African farmers need self determination, not Monsanto-s biotechnology

Dole and Jamaica.

I learn so much reading your posts.

From end of article:

Yet Obama who claims he is connected to the grassroots is promoting genetic engineering though people around the world are screaming they don't want it. Are they dumb people? 850,000 members of the Organic Consumers Association, thousands of members of Slow Food and thousands more of Food and Water Watch and thousands more at Health Freedom and thousands more at the Center for Food Safety. And that is only in the US. In Europe they detest genetic engineering and deeply resent how the US and Monsanto has been trying for years to force it on them.

And are the blacks in the National BLACK Farmers Association also science starved that they have a boycott out on every single Monsanto products? Or do they as farmers know something about genetic engineering and dealing with biotech that you - sitting in an office in Wellesley, Massachusetts, never having raised a single crop or paid an exorbitant price to Monsanto for seeds or signed their "technology agreement" or paid their extra price per acre for their technology or faced the lawsuits they bring so frequently against farmers or lived in fear of them - wouldn't know anything about?

Tonight, I am ashamed to think that my college and a professor there would be involved on the wrong side of a literal worldwide battle to reject genetic engineering. Neither of you seemed to have learn enough from the Nazi's use of "science" to be able to recognize with searing clarity that "science" is just a tool and is being used murderously again, this time to literally colonize whole populations for the control and massive financial benefit of a few biotech corporations and to the utter destruction of people caught in its patent and pesticide trap.

If you would leave the lab and go stay on a farm with the people who are suffering from just the thing you are promoting with such certainty over worldwide objections, you might see the stark and horrific and deadly economic realities biotech has already demonstrated in India.

Notice that though Europeans have been doing everything in their power to keep genetic engineering out, you don't condescend and say they are "starving for science."

Perhaps you owe an apology to Africans for not only insulting their intelligence and doing so while promoting something they know full well will lead them just where Monsanto has taken Indian farmers - to death. The plain truth is that Africans know more of the FULL reality of biotech than you do who sees one small piece and has missed the monopoly, the debt, the pesticides, the loss of human rights and democracy that comes with those evil seeds,

And I'll ask again what I have asked before here, what the hell is Obama thinking to be involved in promoting genetic engineering - especially to poor black people who have suffered enough?

cont.

"Neither the Kenyan people nor civil society or environmental groups have been consulted in the drafting of the Biosafety Bill." Said Oduor Ong'wen of Southern and East Africa Trade Information Network Initiative (SEATINI). "Perhaps that is why the Kenyan draft Bill does not even conform to the minimum standards recommended under the international UN Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, as shown by legal experts affiliated to the African Union."

"There are better and cheaper options than GMOs for tackling the problems faced by Kenyan farmers, which do not jeopardize Kenyan interests or endanger our people and nature." Pointed out Thari Kulissa of ECOTERRA Intl. "For example, the International Centre for Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE), has shown how intercropping with napier grass and desmodium can protect against stemborers and weeds, increase soil fertility and provide fodder for cattle. Why do we need expensive and risky GMOs when we already have the answers?"

Zachary Makanya of Participatory Ecological Land Use Management (PELUM) added, "Our organisations have come together out of concern that the Kenyan government is rushing to allow GMOs into our agriculture, without considering the damaging effects, precautionary measures on how to prevent them, or means to compensate farmers and consumers who are harmed by them. The safety of GMOs has not been proven, and we should not just assume that organisms with genes from completely different species like bacteria are safe for us to eat or plant. These new organisms must not be allowed to contaminate our seeds.

"GMO crops are patented, which means that farmers pay higher prices for seeds, and are forbidden from saving or sharing their seed for the following season. GMOs therefore have huge potential to harm Kenyan farmers' livelihoods. The Biosafety Bill must reflect these concerns and potential dangers. But the current draft fails to do so."

And it turns out some skullduggery - imagine that - was going on by the corporations associated with just the bio-"technology" you think you know is best for people who have had a lot of previous experience with white Westerners claiming just the same - to be interested in helping them out when they don't wish that "help" and have lost by it for centuries."

much more at the link.

cont.

GMOs threaten Kenya's environment. A clean environment is a fundamental right for all. GMOs on the contrary are contaminative, unfriendly to our biodiversity, and pose a threat to the existence of our indigenous seeds, to organic farming systems, and to human and animal health in general.

Our government is being arm-twisted to accept GMOs by multinationals, without considering the effects on small scale farmers.

Small scale farmers in Kenya should be included in policy formulation on agriculture research and food security. Government should invest in irrigation, improvement of infrastructure, appropriate technologies, marketing, subsidies, credit, farm inputs and better rangeland management, and NOT ON GMOs.

We believe that God created life, and no one can own it, not even Monsanto, Syngenta or other multinational companies. We therefore reject all GMOs in agriculture, and call upon the Kenyan government to respect our indigenous expertise. Therefore to be able to fully understand the effects of GMOs on our livelihoods, health and environment, we demand a twenty-year moratorium on GMOs in Kenya.

Then, in relation to the Biosafety Protocol being drafted in their country, the dumb-ass backward black people had this to say:

"A Biosafety Bill should provide protection to Kenyans and the environment, and ensure that the future of Kenya's agriculture and farmers is not compromised." Said Moses Shaha, chairman of Kenya Small Scale Farmers' Forum (KESSFF). "There are many possible risks from the widespread use of GMOs, and any Bill must seek to minimise the likelihood of these risks."

Eric Kisiangani of Intermediate Technology Development Group - East Africa (ITDG-EA) added, "Kenya's Biosafety Bill needs to be rigorous and should have strong safety standards to regulate any import, growth and use of GMOs. However this draft Bill seems to be more of a mechanism to facilitate and approve GMOs, rather than to regulate them."

From the article:
Dear Wellesley College, my alma mater, and Robert Paarlberg, a professor there,

Tonight, you make me so ashamed.

I just read a Des Moines Iowa paper quoting you, Robert Paarlberg, author of "Starved for Science: How Biotechnology is Being Kept Out of Africa," as saying "U.S. agricultural aid is needed to help African scientists to do their own modification of food crops. Let them get comfortable with the technology, and let them sell it to their governments."

Forgive me, but you don't seem aware of what an astoundingly arrogant and patently racist remark that is. You are essentially saying "Let the dumb black African scientists get "comfortable" with technology, they who are "starved" for science." It's a clever dual use of the word - suggesting on one hand that they are ignorant savages still (utterly without modern knowledge) and that you are a humanitarian wanting to help the "starving" of Africa.

You do realize that you may as well be a paid mouthpiece for Monsanto, right? Does it make you the least bit uncomfortable that Monsanto is considered for good and multiple reasons the evilest corporation in the world?

http://www.mindfully.org/Pesticide/Monsanto-Roundup-Glyph...

Do you recognize that your work is helping Monsanto to force onto Africans what they, in their "black ignorance" and even though "starving," have vociferously and repeatedly said they don't want?

Let me quote these backward people at length:

http://www.grain.org/research/contamination.cfm?id=161

The Thika Declaration on GMOs.
Statement from the Kenya Small Scale Farmers Forum, 20 August, 2004

"It is not that farmers are against new technologies, so long as these technologies will not force and destroy our indigenous seed varieties, will not change our native farming systems knowledge and will not render us helpless and at the mercy of the Trans National Companies to monopolize even on what we eat."

Mr Moses Shaha, Chairman of the Kenya Small Scale Farmers Forum
(Kenya Times, 25 August 2004)

The Thika Declaration on GMOs

Statement from the Kenya Small Scale Farmers Forum
20 August, 2004

We, the Kenya Small Scale Farmers Forum leaders, representing crop farmers, pastoralists and fisherfolk, do declare today, August 20th 2004, that farming is our livelihood and not just a trade. Farming has been passed down from generation to generation, and is now threatened by Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs).

GMOs are a danger to food security and our indigenous gene pool. Patented GMO crops threaten farmers' ability to save and share their indigenous seeds which have stood the test of time. Thus they will reduce our seed security and food security, without the long and short term effects on our health and environment being known. GMOs will hand control of our food systems to the multinational companies, who have created these seeds for financial gain, and not for our need.

These new seeds may create conflict between farmers due to the risks of cross pollination from GMO to non GMO crops leading to contamination between farms.

GMOs will increase costs for farmers. This new kind of agriculture has been produced using a complicated and expensive process called genetic engineering. To make their profits back from the farmers, the companies patent the GMO seeds, which leads to higher costs for farmers, who are then forbidden from saving and sharing their seeds for planting the following season. If the seeds fail, farmers are left in great destitution. The agrochemicals associated with GM crops will oblige farmers to pay the high prices set by the companies, and replace the need for paid farm labour, thereby threatening our livelihoods.