The US was accused yesterday of putting intense pressure on United Nations organizations, the European Union and individual countries to support the export of GM food aid to six African countries facing severe hunger in the coming months.

Three countries were insisting that the food be milled to prevent the seeds being planted by farmers who may unwittingly pre-empt national legislation.

Zambia’s chief scientific adviser said that if his country accepted unprocessed food aid a precedent would be set undermining its legal and democratic systems.

Together with Mozambique and Zimbabwe, which also initially refused to accept GM food aid, Zambia insists that the food must be milled before being handed out, because environmental risk assessments are impossible with its lilted resources.

At least a million tonnes of food are expected to be needed in the next six months to feed up to 12 million people in the six stricken countries. The US has offered more than 200,000 tonnes. The EU, the US Agency for International Development (USAid), the World Food Program, the World Health Organization and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization have all been urged by the US government to publicly endorse the safety of the food, which is eaten in more than 35 countries. The EU has refused.

“We have been pushed around by the way the Americans have put pressure on this issue,” said the EU development commissioner, Poul Nielson.

But the three countries who have put conditions on the food – and are preparing to mill it themselves – are angry at the pressure tactics used by the US, which has refused to offer conventional food or to mill the seeds.

“We cannot be so irresponsible so as to risk the lives of innocent people,” Mundia Sikatana, Zambia’s agriculture minister, said. “We don’t need to engage in biotechnology at this stage. If we engage in GM our exports will be thrown overboard and that will cost thousands of jobs”

Non-government groups at the Johannesburg conference joined the row.

Robert Vint, of Genetic Food Alert, said: “It is only because the US can prevent the World Food Program from purchasing available non-GM food from southern nations that it is able to tell countries that they must buy GM maize, that they must buy it from the US and that it must be unmilled.”

Friends of the Earth said the jury was still out on GM foods and African countries should not be forced to accept the supplies. “Africans should choose what they eat, not have someone else decide for them,” its spokesman, Nnimo Bassey, said.

But Andrew Natsios, the administrator of US Aid, told reporters: “It’s frightening people into thinking there is something wrong with the food … and the consequence of it is that the relief effort is slowing down. It is very disturbing to me that some of the groups that are opposed to [genetically modified food] have chosen a famine to make their political points.”

The World Bank has just announced that it is to set up a comprehensive study yet of the risks and opportunities of using GM and other farming systems in poor countries. It is expected to last three years. It is to be co-chaired by Dr Robert Watson, the bank’s chief scientist, who was ousted as chairman of the UN’s inter-governmental panel on climate change in May by the US government and the Exxon oil company, because of his remarks about the potential severity of global warming.

The study was broadly welcomed by environmental groups, who urged the bank to take into account social factors and called on governments to put a moratorium on commercializing GM crops until the bank had reported back.

Meanwhile, small-scale farmers were pushed into the forefront of the debate about the future of GM crops in Africa by the companies and non-governmental groups which are lobbying in force.

“I was given some GM maize seeds by Monsanto and they have done very well. I am very pleased. They save time and money,” said George Phanto, a farm leader from KwaZulu Natal province.

But Samuel Togo, a Tanzanian farmer who came to Johannesburg with an African grassroots organization, was more cautious. “I have heard of GM seeds. I do not understand them, but I do not think they are good. I want to farm organically because it is better for the soil.”

More than 150 people from the biotech industry were in Johannesburg. Monsanto said it had been lobbying ministers, African MPs and and government delegations. NGOs, with little access to the ministers and delegations, are trying to build alliances to oppose the planting of GM crops.

GM food in Africa has been slow to take off, but hi-tech maize and cotton is now grown commercially in South Africa, with GM soya likely to be approved next week. GM cotton should be approved in Kenya and Uganda by the next growing season and Zimbabwe has conducted trials, according to Monsanto, which has been buying up large seed companies in Africa as a way to promote its GM seeds.

Buzzle

Fruit farmers in Tanzania can now profit from their harvest following the opening in April of a $7 million fruit processing factory in Morogoro.

Morogoro and Tanga are major producers of fruits in Tanzania, but most of it goes to waste or is sold to middlemen from Dar es Salaam at throwaway prices. The farmers will now have a ready and steady market for their produce.

The UNNAT Fruits Processing Ltd in Morogoro’s Export Processing Zone, has a capacity to process 140 tonnes of raw fruit a day, which is equivalent to over 2,500 tonnes per annum of juice concentrate.

The plant is currently doing 100 tonnes of its installed capacity and will operate for at least 12 months before going into full capacity. Some 15,000 farmers have already entered into contractS with the plant to supply it with pineapples and oranges. The contracts will boost farmers’ income.

According to UNNAT, the target was to have 75,000 farmers registered with the company in Morogoro and the neighbouring Tanga region by the year 2010.

Centres for collecting fruit have been established at Mkuyuni, Matombo, Kiroka, Chalinze and Muheza.

Administration and human resources manager Nisarg Thakore said 10 centres had so far been established and 15 more are in the pipeline. Mr Thakore said that so far, the firm has exported 10 tonnes of concentrate worth some $270,000, most of it to Qatar.

“The factory’s policy is to buy from farmers regardless of the size of fruit loads,” he said. He said the plant will later produce diluted juice for the local market and export to the region, to be sold at competitive prices compared with imported juices.

The opening of the plant is expected to make fruit farming sustainable. The plant also gives back to the farmers as fertiliser, fermented organic remains from the concentrate to use as fertiliser.

“Besides giving the farmers a guaranteed market we have reserved 11 per cent of shares in the company to be sold to them,” said Mr Thakore, adding that to qualify, all a farmers needs to do is sell at least 500 tonnes of fruit to UNNAT.

In the absence of extension workers, UNNAT management is conducting workshops and seminars for farmers to educate them on the best methods of planting and caring for their fruits.

Even though the emphasis now is on oranges and pineapples, the factory will in the second half of this year start buying mangoes, passion fruit and banana for export to Europe where there is a large market.

The East African

The FAO Director-General is currently working on all continents to deal with the global food crisis, together with Member States, development partners and other UN agencies. While duty-bound to defend an organization of 191 member countries that he was re-elected, unopposed, to lead in 2005, he has no intention of being distracted by a controversy motivated by Senegalese domestic politics with the Head of State to whom he owes respect and esteem.

However the issues raised need objective answers:

1. Regarding the “institutions which, in Niger, said there was a famine”. Which are those institutions? Is FAO one of them? In an article in “Le Quotidien” on 27/11/2007 the journalist Paul Diene Faye wrote, not without humour: “Senegal may not yet have a famine, or at least the Director-General of FAO, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, doesn’t want to say so. The reason, explains Mr Jacques Diouf, is that it is not FAO’s role to say which parts of the world are affected by famine. Its mandate, he explains, is to publish a document entitled “The State of Food Insecurity in the World”. FAO’s Director-General stresses that this is not an “instant” document; it is prepared over a long period of time, and with all due precaution.”

2. As to the statement that, “Feeding the poor is charity”: Does FAO distribute food? What bilateral, regional and multilateral institutions do that job?

3. “Technical assistance to agriculture is assistance to men and women standing on their own two feet”. Technical assistance is precisely what FAO does:

* with field training activities…

* by strengthening veterinary services…

* by using integrated biological control, halving pesticide quantities by 50 percent and obtaining a 15 percent increase in rice production;

* by disseminating hand and foot pumps, irrigation channels, small dams, metal storage silos;

* through projects aimed at increased production of rice, corn, cassava, vegetables, micro-gardens, poultry farming, small ruminants and the introduction and development of aquaculture;

* by re-establishing the productive potential of farmers, herders and fishers following natural disasters…

* by providing specialists, farmers, researchers, teachers and students with WAICENT, an Internet site that which receives four million visits a month for information and statistics on agricultural production, trade, water, soil and farm inputs;

* through the establishment with WHO of 200 Codex Alimentarius norms to protect consumers and serve as benchmarks for resolving disputes over WTO sanitary and phytosanitary regulations.

4. “The winter planting season, starting end May, early June, will soon be upon us in the Sahel. It lasts three months on average. Let us seize this opportunity because it won’t come again for another year.” Almost five months ago, on 17 December 2007, FAO drew international attention to the importance of the 2008 harvest, and launched an “Initiative on Soaring Food Prices”. It was vital for developing country farmers to have access to the seeds, fertilizer and feed they needed but whose price had increased. The Director-General announced that FAO, despite not being a financing institution, was contributing US$17 million to the initiative to increase agricultural productivity and appealed for the mobilization of US$1.7 billion. Such resources, in cash or kind, go through bilateral or multilateral channels under specific agreements with governments. It is therefore not correct to say that, “FAO in turn announced that it needed US$1.7 billion”. FAO’s appeal was approved by UN and the Bretton Woods Institutions at a meeting in Berne, Switzerland, from 28 to 29. It is mentioned in press communiqué of 29 April by the UN Secretary-General.

In December 2007 in Senegal, together with development partners and the Ministers for Agriculture, Water management and others, on 22 December 2007 with the media, and then again on 17 March 2008 with the technical and economic ministries, the FAO Director-General held a series of meetings to alert national authorities and public opinion to the risks of a food crisis and to discuss measures needed to present the programme. The meetings were widely covered by the national press. Why were appropriate actions not implemented then?

5. “The way ahead is clear to that part of the international community which really wants to help – innovative investment agriculture in Africa.” In the first year of his mandate in June 1994, the FAO Director-General launched the Special Programme for Food Security now operational in 100 countries. Priority is given to small-scale water harvesting and irrigation works by rural communities. National programmes featuring agricultural policy measures, institutional capacity-building and investment programmes (using a village-by-village approach) were initiated in 15 countries and are under formulation in 36 more. For 14 years the Director-General of FAO has been saying that Africa’s “agricultural lottery” has to cease (96 percent of farmland is rainfed while the continent only uses 4 percent of its renewable water resources). He has reiterated time and again that investments should focus on irrigation works, storage and packaging (post-harvest losses range from 40 to 60 percent), rural roads, slaughterhouses, fishing harbours, cold supply chains. All these points are contained in the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) prepared with FAO and adopted by the African Union Summit of July 2003. The costs were evaluated to facilitate the financing. At the request of African leaders, FAO also helped translate the CAADP into national programmes in 51 countries.

Since 2001, FAO has helped many regional economic organizations elaborate regional food security programmes (RFSP): In Africa the regional food security programme of UEMOA (2002), CEDEAO (2002), SADC (2002, still to be approved), COMESA (2002), UMA (2001), IGAD (2002), CEEAC (prepared in 2003 and adopted in 2004), CEMAC (2003) and CEN SAD (under formulation). Similar programmes were prepared in other world regions, i.e. the Caribbean (CARICOM, 2002) the Pacific countries (PIF, 2002), South Asia, SAARC, under formulation), Central Asia (ECO, under formulation) and South America (MERCOSUR, draft prepared in 2005).

If, as is clear from the facts, the required investments were never made, does that make FAO responsible? Which bilateral, regional and international organizations have reduced their support to agriculture to dangerous levels? Does FAO’s mandate include financing and investing in agriculture? Who took the decision that cut agriculture’s share of development aid from 17 percent at the beginning of the eighties to 3 percent in 2005? Didn’t FAO organize a World Food Summit back in 2002 to draw the international community’s attention to the situation and underline the absence of political will and resources to fight food insecurity? At the 2001 G8 Summit, in which the Director-General took part, in the United Nations General Assembly, in ECOSOC, and at the 2004 Extraordinary Summit of the African Union on Agriculture and Water in Syrte, didn’t FAO draw the attention of the world’s leaders to the situation and suggest solutions?

6. “FAO as an institution should be held responsible. The present situation largely stems from its failure”. Agricultural specialists, economists and journalists have all analyzed the causes of the food crisis and pinpointed the following factors:

- as concerns supply: agricultural production has been affected by climate change (floods, droughts, harsher winters, cyclones, hurricanes, earthquakes). Cereals stocks stand at their lowest level since 1980. Does FAO have a national territory with farmland and citizens, including farmers who produce food? Does it hold food stocks?

- as concerns demand: the world’s population is set to increase from six to nine billion in 2050. Does FAO bring 78.5 million babies into the world every year? Again, demand in emerging nations is growing very rapidly, especially in China and India. With their GDP growth of 8 to 12 percent as a result of national policies and the hard work of their peoples, they have been able to generate the income they need to improve their populations’ diets. FAO does not regret its excellent cooperation with those countries. Lastly, new demand for biofuels has diverted crops from food to energy. Is FAO responsible for the national incentives, the subsidies and the tariff protection, used to develop the sector?

- at international market level: support from OECD countries to their farmers in terms of Total Support Estimate (TSE) was US$372 billion in 2006, while duties, tariffs and technical trade barriers have also discriminated against agriculture in developing countries. Tough negotiations are taking place on these issues in the Doha Round. Does FAO determine and apply decisions taken in international trade relations? Again, the agricultural policies of developing countries have been liberalized and farmer support structures (extension, inputs, storage, marketing, price stabilization) have been gradually eliminated (better management of those structures would have protected their smallholders from the forces of an unequal international market). Was it FAO that pressured developing countries to adopt those policies? We also have the problem of financial speculation. Investment funds speculate on futures markets and help push up the price of commodities, including food commodities. Does FAO control those funds?

7. “Financially speaking, FAO is a bottomless pit”. FAO’s biennial budget is voted by the Conference of all its Member Nations. It amounts to the budget of the Ministry of Agriculture of South Africa. Various countries contribute according to a United Nations scale (Senegal’s share is 0.004 percent of the total). It is used to implement a programme of work and budget examined and approved by the Finance and Programme Committees. It contains a detailed list of all budget headings for personnel, equipment and running expenses. FAO’s accounts are regularly audited. They have always been approved for every biennium. Between 1994/95 and 2006/07, the budget shrank 22% in real terms, staffing was cut by 24.6%, while the number of Member Nations rose from 169 to 191.

8. “I told them (FAO’s top management) that if you continue … I’ll have you brought to justice, you have to reimburse the 20 percent of the money collected on our behalf.” It is superfluous to comment on such charges. FAO is a United Nations organization whose collective, intergovernmental management system is determined and protected by international treaties guaranteeing its independence and immunity to unilateral interference by individual countries. Senegal has ratified these treaties and has undertaken to respect the Organization’s statute.

9. Lastly, under the United Nations system, agencies, funds and programmes are complementary and the Secretary-General is responsible for coordinating them. In 2005 and 2006 a High-Level Panel on United Nations System-wide Coherence chaired by the Prime Ministers of Norway, Pakistan and Mozambique undertook an in-depth study of how the United Nations worked and published a report on how the system could operate more efficiently and effectively in the field. The Ambassadors and Permanent Representatives of the 192 UN Member Countries regularly discuss the measures proposed at global and national level. FAO was naturally associated with the exercise and is participating actively, not least through eight ongoing pilot field projects.

10. Senegal has thinkers and intellectuals of international standing; some have left the country and are teaching in some of the top universities in the West. FAO is prepared, if the Government so wishes, to work with experts at the technical and economic ministries, at the Senegalese Agricultural Research Institute, at the Universities of Dakar and Saint-Louis as well as at the Senegalese Academy of Sciences, among other institutions, in order to examine the causes of the world food crisis and to consider possible short-, medium- and long-term solutions, the risks and opportunities for Senegal. The Government could thus benefit from the in-depth studies of competent people and obtain pertinent conclusions and analyses that could serve as a solid basis for concerted action aimed at ensuring Senegal’s agricultural development and food security.

FAO