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"Poor-washing" is the common public relations tactic of concealing bitterly unfair and predatory trade policies that create and deepen hunger and poverty with clouds of hypocritical noise about feeding the hungry and alleviating poverty. It's hard to imagine a better case of media poor-washing than the hype around the recently announced $150 million "gifts" of the Gates and Rockerfeller Foundations to the cause of reforming African agriculture, feeding that continent's impoverished millions and sparking an African "Green Revolution"...

Last year, the Gates Foundation hired former Monsanto VP Robert Robert Horsch as senior officer for Africa.

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Then came the massive P.R. campaign about Gates' new-found philanthropy; and particularly his concern for Africa. It seemed he had perhaps realized he couldn't take it with him.

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Ever since humans started farming about ten thousand years ago, farmers have saved the seed from one year’s crop to produce the next, and freely exchanged seed with neighbors and friends.  If the Bush administration and its friends at Monsanto and other “life-sciences” corporations get their way it will soon be illegal in much of the world.

“The problem with farmers exchanging seeds, and saving seeds and planting seeds,” says Michael Dorsey, a professor of International Environmental Policy at Dartmouth University, “is that corporations don’t make any money off it.” 

The latest move in the decades-long campaign by the corporate “life-science industry” to horn in on this ancient and unprofitable practice is the patenting and introduction of the so-called “terminator seed.” Arguably the most fiendish product yet devised by corporate genetic engineers, and in the United States, the least known, terminator gene technology prevents this year’s crop from producing next year’s seed, thus obliging otherwise ungrateful farmers to return to distributors for each year’s seed.  As patent holder, the US Department of Agriculture intends to license and implement this obscene technology worldwide, applying it to food crops including maize, wheat and rice, which are the staples of much of the developing world.  The aim of US corporate biopirates is eventually to make impossible the saving and preserving of next year’s seed from this year’s crop anyplace on earth, while guaranteeing themselves a no-risk profit any time a farmer plants anywhere in the world.

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It used to be that such NGO as the USC had projects in Africa to help local farmers collect and trade indigenous seeds. I have no idea if such programs still exist. I do remember reading some many months ago that South Africa's use of GMOs had increased by an astronomical amount in the last few years.

Here is an excerpt from an older Z-Net article on the US push for biotech takeover of the global South.

Bush's Biotech Bullies vs. The World

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The conference opening plenary says it all: “How science and technology, in a supportive policy environment, can drive agricultural productivity increases and economic growth to alleviate world hunger and poverty”.

Other sessions include: “Food security and the promise of new technologies”, “Attracting foreign and domestic investment in the agricultural economy”, “Fighting Hunger and increasing incomes with biotechnology”, and “Combating Malnutrition, disease, and HIV/AIDS: Food-based intervention”.

As Hope Shand of the ETC Group recently wrote in the NY Times (27 May): “There is no scientific evidence that genetically modified foods are cheaper, safer, better-tasting or more nutritious. Lacking consumer benefits for its genetically modified crops, the biotech industry is desperately seeking moral legitimacy”. Expo exhibitors include biotech giants Monsanto and DuPont (Qualicon), CropLife America (whose members read like a who’s who of US agribusiness/biotechnology corporations), and DC-based International Food Information Council (funded by US food, beverage and agricultural industry and an advocate of biotech). Food irradiation corporations like Ottawa-headquartered MDS Nordion, and San Diego-based Surebeam (sponsor for the Expo grand opening) will also be there. Food irradiation, a technology which brings together the food processing, agribusiness, medical science and nuclear industries is highly controversial. US agribusiness researcher and campaigner Al Krebs writes: “Critics of irradiation believe it is really not only just a quick (and temporary) fix for poor slaughterhouse sanitation, but also a way of disposing of nuclear wastes by selling them to private industry and leaving the taxpayers to fund the inevitable clean-up costs.”

Agriculture remains a hugely contentious trade issue, with the EU and US in apparent stalemate in WTO negotiations. Many countries in the South are resisting pressure to make yet more concessions on a range of issues, including agriculture, saying that the system is based on double standards which favour the powerful, and that the promised benefits of free trade have not materialized.

The USDA, USAID and the State Department are advancing US geopolitical and corporate interests internationally, and a market model of development which has caused ecological and human devastation, both in the South and in the USA. These agencies work to promote biotechnology as a “solution” to hunger. USAID has been promoting agricultural biotechnology for over a decade. The title of its recent policy document, “Foreign Policy in the National Interest: Promoting Freedom, Security and Opportunity” speaks volumes about the agency’s agenda. Hegemony, not humanitarian assistance. Principled opposition to biotechnology on health, environmental, ethical and other grounds, such as African countries decisions to refuse GE food aid are viewed as a new “axis of evil” to be overcome.

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