Tag: Timothy A. Wise

Digging Africa Deeper into Hunger<br>Annual Green Revolution Forum ignores widespread failure of its push for industrialized agriculture

  • Opinion by Timothy A. Wise (cambridge, ma.)
  • Inter Press Service

CAMBRIDGE, MA., Aug 29 (IPS) – As the adage goes, when you find yourself stuck in a hole, stop digging. As African leaders and their philanthropic and bilateral sponsors prepare for another glitzy African Green Revolution Forum, convening September 5-8 in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, they are instead handing out new shovels to dig the continent deeper into a hunger crisis caused in part by their failing obsession with corporate-led industrialized agriculture.

Instead of cutting food insecurity in half, as the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) promised at its founding in 2006, the continent has spiraled in the opposite direction. The number of chronically “undernourished” people in AGRA’s 13 focus countries has increased nearly 50%, not decreased, according to recent hunger data from the United Nations.

AGRA’s corporate cheerleaders will try to blame the continent’s deepening cavern of hunger on disruptions from the COVID pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war, but chronic hunger had already risen 31% by 2018 in AGRA countries, as I documented in my 2020 Tufts University study. The hole was already getting deeper.

Summit host Tanzania is a case in point. As the government readies another Green Revolution festival of self-congratulation, refusing to allow Tanzanian farm groups to offer a more critical perspective and more effective solutions, UN figures show a 34% increase in number of undernourished Tanzanians since 2006. An estimated 59% of Tanzanians suffer moderate or severe levels of food insecurity, according to survey data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

African farmers: “Put down the Green Revolution shovels”

Once again, African farmer organizations are calling on African leaders and the donors who support them to put down the Green Revolution shovels, climb out of the hole, survey the damage their failing agricultural development model has wrought, and change course to more farmer-centered and sustainable ecological agriculture.

The Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa concluded its recent continental meeting on seed rights denouncing “AGRA and other corporate actors’ continued pressure to influence African government seed policies and biosafety regulations to increase corporate capture and control of seed on the continent.” They have scheduled a virtual press conference August 30, demanding “No Decisions About Us Without Us!”

In calling for a strategic reset, they are not ignoring the complex causes of hunger on the continent – climate change, conflict and corruption exacerbated by pandemic disruptions and rising costs of fertilizers and food imports from Russia and Ukraine. They are recognizing that the Green Revolution’s corporate-driven, technology-based strategy for rural uplift has proven unfit to help small-scale farmers cope with such challenges.

In 2006, AGRA offered a coherent strategy and admirably ambitious goals. Its aggressive promotion of commercial seeds and synthetic fertilizers would catalyze a virtuous cycle of agricultural development. Rising yields would feed the hungry and stimulate further investments in productivity-enhancing farm technologies. AGRA’s self-proclaimed “theory of change” would double food-crop productivity and incomes for 30 million small-scale farming households by 2020 while cutting hunger in half.

Seventeen years – and more than one billion dollars – later, the evidence shows that AGRA’s theory of change was flawed at every turn. Those seeds and fertilizers did not produce a productivity revolution. Yields rose only 18% over 14 years, barely faster than before the new Green Revolution push. Maize yields grew only 29% despite billions of dollars in government subsidies to allow farmers to buy – and corporations to sell – the inputs. Meanwhile, more nutritious and climate-resilient traditional crops such as millet and sorghum saw yields stagnate or decline as farmers planted more subsidized maize.

With limited yield improvements, farmers didn’t see more food or higher incomes from sales of their promised new surplus production. They saw a losing proposition, with the costs of seeds and fertilizers outpacing the expected returns from crop sales. When the subsidies were cut as government budgets were squeezed, farmers stopped buying the seeds and fertilizers and went back to their old seeds, if they had managed to save any. Many found themselves in debt after input purchases failed to pay off their investment.

Most found farmland that was now less fertile than before, the nutrients drained by monocultures of maize. The fertilizers fed the maize, not the soil, which continued to lose fertility, starved for the organic matter provided by more ecological methods such as intercropping and manure applications.

So no one should be surprised to find hunger on the rise. Farmers were not growing much more food. What food they were growing – mostly starchy staples like maize and rice – were less nutritious than the mix of crops they used to grow. And they had little new cash income to purchase more food, never mind a diverse and nutritious diet. Many had less cash as they tried to pay off debts from their failed investments in commercial seeds and fertilizers.

Cosmetic changes, less transparency

International donors have failed to heed African farmers’ calls to change course. Instead, AGRA rolls out new corporate branding, a facelift not the full makeover Africa needs.

At last year’s Green Revolution Forum, attendees were treated to a slick set of videos announcing that the forum was removing the term “green revolution” from its name. Indeed, this year’s gathering calls itself the African Food Systems Summit. And AGRA itself dropped “green revolution” from its name, declaring with no real explanation that it would now just go by its acronym, AGRA.

AGRA literally stands for nothing at this point. Calling its new five-year strategy “AGRA 3.0,” leaders refuse to acknowledge the failures of their Green Revolution model. They keep promoting new versions of the same failed approaches. AGRA continues to foster pro-business policy changes within African governments, like the one it has helped push in Zambia this year. It promotes “agro-poles” – 250,000 acre “farm blocks,” often located on land grabbed from local communities so corporate investors can establish industrial-scale farms.

Like many tech upgrades, AGRA 3.0 gives African farmers less of what they really need, not more.

This year, AGRA’s cosmetic changes include a newly redesigned web site, replete with AGRA’s new logo but missing even the rudimentary progress reports it used to make available to the public. Scrubbed from the site – or conveniently buried in it – is last year’s damning donor-commissioned evaluation, which highlighted AGRA’s many failures to deliver on its promises.

African farmers have a different vision. They want donors and governments to stop supporting the failing Green Revolution initiative and instead shift their support to lower cost, farmer-centered, ecological agriculture. Farmers are producing their own organic fertilizers and pesticides from local materials, with excellent results. The simple and low-cost innovation of “green manure-cover-cropping” has scientists working with some 15 million small-scale maize farmers in Africa to plant local varieties of trees and nitrogen-fixing food crops in their maize fields, tripling maize yields at no cost to the farmer.

The solutions are at hand. It is past time for Green Revolution promoters to put down the shovels and stop digging Africa deeper into hunger.

IPS UN Bureau


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© Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service



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The U.S. Assault on Mexicos Food Sovereignty — Global Issues

  • Opinion by Timothy A. Wise (cambridge, mass.)
  • Inter Press Service

CAMBRIDGE, MASS., Jun 06 (IPS) – On June 2, the U.S. government escalated its conflict with Mexico over that country’s restrictions on genetically modified corn, initiating the formal dispute-resolution process under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).

It is only the latest in a decades-long U.S. assault on Mexico’s food sovereignty using the blunt instrument of a trade agreement that has inundated Mexico with cheap corn, wheat, and other staples, undermining Mexico’s ability to produce its own food. With the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador showing no signs of backing down, the conflict may well test the extent to which a major exporter can use a trade agreement to force a sovereign nation to abandon measures it deems necessary to protect public health and the environment.

The Science of Precaution

The measures in question are those contained in the Mexican president’s decree, announced in late 2020 and updated in February 2023, to ban the cultivation of genetically modified corn, phase out the use of the herbicide glyphosate by 2024, and prohibit the use of genetically modified corn in tortillas and corn flour. The stated goals were to protect public health and the environment, particularly the rich biodiversity of native corn that can be compromised by uncontrolled pollination from GM corn plants.

Where the original decree vowed to phase out all uses of GM corn, the updated decree withdrew restrictions on GM corn in animal feed and industrial products, pending further scientific study of impacts on human health and the environment. Some 96% of U.S. corn exports to Mexico, nearly all of it GM corn, fall in that category. It is unclear how much of the remaining exports, mostly white corn, are destined for Mexico’s tortilla/corn flour industries.

These were significant concessions. After all, there is no trade restriction on GM corn. Mexico is not even restricting GM white corn imports, just their use in tortillas.

Timothy A. WiseNo matter. In the U.S. government’s formal notification that it would initiate consultations preliminary to presenting the dispute to a USMCA arbitration panel, it cites a lack of scientific justification for the measures, denials of some authorizations for new GM products, and Mexico’s stated intention to gradually replace GM corn for all uses with non-GM varieties.

As Mexico’s Economy Ministry noted in its short response, Mexico will show that its current measures have little impact on U.S. exporters, because Mexico is self-sufficient in white and native corn. Any future substitution of non-GM corn will not involve trade restrictions but will come from Mexico’s investments in reducing import dependence by promoting increased domestic production of corn and other key staples. The statement also noted that USMCA’s environment chapter obligates countries to protect biodiversity, and for Mexico, where corn was first domesticated and the diet and culture are so defined by it, corn biodiversity is a top priority.

As for the assertion that Mexico’s concerns about GM corn and glyphosate are not based on science, the USTR action came on the heels of an unprecedented five weeks of public forums convened by Mexico’s national science agencies to assess the risks and dangers. More than fifty Mexican and international experts presented evidence that justifies the precautionary measures taken by the government. (I summarized some of the evidence in an earlier article.)

Three Decades of U.S. Agricultural Dumping

Those measures spring from deep concern about the deterioration of Mexicans’ diets and public health as the country has gradually adopted what some have called “the neoliberal diet.” Mexico has displaced the United States as the world leader in childhood obesity as diets rich in native corn and other traditional foods have been replaced by ultraprocessed foods and beverages high in sugar, salt, and fats. Researchers found that since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was enacted in 1994, the United States has been “exporting obesity.”

The López Obrador government recently stood up to the powerful food and beverage industry to mandate stark warning labels on foods high in those unhealthy ingredients. Its restrictions on GM corn and glyphosate flow from the same commitment to public health.

So does the government’s campaign to reduce import-dependence in key food crops – corn, wheat, rice, beans, and dairy. But as I document in a new IATP policy report, “Swimming Against the Tide,” cheap U.S. exports continue to undermine such efforts.

We documented that in 17 of the 28 years since NAFTA took effect, the United States has exported corn, wheat, rice, and other staple crops at prices below what it cost to produce them. That is an unfair trade practice known as agricultural dumping, and it springs from chronic overproduction of such products in that country’s heavily industrialized agriculture.

Just when NAFTA eliminated many of the policy measures Mexico could use to limit such imports, U.S. overproduction hit a crescendo, the result of its own deregulation of agricultural markets. Corn exports to Mexico jumped more than 400% by 2006, with those exports priced at 19% below what it cost to produce them. Again, from 2014 to 2020, corn prices were 10% below production costs, just as Mexico began seeking to stimulate domestic production.

We calculated that Mexico’s corn farmers lost $3.8 billion in those seven years from depressed prices for their crops. Wheat farmers lost $2.1 billion from U.S. exports priced 27% below production costs.

Thus far, the Mexican government has had little success increasing domestic production of its priority foods, though higher international prices in 2021 and 2022 provided a needed stimulus for farmers.

So too have creative government initiatives, including an innovative public procurement scheme just as the large white corn harvest comes in across northern Mexico. With corn and wheat prices falling some 20% in recent weeks, the government is buying up about 40% of the harvest from small and medium-scale farmers at higher prices with the goal of giving larger producers the bargaining power to then demand higher prices from the large grain-buyers that dominate the tortilla industry.

Swimming Against the Neoliberal Tide

With its commitment to public health, the environment, and increased domestic production of basic staples, the Mexican government is indeed swimming against strong neoliberal tides. Remarkably, it is doing so while still complying with its trade agreement with the United States and Canada.

Before U.S. trade officials further escalate the dispute over GM corn, they should look in the mirror and ask themselves if three decades of agricultural dumping are consistent with the rules of fair international trade. And why Mexico doesn’t have every right to ensure that its tortillas are not tainted with GM corn and glyphosate.

For more on the GM corn controversy, see IATP’s resource page, “Food Sovereignty, Trade, and Mexico’s GMO Corn Policies.”

IPS UN Bureau


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AGRA Gets Make-Up, Not Make-Over — Global Issues

  • Opinion by Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Timothy A. Wise (boston and kuala lumpur)
  • Inter Press Service

BOSTON and KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 29 (IPS) – Despite its dismal record, the Gates Foundation-sponsored Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) announced a new five-year strategy in September after rebranding itself by dropping ‘Green Revolution’ from its name.

Rebranding, not reform
Instead of learning from experience and changing its approach accordingly, AGRA’s new strategy promises more of the same. Ignoring evidence, criticisms and civil society pleas and demands, the Gates Foundation has committed another $200 million to its new five-year plan, bringing its total contribution to around $900 million.

Timothy A. WiseMore than two-thirds of AGRA’s funding has come from Gates, with African governments providing much more – as much as a billion dollars yearly – in subsidies for Green Revolution seeds and fertilizers.

Stung by criticism of its poor results, AGRA delayed announcing its new strategy by a year, while its chief executive shepherded the controversial UN Food Systems Summit of 2021. Following this, AGRA has been using more UN Sustainable Development Goals rhetoric.

Hence, AGRA’s new slogan – ‘Sustainably Growing Africa’s Food Systems’. Likewise, the new plan claims to “lay the foundation for a sustainable food systems-led inclusive agricultural transformation”. But beyond such lip service, there is little evidence of any meaningful commitment to sustainable agriculture in the $550 million plan for 2023–27.

Despite heavy government subsidies, AGRA promotion of commercial seeds and fertilizers for just a few cereal crops failed to significantly increase productivity, incomes or even food security. But instead of addressing past shortcomings, the new plan still relies heavily on more of the same despite its failure to “catalyze” a productivity revolution among African farmers.

Jomo Kwame SundaramThe supposedly new strategy dashes any hopes that AGRA or the Gates Foundation would acknowledge the harmful social and environmental effects of Green Revolutions in India, Africa and elsewhere. AGRA offered no explanation for why it dropped ‘Green Revolution’ from its name.

The name change suggests the 16-year-old AGRA wants to dissociate itself from past failures, but without acknowledging its own flawed approach. Recently, much higher fertilizer prices – following sanctions against Russia and Belarus after the Ukraine invasion – have worsened the lot of farmers relying on AGRA recommended inputs.

It is time to change course, with policies promoting ecological farming by reducing reliance on synthetic fertilizers as appropriate. But despite its new slogan, AGRA’s new strategy intends otherwise.

Last month, the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa rejected the strategy and name change as “cosmetic”, “an admission of failure” of the Green Revolution project, and “a cynical distraction” from the urgent need to change course.

Productivity gains and losses
Despite spending well over a billion dollars, AGRA’s productivity gains have been modest, and only for a few more heavily subsidized crops such as maize and rice. And from 2015 to 2020, cereal yields have not risen at all.

Meanwhile, traditional food crop production has declined under AGRA, with millet falling over a fifth. Yields actually also fell for cassava, groundnuts and root crops such as sweet potato. Across a basket of staple crops, yields rose only 18% in 12 years.

Farmer incomes have not risen, especially after increased production costs are taken into account. As for halving hunger, which Gates and AGRA originally promised, the number of ‘severely undernourished’ people in AGRA’s 13 focus countries increased by 31%!

A donor-commissioned evaluation confirmed many adverse farmer outcomes. It found the minority of farmers who benefited were mainly better-off men, not smallholder women the programme was ostensibly meant for.

That did not deter the Gates Foundation from committing more to AGRA despite its dismal track record, failed strategy, and poor monitoring to track progress. Judging by the new five-year plan, we can expect even less accountability.

The new plan does not even set measurable goals for yields, incomes or food security. As the saying goes, what you don’t measure you don’t value. Apparently, AGRA does not value agricultural productivity, even though it is still at the core of the organization’s strategy.

Last month, the Rockefeller Foundation, AGRA’s other founding donor and a leader of the first Green Revolution from the 1950s, announced a reduction in its grant to AGRA and a decisive step back from the Green Revolution approach.

Its grant to AGRA supports school feeding initiatives and “alternatives to fossil-fuel derived fertilisers and pesticides through the promotion of regenerative agricultural practices such as cultivation of nitrogen-fixing beans”.

Business in charge
AGRA’s new strategy is built on a series of “business lines”, e.g., the “sustainable farming business line” will coordinate with the “Seed Systems business line” to sell inputs. Private Village Based Advisors are meant to provide training and planting advice in this privatized, commercial reincarnation of the government or quasi-government extension services of an earlier era.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization successfully promoted peer-learning of agro-ecological practices via Farmer Field Schools after successfully field-testing them. This came about after research showed ‘brown hoppers’ thrived in Asian rice farms after Green Revolution pesticides eliminated the insect’s natural predators.

China lost a fifth of its 2007-08 paddy harvest to the pest, triggering a price spike in the thinly traded world rice market. Seeking help from the International Rice Research Institute, located in the Philippines, a Chinese delegation found its Entomology Department had lost most of its former capacity due to under-funding.

Earlier international agricultural research collaboration associated with the first Green Revolution – especially in wheat, maize and rice – seems to have collapsed, surrendering to corporate and philanthropic interests. This bitter experience encouraged China to step up its agronomic research efforts with a greater agro-ecological emphasis.

Empty promises?
The new strategy promises “AGRA will promote increased crop diversification at the farm level”. But its advisers cum salespeople have a vested interest in selling their wares, rather than good local seeds which do not require repeat purchases every planting season.

AGRA is not strengthening resilience by promoting agroecology or reducing farmer reliance on costly inputs such as fossil fuel fertilizers and other, often toxic, agrochemicals. Despite many proven African agroecological initiatives, support for them remains modest.

The new strategy stresses irrigation, key to most other Green Revolutions, but conspicuously absent from Africa’s Green Revolution. But the plan is deafeningly silent on how fiscally strapped governments are to provide such crucial infrastructure, especially in the face of growing water, fiscal and debt stress, worsened by global warming.

It is often said stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. Perhaps this is due to the technophile conceit that some favoured innovation is superior to everything else, including scientific knowledge, processes and agro-ecological solutions.

IPS UN Bureau


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