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  • From: "permaculture.biz" <darren@permaculture.biz>
  • To: "'permaculture'" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: RE: [permaculture] here's a reason to buy a mac....
  • Date: Sat, 18 Oct 2003 06:29:51 +1000

What a disgrace - $25M is not a huge amount of dough but in the right
hands could rebuild and create durable base systems for many, many needy
communities.

GM imperialism continues....

Cheers,

Yours and Growing,

Darren J. Doherty
Applied Diploma of Permaculture Design, (Education, Site Design, System
Establishment & Implementation) Permaculture Institute (1995)
Permaculture Design Certificate, Permaculture Institute (1993, 1995,
2001)
Whole Farm Planning Certificate (Train the Trainer), University of
Melbourne (1995)
permaculture designer @ permaculture.biz
a. 103 Casey St, East Bendigo, Victoria, Australia, 3550
p. 613 5444 1068
f. 613 5444 0621
e. darren@permaculture.biz
w. www.permaculture.biz





-----Original Message-----
From: permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of mIEKAL aND
Sent: Saturday, October 18, 2003 1:28 AM
To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: [permaculture] here's a reason to buy a mac....

Innocents abroad?

Bill Gates's donation of $25m to fund GM research has led to criticism
that his foundation is backing US corporate interests, not the poor

John Vidal
Thursday  October   16, 2003
The Guardian

Bill Gates wants to do public good with the immense profits of his IT
empire, and over the past few years his foundation has given more than
$6.5bn to global causes. The money has been well-received as socially
useful and, generally, sensibly directed.

But this week the Gates Foundation, the largest philanthropic
organisation in the world, was strongly criticised when it gave $25m to
GM research to develop vitamin and protein-enriched seeds for the
world's poor.

In scientific terms, this is not a lot of money, but it is expected to
be just a first tranche and to   stimulate what the GM companies say is
the second generation of GM crops - those that are potentially of some
real use to ordinary people.

Gates was bitten hard by international charities, farmers' groups and
academics in Europe, India and elsewhere, who argued that the money
would not go to addressing poverty, the root cause of worldwide hunger,
but would promote an agriculture that was of little use to the very
poor.

He was further accused of being captured by an industry now using the
hungry as a "Trojan horse" to get its biotech into poor countries.

The foundation, and the research organisations who will spend his
money, deny all charges, saying that the poor are in desperate need of
vitamins and micro nutrients, and arguing that GM will give the poorest
a choice.

But there are reasons to believe that the Gates food agenda is now
being shaped by US corporate and govern ment interests. The Gates
Foundation has recently appointed a Kenyan ex-Monsanto scientist to one
of its boards, and last year joined Kraft foods, a subsidiary of Philip
Morris, the world's largest and most profitable tobacco corporation, in
a programme to add vitamins to conventionally grown foods.

Gates, moreover, has chosen for his latest venture to partner the US
Department of Agriculture and USAID, Washington's overseas aid
organisation - two of the most active pro-GM organisations in the
world. Also helping with money or research, are several US government
groups and universities who have benefited from government
biotechnology grants.

The other major financial partner is the World Bank, which is reviewing
the costs and benefits of GM to poor countries.

The Gates money, however, is directed at some of the least known but
most controversial organisations on the global stage. The research will
be done mainly by the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture and
the International Food Policy Research Institute.

Both are part of the little-known Consultative Group on International
Agricultural Research (Cgiar). This family of 16 global public
institutes forms the world's largest public plant-breeding effort for
poor farmers and has immense say on the direction of world agriculture.

But Cgiar is widely accused of being a creature of its two major
funders - the US and the World Bank. The bank, dominated by the US, not
only houses its secretariat, but provides its current chair.

Cgiar is only slightly better than the WTO when it comes to
accessibility. It has only once held an annual meeting outside the bank
offices and, when it did - last year in Thailand - there were major
demonstrations against it by international and local farmers'
organisations complaining that it was promoting a top-down,
one-size-fits-all approach to research that ignored the knowledge and
experience of farmers and indigenous people.

Cgiar's public research, say NGOs in Asia, Africa, Latin America and
Europe, is being quietly corporatised, centralised in Washington and
becoming remote from farmers in the developing world.

They argue that having promoted the "green revolution" of the 1960s -
which introduced high-yielding, chemically dependent crops - Cgiar is
now using large amounts of public money to develop GM foods, once again
without consulting the people who the technology will most affect.

With hundreds of millions of small farmers around the world already in
crisis because they cannot compete with US or EU subsidies which mainly
go to corporate farmers, the Gates donation is seen to be supporting
something irrelevant to most farmers - another kick in the teeth for
those in poverty and an endorsement of a widely questioned technology
dominated by vested big science interests.

Cgiar says its work is for the public, by public servants and it is
aware of the power of GM companies to muscle in. But its backing of GM
goes well beyond honest research. Last year it controversially invited
the Syngenta Foundation on to its board.

This charitable, nominally independent organisation is owned by the
largest GM company in the world and run by a former British civil
servant who worked at the Department for International Development.
Insiders believe it is only a matter of time before the Gates
foundation is offered a place, too.

But why should the Gates Foundation be interested in a small, obscure
organisation like Cgiar? Apart from strongly influencing the direction
of world agriculture, one answer is that it is the custodian of more
than 600,000 seeds, something that has been called the "collective
wealth of nature and the food security of the world".

Almost every crop that has ever been grown is held in trust, and the
unpatented genetic bank is of immense potential wealth to life science
companies, not just for food but medicine. Already many have been
investigating partnerships.

Bill Gates's foundation appears the innocent newcomer to the mucky
world of global malnutrition and food security. The trouble may be that
his foundation's increasing influence on the world stage makes it a
prime target for those who have an agenda well beyond the public good.

·John Vidal is the Guardian's environment editor

john.vidal@guardian.co.uk

Special reports
GM food debate
Special report: what's wrong with our food?

Explained
03.06.2003: GM crops

May 2003 investigation
Food: the way we eat now

Useful links
GM public debate - the official site
Monsanto
Agriculture & environment biotechnology commission (government advisory
body)
Agricultural Biotechnology Council

Official reports
Royal Society report on GM plants (pdf)
Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology report on GM food
labelling (pdf)

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