Kofi Annan sees for himself. Jeremy unavailable for comment.
An open letter to Kofi Annan
Dear Mr Annan
Congratulations on your appointment as Chair of the Board of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa. In your inaugural lecture in Capetown you said categorically that the Alliance would “work with farmers using traditional seeds known to them”. I’m not exactly sure what you mean by “traditional seeds,” especially in view of Agra’s strong focus on breeding: “we will develop improved varieties for the full range of Africa’s important staple food crops,” it says on the Agra web site.
Maybe you just mean “not genetically engineered”. That might make sense, because the sentence before the one on “traditional seeds” reads: “We in the Alliance will not incorporate GMOs in our programmes.”
“Sensually mapping the world”
An article by Andrew Jefford over at the Financial Times’ Food and Drink section dissects the concept of “appellations d’origine controlée.” This refers to a system which provides legal protection for a name of an agricultural product made in a particular way in a particular place. Thus, champagne is not just any old sparkling wine, but, “wine produced by a special method, from pinot noir, pinot meunier and chardonnay grapes grown in a circumscribed region of France lying east of Paris.”
The article is a great read. Here’s a longer sample, to give you the — as it were — flavour:
Thanks to the efforts of some 250 local growers with 9,000 ha of meadows irrigated by the river Durance via an intricate series of canals in place since the late 17th century, even hay from the stony Crau plain achieved certification, in 1997, to protect and expand the reputation of this uniquely sweet, nutritious animal feed; only these growers have the right to tie their bales with a distinctive red and white twine. The hay is cut three times every summer, the first cut being ideal for horses and beef cattle, the second cut for dairy cattle and milking ewes, and the third for sheep and goats… Appellations are a way of sensually mapping the world.
No GMOs in AGRA
Kofi Annan has said, very firmly, that A Green Revolution for Africa will not use genetically modified organisms. In his inaugural speech in Capetown, Annan said:
We in the alliance will not incorporate GMOs in our programmes. We shall work with farmers using traditional seeds known to them.
There are some interesting nuances there in just what will comprise “traditional seeds known to them”. It’s perfectly possible to promote destructive monoculture without resorting to genetic engineering. I’m happy to wait and see.
Kofi’s time
In 2002, while UN secretary general, Kofi Annan asked, “How can a green revolution be achieved in Africa?†After more than a year of study, the appointed expert panel of scientists (from Brazil, China, Mexico, South Africa and elsewhere) replied that a green revolution would not provide food security because of the diverse types of farming systems across the continent. There is “no single magic technological bullet…for radically improving African agriculture,†the expert panel reported in its strategic recommendations. “African agriculture is more likely to experience numerous ‘rainbow evolutions’ that differ in nature and extent among the many systems, rather than one Green Revolution as in Asia.†Now Annan has agreed to head the kind of project his advisors told him would not work.
That extract is from a long and thoughtful piece on the web site of Foreign Policy in Focus, an American “think tank without walls”. It is a response, as you might have guessed, to the appointment of Kofi Annan as head of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, the initiative funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation.
If you have any interest in the problems of poverty and agriculture in Africa, I urge you to read it. This is not shrill propaganda. This is carefully considered commentary. Carol B. Thompson, the author, makes several trenchant points that, to me, skewer the rationale behind the Gates/Rockefeller strategy. (Not that I was in favour before, as regular readers will know.)
They say that generals are always fighting the previous war. Alas, the same seems true of the war on poverty.