Traditional farming sacrificed to Foreign seed Companies-AFSA

A traditional farmer in Kenya

By Duke Tagoe

Participants at an advocacy workshop organized by the Alliance for Food Sovereignty In Africa (AFSA) in Accra, Ghana have express disapproval of a plant variety protection protocol recently signed by a few African diplomats in Tanzania. The protocol frowns on collective intellectual property rights and will displace indigenous seeds that have formed the backbone of human society since primitive communalism.

Under what has been christened the “Arusha PVP Protocol”, local farmers with small farm sizes but who ensures sustainable agriculture, provide diversity in food crops and who are in the lead of the campaign to eradicate hunger, will be greatly marginalized.

Opanyin Kwame Sekyere, a local organic seed producer from Offuman in the Techiman district of the Brong Ahafo Region of Ghana understands the criminality of the protocol so well. In an exclusive interview with this reporter in February this year, he said “… by soliciting my support to formulate a bill which seeks to make me rich and overcome poverty by registering my seeds but demanding that those seeds must be new, stable, distinct and uniform is like seeking my consent to dress me naked by removing my clothes and then drive me to the streets to be mocked at.

“The seeds I multiply under my huts you find over there were special seeds given to me by my father when I first married my wife. I survive by multiplying the seeds for the farmers in my community who in turn bring me some grains and other crops from their harvest. I also cultivate some of the seeds with my family on my fifteen acres of land. As I understand, the Plant Breeders Bill before the parliament does not accept my seeds and that is why I will not qualify for registration under the bill” he explained.

But the traditional farmer is even more disturbed. According to him, no parliamentarian alive to his responsibilities unless he be a bandit, a rogue or ignorant, will seek to pass a bill which will disrupt his livelihood because he mandates that parliamentarian to represent him.

A full text of the statement issued after the Pan African advocacy workshop is published below unedited;

African governments sell out their farmers in secret seeds protection deal

African governments, ignoring the protests of their farmers and civil society, in July 6, 2015, agreed an oppressive 'plant variety protection protocol' that will open up their countries to commercial seed monopolists, while limiting farmers rights to save, use, exchange, replant, improve, distribute and sell the seeds they have developed over countless generations.

On 6th July 2015, in Arusha, Tanzania, a Diplomatic Conference held under the auspices of the African Regional Intellectual Property Organisation (ARIPO) adopted a harmonised regional legal framework for the protection of plant breeders' rights.

The Arusha Protocol for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants ('Arusha PVP Protocol') is a slightly revised version of a previous Draft ARIPO Protocol for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (the 'ARIPO PVP Protocol').

The previous Draft has come under consistent and severe attack by the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) because it is based on a Convention known as UPOV (International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants) 1991 - a restrictive and inflexible international legal precept, totally unsuitable for Africa.

Crucially, the ARIPO PVP Protocol proposed extremely strong intellectual property rights to breeders while restricting the age-old practices of African farmers freely to save, use, share and sell seeds and/or propagating material.

These practices are the backbone of agricultural systems in Sub-Saharan Africa; they have ensured the production and maintenance of a diverse pool of genetic resources by farmers themselves, and have safeguarded food and nutrition for tens of millions of Africans in the ARIPO region.

Traditional farming sacrificed to seed monopolists

The Arusha PVP Protocol is part of the broader thrust in Africa to ensure regionally seamless and expedited trade in commercially bred seed varieties for the benefit, mainly, of the foreign seed industry. Multinational seed companies intend to lay claim to seed varieties as their private possessions and to prevent others from using these varieties without the payment of royalties.

Germplasm developed by farming households over centuries is increasingly under threat of privatization; and ecologically embedded farming practices risk being destabilised and dislodged.

The broader modernization thrust of which the Arusha PVP Protocol is an intrinsic part, is designed to facilitate the transformation of African agriculture from peasant-based production to inherently inequitable, inappropriate and ecologically damaging Green Revolution/industrial agriculture.

Such a transformation will lead to many farming households being threatened with marginalisation or extinction, without alternative options for survival.

It is worthwhile to note that a 2002 Food and Agriculture Organisation and World Bank study, the 'International Assessment of Knowledge, Science and Technology' (IAASTD), strongly recommended a complete shift away from the Green Revolution's industrial agriculture to agroecology.

Exclusion of African civil society

Despite AFSA's well-established track record of constructive engagement with ARIPO on the Draft ARIPO PVP Protocol, and despite it being a Pan African network of African regional farmers and NGOs, working with millions of African farmers and consumers, AFSA was purposely excluded from the Arusha deliberations.

This restriction stands in sharp contrast to inclusion in the deliberations of the UPOV Secretariat, and other foreign entities, including the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) the European Community Plant Variety Office (CPVO) and the French National Seed and Seedling Association (GNIS). The commercial seed industry (e.g. the African Seed Trade Association (AFSTA)) was particularly well represented.

The Arusha PVP Protocol has major implications for national decision-making. AFSA's exclusion is a violation of the right of farmers to participate in decision-making on matters related to plant genetic resources for food and agriculture (Article 9.2(c ) of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA).

Least Developed Countries and sui generis options             

Upon adoption, the Arusha PVP Protocol was immediately signed by representatives of the governments of Ghana, Mozambique, Sao Tome and Principe, and the Gambia. Ironically, Mozambique, the Gambia and Sao Tome and Principe are defined as Least Developed Countries (LDCs), along with a further 10 of the 19 members of ARIPO - some of the poorest countries in the world.

LDCs are currently not under any international obligation to provide any form of plant variety protection until 2021, let alone one based on UPOV 1991! In any event, all countries have an option to develop sui generis (i.e. unique) plant variety protection systems that cater for their specific conditions.

Acceptance of the Arusha PVP Protocol will eliminate this option. Smaller countries are bullied into accepting their subordination to regional bodies that are dominated by more powerful foreign countries and multinational corporate interests.

The countries involved as ARIPO members are Botswana, The Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, São Tomé and Príncipe, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Swaziland, United Republic of Tanzania, Uganda Zambia and Zimbabwe.

National sovereignty and slight changes

During the deliberations in Arusha, several delegations raised serious concerns that the Draft ARIPO PVP Protocol eroded national sovereignty because of the extensive decision-making powers vested in the ARIPO Plant Breeders Rights Office (PBRO), which operates at a regional level.

The government of Malawi, in particular, said that this would "have a demeaning and nullifying effect". Consequently, after long hours of negotiation, changes were made that now give Contracting States an explicit right to object to any Plant Breeders' Right (PBR) - as granted by the ARIPO PBRO, regionally - in which event the PBR will not be awarded national protection.

Further, Contracting States and not the ARIPO PBRO will have the right to issue compulsory licenses in the public interest.

Notwithstanding these changes, a centralised regional PVP approval system will be established and the ARIPO PBRO will have full authority to grant and administer breeders' rights on behalf of all Contracting States (e.g. to decide whether or not to grant protection, nullify or cancel PBRs, etc).

These regionally granted PBRs will have a uniform effect in all Contracting States. Expediently, Contracting States will be required to put scarce public resources at the disposal of breeders to enforce breeders' rights at the national level.

Joining UPOV 1991 - and shirking ITPGRFA-guaranteed farmers' rights

The Arusha PVP Protocol will come into force when four member states of ARIPO ratify it. In April 2014 the UPOV Council, at the cost of breaking its own rules, verified that the Draft ARIPO PVP Protocol conformed to the 1991 Act of the UPOV Convention, allowing ARIPO itself as well as ARIPO Members that ratify the Protocol, to become Parties to the 1991 UPOV Convention.

With the new changes, to become a member of UPOV 1991, ARIPO will have to re-submit the Arusha PVP Protocol to the UPOV Council, to reassess its conformity with the 1991 Act.

Hence AFSA calls on UPOV members to reject the Arusha PVP Protocol. On numerous occasions AFSA has challenged the legitimacy of the whole process-leading up to and culminating in the adoption of the Arusha PVP Protocol.

AFSA has also indicated, in many public statements during discussions on the Protocol, that UPOV 1991 restricts farmers' rights to save, exchange and sell farm-saved-seed and/or the propagating material of protected varieties in their possession.

Farmers' rights are recognised in the ITPGRFA yet this has been ignored by the 14 member states of ARIPO that are also Parties to the ITPGRFA. By adopting the Arusha PVP Protocol these countries have placed the rights of plant breeders ahead of farmers' rights.

AFSA vows to continue struggle for seed sovereignty

AFSA is vehemently opposed to the Arusha PVP Protocol. This Protocol's underlying imperatives are to increase corporate seed imports, reduce breeding activity at the national level, and facilitate the monopoly by foreign companies of local seed systems and the disruption of traditional farming systems.

AFSA remains committed to ensuring that farmers, as breeders and users, remain at the centre of localised seed production systems and continue to exercise their rights freely to save, use, exchange, replant, improve, distribute and sell all the seed in their seed systems.

………………………………

BERNARD GURI,

CHAIRPERSON

ALLIANCE FOR FOOD SOVEREIGNTY IN AFRICA

ACCRA, AUGUST 8, 2015,

EXPORT-LED DEVELOPMENT IS A PROBLEM

Edward Kareweh

By Duke Tagoe

Edward Kareweh, Deputy General Secretary of the General Agricultural Workers Union of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) has called on the Government to move away from the export led development mindset. That mindset, he said, is as an ideological orientation which retards progress.

Pointing to a major flaw in government policy, he explained that our continuing support for every production that leads to export of raw materials reinforces our dependency because we do not produce what we consume at home.

“To use state resources to meet the taste of foreign consumers and further the development needs of external people is detrimental to the national interest and runs contrary to the principles that underline nation building.

Edward Kareweh was speaking at a workshop organized to evaluate the benefit of the Export Trade, Agricultural and Industrial Development Fund (EDAIF) for small holder farmers in the Brong Ahafo, Greater Accra and the Northern Regions.

The Export Development and Investment Fund (EDIF) currently the Export Trade, Agricultural and Industrial Development Fund (EDAIF) was established by the Export Development and Investment Fund Act, 2000 (Act 582), and it became operational in 2001 as an agency of the Ministry of Trade and Industry.

The act was, however, amended in 2001 by the Export Development and Investment Fund (Amendment) Act, 2011 (Act 823), to expand the scope of application of the fund to include the development and promotion of agro-processing industry, hence the change of the name of the fund to EDAIF.

EDAIF operates by handing over money to designated financial instructions or banks like Stanchart, Stanbic and the ADB. These banks then evaluate prospective applicants to find out about their financial viability before they get the funding. The challenge for many farmers is that they need to write proposals which are assessed to find out if they meet the criteria. This presents a challenge for most farmers who cannot read nor write good proposals.

In spite of the concerns raised, Micheal Awuku, a top official at the EDAIF Secretariat says export oriented development is the bulwark of the economic policy of the Government of Ghana  adding that the main thrust of Government's foreign trade policy has been the endorsement of Private Sector led export development. He said the policy would offer the country substantial increase in foreign exchange receipts and appreciable opportunity for growth but Ben Kanati, a rice farmer from Ashaiman disagrees.

According to him funding that encourages the production of cash crops for foreign markets does not benefit small holders who produce local and indigenous crops to feed the majority of the Ghanaian people. “That attitude deprives local farmers of the needed revenue to expand and grow more to meet the local market. On the other hand pressure builds for lower tariffs for already highly subsidised imported goods which in turn affect government’s tax revenue. When that happens, it constrains government space and we end up going to borrow from IMF and the World Bank with attendant negative social consequences.

The primary source of funding for the EDAIF fund is money realized from the divestiture of state enterprises.

Madam Victoria Adongo, Programmes Officer of the Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana says small farmers also want to go commercial by expanding not for export but to meet the increasing demand for the local market. According to her, a halt in the import of frozen chicken and support to the local poultry industry will also benefit maize and soya farmers because they provide quality feed for the poultry industry. 

In his contribution to the discussion, Kweku Boateng, a vegetable farmer explained that South Africa has the biggest vegetable market in the world because the government set up councils to support farmers. According to him, vegetable farmers in Johannesburg for instance send their produce to the Johannesberg Food Council who buys them and sell on the local market. Cocoyam, potato and cassava farmers have grades which determine the prices of their produce.

Mr Boateng is calling on EDAIF to use the money in their possession to build infrastructure and make markets available for farmers to sell the product of their labour, make money and thereby remove the over reliance on grant and credit facilities.

GM AND SEED INDUSTRY EYE WEST AFRICA’S LUCRATIVE COWPEA SEED MARKET

The African Centre for Biodiversity
www.acbio.org.za
PO Box 29170, Melville 2109 South Africa
Tel: +27 (0)11 486 1156

The African Centre for Biodiversity (ACB) has today released a new report titled, GM and seed industry eye Africa’s lucrative cowpea seed markets: The political economy of cowpea in Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Ghana and Malawi.  The report shows a strong interest by the seed industry in commercialising cowpea seed production and distribution in West Africa, where a very lucrative regional cowpea seed market is emerging. Cowpea, one of the most ancient crops known to humankind, with its centre of origin in Southern Africa, provides the earliest food for millions of Africans during the ‘hungry season’ before cereals mature.

The report argues that the GM cowpea push in Burkina Faso, Nigeria and Ghana co-incides with this strong interest from multinational and local seed companies to produce foundation and certified seed in West Africa.

Commercialising Seed Production
According to Mariam Mayet of the ACB, “There is a corporate push backed by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the G8 New Alliance on Food Security and Nutrition to harmonise seed laws and intellectual property rights legislation on the basis of the Union for the Protection of Plant Varieties (UPOV) 1991. This push seeks to create regional markets for crops that otherwise would not have the economies of scale for corporate investment. Corporate investment in regional seed markets relies on varieties being released onto regional lists and that are immediately made available at national levels without further trials. It is within this context that the push for the harmonisation of seed laws at regional levels must be understood.”

According to the ACB, the danger of commercialisation of seed production is that it is accompanied by the locking out of smallholder farmers from seed production and distribution- essential life processes in African agriculture. Farmers will be transformed from active participants in the cowpea value chain, to mere passive consumers of expensive certified seed produced elsewhere.

The GM cowpea push
The pro-GM organisation, the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF), is spearheading a GM cowpea project aimed at commercially growing  Bt cowpea in Nigeria, Ghana, Burkina Faso. Field trials of the Bt cowpea underway in Nigeria and Burkina Faso are at advanced stages, with commercialisation expected in 2016/17. The GM cowpea project is funded by USAID, the United Kingdom's Department for International Development (DFID) and the Rockefeller Foundation. The GM cowpea contains the Cry1Ab Bt gene developed by Monsanto. The genetic engineering of the Bt cowpea was conducted by the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, previously involved in a biosafety scandal.

GM cowpea threatens food sovereignty
Mariann Bassey-Orovwuje of Environment Rights Action Nigeria concurs with the ACB report that the the introduction of GM cowpea “will pose a serious threat to food sovereignty in West Africa where cowpea occupies a clearly defined social, economic, nutritional and agro-ecological niche. Cowpea connects agriculture to the local environment; consumers to locally produced healthy foods; and farmers to productive resources such as locally enhanced seeds. The commercialisation of cowpea seed production in Africa will dislocate such a locally interconnected system.”

Reductionist solution
The GM cowpea is engineered to be resistant to the Maruca legume pod borer on the basis that “farmers in West Africa have identified Maruca insects as major problems in cowpea production.”

However, according to the ACB report, farmers are confronted with a myriad of agronomic and post-harvest challenges. The Bt solution responds only to one narrow aspect of production (pod borer), and it requires a significant increase in input cost, despite viable methods of biological control already in practice amongst farmers.

Dangerous opening for commercialising seed production
According to Bern Guri of CIKOD in Ghana, “Traditional farming practices based on recycling farm-saved seed and the use of locally-adapted seed varieties are threatened by a transgenic variety of cowpea that would set a precedent for the systematic commodification of cowpea seeds. Farmers can ill afford the costs of GM seeds and the associated agro-chemical inputs required by the use of these seeds. The high prices that characterise the GM technological package will contribute to jeopardising already fragile socio-economic systems.”

Risk to human health and environment
Bright Phiri from Commons for EcoJustice in Malawi, is also concerned that the Bt cowpea has been developed using the Cry1Ab gene, the same gene contained in Monsanto’s GM maize event, MON810. According to Phiri “the health risks associated with MON810 have been clearly established and are deeply concerning.”

The report also cautions that the Bt-gene will escape from domesticated to wild and cultivated cowpea, which will trigger unknown and irreversible adverse ecological impacts.

Socially just and ecologically sustainable solutions
The report concludes that rather than promoting a tragically flawed agricultural development model that brings enormous risks, solutions are to be found in more sustainable social, economic and agro-ecological food production systems.  The ACB continues to insist that an equitable and sustainable solution to seed production and distribution can only come from direct engagement with farmers and their organisations to ensure their active involvement in these activities.

 Ends

Contact:

Mariam Mayet: mariam@acbio.org.za
Bern Guri: guribern@gmail.com
 Mariann Bassey-Orovwuje mariann@eraction.org
Bright Phiri: bmphiri@live.com

The GM genocide: Thousands of Indian farmers are committing suicide after using genetically modified crops

An Indian Farmer

By Andrew Malone

When Prince Charles claimed thousands of Indian farmers were killing themselves after using GM crops, he was branded a scaremonger. In fact, as this chilling dispatch reveals, it’s even WORSE than he feared.

The children were inconsolable. Mute with shock and fighting back tears, they huddled beside their mother as friends and neighbours prepared their father’s body for cremation on a blazing bonfire built on the cracked, barren fields near their home.

As flames consumed the corpse, Ganjanan, 12, and Kalpana, 14, faced a grim future. While Shankara Mandaukar had hoped his son and daughter would have a better life under India’s economic boom, they now face working as slave labour for a few pence a day. Landless and homeless, they will be the lowest of the low.

Shankara, respected farmer, loving husband and father, had taken his own life. Less than 24 hours earlier, facing the loss of his land due to debt, he drank a cupful of chemical insecticide.

Unable to pay back the equivalent of two years’ earnings, he was in despair. He could see no way out.

There were still marks in the dust where he had writhed in agony. Other villagers looked on – they knew from experience that any intervention was pointless – as he lay doubled up on the ground, crying out in pain and vomiting.

Moaning, he crawled on to a bench outside his simple home 100 miles from Nagpur in central India. An hour later, he stopped making any noise. Then he stopped breathing. At 5pm on Sunday, the life of Shankara Mandaukar came to an end.

As neighbours gathered to pray outside the family home, Nirmala Mandaukar, 50, told how she rushed back from the fields to find her husband dead. ‘He was a loving and caring man,’ she said, weeping quietly.

‘But he couldn’t take any more. The mental anguish was too much. We have lost everything.’

Shankara’s crop had failed – twice. Of course, famine and pestilence are part of India’s ancient story.

But the death of this respected farmer has been blamed on something far more modern and sinister: genetically modified crops.

Shankara, like millions of other Indian farmers, had been promised previously unheard of harvests and income if he switched from farming with traditional seeds to planting GM seeds instead.

Beguiled by the promise of future riches, he borrowed money in order to buy the GM seeds. But when the harvests failed, he was left with spiralling debts – and no income.

So Shankara became one of an estimated 125,000 farmers to take their own life as a result of the ruthless drive to use India as a testing ground for genetically modified crops.

The crisis, branded the ‘GM Genocide’ by campaigners, was highlighted recently when Prince Charles claimed that the issue of GM had become a ‘global moral question’ – and the time had come to end its unstoppable march.

Speaking by video link to a conference in the Indian capital, Delhi, he infuriated bio-tech leaders and some politicians by condemning ‘the truly appalling and tragic rate of small farmer suicides in India, stemming… from the failure of many GM crop varieties’.

Ranged against the Prince are powerful GM lobbyists and prominent politicians, who claim that genetically modified crops have transformed Indian agriculture, providing greater yields than ever before.

The rest of the world, they insist, should embrace ‘the future’ and follow suit.

So who is telling the truth? To find out, I travelled to the ‘suicide belt’ in Maharashtra state.

What I found was deeply disturbing – and has profound implications for countries, including Britain, debating whether to allow the planting of seeds manipulated by scientists to circumvent the laws of nature.

For official figures from the Indian Ministry of Agriculture do indeed confirm that in a huge humanitarian crisis, more than 1,000 farmers kill themselves here each month.

Simple, rural people, they are dying slow, agonising deaths. Most swallow insecticide – a pricey substance they were promised they would not need when they were coerced into growing expensive GM crops.

It seems that many are massively in debt to local money-lenders, having over-borrowed to purchase GM seed.

Pro-GM experts claim that it is rural poverty, alcoholism, drought and ‘agrarian distress’ that is the real reason for the horrific toll.

But, as I discovered during a four-day journey through the epicentre of the disaster, that is not the full story.

In one small village I visited, 18 farmers had committed suicide after being sucked into GM debts. In some cases, women have taken over farms from their dead husbands – only to kill themselves as well.

Latta Ramesh, 38, drank insecticide after her crops failed – two years after her husband disappeared when the GM debts became too much.

She left her ten-year-old son, Rashan, in the care of relatives. ‘He cries when he thinks of his mother,’ said the dead woman’s aunt, sitting listlessly in shade near the fields.

Village after village, families told how they had fallen into debt after being persuaded to buy GM seeds instead of traditional cotton seeds.

The price difference is staggering: £10 for 100 grams of GM seed, compared with less than £10 for 1,000 times more traditional seeds.

But GM salesmen and government officials had promised farmers that these were ‘magic seeds’ – with better crops that would be free from parasites and insects.

Indeed, in a bid to promote the uptake of GM seeds, traditional varieties were banned from many government seed banks.

The authorities had a vested interest in promoting this new biotechnology. Desperate to escape the grinding poverty of the post-independence years, the Indian government had agreed to allow new bio-tech giants, such as the U.S. market-leader Monsanto, to sell their new seed creations.

In return for allowing western companies access to the second most populated country in the world, with more than one billion people, India was granted International Monetary Fund loans in the Eighties and Nineties, helping to launch an economic revolution.

But while cities such as Mumbai and Delhi have boomed, the farmers’ lives have slid back into the dark ages.

Though areas of India planted with GM seeds have doubled in two years – up to 17 million acres – many famers have found there is a terrible price to be paid.

Far from being ‘magic seeds’, GM pest-proof ‘breeds’ of cotton have been devastated by bollworms, a voracious parasite.

Nor were the farmers told that these seeds require double the amount of water. This has proved a matter of life and death.

With rains failing for the past two years, many GM crops have simply withered and died, leaving the farmers with crippling debts and no means of paying them off.

Having taken loans from traditional money lenders at extortionate rates, hundreds of thousands of small farmers have faced losing their land as the expensive seeds fail, while those who could struggle on faced a fresh crisis.

When crops failed in the past, farmers could still save seeds and replant them the following year.

But with GM seeds they cannot do this. That’s because GM seeds contain so- called ‘terminator technology’, meaning that they have been genetically modified so that the resulting crops do not produce viable seeds of their own.

As a result, farmers have to buy new seeds each year at the same punitive prices. For some, that means the difference between life and death.

Take the case of Suresh Bhalasa, another farmer who was cremated this week, leaving a wife and two children.

As night fell after the ceremony, and neighbours squatted outside while sacred cows were brought in from the fields, his family had no doubt that their troubles stemmed from the moment they were encouraged to buy BT Cotton, a genetically modified plant created by Monsanto.

‘We are ruined now,’ said the dead man’s 38-year-old wife. ‘We bought 100 grams of BT Cotton. Our crop failed twice. My husband had become depressed. He went out to his field, lay down in the cotton and swallowed insecticide.’

Villagers bundled him into a rickshaw and headed to hospital along rutted farm roads. ‘He cried out that he had taken the insecticide and he was sorry,’ she said, as her family and neighbours crowded into her home to pay their respects. ‘He was dead by the time they got to hospital.’

Asked if the dead man was a ‘drunkard’ or suffered from other ‘social problems’, as alleged by pro-GM officials, the quiet, dignified gathering erupted in anger. ‘No! No!’ one of the dead man’s brothers exclaimed. ‘Suresh was a good man. He sent his children to school and paid his taxes.

‘He was strangled by these magic seeds. They sell us the seeds, saying they will not need expensive pesticides but they do. We have to buy the same seeds from the same company every year. It is killing us. Please tell the world what is happening here.’

Monsanto has admitted that soaring debt was a ‘factor in this tragedy’. But pointing out that cotton production had doubled in the past seven years, a spokesman added that there are other reasons for the recent crisis, such as ‘untimely rain’ or drought, and pointed out that suicides have always been part of rural Indian life.

Officials also point to surveys saying the majority of Indian farmers want GM seeds  -  no doubt encouraged to do so by aggressive marketing tactics.

During the course of my inquiries in Maharastra, I encountered three ‘independent’ surveyors scouring villages for information about suicides. They insisted that GM seeds were only 50 per cent more expensive – and then later admitted the difference was 1,000 per cent.

(A Monsanto spokesman later insisted their seed is ‘only double’ the price of ‘official’ non-GM seed – but admitted that the difference can be vast if cheaper traditional seeds are sold by ‘unscrupulous’ merchants, who often also sell ‘fake’ GM seeds which are prone to disease.)

With rumours of imminent government compensation to stem the wave of deaths, many farmers said they were desperate for any form of assistance. ‘We just want to escape from our problems,’ one said. ‘We just want help to stop any more of us dying.’

Prince Charles is so distressed by the plight of the suicide farmers that he is setting up a charity, the Bhumi Vardaan Foundation, to help those affected and promote organic Indian crops instead of GM.

India’s farmers are also starting to fight back. As well as taking GM seed distributors hostage and staging mass protests, one state government is taking legal action against Monsanto for the exorbitant costs of GM seeds.

This came too late for Shankara Mandauker, who was 80,000 rupees (about £1,000) in debt when he took his own life. ‘I told him that we can survive,’ his widow said, her children still by her side as darkness fell. ‘I told him we could find a way out. He just said it was better to die.’

But the debt does not die with her husband: unless she can find a way of paying it off, she will not be able to afford the children’s schooling. They will lose their land, joining the hordes seen begging in their thousands by the roadside throughout this vast, chaotic country.

Cruelly, it’s the young who are suffering most from the ‘GM Genocide’  -  the very generation supposed to be lifted out of a life of hardship and misery by these ‘magic seeds’.

Here in the suicide belt of India, the cost of the genetically modified future is murderously high.

Experimenting With Life

David Suzuki, a Geneticist

By David Suzuki

I am a geneticist by training. At one time, I had one of the largest research grants and genetics labs in Canada. The time I spent in this lab was one of the happiest periods of my life and I am proud of the contribution we made to science. My introductory book is still the most widely used genetics text in the world.

When I graduated as a geneticist in 1961, I was full of enthusiasm and determined to make a mark. Back then we knew about DNA, genes, chromosomes, and genetic regulation. But today when I tell students what our hot ideas were in '61, they choke with laughter. Viewed in 2013, ideas from 1961 seem hilarious. But when those students become professors years from now and tell their students what was hot in 2013, their students will be just as amused.

At the cutting edge of scientific research, most of our ideas are far from the mark - wrong, in need of revision, or irrelevant. That's not a derogation of science; it's the way science advances. We take a set of observations or data, set up a hypothesis that makes sense of them, and then we test the hypothesis. The new insights and techniques we gain from this process are interpreted tentatively and liable to change, so any rush to apply them strikes me as downright dangerous.

No group of experts should be more aware of the hazards of unwarranted claims than geneticists. After all, it was the exuberance of geneticists early in this century that led to the creation of a discipline called eugenics, which aimed to improve the quality of human genes.

 These scientists were every bit as clever, competent, and well-meaning as today's genetic engineers; they just got carried away with their discoveries. Outlandish claims were made by eminent geneticists about the hereditary nature of traits such as drunkenness, nomadism, and criminality, as well as those judged "inferior" or "superior." Those claims provided scientific respectability to legislation in the US prohibiting interracial marriage and immigration from countries judged inferior, and allowed sterilization of inmates of mental institutions on genetic grounds. In Nazi Germany, geneticist Josef Mengele held peer-reviewed research grants for his work at Auschwitz. The grand claims of geneticists led to "race purification" laws and the Holocaust.

Today, the leading-edge of genetics is in the field of biotechnology. The basis of this new area is the ability to take DNA (genetic material) from one organism and insert it into a different species. This is truly revolutionary. Human beings can't normally exchange genes with a carrot or a mouse, but with DNA technology it can happen.

However, history informs us that though we love technology, there are always costs, and since our knowledge of how nature works is so limited, we can't anticipate how those costs will manifest. We only have to reflect on DDT, nuclear power, and CFCs, which were hailed as wonderful creations but whose long-term detrimental effects were only found decades after their widespread use.

Now, with a more wise and balanced perspective, we are cutting back on the use of these technologies. But with genetically modified (GM) foods, this option may not be available. The difference with GM food is that once the genie is out of the bottle, it will be difficult or impossible to stuff it back. If we stop using DDT and CFCs, nature may be able to undo most of the damage - even nuclear waste decays over time. But GM plants are living organisms. Once these new life forms have become established in our surroundings, they can replicate, change, and spread; there may be no turning back. Many ecologists are concerned about what this means to the balance of life on Earth that has evolved over millions of years through the natural reproduction of species.

Genomes are selected in the entirety of their expression. In ways we barely comprehend, the genes within a species are interconnected and interact as an integrated whole. When a gene from an unrelated species is introduced, the context within which it finds itself is completely changed. If a taiko drum is plunked in the middle of a symphony orchestra and plays along, it is highly probable the resultant music will be pretty discordant. Yet based on studies of gene behavior derived from studies within a species, biotechnologists assume that those rules will also apply to genes transferred between species. This is totally unwarranted.

As we learned from experience with DDT, nuclear power and CFCs, we only discover the costs of new technologies after they are extensively used. We should apply the Precautionary Principle with any new technology, asking whether it is needed and then demanding proof that it is not harmful. Nowhere is this more important than in biotechnology because it enables us to tamper with the very blueprint of life.

Since GM foods are now in our diet, we have become experimental subjects without any choice. (Europeans say if they want to know whether GMOs are hazardous, they should just study North Americans.) I would have preferred far more experimentation with GMOs under controlled lab conditions before their release into the open, but it's too late.

We have learned from painful experience that anyone entering an experiment should give informed consent. That means at the very least food should be labeled if it contains GMOs so we each can make that choice.

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David T Suzuki PhD is an award-winning scientist, environmentalist and broadcaster. Web:www.davidsuzuki.org

The Riddle of Capitalism

Karl Marx

By Kamal Wadhwa

Everywhere today capitalism is on the ascendant; whether it is in India, China, Russia, Bangladesh or Vietnam. This greatest of man-engineered follies has come on its own at a time when millions of people around the world are on the streets looking for employment.

Whether it's Spain, Greece, Turkey or France, the numbers of the unemployed continue to grow, threatening the integrity and stability of the world order that has withstood such crises resolutely in the past without any great damage to its social and ideological fabric.

Except that now there is no socialism or communism to give hope to the jobless peasant and proletariat; all must hearken to distant lands and faraway destinations to find work, any work that can feed the belly and clothe the body.

What has gone so wrong with the international order so as to create this calamity of monstrous proportions that cannot be contained either by force or legal fiat?

It is really the systematic and relentless dismantling of the socialist and communist societies of yore by sustained pressure from the West that has spawned this maelstrom from which no country can emerge unscathed.

The destruction of scores of stable economies brought about by the onslaught of the structural adjustment reforms initiated by the WTO under the aegis of the United States has meant that the jobless have nowhere to go except into the streets at the slightest provocation or by reduction of their means by austerity drives  launched by their governments.

At one time these jobless people had seen enormous prosperity and an enviable standard of living before the recession began to bite into their livelihoods. Most of these people are unskilled workers, menials, casual laborers and the like, and were formerly employed in large capitalist enterprises that finally folded up due to slackening demand for their manufactures.

In ten years of time from now, if these people are not given some kind of gainful employment, any employment, they may well become the detritus of humanity with gaping mouths and outstretched hands, grasping for any coin or crumb of food thrown to them. These people indeed are the victims of capitalism who aren't supposed to eat when they don't work.

Perhaps the human conscience has hardened in the decades of unparalleled prosperity witnessed by the global order after WWII. Now, aid for the hungry nations is no longer forthcoming from the few capitalist nations that are still prosperous - only fancier and fancier loan packages with punishing conditions so as to make them totally unpalatable to any decent government in need.

 Prime Ministers and Presidents have come and gone from the contagion-affected nations without being able to arrive at any solution to their countries' problems in spite of possessing enormous influence and persuasive power in the capitals of Europe and North America.

However, the so-called "emerging economies" of Southeast Asia seem to be enjoying enormous riches and unprecedented standards of living without being affected by the contagion in Europe. Indeed, the "tiger" economies of South Korea, Thailand, the Philippines and Malaysia and others in their vicinity, owe their prosperity to the capitalist ideas of development adopted by their leaders.

The emerging tiger economies of Southeast Asia are manufacturing everything, ranging from fans to furniture to futuristic machines and nuclear equipment. Yet all these countries have a vested interest in exporting their output to North America and Europe, if possible, or to other underdeveloped nations in Latin America, the Middle East and those in close proximity, at cheap rates, far cheaper than the competition from Japan, Western Europe and North America.

All the tiger economies are optimistic about the future; most are beefing up their defense outlays and military budgets in keeping with the rise in their GDP. Even China, that last surviving bastion of communism, has diluted its socialist ideology to pave the way for capitalist reforms. It is also actively seeking entry and full membership into the World Trade Organization (WTO).

So great is the confidence of China's leaders in making their country an "economic powerhouse" that in the future will rival and even surpass the United States in almost every branch of economic endeavor!

The United States, too, has given full marks to China and considers it to be an economic and military power to be reckoned and engaged with. It has also expressed its willingness to join China in shaping the global political and military scenario in the decades to come since Russia seems to have retreated from those responsibilities due to pressing economic concerns at home.

The basic, fundamental and underlying problem with the emerging economies (including that of China) of Southeast Asia is the same in-built flaw that seems to be crippling vast regions of Europe today. How long can China continue to make and sell its output when there is an equally hungry band of tiger economies that is vying for the same markets that China now dominates?

How much demand can North America and Western Europe generate for China and the other tiger economies when the cry for self-reliance and self-sufficiency through indigenous manufacturing is becoming more vocal and strident in almost every country from South America to Turkey? No leader worth his mettle can still glibly talk of importing electrical generators from South Korea or Thailand when the domestic industries too are beginning to show undue interest in bagging these contracts.

Japan is a beggar nation; so greatly dependant it is on selling its output to the United States and Western Europe and adapt to the resultant influence on its foreign policy. China, too, could follow Japan's example and learn to beg and bow before America just so that it can release its goods in the latter country. Indeed, China, that much-touted economic powerhouse, could collapse like a pack of cards if its goods are denied entry into North America and Western Europe through imposition of crippling tariffs.

Then, too, the West led by the United States, has an active interest in seeing its other trade partners and allies, such as South Korea and Thailand, exploit and benefit from its markets. Can China maintain the current momentum of its consumer exports after the next decade or so? Who will it then turn to sell its wares in a market that is increasingly crowded with cheaper competitors? Will it use force to open up markets in Southeast Asia where traditionally it has exercised hegemony?

That dispensation is unlikely because even the victims of China's past hegemony have developed military teeth and claws with American help.

This, then, is the riddle of capitalism, its' tragic dialectic: waves of unprecedented prosperity followed by periods of prolonged poverty and destitution on a massive scale. If those countries of Europe that are suffering from the contagion of structural adjustment policies do not adopt a planned and rational approach to their economic and social development, then even genocide is possible if the numbers of unemployed continue to grow at the present rate.

The same is true of China and the emerging economies of Southeast Asia.

Socialism may yet find a solution to present-day problems if the rich countries curb their greed and desist from launching smear and propaganda campaigns to malign it, especially through the western media with its distorted news coverage and yellow journalism.                                

NOTE: The author is an Honors graduate in Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities from the University of Chicago and has studied Political Science and Economics at Albright College in Reading, Pennsylvania.  In addition, he was a student in Public Administration and Economic & Social Development at the University of Pittsburgh.