Rural aid programs and multinational agricultural research companies may be a greater threat to the Third World than malnutrition, according to a group of scientists and farmers touring Canada.
The group from developing countries toured Canada recently to lobby government officials and raise public awareness that western governments and corporations need to be more culturally sensitive when providing aid.
The group said agricultural aid should
finance local and regional infrastructure initiatives, which should result in smaller, self-sufficient farms.
Masanagari Narsamma, a traditional farmer and filmmaker from India, said governments, agricultural lenders and corporations tell farmers that they must plant new crops from genetic lines that are not based on local grain varieties.
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“Creating an undiversified monoculture is resulting in our farmers taking to the roads,” she said during an interview.
“In many cases these imported grains and plants don’t perform as we are told they will. In the meantime, traditional crops and varieties are lost because the seed isn’t being grown and the seed farmers have been depending on for generations is sold off or eaten.”
The touring panel called for restrictions on seed sent to the developing world, particularly genetically modified crops and others developed in western countries.
They said modern world agricultural strategies would decimate farms and the livelihoods of Third World traditional farmers. This may also result in lower production over time and worsen already tight food supplies.
Melaku Worede, a former director of the Plant Genetic Resource Centre in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, is a plant geneticist who worked on restoring Ethiopia’s food security programs after decades of intermittent famine.
“Not only are these new crops being introduced not appropriate to local conditions, they are likely to be incapable of resisting the regional weather, pest and disease pressure because they have no (heritage) in the regions.”
He said developing countries’ governments are being convinced by aid-providing nations and corporations that new GM products, such as vitamin A rich rice and Bt cotton, will improve farmers’ returns.
“These crops use additional water, causing shortages … people have to eat such large portions of the rice to get the benefit, portions they never would receive.”
He said traditional crops such as millet are more nutritious.
Anna Paskal of the international social justice organization Inter Pares in Ottawa said new seed supply systems fail to take into account the effect on society.
“Improve plant breeding with existing crops, existing seeds, building on existing farmer knowledge. This needs to be the approach,” she said.
Canadian National Farmers Union president Stewart Wells echoed the sentiments expressed by others on the tour.
Like in India where displaced farmers “take to the road” Canadian farmers too have been forced off the land by high costs of new farm inputs and “low prices for their crops,” he said.
