War on Want slams Government's use of aid budget to promote biotech corporate agenda
http://www.waronwant.org/attachments/The%20Hunger%20Games%202012.pdf
In a new report entitled "The Hunger Games", War on Want mounts a full scale attack (excuse the metaphor) on the Government and DFID for the manner in which it uses hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers money to support the corporate ambitions of Monsanto, Syngenta and other biotech giants in the developing world, while doing little to address the real causes of global hunger and poverty.
Quote: The UK government's Department for International Development (DFID)...... is using the aid budget to tighten the corporate stranglehold over the global food system. As this report reveals, DFID has been using hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers' money with the express purpose of extending the power of agribusiness over the production of food, especially in sub- Saharan Africa. While this will increase the profits of corporate giants such as Monsanto, Unilever and Syngenta, it threatens to disempower small farmers and rural communities and condemn them to longterm poverty. DFID's promotion of genetically modified crops will also lock small farmers into dependency on corporate providers of seeds and chemical inputs, undermining any chance of defeating hunger.
Quote: DFID's website lists 72 bilateral agricultural aid projects worth around £180 million in 2012 and £270 million in 2011. In addition, some of DFID's support to multilateral organisations such as the EU, World Bank and the UN is spent on agricultural projects. As this report shows, much of DFID's support for agribusiness is channelled through public-private partnerships such as the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania (SAGCOT), Grow Africa and the New Vision for Agriculture. This includes support for genetically modified (GM) food through DFID's funding of initiatives such as the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF) and HarvestPlus.
It's a pretty forthright and damning critique of the manner in which the "altruistic" aims of the foreign aid programme have been subverted and undermined by the corporate support policy of the Tory-led government. The detail contained in the report is hugely impressive -- and depressing. It is quite apparent that this whole programme is shot through with bias and corruption -- and that the interests of big business have trumped the interests of the starving poor.
There is nothing new in all of this. In the United States, the foreign aid programme (run by USAID) has always operated on the basis that the main beneficiary is the US business community. USAID developed many of these techniques of dressing up corporate support as "help for the starving" in the aftermath of the Iraq War -- and in the process it effectively took control of the Iraqi agricultural industry and even took possession (through the infamous Order 81) of traditional Iraqi seed varieties through the enforcement of patent rights on seeds which Monsanto and others purported to own just because they made genetic characterisations of them. This was and is a scandal which has gone largely unnoticed in the global media.
The corporate agenda is of course also followed by the Gates Foundation and also by other pseudo-charitable organizations which persistently promote the global takeover by giant business corporations at the expense of the small farmer.
it is interesting that War on Want has not previously made much comment on the socio-economic damage done by the GM industry. However, in this Report there are some very strong statements about the damage which the GMO obsession is doing on the ground, in small communities which are desperately seeking to maintain food security and food sovereignty. The points made are very similar to those made in the IAASTD report of a few years ago.
To its eternal shame, the present Government seems to have not the faintest idea what the terms "food security" and "food sovereignty" actually mean.
World on want press release:
The UK government's Department for International Development (DFID) is using the aid budget to tighten the corporate stranglehold over the global food system.
This report reveals how DFID has been using hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers' money with the express purpose of extending the power of agribusiness over the production of food, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. While this will increase the profits of corporate giants such as Monsanto, Unilever and Syngenta, it threatens to disempower small farmers and rural communities and condemn them to long-term poverty.
The report also lifts the lid on DFID's support for a complex network of companies and investment funds registered in one of Africa's foremost tax havens: Mauritius. This means that much UK aid is being routed through a known 'conduit haven', allowing companies to avoid paying taxes that could be used by national governments to support small farmers and genuine agricultural development.
This is the Conclusion to the Report:
This report has traced how the UK government's Department for International Development (DFID) is spending hundreds of millions of pounds of taypayers' money in order to expand corporate control over agriculture in Africa. At the same time as vast tracts of African farm land are being handed over to private investors, DFID is seeking to bring millions of African farmers under the control of the world's largest agribusiness companies through increased dependency on corporate seeds and chemicals and through their transformation into outgrowers for private sector investment initiatives. In some instances, such as the Malawi case study featured in this report, agricultural extension projects funded by DFID are the sole means by which corporations are able to penetrate these new markets. The fact that much UK aid to agribusiness is being routed through the tax haven of Mauritius adds further insult to injury.
DFID is using the UK aid budget to drive forward the privatisation of African agriculture, denying people's right to control their own food production. Rather than meeting DFID's mandate of poverty reduction, this pro-corporate agenda threatens to deepen hunger and poverty among rural populations into the long-term future. There is an urgent need to halt DFID's support for the corporate takeover of African agriculture before irreversible damage is done. DFID's promotion of agribusiness is an integral part of its 'food security' agenda, which argues that the world's food needs will be assured through greater private sector control over the global food system as a whole. That agenda is kept alive in turn by a revolving door of appointments and personal connections that ensure DFID remains close to the companies that benefit from its assistance. Yet the crisis in the global food system has revealed the need for alternative models of food production, distribution and consumption that guarantee communities control over their own natural resources, strengthen local and national markets and promote agroecological production methods. These positive alternatives come together under the framework of food sovereignty as developed by the worldwide farmers' movement La Vía Campesina and described in full in War on Want's report Food Sovereignty: Reclaiming the global food system.
War or Want believes that:
• DFID should suspend its support for initiatives promoting land grabbing by multinational corporations and agricultural extension activities involving the sale of corporate seeds and chemical inputs to small-scale farmers. In their place, DFID should respond to the call from Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, who has urged all states to promote the model of agroecology in their plans to reduce poverty and climate change.
• DFID should suspend its funding for research into GM crops. Instead, DFID should support agricultural research focused on sustainable, low-input and traditional breeding programmes developed by small-scale farmers around the world.
• DFID should take immediate action to ensure that UK aid funds are not routed through Mauritius or any other tax havens or secrecy jurisdictions. DFID should make a comprehensive public declaration detailing the full extent of all initiatives and investment funds connected with the UK aid budget, and where each is registered, irrespective of sector.