to this administration to walk with Kenyans in their dream to
strengthen and institutionalize democracy, the rule of law, government
accountability and national security,” he said.
At
meetings with the assistant Secretary and Senator Coons Raila called on the US
to support the implementation
of devolution because it holds promise for Kenya's future stability through
inclusive growth, equitable sharing of resources and state
accountability.
He also asked the US to support Kenya's governors
through training, capacity building and actual investments in various
counties.
“We
need the administration’s support for our governors through training, capacity
building, funding and, most importantly, by directing investors to our
counties.”
The
Assistant Secretary pledged continued support for Kenya on security, especially
in war against terrorism.
She
pledged support in hunting down those behind the attack at the Westgate Mall no
matter how long the search lasts.
The Westgate Mall attack underscored
vulnerabilities in the Horn of Africa and demonstrated that al Shabaab has a
capable network in East Africa and is willing to carry out attacks outside
Somalia, she said.
Raila
reiterated that when it comes to matters of National Security, there will be no
opposition and government and Kenyans will stand together as one
people.
The
former PM appealed to the administrators of the Feed the Future program in
Kenya to allow governors to have an input on the agricultural initiatives being
undertaken in their counties.
He
appealed for stronger support for counties in arid areas, singling out Marsabit, Wajir,
Garissa and Tana River.
Raila
appreciated the focus the Feed the Future program has put on Kenya, but appealed
for assistance to farmers in areas of training, provision of quality, drought
resistant seeds and storage facilities.
Feed
the Future is a U.S. Government hunger and food security initiative, supports
partner countries in developing their agriculture sector to spur economic growth
that increases incomes and reduces hunger, poverty and
undernutrition.
Raila
later launched his autobiography at the Johns Hopkins University in Washington,
DC.
----------------------------------
In Summary
- The Cord Delegations will be in the US for two weeks
- The former PM and his delegation will also attend the Emerging Markets Forum in Washington
- Mr Odinga will promote his newly launched autobiography Flame of Freedom
Former Prime Minister Raila Odinga will on Friday lead Coalition for
Reforms and Democracy (CORD governors on a second tour to the United
States.
Mr Odinga and the Cord delegation will be in the US for two weeks. Mr
Odinga is expected to popularise his recently launched autobiography, Flame
of Freedom during the tour.
The former PM and his delegation will meet business executives and also
attend the Emerging Markets Forum in Washington.
“Mr Odinga will also use his two- week stay in the US to promote his newly
launched autobiography Flame
of Freedom in Washington, DC and Minnesota, among other US cities,” a
statement released by his spokesperson Mr Dennis Onyango
stated.
Mr Odinga will be accompanied by governors Ali Hassan Joho (Mombasa),
Wycliffe Oparanya (Kakamega), Nathif Jama (Garissa), Ahmed Abdullahi (Wajir),
Ukur Yatani (Marsabit) and Josephat Nanok of Turkana.
While in Washington, Mr Odinga and his delegation will also meet opinion
leaders and officialsfrom both government and non-governmental agencies before
travelling to Minnesota for meetings with business leaders and to launch the
biography.
In July 2013, the former PM
led Cord governors on a tour to the US (READ: Governors’ US trip not
political: Raila).
-----------------------------------------
Biography
Linda
Thomas-Greenfield
Assistant
Secretary
Bureau of African
Affairs
Term of Appointment: 08/06/2013 to
present
Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, a member of the Career Foreign Service,
was confirmed by the Senate on August 1, 2013 and sworn in on August 6, 2013 as
the next Assistant Secretary for African Affairs.
Prior to assuming her current position, as Director General she led a team
of about 400 employees who carried out the full range of personnel functions for
the State Department’s 60,000-strong workforce - from recruitment and hiring,
through evaluations and promotions, to retirement.
Since beginning her Foreign Service career in 1982 as a consular officer in
Kingston, Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield has risen through the ranks to the
Minister Counselor level. Overseas she has served in Jamaica, Nigeria, The
Gambia, Kenya, Pakistan, Switzerland (at the U.S. Mission to the UN), and most
recently as Ambassador to the Republic of Liberia, where she served from 2008 to
2012. In Washington she has worked in the Bureau of Human Resources, as well as
the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, where she was a Deputy
Assistant Secretary from 2004 to 2006, and the Bureau of African Affairs, where
she was Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary from 2006 to 2008.
Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield
was the 2000 recipient of the Warren Christopher Award for Outstanding
Achievement in Global Affairs in recognition of her work with refugees. She has
received several Superior, Meritorious, and Performance awards, including the
Presidential Meritorious Service Award. She was a 2010 inductee into the
Louisiana State University Alumni Association Hall of Distinction.
Prior to joining the
Department of State, Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield taught political science at
Bucknell University in Pennsylvania. She earned a bachelor's degree from
Louisiana State University and a master’s degree from the University of
Wisconsin, where she also did work towards a doctorate.
US-India partnership to improve
agricultural productivity in AC
Hyderabad
| Wednesday, Jan 16 2013 IST
U S Department of State Special Representative for Global Food Security,
Jonathan Shrier (Acting) today said US-India partneship will improve
agricultural productivity in African Countries (AC). Participating in the first
agricultural training programme of the India-US- Africa Trainangular partneship
here, Mr Shrier and Mr Sanjeev Gupta, Joint Secretary (Information Technology
and Extension), Ministry of Agriculture, said "as part of the broader US-India
Agriculture Dialogue, our triangular engagement will share proven innovations
from India's private and public sector to address food insecurity, malnutrition,
and poverty in the target African Countries." The United States Government is
funding this training program through Feed the Future, the US government's
global hunger and food security initiative.
The triangular partnership will improve agricultural productivity,
strengthen agricultural value chains, and support market institutions in Kenya,
Liberia, and Malawi.
Led by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and
the Indian National Institute of Agricultural Extension Management (MANAGE),
this three-year training program will build the capacity of 180 agriculture
professionals from the three African countries by providing extension
management, agricultural marketing and agri-business training at MANAGE in
Hyderabad and at the Chaudhary Charan Singh National Institute of Agricultural
Marketing in Jaipur. UNI VV AKM ADB19281924 NNNN
-- (UNI) -- 16ms71.xml
Shrier, Jonathan
Jonathan Shrier
Acting Special
Representative
Global Food
Security
Term of Appointment: 08/29/2011 to
present
On August 29, 2011, Mr. Shrier became Acting Special Representative for
Global Food Security and as such, is responsible for coordinating all aspects of
U.S. diplomacy related to food security and nutrition, including in support of
Feed the Future, the U.S. government’s global
hunger and food security initiative. The Special Representative is part of the
interagency leadership of the government-wide Presidential Initiative, serving
concurrently as Deputy Coordinator for Diplomacy for Feed the
Future.
Mr. Shrier leads diplomatic efforts to advance the U.S. global hunger and
food security initiative, with a particular focus on major donor and strategic
partner countries as well as multilateral institutions such as the G8 and G20.
Mr. Shrier came to the State Department’s Office of the Global Food Security
from the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff.
He has served as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary and Acting
Assistant Secretary for Policy and International Affairs at the U.S. Department
of Energy, where he helped to design and establish the Energy and Climate
Partnership of the Americas launched by President Obama. While at the National
Security Council and National Economic Council, Mr. Shrier coordinated
interagency policy at the intersection of energy, climate, and agriculture,
including responses to the spike in commodity prices in 2007-2008. A career
Foreign Service Officer, Mr. Shrier handled international trade and investment
issues for then Under Secretary of State for Economic, Business, and
Agricultural Affairs Josette Sheeran, just prior to her appointment as head of
the World Food Program.
During his service at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, Mr. Shrier worked with
USAID to establish a development assistance program for Tibetan communities in
China, with a focus on agriculture-led development. Mr. Shrier has earned
degrees from the National Defense University (M.S. in National Security Resource
Strategy), University of London (M.B.A. in International Management), London
School of Economics (MSc in International Relations), and Dartmouth (A.B. in
Government). His languages include Mandarin Chinese, Arabic, French, and
Spanish.
======================
Jonathan
Shrier
Published on Jun 17, 2013
Jonathan Shrier, Acting
Special Representative for Global Food Security at the U.S. Department of State,
talks about the need to think about food systems and total nutrition, not just
farming.
===========================
U.S.-India Partnership to Improve Agricultural Productivity in African Countries
Special Representative for Global Food Security Jonathan Shrier (Acting) participates in Hunger, Nutrition and Climate Justice Conference in Dublin
Media
Note
Office of the
Spokesperson
Washington, DC
April 16, 2013
On April 15 and16, Special Representative for Global Food Security Jonathan
Shrier (Acting) participated in the “Hunger, Nutrition and Climate
Justice” Conference, held at Dublin Castle and hosted by the
Government of Ireland and the Mary Robinson Foundation.
The event brought together key policy makers and global leaders, civil
society representatives, and people who face food insecurity and undernutrition
to facilitate a dialogue with the goal of informing potential approaches to
address the nexus of hunger, nutrition and climate change in the post-2015 Development
Agenda.
President of Ireland H.E. Mr. Michael D. Higgins formally opened the
conference, and speakers included former President of Ireland Mary
Robinson and former Vice-President of the United States Al Gore. Special
Representative Shrier (Acting) participated on the panel “From Learning to
Leading – Informing the post-2015 Development Agenda,” where panelists offered
different points of view on how the exchanges from the conference could be
connected to the post-2015 agenda.
The U.S government works with partners to build the resilience of
communities vulnerable to climate change, by helping partner countries develop
strategies to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, transition to low-carbon
futures and better cope with climate impacts. Feed the Future, the U.S. Government hunger and
food security initiative, supports partner countries in developing their
agriculture sector to spur economic growth that increases incomes and reduces
hunger, poverty and undernutrition. These investments contribute to the health,
stability, and resilience of developing countries, and support responsible
management of natural resources in the face of a growing population and changing
climate.
To learn more, please visit here.
PRN: 2013/0419
U.S. looks to
Monsanto to feed the world
Marcia Ishii-Eiteman
PAN North America
2
Feb 2011
http://www.panna.org/blog/us-looks-monsanto-feed-world
At
the annual World Economic Forum this past weekend in Davos, Switzerland, U.S.
Agency for International Development (USAID) Director Rajiv Shah stood beside
CEOs from Monsanto and other infamous giant corporations, and announced U.S.
support for a "New Vision for Agriculture."
Yes, you should be
worried.
Claiming that "large-scale private sector
partnerships [can] achieve significant impact on global hunger and nutrition,"
Shah introduced the initiative's 17 agribusiness "champions": Archer Daniels
Midland, BASF, Bunge Limited, Cargill, Coca-Cola, DuPont, General Mills, Kraft
Foods, Metro AG, Monsanto Company, Nestle, PepsiCo, SABMiller, Syngenta,
Unilever, Wal-Mart, and Yara International.
What!?! Are you kidding me? Most of these
agribusiness giants could be listed in an edition of Who's Who in Environmental
Destruction, Hunger and Human Rights Violations. A few minutes' of investigation
on GRAIN, CorpWatch, Food & Water Watch or PAN's chemical cartel page
will prove this point.
Feeding the corporations
The
plan, USAID tells us, is for the U.S. to leverage private sector investments for
agricultural "growth," using our taxpayer dollars through Obama's Feed the
Future initiative. Back in September, I wrote about the corporate Trojan Horse
lurking within Feed the Future. There's always been some green window dressing
scattered throughout the plan, claiming that the initiative will follow Southern
country priorities, support gender equity, respect local and Indigenous
knowledge, etc.
Back then, Rajiv Shah & Co. were making
only thinly veiled references to the Initiative's plan to "discover" and
"deliver breakthrough technologies" (guess whose) to poor hapless farmers in the
global South.
Now,
however, USAID has abandoned all pretenses of respecting a people's agenda, and
baldly acknowledges that large-scale private sector partnerships with some of
the world's worst corporate actors lies at the core of Feed the Future. We are
given the example of Feed the Future's project in Tanzania, where an "investment
blueprint" to establish "profitable, modern commercial farming and agribusiness"
and designed to last for "years to come" has been set up with Monsanto,
Syngenta, Yara and General Mills, among other multinational corporations. USAID
"hopes to expand the blueprint in the future to at least five additional African
countries."
India, US team up for agri extension training in Africa
Illustration by Peter Ryan / peterthomasryan.com
Percy Schmeiser was a farmer. Shortly after
the Monsanto company introduced
genetically modified (GM) canola plants to Canada, Percy Schmeiser was a farmer
facing a lawsuit.
After hearing that GM crops could potentially increase yields, three
farmers in Schmeiser's region planted fields of Monsanto's seed. Winds pushed
pollen from GM canola into Schmeiser's fields, and the plants cross-pollinated.
The breed he had been cultivating for 50 years was now contaminated by
Monsanto's GM canola.
Did Monsanto apologize? No. It sued Schmeiser for patent infringement —
first charging the farmer per acre of contamination, then slapping him with
another suit for $1 million and attempting to seize his land and farming
equipment. After a seven-year battle, the Canadian Supreme Court eventually
ruled against him but let him keep his farm and his $1 million. He was one of
the lucky ones.
Sara Ventiera
In May, more than 1,300 Miami protesters joined the global march against
Monsanto.
Schmeiser's case illustrates how Monsanto is dominating — and terrifying —
the agricultural world with secretive technologies, strong-arm tactics, and
government approval. According to the Center for Food
Safety, Monsanto has filed at least 142 similar lawsuits against
farmers for alleged infringement of its patents or abuse of its technology
agreement. The company has won 72 judgments totaling almost $24
million.
Agriculture is a big industry in Florida. About $130 billion-per-year big,
the second-largest industry behind tourism. Statewide, 9 million acres of
farmland are divided into more than 47,500 commercial farms. In fact, Palm Beach County is the largest agricultural
county east of the Mississippi
River.
According to the USDA, 95,000
acres of corn, 125,000 acres of upland cotton, and 25,000 acres of soybeans have
been planted in the state in 2013. With Food and Water
Watch warning that nationally, 90 to 93 percent of such crops are
genetically modified, Floridians have cause to know what's lurking up the food
chain.
A Biotech
Revolution
When you're good at something, you want to leverage that. Monsanto's
specialty is killing stuff.
In the early years, the St. Louis biotech giant helped pioneer such leading
chemicals as DDT, PCBs, and Agent Orange. Unfortunately, these breakthroughs
had a tendency to harm humans too.
When lawsuits piled up, putting a crimp in long-term profitability,
Monsanto hatched a less lethal, more lucrative plan. It would attempt to take
control of the world's food supply.
This mission started in the mid-'90s,
when the company began developing genetically modified crops like soybeans,
corn, alfalfa, sugar beets, and wheat (much of it used for livestock feed).
Monsanto bred crops that were immune to its leading weed killer, Roundup. That
meant farmers no longer had to till the land to kill weeds, as they'd done for
hundreds of years. They could simply blast their fields with chemicals. The
weeds would die while the crops grew unaffected. Problem solved.
Monsanto put a wonderful spin on this development: The so-called "No-Till
Revolution" promised greater yields, better profits for the family farm, and a
heightened ability to feed a growing world.
But there was a dark side. First, farmers grew dependent on Monsanto,
having to buy new seed every year, along with Monsanto's pesticides. The effects
on human health were largely unknown — would it harm people to consume foods
whose genetic profile had suddenly changed after millions of years? Or to eat
the animals that had consumed those plants? What about ripple effects on
ecosystems?
But agriculture had placed the belligerent strongman in charge of the
buffet line.
Monsanto squeezed out competitors by buying the biggest seed companies,
spending $12 billion on the splurge. The company bought up the best shelf space
and distribution channels. Its braying of global benevolence began to look much
more like a naked power grab.
Seed prices began to soar. Since 1996, the cost of soybeans has increased
325 percent. Corn has risen 259 percent. And the price of genetically modified
cotton has jumped a stunning 516 percent.
Instead of feeding the world, Monsanto drove prices through the roof —
taking the biggest share for itself. A study by Dr. Charles Benbrook at Washington State
University found that rapidly increasing seed and pesticide costs
were tamping farmers' income, cutting them from any benefits of the new
technology.
Still, Monsanto was doing its best to make them play along. It offered
steep discounts to independent dealers willing to restrict themselves to selling
mostly Monsanto products. These same contracts brought severe punishment if
independents ever sold out to a rival. U.S. regulators showed little concern for
Monsanto's expanding power.
"They're a pesticide company that's bought up seed firms," says Bill Freese, a
scientist at the Center for Food Safety. "Businesswise, it's a beautiful, really
smart strategy. It's just awful for agriculture and the
environment."
Today, Monsanto seeds cover 40 percent of America's crop acres — and 27
percent worldwide. The company makes nearly $8 billion per year.
"If you put control over plant and genetic resources into the hands of the
private sector... and anybody thinks that plant breeding is still going to be
used to solve society's real problems and to advance food security, I have a
bridge to sell them," says Benbrook.
Seeds of
Destruction
It didn't used to be like this. At one time, seed companies were just
large-scale farmers who grew various strains for next year's crop. Most of the
innovative hybrids and cross-breeding was done the old-fashioned way at public
universities. The results were shared publicly.
"It was done in a completely open-sourced way," says Benbrook. "Scientists
at the U.S. Department of Agriculture exchanged all sort of seeds with other
scientists and researchers all over the world. This free trade and exchange of
plant genetic resources was the foundation of progress in plant breeding. And in
less than a decade, it was over."
The first crack appeared in 1970, when Congress empowered the USDA to grant
exclusive marketing rights to novel strains — with the exception that farmers
could replant the seeds if they chose and patented varieties must be provided to
researchers.
But that wasn't enough. Corporations wanted more control, and they got it
with a dramatic, landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1980 that allowed
the patenting of living organisms. The decision was intended to increase
research and innovation. But it did the opposite, encouraging market
concentration.
Monsanto, which declined an interview request for this article, would soon
gobble up every rival seed company in sight. It patented the best seeds for
genetic engineering, leaving only the inferior for sale as non-GM
brands.
It wasn't until 2009 that the Justice
Department, working in concert with several state attorneys
general, began investigating the company for antitrust violations. But three
years later, the feds quietly dropped the case. (They also ignored interview
requests for this article.)
Dr. Peter Carstensen, a professor at the University of Wisconsin Law
School, said some states were interested in pursuing the case and
"some of the staff in the antitrust division wanted to do something, but top
management — you say the word 'patent' and they panic."
Set the Lawyers to Stun
Historically, farmers were able to save money on seeds by using those
produced by last year's crops for the coming year's planting. But because
Monsanto owns patents on its genetically modified strains, it forces farmers to
buy new seeds every year.
Armed with lawyers and private investigators, the company has embarked on a
campaign of spying and intimidation to stop any farmer from replanting his
seeds.
Farmers call them the "seed police," using words such as "Gestapo" and
"Mafia" to describe Monsanto's tactics. The company's agents fan out into small
towns, where they secretly videotape and photograph farmers, store owners, and
co-ops; infiltrate community meetings; and gather information from informants.
Some Monsanto agents pretend to be surveyors. Others confront farmers on their
land and try to pressure them to sign papers giving Monsanto access to their
private records.
In one case, Monsanto accused Indiana farmer David Runyon of using its
soybean seeds, despite documented fact that he'd bought nonpatented seed from
local universities for years. While attempting to pressure Runyon, Monsanto's
lawyer claimed the company had an agreement with the Indiana Department of
Agriculture to search his land.
One problem: Indiana didn't have a Department of Agriculture at the time.
Like most Monsanto investigations, the case never went to trial and would appear
to be more about intimidation than anything. Runyon incurred substantial costs
defending himself without having done anything wrong. In 2006, the Center for
Food Safety estimated that Monsanto had pressured as many as 4,500 farmers into
paying settlements worth as much as $160 million.
Yet Monsanto wanted even more leverage. So it naturally turned to
Congress.
Earlier this year, a little-noticed provision was slipped into a budget
resolution. The measure, pushed by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Missouri), granted the company an
unheard-of get-out-of-jail-free card, which critics derisively dubbed "The
Monsanto Protection Act."
There have been some indications of adverse health effects, but Monsanto
has largely kept its products from researchers. Long-term studies have been
limited, but scientists have found greater prevalence of tumors and digestive
problems in rats fed GM corn and potatoes, and digestive issues for livestock
eating GM feed. Those who have published studies critical of GM have been
besieged by industry-funded critics disputing their finding, assailing their
professional reputations, and effectively muddying the water. The feds have
never bothered to extensively study GM foods. Instead, they've basically taken
Monsanto's word that all is kosher. So organic farmers and their allies sued the
company in 2009, claiming too little study had been done on Monsanto's GM sugar
beets.
A year later, a judge agreed, ordering all recently planted GM sugar beet
crops destroyed until their environmental impact was studied.
The Monsanto Protection Act was designed to end such rulings. It
essentially bars judges from intervening in the midst of lawsuits — a notion
that would seem highly unconstitutional.
Not that Congress noticed. Monsanto's spent more than $10 million on
campaign contributions during the past decade — plus another $70 million on
lobbying since 1998. The money speaks so loudly, Congress has become
tone-deaf.
In fact, the U.S. government has become Monsanto's de facto lobbyist in
countries distrustful of GM safety. Two years ago, WikiLeaks released
diplomatic cables showing how the feds had lobbied foreign governments to weaken
laws and encourage the planting of genetically modified crops in Third World
countries.
Other wires from State
Department diplomats ask for money to fly in corporate flacks to
lean on government officials. Even Mr. Environment, former Vice President Al Gore, was
key in getting France to briefly approve Monsanto's GM corn.
These days, the company has infiltrated the highest levels of government.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is a
former Monsanto lawyer, and the company's former and current employees are in
high-level posts at the USDA and FDA.
But the real coup came in 2010, when President Obama appointed
former Monsanto Vice President Michael Taylor as the FDA's new deputy
commissioner for foods. It was akin to making George Zimmerman the czar of
gun safety.
Trust Us. Why Would We Lie?
At the same time Monsanto was cornering the food supply, its principal
products — GM crops — were receiving less scrutiny than an NSA
contractor.
Monsanto understood early on the best way to stave off bad publicity was to
suppress independent research. Until recently, when negotiating an agreement
with major universities, the company had severely restricted access to its seeds
by requiring researchers to apply for a license and get approval from the
company about any proposed research. The documentary Scientists Under Attack:
Genetic Engineering in the Magnetic Field of Money noted that nearly 95
percent of genetic engineering research is paid for and controlled by
corporations like Monsanto.
Meanwhile, former employees embedded in government make sure the feds never
get too nosy.
Meet Michael Taylor. He's gone
back and forth from government to Monsanto enough times that it's not a
revolving door; it's a Bat-pole. During an early-'90s stint with the FDA, he
helped usher bovine growth hormone milk into the food supply and wrote the
decision that kept the government out of Monsanto's GM crop
business.
Known as "substantial equivalence," this policy declared that genetically
modified products are essentially the same as their non-GM counterparts — and
therefore require no additional labeling, food safety, or toxicity tests. Never
mind that no accepted science backed his theory.
"It's simply a political calculation invented by Michael Taylor and
Monsanto and adopted by U.S. federal policymakers to resist labeling," says Jim Gerritsen, a Maine farmer. "You have this
collusion between corporations and the government, and the essence is that the
people's interest isn't being served."
The FDA approves GM crops by doing no testing of its own but by simply
taking Monsanto's word for their safety. Amusingly, Monsanto agrees that it
should have nothing to do with verifying safety, says spokesman Phil Angell.
"Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is
the FDA's job."
So if neither Monsanto nor the feds is ensuring that the food supply is
safe, who is?
The answer: No one.
We've Got Bigger
Problems Now
So far, it appears the GM movement has done little more than raise the cost
of food.
A 2009 study by Dr. Doug
Gurian-Sherman looked at four Monsanto seeds and found only
minimal increases in yield. And since GM crops cost more to produce, their
economic benefits are questionable at best.
"It pales in comparison to other conventional approaches," says
Gurian-Sherman. "It's a lot more expensive, and it comes with a lot of baggage
that goes with it, like pesticide use, monopoly issues, and control of the seed
supply."
Meanwhile, the use of pesticides has soared as weeds and insects become
increasingly resistant to these death sprays. Since GM crops were introduced in
1996, pesticide use has increased by 404 million pounds. Last year, Syngenta,
one of the world's largest pesticide makers, reported that sales of its major
corn soil insecticide more than doubled in 2012, a response to increased
resistance to Monsanto's pesticides.
Part of the blame belongs to a monoculture that developed around farming.
Farmers know it's better to rotate the crops and pesticides and leave fields
fallow for a season. But when corn prices are high, who wants to grow a less
profitable crop? The result's been soil degradation, relatively static yields,
and an epidemic of weed and insect resistance.
Weeds and insects are fighting back with their own law — the law of natural
selection. Last year, 49 percent of surveyed farmers reported Roundup-resistant
weeds on their farms, up from 34 percent the year before. The problem costs
farmers more than $1 billion annually.
Nature, as it's proved so often before, will not be easily
vanquished.
Pests like Roundup-resistant pigweed can grow thick as your arm and more
than six feet high, requiring removal by hand. Many farmers simply abandon
fields that have been infested with it. Pigweed has infested Florida cotton
fields, and farmers are now using old pesticides on top of Roundup to combat
it.
To kill these adaptive pests, chemical giants like Monsanto and Dow are
developing crops capable of withstanding even harsher pesticides. It's producing
an endless cycle of greater pesticide use at commensurate financial and
environmental cost.
"It's not about stewardship of the land," says Thomas Earnshaw, sustainable
farmer, educator, and founder of Outlaw Farmers in the Florida Panhandle. "The
north Panhandle is probably the most contaminated land in the state — because of
the monoculture farming with all the cotton and soy, both are "Roundup Ready"
[GM crops]. They're just spraying chemical herbicides, pesticides, and
fertilizers into the soil, it's getting into the water table, and farmers aren't
even making any more money — biotech is."
Next Stop... the
World!
The biggest problem for Monsanto's global growth: It doesn't have the same
juice with foreign governments as it does with ours. That's why it relies on the
State Department to work as its taxpayer-funded lobbyist abroad.
Yet that's becoming increasingly difficult. Other nations aren't as willing
to play corporate water boy as America is. The countries that need GM seeds
often can't afford them (or don't trust Monsanto). And the nations that can
afford them (other than us) don't really want them (or don't trust
Monsanto).
Though the European Union imports 30 million tons of GM crops annually for
livestock feed, it's approved only two GM crops for human consumption. Although
Brazil is poised to become the world's largest soybean exporter on the strength
of Monsanto seed, thousands of farmers there are suing Monsanto for more than
$600 million after the company continued to charge them royalties two years
after the expiration of its patent. Ecuador and Peru have shied away from GM
crops. And even in the wake of the 2010 earthquake, Haiti mistrusted Monsanto so
much that it declined its offer of seeds, even with assurances that the seed
wasn't GM.
In April, biotech companies took another hit when the European Union banned
neonicotinoids — AKA "neo-nics" — one of the most powerful and popular
insecticides in the world. It's a derivative of nicotine that's quite poisonous
to plants and insects. German giant Bayer
CropScience and Syngenta both make neo-nics, which are used to
coat seeds, protecting crops in their early growth stage. In America, 90 percent
of America's corn crop comes with the coating.
The problem is that plants sweat these chemicals out in the morning dew,
where they're picked up by bees like a morning cup of Starbucks. Last
year, a study linked neo-nics to the collapse of bee colonies, which threatens
the entire food system. One-quarter of the human diet is pollinated by
bees.
The mysterious collapse of colonies — in which bees simply fly off and die
— has been reported as far back as 1918. Yet over the past seven years,
mortality rates have tripled. Some U.S. regions are witnessing the death of more
than half their populations, especially at corn planting time.
Last year's study indicates a link to Monsanto's GM corn, which has been
widely treated with neo-nics since 2005.
But while other countries run from the problem, the U.S. government is
content to let its citizens serve as guinea pigs. Beekeepers, though, are
starting to fight back. This year, two separate lawsuits have been filed against
the EPA demanding a
more stringent risk assessment process and labeling laws for
pesticides.
What's Mine Is
Yours
The same worries apply to contamination from GM crops. Ask Frank Morton, who grows
organic sugar beet seeds in Oregon's Willamette Valley and is
among the few non-GM holdouts.
In 2010, a federal judge demanded farmers stop planting GM sugar beets.
Farmers were surprised to find there was very little non-GM sugar-beet seed to
be had. Since being introduced in 2005, Monsanto had driven just about everyone
out of the market.
Morton's farm is just two miles from a GM sugar beet farm. Unfortunately,
beet pollen can travel as much as five miles, cross-pollinating other farmers'
fields and, in the case of an organic farmer, threatening his ability to sell
his crop as organic and GM-free.
Morton has to worry about his fields because GM crops have perverted
long-standing property law. Organic farmers are responsible for protecting their
farms from contamination, since courts have consistently refused to hold GM
growers liable.
Kansas farmer Bryce Stephens had to stop
growing organic corn and soybeans for fear of contamination and has 30-foot
buffer crops to protect his organic wheat. (Wheat pollen doesn't travel
far.)
"Monsanto and the biotechs need to respect traditional property rights and
need to keep their pollution on their side of the fence," says Maine farmer Jim
Gerritsen. "If it was anything but agriculture, nobody would question it. If I
decided to spray my house purple and I sprayed on a day that was windy and my
purple paint drifted onto your house and contaminated your siding and shingles,
there isn't a court in the nation that wouldn't in two minutes find me guilty of
irresponsibly damaging your property. But when it comes to agriculture, all of a
sudden the tables are turned."
Contamination isn't just about boutique organic brands. It maims U.S.
exports too.
Take Bayer, which grew
experimental, GM rice — that was unapproved for cultivation and for human
consumption — at test plots around Louisiana State
University for just one year. Within five years, these test plots
had contaminated 30 percent of U.S. rice acreage. No one's certain how it
happened, but Bayer's rice was found as far away as Central America and
Africa.
Within days of the USDA announcement that this untested GM rice had gotten
loose, rice futures lost $150 million in value, while U.S. rice exports dropped
by 20 percent during the next year. And Bayer ended up paying farmers $750
million in damages.
Last month brought another hit. A Monsanto test of GM wheat mysteriously
contaminated an Oregon farm eight years after the test was shut down. Japan and South Korea
immediately halted imports of U.S. soft white wheat — a particularly harsh pill
for the Japanese, who have used our white wheat in almost all cakes and
confectionary since the 1960s.
Monsanto's response? It's blaming the whole mess on
eco-terrorists.
Just Label
It
Trish Sheldon moved to Florida in 2001, but the
bubbly blond still exudes a cool, friendly California air. In 2010, she started
a state chapter of Millions Against Monsanto, then in 2011 founded a group
called GMO-Free Florida to raise awareness of the risks of GMOs and push for
mandatory labeling initiatives.
With Monsanto seeds covering more than 40 percent of America's crop acres
(a March study found that 86 percent of corn, 88 percent of cotton, and 93
percent of soybeans grown here are of a GM variety) and the agri-giant making an
expected $7.65 billion profit this year, it's doubtful the company will go away
anytime soon. But as consumers become more aware of the sinister problems
lurking in the food chain, activists in many states are pushing for laws that
would require foods with GM ingredients to be labeled, much as foods with trans
fats are.
More than 23 right-to-know groups have since popped up throughout Florida
especially after California's push for mandatory labeling legislation, called
Proposition 37, failed last year. Chemical companies defeated the initiative,
thanks to a $46 million publicity campaign full of deceptive
statements.
"Even though there were lies and deceit by the biotech industry, that was
the catalyst," Sheldon says. "People were so pissed off that it failed [and] we
started gaining steam." This May, during a global day of action, more than 2
million protesters attended rallies in more than 400 cities across 52 countries.
In Miami, organizers lost count when protesters topped 1,300.
"If they're going to allow the American people to be lab rats in an
experiment, could they at least know where it is from so they can decide whether
they want to participate or not?" asks Lance Harvell, a Republican
state representative from Maine who sponsored a GM labeling law this year. "If
the FDA isn't going to do their job, it's time we stepped in."
Maine is just the second state (nine days after Connecticut) to pass such a
law. When Vermont raised the issue a
year ago, a Monsanto official indicated the company might sue. So the new laws
in both Maine and Connecticut won't take effect until other states pass similar
legislation so they can share defense costs.
In Florida, state Sen. Maria Lorts Sachs and
House Rep. Michelle
Rehwinkel-Vasilinda have sponsored similar bills — but neither
version made it to committee. Both intend to revise and resubmit bills in the
next legislative session, in January 2014.
"God gave the seed to the earth and the fruit to the trees," Harvell says.
"Notice it didn't say he granted Monsanto a patent. The human body has developed
with its seeds. You're making a major leap into Pandora's box, a quantum leap
that maybe the human body isn't ready to make yet."
As more information comes out, it's increasingly clear that GM seed isn't
the home run it's portrayed to be. It encourages greater pesticide use, which
has a negative impact on the environment and our bodies. Whether or not GM food
is safe to eat, it poses a real threat to biodiversity through monopolization of
the seed industry and the kind of industrial farming monoculture this
inspires.
Meanwhile, a study by the University of
Canterbury in England found that non-GM
crops in America and Europe are increasing their yields faster than GM
crops.
"All this talk about feeding the world, it's really PR," explains Wenonah Hauter, executive
director of Food & Water Watch. "The hope is to get into these new
markets, force farmers to pay for seed, then start changing the food and eating
habits of the developing world."
But as much as he hates GM, Kansas farmer Stephens is sanguine. "I've seen
changes since I was little to where it is now," he says. "I don't think it will
last. This land and these people here have gone through cycles of boom and bust.
We're just in another cycle, and it will be something different."
Providing we don't irreparably break it first.
Additional reporting by Sara
Ventiera.
When you're good at something, you want to leverage that. Monsanto's specialty is
killing stuff.
In the early years, the St. Louis biotech giant helped pioneer such leading
chemicals as DDT, PCBs and Agent Orange. Unfortunately, these breakthroughs
had a tendency to kill stuff. And the torrent of lawsuits that came from random
killing put a crimp on long-term profitability.
So Monsanto hatched a less lethal, more lucrative plan. The company
attempted to take control of the world's food supply.
University of Wisconsin Law School professor Peter Carstensen notes that
Monsanto's seed police are the Pinkertons. "These are the strikebreakers, the
railroad goons. It's déjà vu all over again."
"They're a pesticide company that's bought up seed firms," says Bill
Freese, of the Center for Food Safety. "Business-wise, it's a beautiful, really
smart strategy. It's just awful for agriculture and the
environment."
Dr. Charles Benbrook, a research professor at Washington State University,
found that rapidly increasing seed and pesticide costs were tamping farmers'
income, cutting them from any benefits of the new technology.
Kansas farmer Bryce Stephens had to stop growing organic corn and soybeans
for fear of contamination; he's got thirty-foot buffer crops to protect his
organic wheat.
"Monsanto and the biotechs need to respect traditional property rights and
need to keep their pollution on their side of the fence," says Maine farmer Jim
Gerritsen.
Monsanto's suburban St. Louis headquarters hides behind trees and security
checkpoints. Its business hides behind lawyers, lobbying and
patents.
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More About
It began in the mid-'90s, when Monsanto developed genetically modified (GM)
crops such as soybeans, alfalfa, sugar beets and wheat. It bred Franken-crops
that were immune to its leading weed killer, Roundup. That meant that farmers no
longer had to till the land to kill weeds, as they'd done for hundreds of years.
They could simply blast their fields with chemicals. Problem solved.
The so-called no-till revolution promised greater yields, better profits
for the family farm, and a heightened ability to feed a growing world. But there
was one small problem: Agriculture had placed a belligerent strongman in charge
of the buffet line.
Monsanto knew that it needed more than genetically modified crops to
squeeze out competitors, so it also began buying the biggest seed businesses,
spending $12 billion by the time its splurge concluded. The company was
cornering agriculture by buying up the best shelf space and distribution
channels. All its braying about global benevolence began to look much more like
a naked power grab.
Seed prices began to soar. Between 1995 and 2011, the cost of soybeans
increased 325 percent. The cost of corn rose 259 percent. And the price of
genetically modified cotton jumped a stunning 516 percent.
Instead of feeding the world, Monsanto simply drove prices through the
roof, taking the biggest share for itself. A study by Dr. Charles Benbrook, a
research professor at Washington State
University, found that rapidly increasing seed and pesticide
costs were tamping farmers' incomes, while Monsanto continued to lard away any
cost savings from the technology for itself.
It offered steep discounts to independent dealers willing to restrict
themselves to mostly selling Monsanto products. Those same arrangements brought
severe punishment if the independents ever sold out to a rival.
Intel had run a similar campaign within the tech
industry, only to be drilled by the European Union with a record $1.45 billion
fine for anti-competitive practices. Yet U.S. regulators showed little concern
for Monsanto's expanding power.
"They're a pesticide company that's bought up seed firms," says Bill Freese, a
scientist at the Center for Food
Safety, a non-profit public-interest and environmental-advocacy
group. "Business-wise, it's a beautiful, really smart strategy. It's just awful
for agriculture and the environment."
Today, Monsanto seeds cover 40 percent of America's crop acres — and 27
percent worldwide.
"If you put control over plant and genetic resources into the hands of the
private sector...and anybody thinks that plant breeding is still going to be
used to solve society's real problems and to advance food security, I have a
bridge to sell them," says Dr. Benbrook.
Seeds of
Destruction
It didn't used to be like this. At one time, seed companies were just
large-scale farmers who grew various strains for next year's crop. Most of the
innovative hybrids and cross-breeding was done the old-fashioned way, at public
universities, and the results were shared publicly.
"It was done in a completely open-sourced way," says Benbrook. "Scientists
at the U.S. Department of
Agriculture exchanged all sorts of seeds with other scientists
and researchers all over the world. This free trade and exchange of plant
genetic resources was the foundation of progress in plant breeding. And in less
than a decade, it was over."
The first crack appeared in 1970, when Congress empowered the USDA to grant
exclusive marketing rights to novel strains, with two exceptions: Farmers could
replant the seeds if they chose, and patented varieties had to be provided to
researchers.
But that wasn't enough. Corporations wanted more control, and they got it
with a dramatic, landmark Supreme Court decision in
1980, which allowed the patenting of living organisms. The decision was intended
to increase research and innovation, but it had the opposite effect, encouraging
market concentration.
Monsanto would soon go on its buying spree, gobbling up every rival seed
company in sight. It patented the best seeds for genetic engineering, leaving
only the inferior for sale as conventional, non-GM brands. (Monsanto declined an
interview request for this story.)
Swiss biotech giant Syngenta and DuPont both sued, accusing
Monsanto of monopolistic practices and a "scorched-earth campaign" in its
seed-company contracts. But instead of bringing reform, the chemical giants
reached settlements that granted them licenses to use, sell and cross-develop
Monsanto products. (Some DuPont suits are still dragging on.)
It wasn't until 2009 that the Justice
Department, working in concert with several state attorneys
general, began investigating the company for antitrust violations. But three
years later, the feds quietly dropped the case. (They also ignored interview
requests for this story.)
"I'm told by some of those working on all of this that they had a group of
states that were seriously interested," says Dr. Peter Carstensen, a professor at the University of Wisconsin Law
School. "They had actually found private law firms that would
represent the states on fairly low fees — basically quasi-contingency — and then
nobody would drop a dime. Some of the staff in the antitrust division wanted to
do something, but top management — you say the word 'patent,' and they
panic."
Set the Lawyers to
Stun
Historically, farmers have been able to save money on seeds by using those
produced by last year's crops for the coming year's planting. But such
cost-saving methods are largely a thing of the past, thanks to Monsanto and
other big agricultural concerns. The thick, legalese-laden contracts dropped
like shackles on the kitchen tables of farmers who use Monsanto seed afford the
company access to said farmers' records and fields; they also prohibit them from
replanting leftover seed, essentially forcing them to buy new every year — or
face up to $3 million in damages.
Armed with lawyers and private investigators, Monsanto has embarked on a
campaign of spying and intimidation to stop any farmer from replanting his
seeds.
Farmers call them the "seed police," using words such as "gestapo" and
"mafia" to describe the company's tactics. Monsanto's agents fan out into small
towns, where they secretly videotape and photograph farmers, store owners and
co-ops; infiltrate community meetings; and gather information from informants.
Some Monsanto agents pretend to be surveyors; others confront farmers on their
land and try to pressure them into signing papers that give Monsanto access to
their private records.
Leading the charge, says Dr. Carstensen, is the private police force that
once terrorized union organizers from another generation. "You know who does
their policing?" he chuckles ruefully. "The Pinkertons. These are the
strikebreakers, the railroad goons. It's déjà vu all over again."
In one case, Monsanto accused Indiana farmer David Runyon of illegally
using its soybean seeds and, according to Runyon, threatened to sue for patent
infringement, despite documentation proving that he'd bought non-patented seed
from local universities for years. While attempting to pressure Runyon,
Monsanto's lawyer claimed the company had an agreement with the Indiana
Department of Agriculture to search his land.
One problem: Indiana didn't have a Department of Agriculture at the
time.
But most cases never go to trial. In 2006, the Center for Food Safety
estimated that Monsanto had pressured as many as 4,500 farmers into paying
settlements worth as much as $160 million.
Yet Monsanto wanted even more leverage. So it naturally turned to
Congress.
Earlier this year, a little-noticed provision was slipped into a budget
resolution. The anonymous measure, pushed by Senator Roy Blunt (R-Missouri),
granted the company an unheard-of get-out-of-jail-free card, derisively dubbed
the Monsanto Protection Act by critics.
Despite indications that GM foods could have adverse health effects, the
feds have never bothered to extensively study them. Instead, they've basically
taken Monsanto's word that all is kosher. So organic farmers and their allies
sued the company in 2009, claiming that Monsanto's GM sugar beets had not been
studied enough. A year later, a judge agreed, ordering all recently planted GM
sugar-beet crops destroyed until their environmental impact was
studied.
The Monsanto Protection Act was designed to end such rulings. It
essentially bars judges from intervening in the midst of lawsuits — a notion
that would seem highly unconstitutional.
Not that Congress noticed. Monsanto has spent more than $10 million on
campaign contributions in the past decade — plus another $70 million on lobbying
since 1998. The money speaks so loudly that Congress has become
tone-deaf.
In fact, the U.S. government has become Monsanto's de facto lobbyist in
countries distrustful of GM safety. Two years ago, WikiLeaks released
diplomatic cables showing how the feds had lobbied foreign governments to weaken
laws and encourage the planting of genetically modified crops in Third World
countries.
Other wires from State
Department diplomats ask for money to fly in corporate flacks to
lean on government officials. Even Mr. Environment, former vice-president Al Gore, was
key in getting France to briefly approve Monsanto's GM corn.
These days, the company has infiltrated the highest levels of government.
It has ties to the Supreme Court (former Monsanto lawyer Clarence Thomas), with
former and current employees in high-level posts at the USDA and the FDA.
But the real coup came when President Obama appointed
former Monsanto vice president Michael Taylor as the FDA's
new Deputy Commissioner for Foods. It was akin to making George Zimmerman the czar of
gun safety.
Trust Us. Why Would We
Lie?
At the same time that Monsanto was cornering the food supply, its principal
products — GM crops — were receiving less scrutiny than an NSA
contractor.
Monsanto understood early on that the best way to stave off bad publicity
was to limit research. Prior to a recently negotiated agreement with major
universities, the company had severely restricted access to its seeds. Filmmaker
Bertram Verhaag's 2010 award-winning documentary, Scientists Under Attack:
Genetic Engineering in the Magnetic Field of Money, noted that nearly 95
percent of genetic-engineering research is paid for and controlled by
corporations like Monsanto.
Meanwhile, former employees embedded in government make sure the feds never
get too nosy.
For his part, Michael Taylor has turned that into an art form. He's gone
back and forth from government to Monsanto enough times that it's no longer just
a revolving door; it's a Batpole. During an early-'90s stint with the FDA, he
helped usher Bovine Growth Hormone milk into the food supply and authored the
decision that kept the government out of Monsanto's GM crop
business.
Known as "substantial equivalence," it declared that genetically modified
products are essentially the same as their non-GM counterparts — and therefore
require no additional labeling or testing for food safety or
toxicity.
Never mind that no accepted science backed his theory.
"It's simply a political calculation invented by Michael Taylor and
Monsanto and adopted by U.S. federal policy-makers to resist labeling," says Jim Gerritsen, a farmer in
Maine. "You
have this collusion between corporations and the government, and the essence is
that the people's interest isn't being served."
The FDA is a prime example. It approves GM crops by doing no testing of its
own, but rather by simply taking Monsanto's word for their safety. Amusingly
enough, Monsanto spokesman Phil Angell says the company
agrees that it should have nothing to do with verifying safety: "Our interest is
in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the FDA's
job."
So if neither Monsanto nor the feds are doing it, who is?
The answer: no one.
We've Got a Bigger Problem Now
So far, it appears that the GM movement has done little more than raise the
cost of food.
A 2009 study by Dr. Doug
Gurian-Sherman, a senior scientist with the Union of Concerned
Scientists, looked at four Monsanto seeds and found only minimal
increases in yield. And since GM crops cost more to produce, their economic
benefits are questionable, at best.
"It pales in comparison to other conventional approaches," says
Gurian-Sherman. "It's a lot more expensive, and it comes with a lot of
baggage...like pesticide use, monopoly issues and control of the seed
supply."
Use of those pesticides has soared as weeds and insects become increasingly
resistant to them. Since GM crops were introduced in 1996, usage has increased
by 404 million pounds. Last year, Syngenta, one of the world's largest pesticide
makers, reported that sales of its major corn-soil insecticide more than doubled
in 2012, a response to increased resistance to Monsanto's
pesticides.
Part of the blame belongs to a monoculture that developed around farming.
Farmers know it's better to rotate crops and pesticides and leave fields fallow
for a season. But when corn prices are high, who wants to grow a less profitable
crop? The result has been soil degradation, relatively static yields and an
epidemic of weed and insect resistance.
Weeds and insects are fighting back with their own law: that of natural
selection. Last year, 49 percent of surveyed farmers reported Roundup-resistant
weeds on their farms, up from 34 percent the year before. The problem costs
farmers more than $1 billion annually.
Pests like Roundup-resistant pigweed can grow as thick as your arm and more
than six feet high, requiring removal by hand. Many farmers simply abandon weed-choked fields.
In order to kill the adaptive pests, chemical giants like Monsanto and Dow
are developing crops capable of withstanding even harsher pesticides, resulting
in an endless cycle of greater pesticide use at commensurate financial and
environmental cost.
Nature, as it's proved so often before, will not be easily
vanquished.
"We are not making our agriculture more resistant to environmental stress,
not lowering the amount of pesticides, and not creating a sustainable
agricultural system that works," says Mary-Howells
Martens, an organic grain farmer in New York. "There are so many
things that are short-term, quick-buck kind of things, without any kind of eye
to if this is going to be a good deal long-term."
Next Stop: The World!
The biggest problem for Monsanto's global growth: It doesn't have the same
juice with foreign governments as it does with ours. That's why it relies on the
State Department to work as its taxpayer-funded lobbyist abroad.
Yet that's becoming increasingly difficult. Other nations aren't as willing
to play corporate water boy as America is. The countries that need GM seeds
often can't afford them (or don't trust Monsanto). And the nations that can
afford them (other than us) don't really want them (or don't trust
Monsanto).
Ask Mike Mack, CEO of Syngenta,
which is based in Switzerland. The Swiss, he
argues, are more interested in environmental safety and food quality than in
saving a few pennies at the grocery store.
"Switzerland's greatest natural resource is that it is a beautiful country
that brings in a lot of tourism," he says. "If the Swiss could lower their
consumption spending by 1 percent by applying high-productivity farming, they
probably would not do it if it requires changing their approach to how they
think about food. Countries like Switzerland are a good example where such
things as GM food would be very difficult and perhaps commercially
inadvisable."
Maybe Europe has simply been around the block enough to know better than to
entrust its health to a bottom-line mentality. Although the European Union
imports 30 million tons of GM crops annually for livestock feed, it's approved
only two GM crops for human consumption.
In April, biotech companies took another hit when the European Union banned
neonicotinoids — aka "neo-nics" — one of the most powerful and popular
insecticides in the world. It's a derivative of nicotine that's poisonous to
plants and insects. German giant Bayer
CropScience and Syngenta both make neo-nics, which are used to
coat seeds, protecting crops in their early growth stages. In America, 90
percent of the corn crop comes with the coating.
The problem is that plants sweat these chemicals out in the morning dew,
where they're picked up by bees like a morning cup of Starbucks.
Last year, Dr. Christian Krupke, an
associate professor of entomology at Purdue University, did one
of the first studies linking neo-nics to the collapse of bee colonies, which
threatens the entire food system. One-quarter of the human diet is pollinated by
bees.
The mysterious collapse of colonies — in which bees simply fly off and die
— has been reported as far back as 1918. Yet over the past seven years,
mortality rates have tripled. Some U.S. regions are witnessing the death of more
than half their populations.
"We're looking at bee kills, persistently during corn-planting time,"
Krupke explains. "So what was killing these bees at corn planting?"
While he's still not sure how much responsibility the chemicals bear, his
study indicates a link to Monsanto's GM corn, which has been widely treated with
neo-nics since 2005.
But while other countries run from the problem, the U.S. government is
content to let its citizens serve as guinea pigs.
What's Mine Is Yours
The same worries apply to contamination from GM crops. Ask Frank Morton, who grows
organic sugar-beet seeds in Oregon's Willamette Valley and is
among the few non-GM holdouts.
This became abundantly clear in 2010, when a federal judge demanded that
all U.S. farmers stop planting GM sugar beets. Farmers were surprised to find
that there was very little non-GM sugar-beet seed to be had. Since the GM
variety was introduced in 2005, Monsanto had driven just about everyone out of
the market.
Morton's farm is just two miles from a GM sugar-beet farm. Unfortunately,
beet pollen can travel as much as five miles, cross-pollinating other farmers'
fields and, in the case of an organic farmer, threatening his ability to sell
his crop as organic and GM-free. The contamination can arrive in the most benign
ways.
"Some guy from a landscaping company goes driving by in his dump truck and
sees this potting soil full of Roundup Ready sugar-beet roots and gets the
farmer to sell it to him," says Morton. "A scientist who works at Oregon State
University and knows me happened to go into this landscaping business and was
buying some potting soil when she saw these roots, and she knew what they
were.
"The company that was responsible for the roots had to go out and find all
the people," he continues. "They went out and paid people to let them recover
the roots from their soil. And to not say anything, they gave them $100 each. I
know, because the lady who owns the liquor store told me that she bought some of
the soil and they paid her not to mention it."
It's especially galling because GM crops have perverted longstanding
property law. Organic farmers, for example, are responsible for protecting their
farms from contamination, since courts have consistently refused to hold GM
growers liable.
Kansas farmer Bryce Stephens had to stop
growing organic corn and soybeans for fear of contamination; he has thirty-foot
buffer crops to protect his organic wheat. (Wheat pollen doesn't travel
far.)
"Monsanto and the biotechs need to respect traditional property rights and
need to keep their pollution on their side of the fence," says Maine farmer Jim
Gerritsen. "If it was anything but agriculture, nobody would question it. If I
decided to spray my house purple and I sprayed on a day that was windy, and my
purple paint drifted onto your house and contaminated your siding and shingles,
there isn't a court in the nation that wouldn't in two minutes find me guilty of
irresponsibly damaging your property. But when it comes to agriculture, all of a
sudden the tables are turned."
Contamination isn't just about boutique organic brands, either. It maims
U.S. exports, too.
Take Bayer, which grew
unapproved, experimental GM rice at test plots around Louisiana State
University for just one year. Within five years, these test plots
had contaminated 30 percent of U.S. rice acreage. No one's certain how it
happened, but Bayer's rice was found as far away as Central America and
Africa.
Within days of the announcement, rice futures lost $150 million in value,
while U.S. rice exports dropped by 20 percent during the next year. (Bayer ended
up paying $750 million in damages.)
Last month brought another hit. A Monsanto test of GM wheat mysteriously
contaminated an Oregon farm eight years after the test was shut down. Japan and South Korea
immediately halted imports of U.S. soft white wheat — a particularly harsh pill
for the Japanese, who have used our white wheat in nearly all their cakes and
confectionery since the 1960s.
Monsanto's response? It's blaming the whole mess on
eco-terrorism.
Just Label It
Brazil is poised to become the world's largest soybean exporter on the
strength of Monsanto seed. Still, the country's farmers aren't big fans of the
company. Thousands of farmers are suing Monsanto for more than $600 million
after the company continued to charge them royalties two years after the
expiration of its patent.
Trust, unfortunately, has never been Monsanto's strong suit. It's become
one of the main motives behind the push for GM labeling.
"If they're going to allow the American people to be lab rats in an
experiment, could they at least know where it is so they can decide whether they
want to participate or not?" asks Lance Harvell, a Republican
state representative from Maine. "If the FDA isn't going to do their job, it's
time we stepped in."
Last month, Harvell's GM-labeling law overwhelmingly passed the Maine House
(141-4) and Senate (35-0) and awaits the governor's signature. That makes Maine
the second state (nine days after Connecticut) to pass a GM-labeling
law.
The Right to Know movement has picked up steam since chemical companies
defeated California's labeling initiative, thanks to a $46 million publicity
campaign full of deceptive statements. A recent ABC News poll found that 93
percent of Americans surveyed support GM labeling.
When Vermont raised the issue a
year ago, a Monsanto official indicated that the company might sue. But the
states are smart. The new laws in both Maine and Connecticut won't take effect
until other states pass similar legislation so they can share defense
costs.
What's interesting is that Harvell, by his own admission, is a very
conservative Republican. Yet on this issue, left and right have the same quest
for greater caution.
"God gave the seed to the earth and the fruit to the trees," Harvell says.
"Notice it didn't say he granted Monsanto a patent. The human body has developed
with its seeds. You're making a major leap into Pandora's Box — a quantum leap
that maybe the human body isn't ready to make yet."
As more information comes out, it's increasingly clear that GM seed isn't
the home run it's portrayed to be. It encourages greater pesticide use, which
has a negative impact on the environment and our bodies. And whether or not GM
food is safe to eat, it poses a real threat to biodiversity through
monopolization of the seed industry and the kind of industrial farming
monoculture that inspires.
Meanwhile, a study by the University of
Canterbury in England found that non-GM
crops in America and Europe are increasing their yields faster than GM
crops.
"All this talk about feeding the world, it's really PR," explains Wenonah Hauter, the author
of Foodopoly and executive director of Food & Water Watch. "The
hope is to get into these new markets, force farmers to pay for seed, then start
changing the food and eating habits of the developing world."
Since farming is such a timeworn tradition, there's a tendency to take it
for granted, and that worries a lot of people. But as much as he hates GM, Bryce
Stephens is sanguine.
"I've seen changes since I was little to where it is now," the Kansas
farmer says. "I don't think it will last. This land and these people here have
gone through cycles of boom and bust. We're just in another cycle, and it will
be something different."
Providing we don't break it irreparably first.
Feeding the World
Asia’s Prospect of Plenty
|
Briefing on Global Food Security and the G8 Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition
October 17, 2012
Acting Special Representative for Food Security Jonathan Shrier briefs
journalists on the United State's Commitment to Fighting Hunger and Ensuring
Food Security and the G8 New Alliance for Food Security and
Nutrition.
Audio of the briefing
will be made available soon.
Transcript:
Moderator: Good
afternoon to everyone, from the African Regional Media Hub with the United
States Department of State. I would like to welcome all of our participants.
Thank you for joining us. Our speaker today is Jonathan Shrier, the Acting US
Special Representative for Global Food Security. Mr Shrier will brief us on
recent developments around the issue of food security and discuss meetings had
during the UN General Assembly and the US Government's Feed the Future
initiative and the G8 Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition. We will begin
today's call with remarks from our speaker and then open it up for your
questions. To ask a question, please press "star-one" on your phone and you will
be placed in the question queue. As a reminder, today's call is one the record
and will last approximately 45 minutes. And now I will turn it over to Mr
Jonathan Shrier.
Jonathan Shrier: Thank you very much. I want to check and make sure
that I am coming through loud and clear to those on the call.
Moderator: Yes you
are.
Jonathan Shrier:
Good. Okay. So we both got guests here in Rome and so I guess when we get to
questions and answers we will go back and forth between the phone callers and
the reporters here. But just to say at the outset, the United States has been
really strongly committed to meeting the challenge of global food security. The
Obama administration has made it a paramount priority of our development agenda
and through the work of President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham
Clinton and the administrator of our US Agency for International Development, Dr
Rajiv Shah, we have dedicated ourselves to putting that commitment into
practice. This is taking place through several channels.
First of all, in 2009 we worked together, the United States worked together
with other governments and other institutions to launch here in Italy the
L'Aquila Food Security Initiative, which was launched at the time of the G8
Summit in July 2009 in L'Aquila, Italy. And that was a real turning point for
global efforts to address food security, poverty and under-nutrition. It
committed us to adopting a new way of doing business in agricultural
development, one that was dedicated to taking comprehensive approaches to the
problem rather than piecemeal approaches, one that was dedicated to
strategically coordinating the efforts of all the players involved in addressing
the problem. It was an approach dedicated to prioritizing the country's own
plans for addressing its food security challenges and its agricultural
development, so it was dedicated to country-led country-owned approaches to
development that is owned by the developing country itself. It was an approach
dedicated to leveraging the assets of multi-lateral organizations such as Food
and Agriculture Organization, other institutions such as the Committee on World
Food Security, whose meetings are going on now in Rome , and the World Food
Program and the World Bank and so on. And the approach was also dedicated to the
idea that we needed to make commitments to which we would hold ourselves
accountable over time. So we have done that through the L'Aquila Food Security
Initiative, individually as the US and collectively as a group of donors and
partner countries working together. I am happy to talk more about that piece of
the effort.
Where the United States, we also made a funding commitment pledged by
President Obama in 2009 of $3.5 billion towards the cause of food security. It
was part of a broader pledge by all of the donors collectively, all of the
L'Aquila Food Security Initiative donors collectively of $22 billion over three
years, and that includes the $3.5 billion from the US. And we are making good
progress collectively and individually in fulfilling that financial pledge. But
it is not just about the money. For the US it was also about launching a new
security initiative that is called Feed the Future. Feed the Future is the US
Government's global hunger and food security initiative. It adopts this new way
of doing business that I described and the way of doing business that
memorialized here in Rome as the Rome Principles on Sustainable Global Food
Security. So if you hear people referring to the Rome Principles, the US Feed
the Future effort is very much in tune with those principles. Also based on the
idea that we can make a greater impact by concentrating our efforts in the areas
where we have the greatest opportunity to make a difference. So for the United
States we concentrated on Feed the Future. We now have it concentrated in 19
focus countries where we are working to support the countries' own strategic
priorities in agricultural development, security and nutrition and we are also
supporting the country focused work with a robust research agenda to generate
scientific and technological breakthroughs that will ultimately advance the
cause of food security. So that is the US food security initiative Feed the
Future.
Then thirdly, in May of this year under the US Presidency of the Group of
Eight countries, the G8 came together with African leaders and with the African
Union and with private sector leaders to launch the New Alliance for Food
Security and Nutrition. The New Alliance aims at filling a gap that we saw in
the effort. So the New Alliance is built on the foundation of the L'Aquila Food
Security Initiative, a continuation of that effort. It recognizes that country
leadership is important and that is why it also builds on the efforts of African
countries through the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development program, or
CAADA, to chart their own course in addressing their own challenges of food
insecurity. But it also recognizes that these country plans that developing
countries have established, their agricultural development had made good
progress in raising money from public sources, whether it is from African
governments' own budgets or a donor country's contribution to the effort, but
had underperformed in meeting goals for private sector participation in
agriculture development.
And so the point of the New Alliance, a key point of the New Alliance, was
to mobilize private sector activity and investment in the agricultural sectors
of sub-Saharan African countries. And this New Alliance has an over-arching goal
of uplifting 50 million people out of poverty over 10 years. That is by 2022.
Lifting 50 million people out of poverty through the collective efforts of G8
governments, African governments and the African Union, private sector
participants, civil society, and other participants in the effort, international
organizations and so on. And the New Alliance is also taking this kind of
approach that focuses, at least initially, on several countries where there is a
clear opportunity. And these countries in the initial set are Tanzania, Ethiopia
and Ghana, announced cooperation frameworks, arrangements for working together
among donors, African governments and private sector participants towards
greater food security for the populations. Those three announced cooperation
frameworks in May of this year, in May of 2012. And then in September we
announced three more. So the New Alliance now has three more African partners
with cooperation frameworks. Those are Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire d'Ivoire, and
Mozambique. Through these cooperation frameworks we have crystallized funding
intentions from donor governments which were specified in the agreements, plus
commitments which were specified by African governments. In each individual
agreement, each African government specified policy changes that it would make
and identified a date by which these policies would be changed or adopted. And
these policies are intended to create the kind of environment that attracts or
enables private sector activity or investment in the agricultural sector.
And then thirdly, private firms stood up and announced investment
intentions. There were over 45 companies that announced investment intentions in
May, a mix of African companies and companies from outside of the African
region, and local companies. The total then was more than $3 billion worth of
investment intention that were put forward by private sector forms. And we added
another 20 or so companies with a second set of three cooperation frameworks.
And again it was a mix of African companies, local companies and global
companies from outside of the African region. And so these are important results
that we have seen. We have since seen in-country events to bring together
multiple stakeholders, to discuss ways of implementing these cooperation
frameworks. So those are on a very good path. Then the last thing I will say
before opening the floor for questions, that we are also pursuing a range of
other activity within the New Alliance that are intended to help facilitate
private sector oriented growth in agriculture. These include things like working
to establish a technology arrangement to help spread new technologies for seeds,
for agricultural productivity, broader African agricultural sector arrangements
to reduce risk to help the most vulnerable populations in Africa to ride out
climate induced risks or other challenges to their productivity, and
arrangements to improve the flow of financing to projects in African
agriculture, such as project preparations that would help investors develop
projects in financing for them. So this clearly is a multi-faceted initiative.
It recognizes the importance of doing work to improve nutritional outcomes, it
recognizes the centrality of smallholder farmers in the effort as the key
beneficiaries of the effort and it recognizes the importance of addressing the
role of gender in agriculture, that is, makes sure that women farmers, that are
so important in agriculture in Africa, are explicitly and intentionally included
in our efforts so that all African farmers benefit. Let me stop there and turn
to our moderator on the phone to guide the questioning.
Question by Catherine Hornby, Reuters: Do some countries present
more of an opportunity for private investment than others? How are the
conditions in those ones compared to the ones where there is less private
investment?
Jonathan Shrier: So
the countries that are, that have been the first wave of New Alliance partners
are countries that had in a sense stepped forward themselves. They were already
involved in efforts to improve their investment environment, to improve the
potential for private sector activity. Again, private sector activity
that is as much about domestic activity as it is attracting foreign investment.
And so several of these countries were involved in an effort that was launched
by the African Union and by its New Partnership for African Development, or
NEPAD, and the World Economic Forum partnership called Grow Africa. So there
were several African countries that were already involved in this effort to map
out what was attractive about their agricultural sector, how they could attract
greater private sector involvement. So these were among the readiest candidates.
So this is why they were in the first wave.
Question from Agence France-Presse: Regarding the private sector, is
there any specification, and specific regulation that bans for instance land
grabbing or the ban to grow production for bio-fuels?
The companies that have been involved in the New Alliance, there are two
things that I would point to. First of all, there were 60 or so companies that
signed a private sector declaration of support for African Agricultural
development and that declaration made note of the voluntary guidelines on land
tenure that were adopted. For those on the phone, we are here in Rome during the
meetings of the committee on World Food Security, which are the institutions
that adopted these voluntary guidelines on land tenure. So those make explicit
reference to those voluntary guidelines. And this private sector declaration
also makes reference to the principles of responsible agricultural investment
and the idea that companies intend to invest responsibly. That idea is also
carried forward in these cooperation frameworks that I mentioned, that these
cooperation frameworks also dedicate all the participants, the African
government in each case, the donor governments, the G8 governments and the
private sector participants, to implementation of the voluntary guidelines and
to pilot projects related to the principles of responsible agricultural
investments. There is explicit intent to ensure that private sector activities
are carried out in a responsible fashion.
Question from an
unidentified journalist: The New Alliance has been extended to three
additional countries, Cote d’Ivoire D'Ivoire, Mozambique and Burkina Faso. First
of all I would like to know what have been the criteria of prioritizing? Is it
because of elections or is it because of the [word indistinct] of agriculture in
these countries or because of the potential. Second I will like to know how will
it be implemented? Who will be the beneficiaries? Government or the farmers? And
third I will like to know what will be the impact of this New Alliance. Thank
you.
Question from Radio
Burkina: I just want to know what are you expecting for the New Alliance
countries? What challenges do they have to overcome? That is my question.
Jonathan Shrier: In
identifying countries for the initial two sets of cooperation frameworks, the
initial two sets of partners in the two alliance, we looked at a range of issues
that included the potential for private sector activity, the needs questions
related to the degree of hunger, as well as the situation in terms of human
rights and control of corruption, and we also looked at the potential for
spill-over effects and regional impact in different parts in Africa. So there
were a range of considerations that were taken into account when identifying the
initial partner countries. In terms of the beneficiaries, the New Alliance is
rooted fundamentally in the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development
Program, or CAADP, and under CAADP each of these partner governments have
developed a national investment plan for agriculture, a country investment plan.
And that is the mechanism for identifying the beneficiaries and vehicles through
which the government of Burkina Faso or the government of Tanzania is trying to
reach all the beneficiaries. In terms of the specific kinds of investments that
private sector firms have come forward with, I will say that a number of them
clearly involves smallholder or small-scale farming. They provide a market, a
channel for marketing products of smallholder farming. And so there is a number
of clear benefits to small scale farmers. In terms of the impact, I did mention
the over-arching goal of the New Alliance of placing 50 million people out of
poverty over 10 years. This is based on the economic research that has
demonstrated that one of the best tools for reducing hunger is to raise incomes.
People who have money in the household cannot go hungry. And so we will see
these impacts play out over time. They are not short-term projects. It is not
like emergency food aid where you see the results the day after the food
delivery arrives. These are development efforts that take time to show results.
But we are intent on tracking those results. Again, we look among other things
to the processes already being put in place by African governments through the
CAADP program to track impacts of the efforts to implement the country's
investment plans for agriculture. And in terms of the challenges that new
partners in the New Alliance may face - it is really a question of how to ensure
that there is wide recognition of what has been accomplished through these
cooperation frameworks. What I mean by that is it is useful to have wide
recognition of the policy commitments that the African government in question
has made, so that those who may benefit from the policy change can begin to get
ready for it, begin to look for it to happen. It will also be important to
ensure that the many different parts of the society in question are ready to
play a part in promoting the success of the New Alliance activities in that
country and so that means making sure that the different parts of the
government, the different members of the donor community, the different players
in the private sector, both domestic and foreign , or international, as well as
civil society, are all fully aware of and involved in the implementation of
these efforts. So thank you for the questions from Ouagadougou.
Question from Gedeyaw
Nigussie, Deutsche Welle Horn of Africa Service: My question is in relation
to the land grabbing that is taking place in some parts of the countries. Some
African countries says that land grabs is taking place extensively and that the
indigenous people are in danger. So how are you working to control the effect of
these land grabs on the ordinary people and the environment? Thank
you.
Jonathan Shrier:
Okay thank you. The challenge in African agricultural development is in part one
that depends on constructive investment in the agriculture sectors. There is a
real need for more resources to flow into African agriculture. Those resources
include resources from the African governments involved, which committed through
the Maputo Declaration to spending 10% of public budgets, of government budgets,
on agriculture. It depends on investments, that is resources being put into
agriculture by the private sector, or the domestic private sector in African
countries, and ideally global investment, international investment in African
agriculture. So the biggest problem is securing enough resources, attracting
enough resources to African agriculture. And so the primary focus of the new
alliance is on helping to stimulate the pathways for more investment, again a
mix of domestic and international investment, in African agriculture. It is also
important to make sure that systems are in place to govern the use of land in
African agriculture. And it is not limited to Africa. It is important to have
rules in place to govern the use of land in many countries in the world. This is
why in the Committee on World Food Security there was this deliberate lengthy
process to come up with voluntary guidelines on the governments with land tenure
that were adopted in May of this year, the negotiations concluded in March, to
provide some guidance, so voluntary guidelines, on the best ways to approach
this challenge of effectively governing the use of land, so that the rights and
interests of all that would use it, are appropriately protected. That is
something that in the implementation will rely on the activities of governments
of the countries concerned, the countries where the land is, it will involve
attention from governments internationally, more broadly internationally, and it
will require the attention of companies themselves in making their own
investment plans. And again here I think the New Alliance warrants some credit
for raising the profile of these problems and committing countries, both African
governments and donor governments, all to take account of these challenges.
Question by Catherine Hornby, Reuters: I just wanted to ask on these
land tenure guidelines. The CFS [as heard] is going to start cutting the
investment [word indistinct]. How can they build on land tenure guidelines to
make [word indistinct].
Jonathan Shrier:
There is always a conceptual link between those two fields and that is part of
the reason why the Committee on World Security did take those topics in
sequence. So we knew we wanted to settle one before we turned to the other. And
land tenure obviously relates to a significant part of what people are concerned
about when they talk about responsible agricultural investment. So there is an
intent on the part of the United States, and I think it is widely true
throughout the Committee on World Food Security System, that is governments,
civil society participants, private sector participants and international
institutions, to pay attention to land as part of the question of responsible
agricultural investment, but not to renegotiate something that we have just
completed. So there is a clear link there and I think there is a lot of
enthusiasm now to get moving on the process, consultative process, the process
of consultations surrounding responsible agricultural investment. There were do
have some work that has been usefully done by several international
organizations to produce principles for responsible agricultural investments,
and those were specifically referenced in the New Alliance as something we would
want to implement on a pilot basis as a way of informing the committee on World
Food Security consultations on responsible agricultural investment. So there is
a chance to get some field knowledge. Some ground troops into the process.
Question from Agence
France-Presse: The principles are the guidelines?
Jonathan Shrier: On
land tenure there are voluntary guidelines and they have a very long name. It is
the Voluntary Guidelines on the Governance of Land Tenure. Then there are
several more words behind it, because there are a lot of ideas embedded in those
guidelines.
Question from Agence France-Presse: And regarding the structural
investments?
Jonathan Shrier:
Regarding responsible agricultural investment, there is a document that was
produced by several international organizations, including the International
Fund for Agricultural Development here in Rome and the Food and Agricultural
Organization, and UN Conference on Trade and Development, and that document is
called Principles for Responsible Agriculture Investment. But the discussion
going on in the CFS have that word 'principles' in it, it is just a discussion.
Question from Agence France-Presse: And that could be adopted as
soon as today?
Jonathan Shrier:
Well the process will be, there is a decision pending today on launching the
process. The result will take some time. And this is because there is a desire
to have broad based consultation around this topic, to make sure that we are
hearing all the views. And again, that includes the views, some of which have
already been expressed in the CFS, from some African governments, staying with
the contents of Africa in today's discussion, about their desire to stimulate
more private sector activity in their countries, including investments.
Question by Catherine
Hornby, Reuters: You mentioned that you are going to try a pilot project.
Jonathan Shrier:
That is still under development exactly how that will work.
Question by Catherine Hornby, Reuters: But you will want to try
implementing the principles before they have actually been finally …[sentence
trails off].
Jonathan Shrier: The
Principles, capital P, Principles for Responsible Investment, those exist, it is
a published document available to anyone in the world. And in the field of
agriculture investment, it is one of the few existing documents. What the
question before the CFS is, is a question of what principles, with a small p, or
what guidance of some sort, the CFS as a whole endorses or adopts. And that
hasn’t happened.
Question from Burkina
Faso: Yes on behalf of one of our French speaking journalists from the
newspaper [name unclear], the journalist asks a skeptical question. His question
is what is the actual political will to follow through with the framework for
food security in Burkina Faso? It is framed as it is nice that this has been
developed and that so much money has been earmarked for this kind of project,
but what is the kind of political will and the reality that this will actually
be followed through.
Jonathan Shrier:
Thank you for the question, and if you mute you phone will reduce an echo that I
hear on the line. So the government of Burkina Faso endorsed this cooperation
framework at the highest level. The national leadership of Burkina Faso
committed itself to this cooperation framework. And so I think there is strong
political will to follow through on it. I would also point out that these
cooperation frameworks specify specific policy commitments and specific dates by
which they are to be carried out. And so that makes it easy to check on whether
a government or for that matter other participants in these cooperation
frameworks, whether a participant to the cooperation framework is doing what it
said it would do, because there is a record. And so we, in this case we know
that the government of Burkina Faso was enthusiastic about this cooperation
framework and committed to the policy commitments that it adopted through the
cooperation framework. So I think the political will is strong.
Question from Valentin
Mbougueng, Fraternite Matin Daily (Cote D’Ivoire): Hello, I
amValentin Mbougueng, of Fraternite Matin, Cote d’Ivoire. Just two
questions please. The first one is small land owners are very vulnerable and
they have no social protection programs like crop insurance, employment
guarantee systems. What can we do, what do you intend to do? And the second
question is, with the population expected to exceed 2 billion sometime after
2050, Sub-Saharan Africa will need to produce substantially more food. What do
you think that this program, New Alliance, can be of a great help to face this
situation? Thank you.
Jonathan Shrier:
Thank you for your question. There is two aspects to it. The one is on
protecting and helping the most vulnerable populations. There really are two
ways that New Alliance is focused on that effort. One is through these country
oriented efforts, there is this intention to ensure that small holders are among
the main beneficiaries of the New Alliance work in Cote d’Ivoire, in Burkina
Faso. And there in each case there is a CAADP country investment plan. There is
the National Agricultural Development Strategy of the government of Cote
d’Ivoire or Mozambique or Ethiopia or Tanzania or Ghana or Burkina Faso, and
those national strategies address the challenge of reaching small holder
farmers, of making sure that small holder farmers benefit from these efforts.
The second way is through tools the New Alliance brings to Sub-Sahara Africa to
work on risk management and these again are tools that should reach vulnerable
populations such as small holder farmers. These are tools such as efforts to
national risk assessments that look at the kinds of risks that countries have,
from climate or weather related challenges such as drought, or flooding,
depending on the area and what the resources are that are available to confront
those risks. And there is also an effort through the New Alliance to develop and
promote risk index insurance, and this is insurance to help small holder farmers
and others in the agricultural sector to deal with these kind of risks, so that
when a certain risk is triggered, that means that the drought conditions have
reached a certain threshold or something, the insurance policy would pay out to
beneficiaries. And so there are tools in the works through the New Alliance that
should help address the vulnerable populations that you mentioned. So I hope
that answers the question.
Question from Valentin
Mbougueng, Fraternite Matin Daily (Cote D’Ivoire): Thank you, my name,
Valentin Mbougueng again, from Fraternite Matin, Cote d’Ivoire. We have a good
story coming from Malawi, which transformed a food deficit into a 1.3 million
ton surplus within two years, thanks to a massive seed and fertilizer program.
Do you think this is a success story which can be translated in other
countries?
Jonathan Shrier:
Thank you for that question. Malawi has really made some impressive progress in
agricultural development. My secretary, Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton, was
recently in Malawi where she visited a dairy cooperative, and since this is the
year of agricultural cooperatives here at the Food and Agriculture Organization,
that was an important visit. And there she saw some of the results of Malawi's
efforts. Malawi has made progress also through its policies related to seeds and
fertilizers, and that is really a reminder of one of the key elements of the New
Alliance, which is to recognize that policy decisions, policy choices by
governments, matter. And so when governments make sound policy choices in
agriculture, that can promote agricultural growth. And in the case of the New
Alliance, those policy commitments, the policy choices that the governments have
made, are choices related to their desire to stimulate more private sector
activity in African agriculture in their countries. Thank you. Thank you all.
Moderator: Thank you. That concludes today's call. I would like to
thank Mr. Jonathan Shrier once again for joining us and thank all of our callers
for participating in today's call. If you have any questions about today's call,
you can contact the Africa Regional Media Hub at afmediahub@state.gov. Thank you.
----o0o----
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----- Forwarded
Message -----
From: maina ndiritu
To: "youngprofessionals_ke@googlegroups.com"; africa yahoogroups
; VVM Vuguvugu Mashinani
; forum
; the last word to kenya
Sent: Wednesday, October 16, 2013 9:42 AM
Subject: CORD man tells supporters to stop mourning and identify another leader - RAILA ODINGA is “dead” politically
From: maina ndiritu
To: "youngprofessionals_ke@googlegroups.com"
Sent: Wednesday, October 16, 2013 9:42 AM
Subject: CORD man tells supporters to stop mourning and identify another leader - RAILA ODINGA is “dead” politically
Wednesday October 16, 2013 - Kakamega
Governor, Wycliffe Oparanya has
told Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (CORD) supporters to stop
mourning and identify a new leader to steer the party to the future.
Speaking at a function in Kakamega County on Wednesday, Oparanya who
is among senior CORD lieutenants, said Raila Odinga’s presidential
dream is completely dead adding that he is a spent cartridge.
He challenged CORD supporters to reconsider an appropriate replacement
of Raila Odinga as soon as possible to prevent the alliance from
disintegrating.
“When your child dies you will mourn. After burial, the honourable
thing to do is settle down and get another child,” Oparanya said.
“CORD supporters should be steadfast and chart the political destiny
of the party,” Oparanya added.
He said Raila Odinga’s third attempt to clinch the Presidency on March
4th failed and it is high time CORD supporters identify a new leader
who will attract votes from all the 42 tribes in Kenya.
Pressure has also been mounting on Raila Odinga, who is a seasoned
loser, to give way to fresh leadership in ODM.
told Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (CORD) supporters to stop
mourning and identify a new leader to steer the party to the future.
Speaking at a function in Kakamega County on Wednesday, Oparanya who
is among senior CORD lieutenants, said Raila Odinga’s presidential
dream is completely dead adding that he is a spent cartridge.
He challenged CORD supporters to reconsider an appropriate replacement
of Raila Odinga as soon as possible to prevent the alliance from
disintegrating.
“When your child dies you will mourn. After burial, the honourable
thing to do is settle down and get another child,” Oparanya said.
“CORD supporters should be steadfast and chart the political destiny
of the party,” Oparanya added.
He said Raila Odinga’s third attempt to clinch the Presidency on March
4th failed and it is high time CORD supporters identify a new leader
who will attract votes from all the 42 tribes in Kenya.
Pressure has also been mounting on Raila Odinga, who is a seasoned
loser, to give way to fresh leadership in ODM.
------------------------------------------
Nubian community endorses
Uhuru
Wednesday, February 27, 2013 -
00:00 -- BY BRIAN
OMINO
- See more at: http://the-star.co.ke/news/article-109715/nubian-community-endorses-uhuru#sthash.8KFFCiYA.dpuf
Members of the Kenya Nubian
Council of Elders (KNCE) have endorsed Jubilee presidential candidate Uhuru
Kenyatta. The elders,in a press statement expressed their dissatisfaction with
leadership of CORD presidential candidate Raila Odinga who's the immediate
former MP of Langata. Raila been the MP for area for 20 years.
The elders have urged members of the Nubian community and residents of
Kibera not to vote for Raila. The elders said Raila had failed to resolve most
of the pertinent issues facing the community during his tenure as the area
MP.
The elders also blamed the PM over land injustice in Kibra, they also
claimed that the PM had sidelined the Nubian community in the slum upgrading
programme.
Kenya: Raila Behind Plot to Oust
Ruto, Says URP
THE hand of former Prime
Minister Raila Odinga lies behind the rift between Governor Isaac Rutto and
Deputy President William Ruto, URP leaders believe.
Supporters of the Deputy President believe that Raila wants the Bomet
governor to be his running mate in the 2017 elections and to thereby topple
William Ruto as the leader of the Kalenjin.
URP insiders believe that
Raila, who lost to President Uhuru Kenyatta in the March elections, want to
compete again in the next presidential elections.
The party has concluded that
Raila blames the Deputy President for his defeat in the last elections as the
Rift Valley voted overwhelmingly for Jubilee.
"We all know that Rutto is angling to be Raila's running mate in 2017. We
are aware of the scheme and we are ready for it," said Ainamoi MP Benjamin
Langat, a close ally of William Ruto.
Langat added that Rutto's
demand for immediate transfer of funds to the counties was meant to destabilise
Jubilee. He said Raila helped get Rutto elected as the chairman of the Council
of Governors. The council brings together the president, his deputy and the
governors from the 47 counties, most of whom belong to Cord.
Nairobi Governor Evans
Kidero and Mombasa Governor Hassan Joho, both from ODM and Cord, had indicated
their interest to chair the Council of governors and qwere considered the
frontrunners due to the Cord majority in the council.
"We know it was Raila who prevailed upon the two to step down for Rutto
because on his own he wouldn't have won," said a former MP close to Jubilee. The
former MP claimed that Raila did not want to team up again with former Vice
President Kalonzo Musyoka in 2017 and would prefer a running mate from Rift
Valley.
However Cord denied that
Raila wants Rutto as his running mate in 2017.
"It is a ploy by Jubilee to
divert the Kenyan public from the real issues facing the country," said Francis
Nyenze, Minority Leader in the National Assembly . On Wednesday night in Karen,
the URP top leadership met to discuss the conduct of Rutto and agreed to
consider moving a motion to impeaching him as the Bomet
governor.
The URP leaders and MPs are
angry over Rutto's repeated criticisms that the Jubilee government is
undermining devolution and his comments that URP might team up with Raila in
2017. But yesterday, members of Bomet County Assembly vowed to reject any
impeachment motion against Rutto. They accused URP MPs of engaging on a smear
campaign against their governor.
They vowed to stand by Rutto
in his push for full implementation of devolution under the new
constitution.
Bomet majority leader Julius Korir said the assembly does not see any
grounds to impeach the governor.
He warned MPs against dragging the Bomet assembly into the saga saying they
were not party to political intrigues.
"The constitution is very
clear on impeachment and those planning should stick to it before thinking of
impeaching Governor Rutto. For us we have not found the grounds to call for his
impeachment," said Korir.
Yesterday Rutto maintained that his sole interest is to ensure devolution
is fully implemented. He called on other governors and senators to stand firm
against anti-devolution agents.
He was addressing a forum on
devolved government for governors and senators organised by the Commission for
the Implementation of the Constitution at Leisure Lodge resort in Kwale.
"The journey of devolution
is long and you know there are believers and non-believers. If we don't watch
out, they can steal it," he said.
Rutto said the country is on
the home stretch of the new constitution where aspirations can be actualised or
killed.
-------------------------------------
Raila Allies
in Rift Valley Quit ODM
By Mwakilishi | Sat, 10/12/2013 06:27PM -0400
Franklin Bett
The Orange Democratic
Movement led by former Prime Minister Raila Odinga is putting in place
strategies aimed at repositioning itself for the 2017 political contest. But
even before the dust settles on its defeat in the March 4 General Election, ODM
is staring at yet another setback. Raila’s key allies in the Rift Valley are
leading an exodus from the Orange party. Former party loyalists, Franklin Bett
and Margaret Kamar, both of them former Cabinet ministers in the grand coalition
government – have already tendered their resignation from the party. Other
strong pillars have curiously taken a low profile. On Friday, during the burial of his
mother in Nandi, ODM chairman Henry Kosgey, hinted that he could be willing to
work with the Jubilee government. Referring to URP leaders who attended the
burial, Kosgey said: “We have now left the (leadership) baton to those in
Government. We will now support you.” Kosgey said he was willing to be consulted
saying he would be ready to offer his contribution to nation building. Then came
a surprise announcement by President Uhuru Kenyatta’s political affairs adviser
Joshua Kutuny. “Kosgey is one of our respected leaders and soon we might even
give him a post in the Jubilee government,” he said, a statement that probably
pointed to the reason Jubilee leaders attended the burial.RESIGNED
Jubilee elected leaders at the burial included senators Kithure Kindiki,
Kipchumba Murkomen and Governor Isaac Ruto as well as MPs Alfred Keter, Alex
Kosgey, Cornelly Serem, Julius Melly and Oscar Sudi. Speaking to The Standard on
Sunday, Kamar said she was now working with the government as a consultant and
that is why she resigned from ODM. She said she landed a job at the Centre for
Parliamentary Studies and Training, which is run by the government. She is part
of a team training the new bicameral Parliament following the introduction of
devolution. Kamar also disclosed that she is now a consultant with the
Transition Authority, helping in operationalisation of county governments. “It
was therefore untenable to continue being in politics because these roles expect
that I be impartial. That is why I resigned from ODM,” said Kamar, who was the
Uasin Gishu ODM chairperson. Kamar was highly rated as the most likely first
Uasin Gishu governor, a post she ran for in the March 4 general election, but
lost to URP’s Jackson Mandago. Many voters supported her but argued she was in
the wrong party with many even calling on her to quit ODM for URP to win the
seat. In 2007, ODM enjoyed mass support in the region until the URP and TNA wave
swept across the region in the March 4 elections winning most elective posts.
The ODM top guns from the Rift Valley were not present in last week’s party
governing council meeting held in Nairobi and attended by party leader Raila
Odinga. Mr Magerer Langat, the ODM executive director, said the ODM meeting was
convened to review the
status of the party and also its role as official opposition. “We want to
ensure the party plays its role well and also ensure it is well organised. But
it was not a meeting for all,” said Magerer, seeking to explain the absence of
key Rift Valley party leaders. Until the last general election, the party had in
its fold powerful
ministers from the region including party chairman Kosgey (Industrialisation),
Bett (Roads), Prof Kamar (Higher Education), Dr Sally Kosgei (Agriculture) and
Musa Sirma (East African Community). They were Raila’s key pillars who also
mounted spirited campaigns for the party ahead of the elections despite strong
opposition from residents. But today, they are hardly visible even in the court
battles waged by the party since it lost to Jubilee in the race for State House.
Raila has held various functions in parts of the region only accompanied by
Magerer. Bett confirmed that he had received an invitation for the governing
council meeting but did not attend saying: “I now want to involve myself with
personal and family matters only”. Declaring he had quit ODM, Bett also stated
that he couldn’t force himself to sing a tune that the Kalenjin community does
not want to hear. He said he would remain in support of the government as long
as it puts in place policies that are beneficial to all. “Every policy in this
government that will enhance welfare and the wellbeing of all and to the economy, I will support.
You cannot fight the hand that feeds you,” he said.MISHANDLE Bett did not seek
any elective position in the March 4 polls while his colleagues who sought
various positions on an ODM ticket lost to political first timers riding on a
strong Jubilee wave. The former Bureti MP who spoke to The Standard on Sunday on
the phone said he
no longer wants to be involved in politics at the moment hinting that he did not
defend his seat because of the URP wave in the South Rift. He said: “Whether
there is ODM, URP or TNA, I want to involve myself with personal matters. There
is always a time for everything as the Bible says in Ecclesiastes Chapter 3”.
The former State House Comptroller said he did his best to serve the public and
the party while in ODM and said he will not be looking for any elective post in
the future. “I will not look for any votes again,” he said. Bett asked the
Kalenjin community to respect their former and present leaders. “I protest the
way we handled our former leaders as a Kalenjin people. We mishandle and even
neglect them yet we required their assistance when they were in top positions,”
he said. The position of Sirma and Dr Kosgei regarding their political future
remains unknown as efforts by The Standard on Sunday to get them on phone were futile. Some
of the senior ODM leaders from the region are however said to be considering
quitting active politics considering the odds against Cord’s future political
prospects. Trying to explain the absence of ODM leaders from Rift Valley in the
Nairobi meeting, Magerer said, “the governing council is not a free for all affair”
adding that there are no provisions for former MPs to attend. He said the
meeting was for the national elections board and chairmen of 47 party branches
in the country. Asked why some leaders in Rift Valley had suddenly disappeared
from the party radar, Magerer said he could not speak on their behalf. “Some
people were there by virtue of their positions. The party constitution allows
members to be as active as they deem and we cannot push anyone to be active,”
said Magerer. The director however admitted that there was disloyalty ahead of
the last elections with some party candidates in some regions campaigning only
for themselves and not the party. “Some were asking voters to elect whoever they
wanted for the presidency for example so long as the electorate considered them
for the individual positions they were gunning for,” said Magerer. genuine
gesture On the absence of the ODM chairman in the meeting, Magerer said Kosgey
would have been present but he could not attend because he lost his mother a day
prior to the meeting. But at the burial, Raila led a strong team of ODM leaders
to pay their last respects. The party also paid for an obituary in the dailies
announcing the passing on of Kosgey’s mother. Rift Valley political analyst and
Maasai Mara University lecturer, Philip Chebunet, said the move could have been
a genuine gesture to support Kosgey, an ally who stood by the party during
campaigns for the March 4 general elections. “Kosgey really campaigned for them
and it was only fair for them to be by his side during the funeral. But we are
yet to see whether their political union will continue now that they lost their
bid for State House twice,” he said. Magerer confirmed that Kamar had tendered
her resignation from the party about three months ago. “I received Kamar’s
resignation three months ago. She is one of the trainers for county governance
and they are not supposed to be in political parties,” said Magerer. He said
members resolved that the next delegates convention, which is normally held
after five years, would be convened in February next year. The meeting, he
added, will also be used to replace top officials who quit the party and will
also address any weaknesses that might have affected popularity of the party.
“As a party, we in ODM belief in appropriate party structures unlike others. We
are also the only ones who held national elections early last year,” he said.
Magerer said the party requires a fresh approach in the Rift Valley saying “I
shall be moving around the region to reorganise branches and sub branches”. He
took issue with Jubilee government for delays in releasing money to political
parties, claiming that the government feels threatened by ODM. “These funds
could allow us undertake our activities smoothly because we want to employ
county directors to manage the party branches,” he said. Uasin Gishu County ODM
chairman David Songok and his Nandi counterpart Jacob Keino who attended the
meeting said it was convened to chart the way forward for the party. Songok
however expressed fears that communication “may not have been well coordinated”
and said they want an active office that will coordinate affairs well. Keino
said: “The governing council meeting was well attended and was for elected
governors, senators and MPs and chairmen of branches and youth executives”.
Keino added that the party still commands a good following in Nandi County and
would gain more popularity once funds are released to streamline its operations.
The URP under the Jubilee umbrella swept majority of elective seats in Rift
Valley ranging from the Senators, governors, MPs, Women representatives and
Members of County Assemblies. - The Standard
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