Tag Archives: farmers

Don’t ‘abhor’ us – abhor GMO scientists laden with conflicts of interest! Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




Speaking at a public meeting organised for farmers in Ghana’s Brong Ahafo Region entitled “GMOs the truth and misconceptions”, Professor Walter Sandow Alhassan advised farmers to avoid being misled by anti-GMO groups, telling them:

“We should get away from this misinformation and try to see how we can revolutionize our agriculture and move with modern trends.”

He is also quoted as calling for groups opposing GMOs and corporate seed-grabbing like Food Sovereignty Ghana (FSG) to be “abhorred”, because, according to him, “those groups do not have any scientific proof or knowledge to offer when it comes to Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) technology.”

We at FSG are shocked by Alhassan’s reported pronouncements urging farmers to reject our warnings and stand by our position that accepting GMOs will result in seed colonisation and seed slavery. In truth, what Ghanaian farmers need to abhor and reject is scientists laden with conflicts of interest.

Because ultimately, genetic engineering is about private corporate control of the food system. Monsanto and Syngenta are particularly greedy to get their hands on Ghana’s agriculture and control the seed market here – and Professor Alhassan is a key servant of the global GMO establishment helping to make this resource grab possible.

The meeting itself also deserves examination. It was organised by the Ghana Chapter of the Open Forum on Agricultural Biotechnology in Africa (OFAB) in collaboration with the GMO-pushing, Gates Foundation-supported African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF) which itself created OFAB in 2006.

OFAB’s purpose is to “positively change public perceptions toward modern biotechnology. This will lead to increased adoption of GM products in Africa and the rest of the world.” So it iis hardly an impartial voice of science!

Another co-sponsor of the meeting was CSIR, the South African-based Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, which works in biotech, GMOs and synthetic biology – and which notoriously ‘biopirated’ the Hoodia plant – appropriating and patenting the traditional knowledge of the San people of southern Africa.

Who pays the piper …

Alhassan, now a consultant, is himself a former Director General of CSIR, and much of his career has been funded by the biotech industry – some by Monsanto, particularly his education and early history, and more lately by Syngenta and the Syngenta Foundation.

Naturally he supports GMOs. He has spent his entire life in their service. He is Syngenta’s man in Ghana. And he exemplifies the close links forged by Big Ag with key figures in the academic world. As Kamil Ahsan writes in his article ‘The New Scientism‘:

“Today, large numbers of scientists are in the employ of Big Pharma, Big Ag, and all kinds of corporations with anti-environmental and anti-social justice agendas.”

And while academics are still largely publicly funded, “many receive grants or training fellowships from biotech, pharmaceutical, or agricultural companies; serve on advisory panels and committees; oversee and participate in industry-funded events and colloquiums; and rely on industry links as funnels for outgoing graduate students or postdoctoral candidates. GMOs are a good example of how academics function as cheerleaders for Big Ag.”

Big Ag is not afraid to lie about the GMOs they are pushing. For example Monsanto has just been forced to withdraw advertisements in South Africa because of unsubstantiated information and false claims that GMO crops “enable us to produce more food sustainably whilst using fewer resources; provide a healthier environment by saving on pesticides; decrease greenhouse gas emissions and increase crop yields substantially.”

Yet we hear Professor Alhassan and his network repeating these same untruths over and over again and calling them ‘science’. When he warns that anti GMO groups do not have any scientific proof or knowledge to offer when it comes to GMO technology, he is surely trying to suppress scientific inquiry, knowledge and debate.

More information on the dangers of GMO pesticide plants comes out every day, this despite the fact that the biotechnology industry has done its best to suppress any studies or information that does not support industry claims.

GMO cowpeas a threat to all of Africa

Right now Professor Alhassan and his corporate and academic cronies are trying to get Bt cowpeas into the Ghanaian market. Bt cowpeas are laden with pesticides as are all Bt GMO plants. When Ghanaians eat Bt cowpeas they will be eating pesticides.

In the US Bt plants are registered as pesticides by the USDA. When you eat any part of a Bt plant, you are eating a toxic pesticide – one aimed at insects, but which also impacts on humans. Although Bt does occur in nature, that is quite different than having a plant which contains Bt toxin in every cell of the plant.

With Bt in nature, and when used as a dust or spray in agroecological farming, the active toxin can only be found in the gut of the insect. The plant itself contains no Bt. If there is any residual spray or dust on the surface of the plant it can be washed off.

However, with the Bt in GMO cowpeas and all other Bt GMO plants, as GM Watch points out, “active toxin is in every plant cell and tissue, all the time and cannot be washed off … active toxins are not easily degraded by gut enzymes and, since they are lectins, they all are very likely to bind to the wall of the mammalian / human gut.”

And that means they are likely to be processed into your body creating who knows what short term or long term health risks and dangers.

Those insects that are controlled and killed by the Bt in Bt GMO plants evolve a tolerance for the Bt toxin and come back stronger over time, as recently observed in Brazil where BT corn is actually less resistant to the Fall Armyworm than conventional varieties.

Other opportunistic insects will take advantage of the lack of competition and move in to take the place of the former pests creating new super pests. That is happening in the US where GMOs have been around for 20 years.

And it’s leading to more and stronger pesticides being used every year, endangering the health of humans and livestock, degrading and polluting the soil, water, and air across US farmlands.

It is particularly worrisome to have Bt cowpeas growing in Ghana, a species indigenous to West Africa, as the GMO crops will contaminate neighboring crops with their pollen. If grown in quantity, GMO cowpeas could contaminate the entire region of West Africa. Because of this kind of contamination, Mexico has banned growing Bt corn – a ruling fiercely fought by Monsanto.

Cowpeas are one of the most important food crops in Africa’s drylands: they survive high temperatures with little water, even on very sandy soils, fix nitrogen, and are shade tolerant, allowing them to be used in agroforestry systems.

We must unite to fight this evil law!

If the Ghana Plant Breeders Bill is passed, it would allow the corporate GMO owners to claim all offspring of that contamination as their own property according to their intellectual property rights.

They could force a farmer whose crop is contaminated – against the farmer’s will, and providing no benefit to the farmer – to pay for the contaminated crop, to pay damages to the corporation! They could also force farmers to destroy their crops.

This is happening across the United States and in Canada where GMO corporations are winning huge financial judgements against farmers. It is happening in other countries that have passed UPOV laws such as Ghana’s Plant Breeders Bill. This is what Professor Alhassan intends to bring to Ghana’s farmers, claiming it is ‘progress’ and calling it ‘science’. It is just old fashioned corporate greed.

Contamination of the West African cowpea means the destruction of Ghana’s heritage, destruction of the seed DNA Ghana’s farmers, going back generations and centuries, have laboured to develop and preserve.

This is biopiracy, made legal by the Plant Breeders Bill. Professor Walter Alhassan may believe that this destruction is simply ‘science’, but it is in truth a tool by which foreign corporations aim to profit and re-colonize Ghana, West Africa, and the entire continent of Africa.

Would you trust Professor Walter Alhassan to make decisions about what you eat? Do you trust Professor Alhassan and his recommended scientific cronies to tell you what to plant, or what seeds you are required to use? Whose best interests does Professor Alhassan really represent?

 

 

Edwin Kweku Andoh Baffour is Acting Director of Communications with Food Sovereignty Ghana. The original article has been expanded and edited by The Ecologist.

Twitter: twitter.com/FoodSovereignGH
Facebook: facebook.com/FoodSovereigntyGhana

 




390291

Don’t ‘abhor’ us – abhor GMO scientists laden with conflicts of interest! Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




Speaking at a public meeting organised for farmers in Ghana’s Brong Ahafo Region entitled “GMOs the truth and misconceptions”, Professor Walter Sandow Alhassan advised farmers to avoid being misled by anti-GMO groups, telling them:

“We should get away from this misinformation and try to see how we can revolutionize our agriculture and move with modern trends.”

He is also quoted as calling for groups opposing GMOs and corporate seed-grabbing like Food Sovereignty Ghana (FSG) to be “abhorred”, because, according to him, “those groups do not have any scientific proof or knowledge to offer when it comes to Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) technology.”

We at FSG are shocked by Alhassan’s reported pronouncements urging farmers to reject our warnings and stand by our position that accepting GMOs will result in seed colonisation and seed slavery. In truth, what Ghanaian farmers need to abhor and reject is scientists laden with conflicts of interest.

Because ultimately, genetic engineering is about private corporate control of the food system. Monsanto and Syngenta are particularly greedy to get their hands on Ghana’s agriculture and control the seed market here – and Professor Alhassan is a key servant of the global GMO establishment helping to make this resource grab possible.

The meeting itself also deserves examination. It was organised by the Ghana Chapter of the Open Forum on Agricultural Biotechnology in Africa (OFAB) in collaboration with the GMO-pushing, Gates Foundation-supported African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF) which itself created OFAB in 2006.

OFAB’s purpose is to “positively change public perceptions toward modern biotechnology. This will lead to increased adoption of GM products in Africa and the rest of the world.” So it iis hardly an impartial voice of science!

Another co-sponsor of the meeting was CSIR, the South African-based Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, which works in biotech, GMOs and synthetic biology – and which notoriously ‘biopirated’ the Hoodia plant – appropriating and patenting the traditional knowledge of the San people of southern Africa.

Who pays the piper …

Alhassan, now a consultant, is himself a former Director General of CSIR, and much of his career has been funded by the biotech industry – some by Monsanto, particularly his education and early history, and more lately by Syngenta and the Syngenta Foundation.

Naturally he supports GMOs. He has spent his entire life in their service. He is Syngenta’s man in Ghana. And he exemplifies the close links forged by Big Ag with key figures in the academic world. As Kamil Ahsan writes in his article ‘The New Scientism‘:

“Today, large numbers of scientists are in the employ of Big Pharma, Big Ag, and all kinds of corporations with anti-environmental and anti-social justice agendas.”

And while academics are still largely publicly funded, “many receive grants or training fellowships from biotech, pharmaceutical, or agricultural companies; serve on advisory panels and committees; oversee and participate in industry-funded events and colloquiums; and rely on industry links as funnels for outgoing graduate students or postdoctoral candidates. GMOs are a good example of how academics function as cheerleaders for Big Ag.”

Big Ag is not afraid to lie about the GMOs they are pushing. For example Monsanto has just been forced to withdraw advertisements in South Africa because of unsubstantiated information and false claims that GMO crops “enable us to produce more food sustainably whilst using fewer resources; provide a healthier environment by saving on pesticides; decrease greenhouse gas emissions and increase crop yields substantially.”

Yet we hear Professor Alhassan and his network repeating these same untruths over and over again and calling them ‘science’. When he warns that anti GMO groups do not have any scientific proof or knowledge to offer when it comes to GMO technology, he is surely trying to suppress scientific inquiry, knowledge and debate.

More information on the dangers of GMO pesticide plants comes out every day, this despite the fact that the biotechnology industry has done its best to suppress any studies or information that does not support industry claims.

GMO cowpeas a threat to all of Africa

Right now Professor Alhassan and his corporate and academic cronies are trying to get Bt cowpeas into the Ghanaian market. Bt cowpeas are laden with pesticides as are all Bt GMO plants. When Ghanaians eat Bt cowpeas they will be eating pesticides.

In the US Bt plants are registered as pesticides by the USDA. When you eat any part of a Bt plant, you are eating a toxic pesticide – one aimed at insects, but which also impacts on humans. Although Bt does occur in nature, that is quite different than having a plant which contains Bt toxin in every cell of the plant.

With Bt in nature, and when used as a dust or spray in agroecological farming, the active toxin can only be found in the gut of the insect. The plant itself contains no Bt. If there is any residual spray or dust on the surface of the plant it can be washed off.

However, with the Bt in GMO cowpeas and all other Bt GMO plants, as GM Watch points out, “active toxin is in every plant cell and tissue, all the time and cannot be washed off … active toxins are not easily degraded by gut enzymes and, since they are lectins, they all are very likely to bind to the wall of the mammalian / human gut.”

And that means they are likely to be processed into your body creating who knows what short term or long term health risks and dangers.

Those insects that are controlled and killed by the Bt in Bt GMO plants evolve a tolerance for the Bt toxin and come back stronger over time, as recently observed in Brazil where BT corn is actually less resistant to the Fall Armyworm than conventional varieties.

Other opportunistic insects will take advantage of the lack of competition and move in to take the place of the former pests creating new super pests. That is happening in the US where GMOs have been around for 20 years.

And it’s leading to more and stronger pesticides being used every year, endangering the health of humans and livestock, degrading and polluting the soil, water, and air across US farmlands.

It is particularly worrisome to have Bt cowpeas growing in Ghana, a species indigenous to West Africa, as the GMO crops will contaminate neighboring crops with their pollen. If grown in quantity, GMO cowpeas could contaminate the entire region of West Africa. Because of this kind of contamination, Mexico has banned growing Bt corn – a ruling fiercely fought by Monsanto.

Cowpeas are one of the most important food crops in Africa’s drylands: they survive high temperatures with little water, even on very sandy soils, fix nitrogen, and are shade tolerant, allowing them to be used in agroforestry systems.

We must unite to fight this evil law!

If the Ghana Plant Breeders Bill is passed, it would allow the corporate GMO owners to claim all offspring of that contamination as their own property according to their intellectual property rights.

They could force a farmer whose crop is contaminated – against the farmer’s will, and providing no benefit to the farmer – to pay for the contaminated crop, to pay damages to the corporation! They could also force farmers to destroy their crops.

This is happening across the United States and in Canada where GMO corporations are winning huge financial judgements against farmers. It is happening in other countries that have passed UPOV laws such as Ghana’s Plant Breeders Bill. This is what Professor Alhassan intends to bring to Ghana’s farmers, claiming it is ‘progress’ and calling it ‘science’. It is just old fashioned corporate greed.

Contamination of the West African cowpea means the destruction of Ghana’s heritage, destruction of the seed DNA Ghana’s farmers, going back generations and centuries, have laboured to develop and preserve.

This is biopiracy, made legal by the Plant Breeders Bill. Professor Walter Alhassan may believe that this destruction is simply ‘science’, but it is in truth a tool by which foreign corporations aim to profit and re-colonize Ghana, West Africa, and the entire continent of Africa.

Would you trust Professor Walter Alhassan to make decisions about what you eat? Do you trust Professor Alhassan and his recommended scientific cronies to tell you what to plant, or what seeds you are required to use? Whose best interests does Professor Alhassan really represent?

 

 

Edwin Kweku Andoh Baffour is Acting Director of Communications with Food Sovereignty Ghana. The original article has been expanded and edited by The Ecologist.

Twitter: twitter.com/FoodSovereignGH
Facebook: facebook.com/FoodSovereigntyGhana

 




390291

Polish farmers block motorways for land rights, no GMOs Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




Poland’s biggest ever farmers’ protest is now entering its second week after closing down key motorways and main ‘A’ roads.

Rallies and blockades have so far taken place in over 50 locations across the country involving thousands of small and family farmers.

Over 150 tractors have been blockading the A2 motorway into Warsaw since the 3rd February and hundreds more have closed roads and are picketing governmental offices in other regions.

The farmers are vowing to continue the struggle until the government agrees to enter talks with the union and address what the growing crisis in Polish agriculture, and roll back measures that unfairly discriminate against smaller family-run farms.

“We are ready for dialogue”, said Edward Kosmal, chairman of the farmers protest committee for West-Pomeranian Region. “We look forward to meeting with you, Prime Minister, and beginning a comprehensive government commitment to solving the problems of Polish agriculture.

“If you do not enter into a dialogue with the Union, we will be forced to step up our protests.”

Key demands: land rights, no GMOs, legalize farm food sales

The four key demands of the farmers are:

  • Land rights – implement regulation to prevent land-grabs by Western companies and to protect family farmers rights to land – from 2016 foreign buyers will be legally able to buy Polish land.

  • Legalize direct sales of farm produce – the government must take action to improve farmers’ position in the market, including the adoption of a law to facilitate direct sales of processed and unprocessed farm products (NB. Poland has the most exclusionary policies in Europe around on-farm processing of food products and direct sales, which make it impossible for family farmers to compete with bigger food companies).

  • Extend inheritance laws to include land under lease as a fully legal form of land use.

  • Ban the cultivation and sale of Genetically Modified Organisms in Poland

“We demand a legal ban on GM crops in Poland”, said one protesting farmer and Solidarity member. “The value of Polish agriculture, unique in Europe, is the unpolluted environment and high quality food production. That’s decisive concerning our competitiveness in global markets.”

Another added: “We demand the introduction of legislation that will protect Polish land from exploitation by foreign capital! Agricultural land cannot be sold to commercial companies. It’s part of Polish territory. Once sold it will be lost.”

A dramatic escalation

These actions represent a dramatic escalation of protests that have been simmering across the country over the last year, but especially in the northern provinces.

An immediate cause of discontent has been oppressive ‘food hygiene’ and other regulations that effectively present small scale farmers from selling their produce on-farm and in local markets, where their mostly organic (if uncertified) produce is widely respected as of higher quality than food gown on modern industrial farms.

Poland is one of the last European countries that still has a large body of small scale ‘peasant’ farmers who still use traditional agricultural methods free of chemicals and with very low levels of mechanization, with horses still widely used for traction.

Farms are typically mixed, with small number of pigs, chickens, cattle and horses and arable fields all contained on around five hectares.

However industrial farmers are keen to expand their operations and many family farmers see the increasingly stringent regulations as an attempt to force them off their land.

Industrial farmers are welcomed by Poland’s right-wing government, for example Smithfield, the world’s biggest pig producers, which bought Poland’s Animex SA in 1999 and now runs a string of 16 or more huge hog farms where animal welfare conditions have been described as “horrendous“.

Julian Rose, President of the International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside (ICPPC), explained: “We are witnessing a sharp escalation in activity by Polish farmers squeezed by EU, government and corporate interests.

“These protests are touching the raw nerve of what’s wrong with the inhuman, neo-liberal and profit obsessed practices of today. Practices which ignore the real needs of farmers and consumers alike.”

 

 

More information

English: http://icppc.pl/index.php/en/
Polish: http://protestrolnikow.pl / Facebook.

Action: Please send expressions of your support for Polish farmers to Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz, kontakt@kprm.gov.pl and copy to ICPPC – biuro@icppc.pl .

Donate: icppc.pl/index.php/en/support-us.html

Further online resources:

 

 

Photo via Land Workers Alliance.

 

 




390004

Nigerian farmers face destitution from 300 sq.km land grab backed by UK aid Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




    Farmers in Nigeria’s north eastern state of Taraba are being forced off lands they have farmed for generations to make way for US company Dominion Farms to establish a 300 square kilometre rice plantation.

    The Dominion Farms project forms part of the UK-backed New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition in Africa and the Nigerian government’s Agricultural Transformation Agenda.

    Both initiatives are ostensibly intended to enhance food security and livelihoods for small farmers in Nigeria. But a new report published today ‘The Dominion Farms land grab in Nigeria‘, finds that the Dominion Farms project is having the opposite effect.

    In fact, the lands provided to Dominion Farms are part of a public irrigation scheme that 45,000 people depend on for their food needs and livelihoods.

    Diane Abbott MP has written to the Development Secretary Justine Greening to ask questions about the involvement of the New Alliance in the Dominion land grab, and is awiting her reply.

    “Aid money should be spent supporting communities to develop sustainable agriculture rather than supporting initiatives which are enabling companies to evict those communities”, commented Heidi Chow, food sovereignty campaigner from Global Justice Now.

    “Initiatives like the New Alliance seem to be more about providing opportunities for agribusiness to carve up the resources of African countries rather than trying to address poverty or hunger.”

    Farmers are unanimous – this is our land!

    “The local people are united in their opposition to the Dominion Farms project”, says Raymond Enoch, an author of the report and director of the Center for Environmental Education and Development in Nigeria. “They want their lands back so that they can continue to produce food for their families and the people of Nigeria.”

    The local people were never consulted about the Dominion Farms project and, although the company has already started to occupy the lands, they are still completely in the dark about any plans for compensation or resettlement.

    “The only story we hear is that our land is taken away and will be given out”, said Rebecca Sule, one of the affected women farmers from the Gassol community in Taraba State.

    “We were not involved at any level. For the sake of the future and our children, we are requesting governmental authorities to ask Dominion Farms to stay away from our land.”

    Mallam Danladi K Jallo, another local farmer from Gassol, added: “Our land is very rich and good. We produce a lot of different crops here, and we farm fish and rear goats, sheep and cattle.

    “But since the Dominion Farms people arrived with their machine and some of their working equipment, we were asked to stop our farm work and even leave our lands as the land is completely given to the Dominion Farms project.”

    The global land grab comes to Taraba

    The Nigerian government’s Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and the Federal Ministry of Investment are seeking to increase foreign direct investment in agriculture as a strategy to raise national food production.

    Under the policy, vast tracts of agricultural lands have been identified by the government for large scale projects by foreign companies – including 380 sq.km controlled by Taraba State’s Upper Benue River Basin Development Authority (UBRBDA) – a government agency established in 1978 to support local farmers with irrigation schemes, flood defences, roads, stores and warehouses.

    The UBRBDA lands and the Gassol Community lie on the north-eastern shoreline of the Taraba River. Some 10,000 farmers depend on these lands for their livelihoods, of which 3,000 hold land titles inherited from their ancestors who first settled there. In all some 45,000 people are sustained by the fertile farmland.

    Along one side of the lands runs an 8 km long embankment that was built by UBRBDA to protect the farmlands from the river’s overflow. The lands provide major ecological and hydrological functions and are a major source of livelihoods for the farmers of Gassol and other neighbouring communities.

    In 2010, Dominion Farms first made its appearance in Gassol seeking the allocation of lands, water resources, fishing ponds and grazing areas used by the community for the construction of a large scale rice farm.

    Two years later the company achieved its objective when it signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Taraba State government and the Nigerian government for a 300 sq.km concession on the UBRBDA lands for the creation of a large scale rice farm.

    “The MOU was signed without public knowledge and the details of its contents remain unknown to the local community of Gassol and organisations that have been following the deal”, states the report.

    As well as seizing the land from local farmers, it adds, the project “will also affect the pastoralists of the area by disrupting the spaces they use for livestock grazing and pastoralist routes.”

    ‘Severe irregularities’

    Two Nigerian NGOs, Environmental Rights Action (ERA) / Friends of the Earth Nigeria (FOEN) and Center for Environmental Education and Development (CEED) visited the area in June 2014 to find out how local Gassol farmers were affected by the Dominion Farms project.

    “Consultations with the affected farmers in Gassol community revealed severe irregularities”, they found. “The farmers interviewed indicated that only the local elites and government agents were consulted, some of whom had personally endorsed the project in their community in spite of apparent widespread opposition amongst the members of the community.

    “It further revealed that consultations did not deal with the question of whether or not the local communities accept the project and under what terms they would do so”

    Some affected farmers said that a range of promises – about adequate compensation for their lands, about the building of schools, roads, hospitals and a farm training centre, and about the employment of local people – had been made when Dominion Farms and government agencies initially visited the area. However “none of these promises have been kept.”

    The MOU between the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the Taraba State Government and Dominion Farms Ltd was signed “without proper consultations with the affected communities”, the investigators found.

    “Those consultations that did take place involved mainly government officials. The information that local people received about the project was insufficient and was presented in a partial manner in favour of the project.

    “Local farmers were never asked if they agreed to the project or under what terms they would accept the project, and were thus kept out of a decision that has major impacts on their lives.”

    Farmers forced off their lands

    The agreement was also signed without a social and environmental impact assessment, and did not include any resettlement plan for the farmers that would be evicted from their farms.

    “Pledges that were made during the process of allocating lands to Dominion Farms to improve the livelihood of the local farmers of Gassol have so far not transpired”, the report adds. “No roads have been constructed, no hospitals, training centres or schools have been built, and locals have not been hired by the company.

    “Families who have been farming and living for generations on the lands acquired by Dominion Farms are upset and disillusioned. They say the project will breach their right to adequate food and livelihoods, and their right to access the lands.

    “They consider it a forced eviction without proper consultation and compensation. Several farmers said that Dominion Farms is putting undue pressure on them to leave the plots of land that they have been farming.”

    Dominion Farms has already filled in ponds and water canals that local people depend on for fishing and has stationed security agents in the area to prevent farmers from accessing their lands. People have also been forced to stop grazing their goats and cows on the lands occupied by Dominion Farms.

    Local peoples are also concerned that Dominion Farms is not providing the service and technical support to farmers that was formerly provided by UBRBDA and they worry that the facilities will erode if they are not properly maintained.

    “They have complained to the authorities”, states the report, “but, as of yet, no action has been taken by either local, state or federal authorities.”

    Dominion Farms: registered in Kenya, based in the US, controlled from Canada

    Dominion Farms Limited is a company registered in Kenya, with headquarters in Oklahoma, US, that is majority owned by US-Canadian businessman Calvin Burgess as part of his ‘Dominion Group of Companies’.

    The company operates a controversial rice farm operation in the Yala Swamp area of Western Kenya that local farmers say has resulted in the loss of their lands and livelihoods, and grave social, environmental and health impacts on the affected communities.

    Dominion’s activities in Nigeria and Taraba State are relatively new. In 2012, the company began a process to establish a large rice farm project in the Northern Nigerian state of Taraba. The company signed a MOU with the Federal Government of Nigeria represented by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) and the Taraba State Government.

    The Dominion Farms project in Taraba is part of the co-operation framework agreement of the G8’s New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition in Africa. Dominion Farms has signed a letter of intent between the Government of Nigeria and the G8 aid donor countries.

    The letter details a $40 million investment in “growing and processing rice on 30,000 ha of land”, a 3,000 ha “nucleus farm owned by Dominion”, a rice mill and the training of Nigerian youth at Dominion’s Kenyan operations.

    “In spite of the New Alliance rhetoric on tackling food security, on the ground the Dominion Farms investment has resulted in land grabbing, reducing the ability and resilience of local farmers to feed themselves and their communities”, says the report. “Ultimately, it exposes the problems of the G8’s push for corporate-driven agriculture.”

    Nigeria is already suffering from violent conflicts and insecurity, especially in the North. Land grabs for agribusiness projects will only make the situation worse.

     

     

    The report: ‘The Dominion Farms land grab in Nigeria‘.

    Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

     




    389616

Save our farmers with fair trade milk! Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




I have recently been listening to the bad news about the price of milk while actually milking cows, as my herdsman took a break over Christmas and the New Year.

Experiencing at first hand the economic impact of the climate in which dairy farmers are operating gives the issue a whole different meaning.

It seems to me that nothing could better illustrate the institutionalised madness that prevails in the world of globalised, industrialised, commodity-style food production than its impact on the price of milk and dairy farmers in Britain.

As with so many matters connected with food, the root of the problem lies in the distorted economic system.

I’ve just been down to my local Tesco store in Bristol, which, along with most of the major British supermarkets, is now selling milk very cheaply, in this case four pints of conventional whole milk for 89 pence (£0.89).

Apologies for dancing between pints and litres, but four pints of milk is 2.27 litres, so divide that into 89 pence and you get just over 39.2 ppl (pence per litre). This is theoretically the total amount of money that has to be divided between the farmer, processor and retailer.

The conventional milk did not appeal to me, so I purchased two pints of organic milk for £1.14 instead. Doing the same maths, that makes the retail price of the organic milk almost exactly £1 per litre, more than twice the price of the conventional product.

Down on the farm, things are getting desperate

That is what’s happening in the shops, but what about back on the farm? Well, for conventional milk production at least, it’s a pretty horrible story. About a year ago the farm gate milk price was around 37 ppl – the best for years and good enough to make a reasonable profit.

Farmers responded by vastly increasing their milk production, mostly by expanding their herd sizes and further intensifying production, with the very large industrialised farms getting even bigger.

The phrase ‘turkeys voting for Christmas’ comes to mind. Now imagine this happening all over the world, combined with a good growing season for dairying weather-wise. The inevitable consequence has been a serious over-supply of the milk market.

To cap it all, Russia then banned imports of dairy products from the European Union in response to EU sanctions over Ukraine, which precipitated a catastrophic downward slide in farm gate milk prices. Ironically there are a number of parallels with the dramatic fall in the price of oil.

As a result, most producers are only receiving just over half the price they received about a year ago; currently as little as 22 ppl for conventional milk, which is well below the cost of production.

There is only so long that any farmer can lose serious money on every litre of milk, and needless to say it is the small, so-called ‘inefficient’ family dairy farms (which represent the backbone of rural culture in England, Wales and Scotland) that are being forced out of business the fastest.

With support from their banks the biggest farms will survive by intensifying further and growing bigger still – something that has negative implications for the environment, animal welfare, rural communities and milk quality.

Last week, the total number of dairy farms in England and Wales dropped below 10,000 for the first time and all the signs suggest that the exodus will continue.

This is a kind of cultural cleansing by price, with the farmers giving up quietly without fuss as their bank managers politely tell them that they have nowhere to go and had better quit milking while they still have some equity in their business.

Are there any rays of hope on the horizon of this bleak landscape?

Well, it is slightly better for organic producers. At the time of writing this, the West Wales farmers co-op that supplies organic milk to Rachel’s Dairy, now owned by Lactalys, a French company with a tradition of looking after its producers, are paying a base price of 40 ppl. That’s double the conventional price, though I suspect this too will drop in the near future.

Otherwise, the prospects for non-organic dairy farmers are bleak indeed, with the leaders of the farming industry still advocating that we have no choice but to continue to ride the roller-coaster of global prices, as they foolishly believe that this is the most efficient means of regulating supply and demand.

In practical terms, this means that only when a sufficient number of dairy farms have gone out of business will the market turn and prices pick up again. A jargon label has even been invented to make the phenomenon more legitimate: it’s called ‘price volatility’! Prices will go up, there will be another surge of intensification, prices will slump, and so on and so forth.

As a result, there will be ever-fewer dairy farmers, with the industrial-style survivors producing vast quantities of commodity milk from permanently housed cows that are fed on genetically modified grains and never allowed out to pasture. This is a story that, if you knew it, would probably discourage you from wanting to buy milk at all.

A solution: fair trade milk!

The BBC’s Today Programme has covered this twice over the last few days. In the first discussion I heard Meurig Raymond, President of the National Farmers Union, and David Handley, Chairman of Farmers for Action (a French-style blockade-the-supermarkets group), bemoaning this bleak situation.

But when the presenter asked them what could be done about it, neither of them really had an answer, apart from blaming the supermarkets for the ongoing price wars. But is there the slightest chance that the supermarkets will change their practices when they too are engaged in a struggle for the survival of the ‘fittest’ – in this case currently Aldi and Lidl?

I thought not, so after the programme I rang up the editor and suggested that the only way to improve the financial fortunes of dairy farmers will be through the emergence of some kind of public contract, perhaps based on the principles of fair trade, where consumers can buy milk and dairy products knowing the price the farmer has been paid is equitable and fair.

Interestingly they ran another piece on the Today Programme in which fair trade was mentioned, but there was no clear call for action. So here’s what I think could be done: why not introduce a fair trade label for milk?

I’d be very interested to know what the UK Fairtrade Foundation thinks about this idea. Since about 10 years ago, when I was at the Soil Association, we did try to develop a fair trade organic label, but when we approached the Fairtrade Foundation we received a clear message which I can roughly summarise as:

“Fairtrade is about tea, coffee and bananas produced by peasant farmers in developing countries, not featherbedded, heavily subsidised, rich European producers!”

At the time, we backed off – mistakenly in my view, with the benefit of hindsight – as we didn’t want to pick a public fight with those guys.

Fair trade should begin at home

But it still seems to me that fair trade should start at home and that means using our purchasing power right now to support all those beleaguered small family dairy farms on the edge of a precipice, through the introduction of a fair trade milk scheme which gives them a guaranteed fair price, providing their production systems are ethical.

If we don’t do this the family farms will disappear simply to be replaced by ever-larger industrialised farms where the cows are put under ever-more pressure to produce milk yields beyond their metabolic limits. So, let’s challenge the various certification organisations to introduce a fair trade milk label, with some conditions for entry!

In my opinion the scheme should be restricted to farmers with herds of fewer than 400 cows. That’s because the cows should be required to graze pastures during the summer season and larger herds need more land to graze, which means the distances they have to walk night and morning become excessive. There would also be other restrictions that would ensure the story behind the fair-trade mark met with customer expectations.

In parallel with the introduction of such a label, there needs to be a proper investigation into the true cost of environmentally and socially sustainable dairy farming.

That way we can come up with an objective price for milk production that avoids damaging environmental and human health consequences, while at the same time preserving natural capital, avoiding pollution and promoting public health.

This is a project that the Sustainable Food Trust will champion as part of our True Cost Accounting initiative.

But in the meantime, it should be relatively simple to come up with a minimum price based on existing research on the cost of production and linking this to any agreed ethical, welfare and environmental criteria.

 

 

Patrick Holden is the founding director of the Sustainable Food Trust, working internationally to accelerate the transition towards more sustainable food systems. He is also Patron of the UK Biodynamic Association and was awarded the CBE for services to organic farming in 2005.

This article was originally published by the Sustainable Food Trust.

Photo: Steph French.

 




389304

New technologies can help poor farmers – just not the ones you’re thinking of Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




During recent years we’ve become used to hearing that the answer to looming food security challenges is technology. For example, more sophisticated pesticides, genetic modification and machinery to grow food at ever-greater scale.

It is an especially believable narrative because – broadly speaking – this what has delivered some level of food security to most people during the period of explosive population growth that started during the 20th century, and continues today.

But while marking a success at one level, there are serious downsides, not least seen in how modern farming is responsible for driving several worsening global ecological trends.

These include climate change caused by the build up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere; the progressive pollution of ecosystems (especially aquatic and marine ones) with excess nitrogen and phosphorous; and the loss of biological diversity, caused by both of the above and habitat loss, mostly driven by conversion of more natural ecosystems to farmland.

Agriculture is also responsible for depleting resources that are vital for its own future – not least soils and freshwater.

That we cannot go on like this is not in doubt. The question is, will more technology present solutions that will actually work? The answer to that is an emphatic ‘yes!’ – although perhaps not the kind of technology many generally associate with farming policy.

A glimpse as to what technologies might work better in producing more food while protecting the natural systems we depend upon was glimpsed this week at the Slow Life Foundation‘s Slow Life Symposium taking place in the Maldives.

Digital technologies supporting India’s farmers

Rikin Gandhi is Chief Executive of an organization called Digital Green, and he presented to Symposium participants some of the methods being successfully deployed by his organization in dramatically increasing yields among small-scale farmers.

His basic idea is to exploit a particular fact of life that is seen right across the world. It stems from where most farmers get most of their new ideas from: namely other farmers.

Government training and information schemes can make an impact, so can advice from agrochemical companies (albeit biased at times), but by far the most convincing source of new ideas is other farmers.

Working with this reality Digital Green set out to improve yields through helping farmers make videos that would be shown to other farmers nearby.

Using off-the-shelf equipment including pocket video cameras and pico projectors, Digital Green assists farmers to generate content for use among tribal communities living in remote areas without electricity. (see photo)

Battery powered video and projection enables best practice to be shared even among illiterate groups where the written word is near to useless. Gandhi got results with better farming methods adopted more quickly and more cost-effectively than earlier attempts to do the same.

Indeed, Digital Green has demonstrated that for every dollar spent, the system persuaded seven times as many farmers to adopt new ideas as an existing official program of training and visits.

Twice the rice, half the water

Another measure of success is how many farmers have been empowered through new knowledge to the point where they are producing twice as much rice with half as much water – thereby helping to address the twin emerging challenges of food and water security, while keeping people on the land (and out of the fast expanding cities) by increasing their incomes.

And when farmers have more knowledge about soil health and the role of composts as at least a partial alternative to commercial fertilisers then opportunities are presented to cut costs while reducing environmental impacts.

Other technologies can complement this basic means of sharing ideas, including mobile phones. Although most farmers are still not yet connected in this way, the proportion that are is growing fast, in turn offering the prospect to lever further value from existing agricultural resources in terms of people and land through, for example, sharing of information about market conditions and weather forecasts.

There is of course a cautionary note to strike, as Gandhi observes: “During the Green Revolution era it was all about agricultural technology being transferred to farmers. That did boost yields but had issues coming with it.

“The same thing can be said about information technology. This is powerful but also needs to be supported through partnerships and working with social organisations. We need to think about the context for the technology, and the people using it, not just the technology.”

The new ‘intensification’: producing more, from less

Alongside a flipping of the narrative relating to agricultural technology is a change in tone regarding the very concept of intensification. For decades that idea has been associated with ever more chemical inputs, with all the attendant consequences as seen for example in resource depletion and greenhouse gas emissions.

Those close to the emerging challenge of how best to achieve food security while maintaining ecological integrity see a new definition here too.

‘Intensification’ is now regarded as empowering farmers to use their ingenuity and local resources more effectively, rather than being based on strategies to import energy intensive inputs.

David Monsma, Executive Director at the Aspen Institute‘s Energy and Environment Programme, emphasised that “Smallholder farmers remain the backbone of food supply systems in most low income and many middle income countries.”

Their “awareness of and access to agricultural technologies and techniques is often lacking”, he added, but that fact opens up a huge opportunity for sustainable growth in both food supply, and rural incomes:

“Training in production techniques and technologies that conserve soil and water, or that reduce waste and loss of crops, communications tools such as cellphones and videos and organizational innovations such as setting up market-oriented farmer based organisations, can lead toward more sustainable intensification while broadly increasing food security.”

The smart money is backing this new and more joined up farmer-focused approach, with big funders such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (also see here) and the Clinton Development Initiative ‘going local’ and backing strategies that help small actors do better.

Technologies for farmer empowerment

Among the approaches delivering results are those that improve storage and market access, thereby cutting food waste in the agricultural landscapes where food is grown.

Micro-finance and micro-insurance are proving vital facilities for many farmers in enabling them to make investments and to manage risk. Farmer empowerment via training is also increasingly seen as a vital plank for future food security.

Perhaps this shift of emphasis toward communications technologies and intensification based on farmer empowerment marks the opening of a new chapter in our multi-millennial efforts to ensure we have enough to eat.

It comes not a moment too soon. The days when technology could be thrown at the challenges linked with feeding ourselves and it assumed that the ecological damage was an acceptable price to pay for cheap food are over.

No longer is it feasible to trade one set of priorities at the expense of the others, for if nature doesn’t function neither will our food system. One vital strategy for navigating these tight straits is the empowerment of small scale farmers.

 

 

Tony Juniper is a campaigner, writer, sustainability advisor and leading British environmentalist. For more than 25 years he has worked for change toward a more sustainable society at local, national and international levels. His website is at tonyjuniper.com.

 

 




386927

New technologies can help poor farmers – just not the ones you’re thinking of Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




During recent years we’ve become used to hearing that the answer to looming food security challenges is technology. For example, more sophisticated pesticides, genetic modification and machinery to grow food at ever-greater scale.

It is an especially believable narrative because – broadly speaking – this what has delivered some level of food security to most people during the period of explosive population growth that started during the 20th century, and continues today.

But while marking a success at one level, there are serious downsides, not least seen in how modern farming is responsible for driving several worsening global ecological trends.

These include climate change caused by the build up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere; the progressive pollution of ecosystems (especially aquatic and marine ones) with excess nitrogen and phosphorous; and the loss of biological diversity, caused by both of the above and habitat loss, mostly driven by conversion of more natural ecosystems to farmland.

Agriculture is also responsible for depleting resources that are vital for its own future – not least soils and freshwater.

That we cannot go on like this is not in doubt. The question is, will more technology present solutions that will actually work? The answer to that is an emphatic ‘yes!’ – although perhaps not the kind of technology many generally associate with farming policy.

A glimpse as to what technologies might work better in producing more food while protecting the natural systems we depend upon was glimpsed this week at the Slow Life Foundation‘s Slow Life Symposium taking place in the Maldives.

Digital technologies supporting India’s farmers

Rikin Gandhi is Chief Executive of an organization called Digital Green, and he presented to Symposium participants some of the methods being successfully deployed by his organization in dramatically increasing yields among small-scale farmers.

His basic idea is to exploit a particular fact of life that is seen right across the world. It stems from where most farmers get most of their new ideas from: namely other farmers.

Government training and information schemes can make an impact, so can advice from agrochemical companies (albeit biased at times), but by far the most convincing source of new ideas is other farmers.

Working with this reality Digital Green set out to improve yields through helping farmers make videos that would be shown to other farmers nearby.

Using off-the-shelf equipment including pocket video cameras and pico projectors, Digital Green assists farmers to generate content for use among tribal communities living in remote areas without electricity. (see photo)

Battery powered video and projection enables best practice to be shared even among illiterate groups where the written word is near to useless. Gandhi got results with better farming methods adopted more quickly and more cost-effectively than earlier attempts to do the same.

Indeed, Digital Green has demonstrated that for every dollar spent, the system persuaded seven times as many farmers to adopt new ideas as an existing official program of training and visits.

Twice the rice, half the water

Another measure of success is how many farmers have been empowered through new knowledge to the point where they are producing twice as much rice with half as much water – thereby helping to address the twin emerging challenges of food and water security, while keeping people on the land (and out of the fast expanding cities) by increasing their incomes.

And when farmers have more knowledge about soil health and the role of composts as at least a partial alternative to commercial fertilisers then opportunities are presented to cut costs while reducing environmental impacts.

Other technologies can complement this basic means of sharing ideas, including mobile phones. Although most farmers are still not yet connected in this way, the proportion that are is growing fast, in turn offering the prospect to lever further value from existing agricultural resources in terms of people and land through, for example, sharing of information about market conditions and weather forecasts.

There is of course a cautionary note to strike, as Gandhi observes: “During the Green Revolution era it was all about agricultural technology being transferred to farmers. That did boost yields but had issues coming with it.

“The same thing can be said about information technology. This is powerful but also needs to be supported through partnerships and working with social organisations. We need to think about the context for the technology, and the people using it, not just the technology.”

The new ‘intensification’: producing more, from less

Alongside a flipping of the narrative relating to agricultural technology is a change in tone regarding the very concept of intensification. For decades that idea has been associated with ever more chemical inputs, with all the attendant consequences as seen for example in resource depletion and greenhouse gas emissions.

Those close to the emerging challenge of how best to achieve food security while maintaining ecological integrity see a new definition here too.

‘Intensification’ is now regarded as empowering farmers to use their ingenuity and local resources more effectively, rather than being based on strategies to import energy intensive inputs.

David Monsma, Executive Director at the Aspen Institute‘s Energy and Environment Programme, emphasised that “Smallholder farmers remain the backbone of food supply systems in most low income and many middle income countries.”

Their “awareness of and access to agricultural technologies and techniques is often lacking”, he added, but that fact opens up a huge opportunity for sustainable growth in both food supply, and rural incomes:

“Training in production techniques and technologies that conserve soil and water, or that reduce waste and loss of crops, communications tools such as cellphones and videos and organizational innovations such as setting up market-oriented farmer based organisations, can lead toward more sustainable intensification while broadly increasing food security.”

The smart money is backing this new and more joined up farmer-focused approach, with big funders such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (also see here) and the Clinton Development Initiative ‘going local’ and backing strategies that help small actors do better.

Technologies for farmer empowerment

Among the approaches delivering results are those that improve storage and market access, thereby cutting food waste in the agricultural landscapes where food is grown.

Micro-finance and micro-insurance are proving vital facilities for many farmers in enabling them to make investments and to manage risk. Farmer empowerment via training is also increasingly seen as a vital plank for future food security.

Perhaps this shift of emphasis toward communications technologies and intensification based on farmer empowerment marks the opening of a new chapter in our multi-millennial efforts to ensure we have enough to eat.

It comes not a moment too soon. The days when technology could be thrown at the challenges linked with feeding ourselves and it assumed that the ecological damage was an acceptable price to pay for cheap food are over.

No longer is it feasible to trade one set of priorities at the expense of the others, for if nature doesn’t function neither will our food system. One vital strategy for navigating these tight straits is the empowerment of small scale farmers.

 

 

Tony Juniper is a campaigner, writer, sustainability advisor and leading British environmentalist. For more than 25 years he has worked for change toward a more sustainable society at local, national and international levels. His website is at tonyjuniper.com.

 

 




386927

New technologies can help poor farmers – just not the ones you’re thinking of Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




During recent years we’ve become used to hearing that the answer to looming food security challenges is technology. For example, more sophisticated pesticides, genetic modification and machinery to grow food at ever-greater scale.

It is an especially believable narrative because – broadly speaking – this what has delivered some level of food security to most people during the period of explosive population growth that started during the 20th century, and continues today.

But while marking a success at one level, there are serious downsides, not least seen in how modern farming is responsible for driving several worsening global ecological trends.

These include climate change caused by the build up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere; the progressive pollution of ecosystems (especially aquatic and marine ones) with excess nitrogen and phosphorous; and the loss of biological diversity, caused by both of the above and habitat loss, mostly driven by conversion of more natural ecosystems to farmland.

Agriculture is also responsible for depleting resources that are vital for its own future – not least soils and freshwater.

That we cannot go on like this is not in doubt. The question is, will more technology present solutions that will actually work? The answer to that is an emphatic ‘yes!’ – although perhaps not the kind of technology many generally associate with farming policy.

A glimpse as to what technologies might work better in producing more food while protecting the natural systems we depend upon was glimpsed this week at the Slow Life Foundation‘s Slow Life Symposium taking place in the Maldives.

Digital technologies supporting India’s farmers

Rikin Gandhi is Chief Executive of an organization called Digital Green, and he presented to Symposium participants some of the methods being successfully deployed by his organization in dramatically increasing yields among small-scale farmers.

His basic idea is to exploit a particular fact of life that is seen right across the world. It stems from where most farmers get most of their new ideas from: namely other farmers.

Government training and information schemes can make an impact, so can advice from agrochemical companies (albeit biased at times), but by far the most convincing source of new ideas is other farmers.

Working with this reality Digital Green set out to improve yields through helping farmers make videos that would be shown to other farmers nearby.

Using off-the-shelf equipment including pocket video cameras and pico projectors, Digital Green assists farmers to generate content for use among tribal communities living in remote areas without electricity. (see photo)

Battery powered video and projection enables best practice to be shared even among illiterate groups where the written word is near to useless. Gandhi got results with better farming methods adopted more quickly and more cost-effectively than earlier attempts to do the same.

Indeed, Digital Green has demonstrated that for every dollar spent, the system persuaded seven times as many farmers to adopt new ideas as an existing official program of training and visits.

Twice the rice, half the water

Another measure of success is how many farmers have been empowered through new knowledge to the point where they are producing twice as much rice with half as much water – thereby helping to address the twin emerging challenges of food and water security, while keeping people on the land (and out of the fast expanding cities) by increasing their incomes.

And when farmers have more knowledge about soil health and the role of composts as at least a partial alternative to commercial fertilisers then opportunities are presented to cut costs while reducing environmental impacts.

Other technologies can complement this basic means of sharing ideas, including mobile phones. Although most farmers are still not yet connected in this way, the proportion that are is growing fast, in turn offering the prospect to lever further value from existing agricultural resources in terms of people and land through, for example, sharing of information about market conditions and weather forecasts.

There is of course a cautionary note to strike, as Gandhi observes: “During the Green Revolution era it was all about agricultural technology being transferred to farmers. That did boost yields but had issues coming with it.

“The same thing can be said about information technology. This is powerful but also needs to be supported through partnerships and working with social organisations. We need to think about the context for the technology, and the people using it, not just the technology.”

The new ‘intensification’: producing more, from less

Alongside a flipping of the narrative relating to agricultural technology is a change in tone regarding the very concept of intensification. For decades that idea has been associated with ever more chemical inputs, with all the attendant consequences as seen for example in resource depletion and greenhouse gas emissions.

Those close to the emerging challenge of how best to achieve food security while maintaining ecological integrity see a new definition here too.

‘Intensification’ is now regarded as empowering farmers to use their ingenuity and local resources more effectively, rather than being based on strategies to import energy intensive inputs.

David Monsma, Executive Director at the Aspen Institute‘s Energy and Environment Programme, emphasised that “Smallholder farmers remain the backbone of food supply systems in most low income and many middle income countries.”

Their “awareness of and access to agricultural technologies and techniques is often lacking”, he added, but that fact opens up a huge opportunity for sustainable growth in both food supply, and rural incomes:

“Training in production techniques and technologies that conserve soil and water, or that reduce waste and loss of crops, communications tools such as cellphones and videos and organizational innovations such as setting up market-oriented farmer based organisations, can lead toward more sustainable intensification while broadly increasing food security.”

The smart money is backing this new and more joined up farmer-focused approach, with big funders such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (also see here) and the Clinton Development Initiative ‘going local’ and backing strategies that help small actors do better.

Technologies for farmer empowerment

Among the approaches delivering results are those that improve storage and market access, thereby cutting food waste in the agricultural landscapes where food is grown.

Micro-finance and micro-insurance are proving vital facilities for many farmers in enabling them to make investments and to manage risk. Farmer empowerment via training is also increasingly seen as a vital plank for future food security.

Perhaps this shift of emphasis toward communications technologies and intensification based on farmer empowerment marks the opening of a new chapter in our multi-millennial efforts to ensure we have enough to eat.

It comes not a moment too soon. The days when technology could be thrown at the challenges linked with feeding ourselves and it assumed that the ecological damage was an acceptable price to pay for cheap food are over.

No longer is it feasible to trade one set of priorities at the expense of the others, for if nature doesn’t function neither will our food system. One vital strategy for navigating these tight straits is the empowerment of small scale farmers.

 

 

Tony Juniper is a campaigner, writer, sustainability advisor and leading British environmentalist. For more than 25 years he has worked for change toward a more sustainable society at local, national and international levels. His website is at tonyjuniper.com.

 

 




386927

New technologies can help poor farmers – just not the ones you’re thinking of Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




During recent years we’ve become used to hearing that the answer to looming food security challenges is technology. For example, more sophisticated pesticides, genetic modification and machinery to grow food at ever-greater scale.

It is an especially believable narrative because – broadly speaking – this what has delivered some level of food security to most people during the period of explosive population growth that started during the 20th century, and continues today.

But while marking a success at one level, there are serious downsides, not least seen in how modern farming is responsible for driving several worsening global ecological trends.

These include climate change caused by the build up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere; the progressive pollution of ecosystems (especially aquatic and marine ones) with excess nitrogen and phosphorous; and the loss of biological diversity, caused by both of the above and habitat loss, mostly driven by conversion of more natural ecosystems to farmland.

Agriculture is also responsible for depleting resources that are vital for its own future – not least soils and freshwater.

That we cannot go on like this is not in doubt. The question is, will more technology present solutions that will actually work? The answer to that is an emphatic ‘yes!’ – although perhaps not the kind of technology many generally associate with farming policy.

A glimpse as to what technologies might work better in producing more food while protecting the natural systems we depend upon was glimpsed this week at the Slow Life Foundation‘s Slow Life Symposium taking place in the Maldives.

Digital technologies supporting India’s farmers

Rikin Gandhi is Chief Executive of an organization called Digital Green, and he presented to Symposium participants some of the methods being successfully deployed by his organization in dramatically increasing yields among small-scale farmers.

His basic idea is to exploit a particular fact of life that is seen right across the world. It stems from where most farmers get most of their new ideas from: namely other farmers.

Government training and information schemes can make an impact, so can advice from agrochemical companies (albeit biased at times), but by far the most convincing source of new ideas is other farmers.

Working with this reality Digital Green set out to improve yields through helping farmers make videos that would be shown to other farmers nearby.

Using off-the-shelf equipment including pocket video cameras and pico projectors, Digital Green assists farmers to generate content for use among tribal communities living in remote areas without electricity. (see photo)

Battery powered video and projection enables best practice to be shared even among illiterate groups where the written word is near to useless. Gandhi got results with better farming methods adopted more quickly and more cost-effectively than earlier attempts to do the same.

Indeed, Digital Green has demonstrated that for every dollar spent, the system persuaded seven times as many farmers to adopt new ideas as an existing official program of training and visits.

Twice the rice, half the water

Another measure of success is how many farmers have been empowered through new knowledge to the point where they are producing twice as much rice with half as much water – thereby helping to address the twin emerging challenges of food and water security, while keeping people on the land (and out of the fast expanding cities) by increasing their incomes.

And when farmers have more knowledge about soil health and the role of composts as at least a partial alternative to commercial fertilisers then opportunities are presented to cut costs while reducing environmental impacts.

Other technologies can complement this basic means of sharing ideas, including mobile phones. Although most farmers are still not yet connected in this way, the proportion that are is growing fast, in turn offering the prospect to lever further value from existing agricultural resources in terms of people and land through, for example, sharing of information about market conditions and weather forecasts.

There is of course a cautionary note to strike, as Gandhi observes: “During the Green Revolution era it was all about agricultural technology being transferred to farmers. That did boost yields but had issues coming with it.

“The same thing can be said about information technology. This is powerful but also needs to be supported through partnerships and working with social organisations. We need to think about the context for the technology, and the people using it, not just the technology.”

The new ‘intensification’: producing more, from less

Alongside a flipping of the narrative relating to agricultural technology is a change in tone regarding the very concept of intensification. For decades that idea has been associated with ever more chemical inputs, with all the attendant consequences as seen for example in resource depletion and greenhouse gas emissions.

Those close to the emerging challenge of how best to achieve food security while maintaining ecological integrity see a new definition here too.

‘Intensification’ is now regarded as empowering farmers to use their ingenuity and local resources more effectively, rather than being based on strategies to import energy intensive inputs.

David Monsma, Executive Director at the Aspen Institute‘s Energy and Environment Programme, emphasised that “Smallholder farmers remain the backbone of food supply systems in most low income and many middle income countries.”

Their “awareness of and access to agricultural technologies and techniques is often lacking”, he added, but that fact opens up a huge opportunity for sustainable growth in both food supply, and rural incomes:

“Training in production techniques and technologies that conserve soil and water, or that reduce waste and loss of crops, communications tools such as cellphones and videos and organizational innovations such as setting up market-oriented farmer based organisations, can lead toward more sustainable intensification while broadly increasing food security.”

The smart money is backing this new and more joined up farmer-focused approach, with big funders such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (also see here) and the Clinton Development Initiative ‘going local’ and backing strategies that help small actors do better.

Technologies for farmer empowerment

Among the approaches delivering results are those that improve storage and market access, thereby cutting food waste in the agricultural landscapes where food is grown.

Micro-finance and micro-insurance are proving vital facilities for many farmers in enabling them to make investments and to manage risk. Farmer empowerment via training is also increasingly seen as a vital plank for future food security.

Perhaps this shift of emphasis toward communications technologies and intensification based on farmer empowerment marks the opening of a new chapter in our multi-millennial efforts to ensure we have enough to eat.

It comes not a moment too soon. The days when technology could be thrown at the challenges linked with feeding ourselves and it assumed that the ecological damage was an acceptable price to pay for cheap food are over.

No longer is it feasible to trade one set of priorities at the expense of the others, for if nature doesn’t function neither will our food system. One vital strategy for navigating these tight straits is the empowerment of small scale farmers.

 

 

Tony Juniper is a campaigner, writer, sustainability advisor and leading British environmentalist. For more than 25 years he has worked for change toward a more sustainable society at local, national and international levels. His website is at tonyjuniper.com.

 

 




386927

Living with GMOs – a letter from America Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




We are writing as concerned American citizens to share with you our experience of genetically modified (GM) crops and the resulting damage to our agricultural system and adulteration of our food supply.

In our country, GM crops account for about half of harvested cropland. Around 94% of the soy, 93% of corn (maize) and 96% of cotton grown is GM. i

The UK and the rest of the EU have yet to adopt GM crops in the way that we have, but you are currently under tremendous pressure from governments, biotech lobbyists, and large corporations to adopt what we now regard as a failing agricultural technology.

Polls consistently show that 72% of Americans do not want to eat GM foods and over 90% of Americans believe GM foods should be labeled. ii

In spite of this massive public mandate, efforts to get our federal iii and state iv governments to better regulate, or simply label, GMOs are being undermined by large biotech and food corporations with unlimited budgets v and undue influence.

As you consider your options, we’d like to share with you what nearly two decades of GM crops in the United States has brought us. We believe our experience serves as a warning for what will happen in your countries should you follow us down this road.

Broken promises

GM crops were released onto the market with a promise that they would consistently increase yields and decrease pesticide use. They have done neither. vi In fact, according to a recent US government report yields from GM crops can be lower than their non-GM equivalents. vii

Farmers were told that GM crops would yield bigger profits too. The reality, according to the United States Department of Agriculture, is different. viii Profitability is highly variable, while the cost of growing these crops has spiraled. ix

GM seeds cannot legally be saved for replanting, which means farmers must buy new seeds each year. Biotech companies control the price of seeds, which cost farmers 3-6 times more than conventional seeds. x This, combined with the huge chemical inputs they require, means GM crops have proved more costly to grow than conventional crops.

Because of the disproportionate emphasis on GM crops, conventional seed varieties are no longer widely available leaving farmers with less choice and control over what they plant. xi

Farmers who have chosen not to grow GM crops can find their fields contaminated with GM crops as a result of cross pollination between related species of plants xii and GM and non-GM seeds being mixed together during storage.

Because of this our farmers are losing export markets. Many countries have restrictions or outright bans on growing or importing GM crops xiii and as a result, these crops have become responsible for a rise in trade disputes when shipments of grain are found to be contaminated with GM organisms (GMOs).xiv

The burgeoning organic market here in the US is also being affected. Many organic farmers have lost contracts for organic seed due to high levels of contamination. This problem is increasing and is expected to get much bigger in the coming years.

Pesticides and superweeds

The most widely grown types of GM crops are known as ‘Roundup Ready’ crops. These crops, mostly corn and soy, have been genetically engineered so that when they are sprayed with the herbicide Roundup – the active ingredient of which is glyphosate – the weeds die but the crop continues to grow.

This has created a vicious circle. Weeds have become resistant to the herbicide, causing farmers to spray even more. Heavier use of herbicides creates ever more ‘superweeds’ and even higher herbicide use.

A recent review found that between 1996 and 2011, farmers who planted Roundup Ready crops used 24% more herbicide than non-GMO farmers planting the same crops. xv

If we remain on this trajectory with Roundup Ready crops we can expect to see herbicide rates increase by 25% each year for the foreseeable future.

This pesticide treadmill means that in the last decade in the US at least 14 new glyphosate-resistant weed species have emerged, xvi and over half of US farms are plagued with herbicide-resistant weeds. xvii

Biotech companies, which sell both the GM seeds and the herbicides, xviii have proposed to address this problem with the creation of new crop varieties that will be able to withstand even stronger and more toxic herbicides such as 2,4-D and dicamba.

However it is estimated that if these new varieties are approved, this could drive herbicide use up by as much as 50%. xix

Environmental harm

Studies have shown that the increased herbicide use on Roundup Ready crops is highly destructive to the natural environment. For example, Roundup kills milkweeds, which are the key food source for the iconic Monarch butterfly xx and poses a threat to other important insects such as bees. xxi

It is also damaging to soil, killing beneficial organisms that keep it healthy and productive xxii and making essential micronutrients unavailable to the plant. xxiii

Other types of GM plants, which have been engineered to produce their own insecticide (e.g. “Bt” cotton plants), have also been shown to harm beneficial insects including green lacewings xxiv, the Daphnia magna waterflea xxv and other aquatic insects, xxvi and ladybugs (ladybirds). xxvii

Resistance to the insecticides in these plants is also growing xxviii, creating new varieties of resistant “superbugs” and requiring more applications of insecticides at different points in the growth cycle, for instance on the seed before it is planted. xxix In spite of this, new Bt varieties of corn and soy have been approved here and will soon be planted.

A threat to human health

GM ingredients are everywhere in our food chain. It is estimated that 70% of processed foods consumed in the US have been produced using GM ingredients. If products from animals fed GM feed are included, the percentage is significantly higher.

Research shows that Roundup Ready crops contain many times more glyphosate, and its toxic breakdown product AMPA, than normal crops. xxx

Traces of glyphosate have been found in the breastmilk and urine of American mothers, as well as in their drinking water. xxxi The levels in breastmilk were worryingly high – around 1,600 times higher than what is allowable in European drinking water.

Passed on to babies through breastmilk, or the water used to make formula, this could represent an unacceptable risk to infant health since glyphosate is a suspected hormone disrupter. xxxii Recent studies suggest that this herbicide is also toxic to sperm. xxxiii

Likewise, traces of the Bt toxin have been found in the blood of mothers and their babies. xxxiv

GM foods were not subjected to human trials before being released into the food chain and the health impacts of having these substances circulating and accumulating in our bodies are not being studied by any government agency, nor by the companies that produce them.

Studies of animals fed GM foods and/or glyphosate, however, show worrying trends including damage to vital organs like the liver and kidneys, damage to gut tissues and gut flora, immune system disruption, reproductive abnormalities, and even tumors. xxxv

These scientific studies point to potentially serious human health problems that could not have been anticipated when our country first embraced GMOs, and yet they continue to be ignored by those who should be protecting us.

Instead our regulators rely on outdated studies and other information funded and supplied by biotech companies that, not surprisingly, dismiss all health concerns.

A denial of science

This spin of corporate science stands in stark contrast to the findings of independent scientists.

In fact, in 2013, nearly 300 independent scientists from around the world issued a public warning that there was no scientific consensus about the safety of eating genetically modified food, and that the risks, as demonstrated in independent research, gave “serious cause for concern.” xxxvi

It’s not easy for independent scientists like these to speak out. Those who do have faced obstacles in publishing their results, been systematically vilified by pro-GMO scientists, been denied research funding, and in some cases have had their jobs and careers threatened. xxxvii

Control of the food supply

Through our experience we have come to understand that the genetic engineering of food has never really been about public good, or feeding the hungry, or supporting our farmers. Nor is it about consumer choice. Instead it is about private, corporate control of the food system.

This control extends into areas of life that deeply affect our day-to-day well-being, including food security, science, and democracy. It undermines the development of genuinely sustainable, environmentally friendly agriculture and prevents the creation of a transparent, healthy food supply for all.

Today in the US, from seed to plate, the production, distribution, marketing, safety testing, and consumption of food is controlled by a handful of companies, many of which have commercial interests in genetic engineering technology.

They create the problems, and then sell us the so-called solutions in a closed cycle of profit generation that is unequalled in any other type of commerce.

We all need to eat, which is why every citizen should strive to understand these issues.

Time to speak out!

Americans are reaping the detrimental impacts of this risky and unproven agricultural technology. EU countries should take note: there are no benefits from GM crops great enough to offset these impacts. Officials who continue to ignore this fact are guilty of a gross dereliction of duty.

We, the undersigned, are sharing our experience and what we have learned with you so that you don’t make our mistakes.

We strongly urge you to resist the approval of genetically modified crops, to refuse to plant those crops that have been approved, to reject the import and/or sale of GM-containing animal feeds and foods intended for human consumption, and to speak out against the corporate influence over politics, regulation and science.

If the UK and the rest of Europe becomes the new market for genetically modified crops and food our own efforts to label and regulate GMOs will be all the more difficult, if not impossible. If our efforts fail, your attempts to keep GMOs out of Europe will also fail.

If we work together, however, we can revitalize our global food system, ensuring healthy soil, healthy fields, healthy food and healthy people.

 

 

See below for Signatories – NGOs, academics, scientists, anti-GM groups, celebrities, food manufacturers, and others representing around 57 million Americans.

References

i