Agriculture

Ecocide must be listed alongside genocide as an international crime

Published

1 month ago

June 23, 2021

Steven Jay

Large-scale environmental destruction affects the future of all life on our planet. Criminalising it would finally hold decision-makers to account

For many years, we have been advised and counseled, warned and forewarned that we cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking (and action) that created them. As many of us have been on the path of speaking our minds, warning leaderships, boycotting corporations that damage our planet and our rights to health, the good news is that the effortsof our labors are starting to bear fruit.

According to the Guardian on 06/23/2021: An international team of lawyers co-chaired by Philippe Sands QC and Dior Fall Sow has presented the outcome of its work announced in November last year to develop a legal definition of ecocide. This is a crucial step towards adding ecocide to the list of other major offences recognised by the international criminal court (ICC), including crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide. Source: The Guardian UK

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A web of Life for ALL Life

Allan Savory: A holistic management shift is required

Published

4 weeks ago

July 1, 2021

Steven Jay

"We need to findmore effective ways to amplify the stories of solutions"

Mr. Savory we know historically that the deterioration of food production systems in past civilizations and their inability to cognize encroaching complexity of population growth and governance in a holistic context leads to unbroken chain of civilizations’ collapsing. Do you think we still have time to avoid this on a global level now? Is there a way to create a new hope and new vision?

We we do not know, but Britain did not know if they could survive after the fall of France and most of Europe – but with good leadership, pushing aside egos and personal gain and acting on a war-footing they more than survived. Never has human civilization faced a graver danger than now with global finance and ecological illiteracy of our institutions driving the massive environmental degradation destroying our only habitat. Ordinary people know that all species, including humans cannot survive without suitable habitat. If world leaders (heads of governments and UN) put the massive environmental degradation that culminates in global desertification and the climate emergency on a war-footing and lead we have great hope for future generations.

Can you elaborate on the different impacts that ‘policy’ vs. ‘practice’ has on this impending problem of reforming agricultural systems worldwide?

Yes. Without agriculture there is no city, church, university, army, business or government – no civilization. Without a new regenerative form of agriculture (not crop production, but the production of food and fibre from the world’s land and waters) global civilization will fail. This is because all forms of agriculture historically have led to the failure of civilizations in all regions of the world and now the same threat is global. Few things in my life have taught society more clearly how interlinked our survival is than the present pandemic. Armies change civilizations. Farmers, foresters, fishermen, pastoralists destroy civilizations. So, we face the situation in which mainstream institutional, industrial agriculture led by our universities, governments and corporations supported by global finance, is the most destructive and extractive industry ever in history. And all forms of organic, sustainable, permaculture, grass production of livestock ever known led to failure of many civilizations in all regions long before chemicals and machinery.

So, if we keep discussing different practices and people keep vying for validity and funding for their favoured practice we know we will fail. What world leaders on a global war-footing need to do is to address agriculture at the policy level by focusing on the cause of agriculture, throughout history, being so environmentally, socially and economically destructive (while feeding ever growing numbers of people).

By governments and all large institutions addressing at policy level the cause of the ever-growing environmental destruction reflected in global desertification and climate change all nations will rapidly develop the required new regenerative agriculture. Very little new knowledge, not already available amongst the world’s farmers, fishermen, foresters, wildlife and livestock managers, universities and environmental organizations, is required. We do not lack detailed knowledge, we lack the ability to manage the social, cultural, environmental and economic complexity. That ability we only gained in 1984.

“If the Greta Thunberg generation are to have any hope I am again going to use my statement “We have no option but the unthinkable. By every means possible we have get enough public demand to force quicker change by insisting institutions develop policies to address problems in a holistic context.”

We know most of the organized structures of our modern world can be represented as silo’s, inhabited by true believers (Eric Hoffer author), and authoritarian demagogues. Do you believe that Holistic Management training will become widely acceptable at upper levels of organizations or will occur because of collapsing regional agricultural ecosystems at the level of farming being our next crises?

I don’t know. All we do know, from good research and history, is that when counter-intuitive or paradigm-shifting change is involved, it is impossible for democratic leaders or any organization (institution) to lead. No change is possible until public opinion shifts and demands that change. And this holds no matter how serious, no matter how many million lives are lost or what the economic cost. Institutions, including elected leaders of such, take on a life of their own as complex systems. Institutions reflect the prevailing beliefs of society and lead the way with such thinking. However, when truly new knowledge emerges (which has happened very few times in history – Coppernicus, Galilleo, Semmelwiess are examples) institutions lead the ridicule and rejection until public opinion shifts. I cannot find any case in history of any institution accepting paradigm-shifting change ahead of its public.

Addressing the cause of all that ails us involves two paradigm-shifting concepts – known and developed by thousands of people over sixty years, including thousands employed in institutions but acting independently of their institutions – the Holistic Management framework has been blocked from rapidly gaining public awareness by the world’s institutions that became aware of it – environmental and agricultural organizations, universities, governments and international agencies. Only time will tell if programs such as this interview, social networking and the efforts of many people mainly engaged in developing regenerative agriculture will prevail over institutional aggression and inertia.

How is the lack of validation affecting positive change in local communities to holistic principles?

Firstly, there is really only one holistic principle. Intuitively known by all earlier people who in most cultures recognized humanity’s inseparable tie to our habitat. And the principle was brought into Western thought in 1926 by Jan Smuts who wrote Holism and Evolution. That principle is that nature works in wholes and patterns – not as mechanistic world-view and science believed. Knowing all they did, including Native Americans thinking seven generations ahead before taking any action, did not help them. Wherever humans were we still damaged our environment and least so in regions of perennial humidity. This was brought about by two things. First human decision making has always been to meet our needs, desires or to address problems basically. Reducing the unavoidable web of social, cultural, environmental and economic complexity to such things as the reason or context for management and policy is “reductionist” in a holistic world. What we finally discovered in 1984 after decades of work, was how to address the cause of past and present failures – by going to where the rubber hits the road.

That point is where actual decisions are made in any policy or management practice. Here, two points become important for the survival of civilization. One- all management and policy needs to be in a holistic context. Second -it is simply not possible, as tool-using animals, for humans to prevent or address global desertification and thus climate change using the only tools institutional scientists who advise world leaders accept or recognize. Those tools available to institutional scientists (and world leaders can only act through institutions) are technology in its many forms, fire, or conservation (resting our environment to recover). Three tools. That is why in a 2013 TED Talk I said “we have no option, but the unthinkable, and that is to use livestock as a tool to address global desertification.”

So, yes, none of this can come about until we have a better-informed public insisting that our governments and large environmental organizations in particular develop policies in a holistic context. It cannot be done until there is public insistence is what we learn from both research and history. So this we need to focus on.

After so many years of educating farmers has a training model emerged that can be web based and integrated into real time data collection to establish the validity of rethinking management in agriculture?

We do have a great deal of training material from simple self-help to more sophisticated coaching and mentoring in collaborating groups of people and organizations that are beginning to change. That can and will keep growing. However, that is the normal process of incremental change against institutional blocking and according to research we can expect to take about 200 years. Just to get the Royal Navy to accept lime juice would end scurvy cost over a million sailors lives and took 200 years – and nothing has changed in institutions since.

If the Greta Thunberg generation are to have any hope I am again going to use my statement “We have no option but the unthinkable. By every means possible we have get enough public demand to force quicker change by insisting institutions develop policies to address problems in a holistic context.”

The downside of public demand for this is Zero – there is absolutely no risk whatsoever and the only blockage is professional and institutional egos. Over now sixty years of development there has never yet been any financial vested interest oppose or ridicule the idea of managing or developing policy holistically. The upside is that we might just address global human habitat destruction in time to save civilization as we know it.

One of your key observations that attracted me years ago to your work was the “herd effect” and grasslands regeneration. Has that observation become an empirically established fact at this time?

When I consider this question, I ponder whether it is an empirically established fact that water flows downhill? Science is fundamentally a process of observation, interpretation, deduction and experimentation to gain knowledge of nature. That enabled us thousands of years ago to accept water flows downhill and later the theory of gravity, and experimentation there gave explanation as to why water flows downhill.

By this “scientific” process over thousands of years before academic scientists people developed all the domestic varieties of plants and animals making civilization possible. Since the recent dominance in management by academic scientists we are losing species, losing languages, losing cultures and accelerating human habitat destruction.

It was a simple observation by me over twenty years of tracking people and animals that where people, or animals, crowded in one another’s body space or were hungry, lost or wounded the effect on the soil and vegetation was different – more soil surface disruption, more course plants trampled more dead plant material laid horizontally on the soil ( slowing water flow, slowing rate of application of water from rainfall to the soil surface, increasing water penetration,..) more seedlings, closer plant spacing holding litter – all of this dramatically affecting the ease or otherwise of tracking. How much easier tracking was where fewer herds, more fire, more bare soil, more erosion and so on. And it was simply observation that any large herbivores (buffalo, bison, elk or whatever) when not apprehensive and defensive against pack-hunting predators spread, walked gently, did not tramp on course plants, did not lay much litter, etc. etc. And from there we simply recognized if we are to use animals as tools we have to do so largely through behaviour and their feet not mouths, and not mere presence. I have frankly not wasted my time worrying about empirically proving any of this that can be observed at any time – just like water flowing downhill. That academics sitting in offices relying entirely on peer-reviewed publications have a problem with this I have no doubt. Thank goodness the pioneers like Leopold, Smuts, Bennet, Howard and others engaged in science mostly in the field as did my own mentors.

Where you aware of the fact that research based on NASA satellite sequential space photos of the Great Plains area in the United State, a major bread basket of the world, is showing a significant destabilization of grass cover? Desertification is a major issue isn’t it.

I was not aware, but am not surprised. The desertification of the United States is terrible and is a major contributor to climate change as well as the increasing droughts, floods, poverty, collapse of the Western Culture (which will eventually be kept alive only by rodeo athletes and cowboy poets). I have always been saddened by the extreme opposition to my work from cattlemen’s organizations and environmental organizations in the US. But again, people are not being bad and are not to be blamed – that is what institutions do -ridicule and oppose any truly new insights.

Could you explain what sustainability means in a holistically managed paradigm, and what that would look like in greening the planet?

Let me try. First I must say it will not be Holistic Management because that is not agriculture but is purely a way to manage complexity in anyone’s life or business. It will be a new agriculture (crops, livestock, forestry, fisheries and wildlife management) that regenerates the world’s living soils and biodiversity on the land and in our waters including oceans. Regenerating societies, cultures, towns and economies based, as they need to be, on the photosynthetic process – not paper wealth or wealth based on extractive industry. This new agriculture will be made up largely of many of the practices we see today in organic, sustainable, permaculture, pastoralism, wildlife, fisheries and forestry management. It will include some new practices (like the Holistic Planned Grazing process or holistic policy development) to reverse desertification that only became known and possible with the development of the Holistic Management framework. The practices that will “float to the top” as it were will be those that are socially, environmentally and economically sound both short and long-term all determined by policy developed in a holistic context reflecting what all humans want. Regenerative agriculture is what it will be. Management and policy developed in a global holistic context is how it will come about.

How can farmers best usher in a post industrial ecologically balanced food system?

They can do their best to learn how to manage holistically ensuring those practices that improve their own immediate environment, society and economy as many are doing today. However, this will not succeed because, as the corona pandemic has highlighted, we are a global community. Most of our population lives in cities and the economic and political power has shifted to cities totally disengaged from ecological literacy and ability to connect the dots. Corporate, shareholder, political game playing, celebrity desire for popular appeal, institutional and professional egos will persist in supporting veganism, vilifying meat, investing in manufactured meat, factory production of animals, university/corporate led crop production based on chemistry and marketing of technology (not on biological science) and of course planting billions of trees. All of which is leading to climate change and none of which addresses the cause. And the UN will continue to promote its 17 Sustainable Development Goals that almost all address the symptoms of desertification and not the cause and so are doomed once more to failure.

With such facts the best we can strive for is to use social media to educate the public in cities as well as rural environments to the fact that agriculture has to be regenerative and can really only be brought about in time by demanding policies be developed in a global holistic context – soaring above politics, stock markets, national power aspirations – to what all humans want and need for civilization to survive.

In addressing a world audience what would you say is the most important take away from your many years of astute observations of regeneration of natural systems?

My view is coloured by my years of struggle to first understand, and then find solutions to why humans so consistently destroyed their own environment or habitat. A struggle that led to me from being a government research officer to being an independent scientist, a farmer, rancher, game rancher, international consultant, soldier, member of parliament, president of a political party, exile while throughout collaborating with thousands of concerned individuals in all walks of life. From that broad perspective enjoyed by few if any scientists the two most important thoughts I would love to convey would be:

That we have to work at scale through governments and that all forms of governance -communism, socialism, capitalism, dictatorships, populism – have failed us. Our best hope lies in democracies but only when democracies ban all political parties that make it impossible for democracy to function. In this view I was preceded by George Washington (with some parallels in our lives) some 200 years ago.

Secondly governments need to form all policies in a national holistic context to ensure that all people feel well governed and secure, without which no one is.

If these come about I can see the human spirit fly as never before. If we continue supporting political parties and reductionist management and policy the future will be grim beyond imagination and the greatest suffering will be in cities.

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Agriculture

How is The Gates Foundation is driving the world’s food system in the wrong direction.

Published

1 month ago

June 19, 2021

Steven Jay

By GRAIN

Gates: the new king of the global food system? Image: A Growing Culture

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has spent nearly US$6 billion over the past 17 years trying to improve agriculture, mainly in Africa. This is a lot of money for an underfunded sector, and, as such, carries great weight. To better understand how the Gates Foundation is shaping the global agriculture agenda, GRAIN analysed all the food and agriculture grants the foundation has made up until 2020. We found that, while the Foundation’s grants focus on African farmers, the vast majority of its funding goes to groups in North America and Europe. The grants are also heavily skewed to technologies developed by research centres and corporations in the North for poor farmers in the South, completely ignoring the knowledge, technologies and biodiversity that these farmers already possess. Also, despite the Foundation’s focus on techno-fixes, much of its grants are given to groups that lobby on behalf of industrial farming and undermine alternatives. This is bad for African farmers and bad for the planet. It is time to pull the plug on the Gates’ outsized influence over global agriculture.

In 2014 GRAIN published a detailed breakdown of the grants made by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to promote agricultural development in Africa and other parts of the world.¹ Our main conclusion then was that the vast majority of those grants were channelled to groups in the US and Europe, not Africa nor other parts of the global South. The funding overwhelmingly went to research institutes rather than farmers. They were also mainly directed at shaping policies to support industrial farming, not smallholders.

Much has happened since then. For starters, Bill and Melinda Gates announced their divorce in May this year, leaving the future of the Foundation and its grant-making in doubt. The news came as Bill Gates himself came under fire for supporting Big Pharma’s patent monopoly on COVID-19 vaccines, for effectively preventing people’s access across much of the world, and for how he treats – or mistreats – women.² The Foundation’s agenda with agriculture has also been coming under increased scrutiny. A 2020 report from Tufts University concluded that its work in Africa completely failed to meet the objectives that it had set itself.³ The African Centre for Biodiversity published a string of reports denouncing the Gates Foundation for pushing GMOs and other harmful technologies onto Africa.⁴ Amongst all this, the US Right to Know collective started a “Bill Gates Food Tracker” to monitor the multiple initiatives that Gates is involved in to reshape the global food system.⁵

GRAIN wondered whether the Gates Foundation had been receptive to the criticism of its food and agriculture funding. So we set out to update our 2014 report, downloaded the Foundation’s publicly available grant records and created a database of all of the Foundation’s grants in the area of food and agriculture from 2003 to 2020 – almost two decades worth of grant-making.⁶

The results are sobering. From 2003 to 2020 the Foundation dished out a total of 1130 grants for food and agriculture, worth nearly $US6 billion of which almost US$5 billion is supposed to service Africa. There was no shift to try and reach groups in Africa directly, no refocusing away from the narrow technological approach, and no moves to embrace a more holistic and inclusive policy agenda. Of course, the Gates Foundation is about much more than just making grants. The Foundation’s Trust Fund, which manages the Foundation’s endowment, has big investments in food and agribusiness companies, buys up farmland, and has equity investments in many financial companies around the world.⁷ These, and other activities of Gates in the area of food and agriculture, are illustrated in the infographic that accompanies this report.⁸

Infographic by A Growing Culture .

The Gates Foundation fights hunger in the South by giving money to the North

Graph 1 and Table 1 provide an overall picture of GRAIN’s research results. Almost half of the Foundation’s grants for agriculture went to four big groupings: the global agriculture research network of the Consortium Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA – set up in 2006 by the Gates Foundation itself together with the Rockefeller Foundation), the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF – another technology centre pushing Green Revolution technology and GMOs into Africa) and a number of international organisations (World Bank, UN agencies, etc.). The other half ended up with hundreds of research, development and policy organisations across the world. The Gates Foundation claims that 80% of their grants are meant to serve African farmers. But of the funding to these hundreds of organisations a staggering 82% was channelled to groups based in North America and Europe while less than 10% went to Africa-based groups.

The breakdown of the NGOs that the Gates Foundation funds is even worse. Almost 90% of this funding goes to groups in North American and Europe whilst just 5% is directly channelled to African NGOs. The Gates Foundation seems to have very little trust in African organisations serving African farmers. Not that we would want the Gates Foundation to just send more of its grants directly to Africa if it comes with the same corporate industrial farming agenda. But it illustrates the point of where the priorities of the Foundation lie.

For contrast, Oxfam spends over half of all its funding directly in Africa, and over a third in Asia and Latin America, a lot of it through local NGOs in these regions.⁹

The Gates Foundation gives to scientists, not farmers

As can be seen in Graph 2, the single biggest recipient of grants from the Gates Foundation is the CGIAR- a consortium of 15 international research centres launched in the 1960s and 70s to promote the Green Revolution with new seeds, fertilisers and chemical inputs. The Gates Foundation has given CGIAR centres US$1.4 billion since 2003. Another priority for the Gates Foundation in its funding is to support research at universities and national research centres. Again, the vast majority of the Gates’ grants go to universities and research centres in North America and Europe. Together, all this research gets almost half (47%) of the Gates Foundation’s funding.

The Gates Foundation’s support for Green Revolution-style research extends beyond the scientists. One of the most significant recipients of Gates Foundation funding is a high-profile advocacy organisation called the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). The Gates and Rockefeller Foundations launched AGRA in 2006 as a “farmer-centered” and “African-led” institution. The reality is anything but. AGRA implements a top-down Green Revolution agenda with the main focus being to get new seeds and chemicals developed by Gates funded research centres and corporations into the hands of African farmers. AGRA establishes, funds, coordinates and promotes networks of pesticide and seed companies and public agencies to sell and supply agriculture inputs to farmers across Africa. It also actively lobbies African governments to implement policies that favour seed and pesticide companies, such as patents on seeds or regulations that allow for GMOs.

The Gates Foundation has given AGRA a whopping US$638 million since 2006, covering almost two thirds of its overall budget. But AGRA’s results are underwhelming to say the least. In the countries where AGRA is active, yields of staple crops increased only 18% over the past 12 years- far short of AGRA’s goal of doubling yields. Meanwhile, undernourishment (as measured by the FAO) increased by 30% in those countries.¹⁰

Instead of acknowledging that their data shows a complete failure to achieve their objectives and changing their approach accordingly, Bill and Melinda are doubling down. In early 2020 they launched their own new research institute called “Gates Ag One”. This enterprise claims to speed up the development of new seeds and chemicals and get them to farmers in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia more quickly.¹¹ Where will the institute be based? Not in Ethiopia or Sri Lanka but in St. Louis, USA, home of Monsanto and other GMO and pesticide giants.

The Gates Foundation buys political influence

In many subtle and not so subtle ways the Gates Foundation grants are used to push policy makers to implement its top-down industrial farming agenda.

Gates at the 2006 World Economic Forum advising policy makers. Photo: World Economic Forum; Peter Klaunzer- Flickr

One recent example is the 2021 “High-Level Dialogue on Feeding Africa” that was held on 29-30 April this year.¹² This forum, funded by the Gates Foundation, and organised by a number of Gates Foundation grantees such as the African Development Bank, CGIAR and AGRA, was meant to launch a policy and funding agenda to further push the Green Revolution into Africa. The event attracted no less than 18 African heads of state and several other high-profile personalities. But, most remarkable of all, is that of all the international organisations with activities in Africa on the long speakers list of the dialogue, virtually all are Gates grantees. The forum concluded with a commitment to double agricultural productivity, something AGRA and the Gates Foundation have been promising and failing to deliver for the last decade and a half.

Of course, AGRA itself is also actively pushing the African policy agenda. AGRA is among the key conveners of the annual Africa Green Revolution Forum (AGRF) which calls itself the world’s premier forum for African agriculture and has been convening annual meetings for the past decade. Partners include some of the main global agrochemical corporations, such as Bayer, Corteva and Yara, and of course the Gates Foundation itself. Unsurprisingly, its agenda is clearly oriented to push government policies towards more chemical inputs, fertilisers and hybrid seeds. On its website, AGRF has a special section it calls the Agribusiness deal room, which “has directly facilitated over 400 companies with targeted investor matchmaking and hosted more than 800 companies to explore networking opportunities”.¹³ This is clearly market matchmaking serving corporate interests, not farmers.

While most of the Gates grants are aimed at pushing technological solutions, many are also oriented towards policy change. A total of 45 grants address policy or policy makers. For example, Iowa State University got a grant to support implementation of policy changes aimed at increasing the supply of new seeds to farmers in Africa. The World Economic Forum received a grant to support a “policy platform for ag innovation and value chain development”, whilst the African Centre for Economic Transformation got a grant to promote agricultural transformation in Africa aimed at policy reforms. In addition, the Foundation is actively involved in bankrolling the “Enabling the Business of Agriculture” project, implemented by the World Bank, amongst many other initiatives.¹⁴

Gates’ enthusiasm for GMOs is made clear through its grant database. Michigan State University received US$13 million to create a centre in Africa that provides training for African policy makers on how to use and promote biotechnology. The African Seed Trade Association got a grant to increase farmers’ awareness “of the benefits of replacing their older varieties of crops with newer seed”. AATF got US$32 million to increase awareness on the benefits of agricultural biotechnology and another US$27 million to fund the approval and commercialization GMO maize in at least four African countries. So the Gates Foundation is not only funding public acceptance of GMOs, it is also directly funding the approval and commercialisation of GMOs in Africa.

Gates grantees are clearly carrying the Gates agenda and influencing global agricultural policy. In just over a decade, the Gates brainchild in Africa, AGRA, has managed to manoeuvre itself from nowhere right into the centre of agricultural policy discussions across the continent. Similarly, while resistance to GMOs in Africa remains high, the AATF is managing to get legislation adopted to accept GMOs, as seen most recently in Ghana. It’s just as important to look at who the Gates Foundation is supporting as who they are not supporting; African farmers. The Foundation provides zero funding to support farmer seed systems, which supply 80 to 90% of all the seeds used in Africa. Instead, it provides a lot of funds to initiatives that destroy them. Furthermore, the Gates Foundation props up biofortification as a solution to malnutrition, taking funds and attention away from much more practical and culturally appropriate efforts to improve nutrition by enhancing on-farm biodiversity and people’s access to it.¹⁵ Over the last decade or so, the Gates Foundation has given US$73 million to biofortification initiatives that essentially seek to artificially pack nutrients into single crop commodities.

Then, of course, there is Bill Gates himself. Sitting down with heads of state, policy makers and business leaders, Gates tries to convince them that his view of the world is the one to go after. The world has gotten used to pictures of him shaking hands or sitting shoulder to shoulder with the leaders of the world. Indeed, many of those leaders seem very eager to be in these pictures and heed his advice. The most recent display of this was at Joe Biden’s virtual “Leaders Summit on Climate” where Gates shared his vision on how to fight the climate crisis.¹⁶ His recipe to tackle the climate crisis is very similar and equally dangerous to how he wants to feed the world: develop new technologies, trust the market, and put in place policies so that corporations can make it all happen faster.¹⁷

Gates clearly isn’t listening to or learning from the people on the ground. So why should anyone listen to him? Rather than being listened to, Gates and his top down corporate technology agenda must be resisted and stopped in its tracks.

GRAIN wishes to thank Camila Oda and María Teresa Montecinos for their help in compiling the database and to ‘A Growing Culture’ for their feedback on the draft and their work on the infographic.

Click here and here to consult all the food and agriculture grants of the Gates Foundation

Graph 1

Graph 2

Table 1: Gates Foundation agricultural grants by type of grantee, 2003-2021

Agency	$US million	Main recipients
CGIAR	1,373	The CGIAR is a consortium of 15 international research centres set up to promote the Green Revolution across the world. Gates is now amongst its major donors. Main recipients include: IFPRI ($223 million), CIMMYT ($346m), IRRI ($197m), ICRISAT ($151m), IITA ($166m), ILRI ($74m), CIP ($91m), and others. Most of the grants are in the form of project support to each of the centres, and many of them are focusing on developing new crop varieties.
AGRA	638	A total of 20 grants for core support and AGRA’s main issue areas: seeds, soils, markets, and lobbying African governments to change policies and legislation.
Int’l orgs (UN, World Bank, etc.)	601	World Bank – IBRD ($192m); World Food Programme (WFP) ($99m); UNDP ($54m.); FAO ($88m.) UN Foundation ($76m). The lion’s share of the grants to the World Bank are to promote public and private sector investment in agriculture ($70m), WFP is supported to improve market opportunities for small farmers, UNDP to establish rural agro-enterprises in West Africa, and the support to FAO is mostly for statistical and policy work.
AATF	170	AATF (African Agricultural Technology Foundation) is a blatantly pro-GMO pro-corporate research outfit based in Nairobi. The bulk of the Gates’ support is to develop GMO drought-resistant maize, a project that has already miserably failed according to many. But it also gets support to raise “awareness on agricultural biotechnology for improved understanding and appreciation”, and to get legislation approved for allowing GMOs in African countries.
Universities & National Research Centres	1,393	Over three quarters of all Gates’ funding to universities and research centres goes to institutions in the US and Europe, such as Cornell, Michigan and Harvard in the US, and Cambridge and Greenwich Universities in the UK, amongst many others. The work supported is a mix of basic agronomic, breeding and molecular research, as well as policy research. A lot of it includes genetic engineering. Michigan State University, for example, got $13m to help African policy-makers “to make informed decisions on how to use biotechnology”. Although most of the Foundation’s grants are supposed to benefit Africa, barely 11% of its grants to universities and research centres go directly to African universities and research institutions ($147m in total, of which $30m for the Uganda based Regional University Forum set up by the Rockefeller Foundation).
Service delivery NGOs	1,446	The Gates Foundation sees these as agents to implement its work on the ground. They include both large development NGOs and foundations, and the activities supported tend to have a strong technology development angle or focus on policy and education work in line with the Foundation’s philosophy. A whopping 70% of these grants end up with US-based beneficiaries, and another 19% in Europe. African NGOs get 4% of the NGO grants ($73m total, $36m of which goes to groups in South Africa, and another $13m for “Farm Concern International”- an NGO based in Nairobi with the mission of building “market-led business models” for small farmers).
Corporations	244	A relatively minor share of Gates’ funding goes directly to the corporate sector. Most of the grants are for specific technologies developed by the corporations in question. Major grantees include the World Cocoa Foundation ($31m), a corporate outfit representing the world’s major food and cocoa processors, for improving marketing and production efficiency, and Zoetis (a Belgium based veterinary transnational – $14m) for getting veterinary products to farmers.
Total	5,865

Table 2: Gates Foundation agricultural grant recipients, top 10 countries 2003-2021

(Excludes grants to CGIAR, AGRA, AATF and International organisations)

Country	$US million	Main recipients
USA	1,657	The USA is by far the largest recipient country of Gates agricultural grants meant to benefit farmers in poor countries: $1,657 million dished out in over 400 grants. Recipients include US universities and research institutions to produce crop varieties and biotechnology research for farmers in Africa (e.g. Cornell University, a whopping $212m in 26 grants), big NGO projects mostly oriented to develop technology and markets (e.g. Heifer, $51m, to increase cow productivity and Technoserve Inc., $51m, to push new technologies), and several policy and capacity building projects to push the foundation’s agenda in Africa and elsewhere.
UK	466	A total of 81 grants with a focus on research such as for the University of Greenwich to work on pests and diseases in cassava and other crops (10 grants totalling $73m), and for the Global Alliance for Livestock Veterinary Medicines (9 grants totalling $169m) to produce livestock medicines and vaccines sold by the private sector to African farmers.
Germany	154	8 grants for the German Federal Enterprise for International Cooperation (GIZ) to develop supply chains for African cashew and rice farmers and other projects ($57m), and another three grants for the German Investment Corporation to work on African cotton and coffee farming ($47m), amongst others.
India	98	Total of 33 grants to a variety of grantees including three grants to PRADAN ($34m for women farmers training), and three grants to BAIF ($16m) to give farmers access to the latest livestock breeding technologies.
Netherlands	95	Mostly for five grants to the Wageningen University for agronomic research on grain legumes, supporting digital farming and other projects ($57m).
Canada	74	A total of 20 grants mostly towards universities to ensure adoption of new technologies, develop commercial cassava seed supply chains in Tanzania, and to produce vaccines for livestock diseases, amongst other programmes.
Australia	61	A total of 24 grants mostly to universities and research centres (including $30 million for the University of Queensland) to develop sorghum and cowpea hybrids for Africa, and provide genetically improved cattle, amongst other programmes.
China	48	Mostly for the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (two grants totalling $33 million) to develop new rice varieties for farmers across the world.
Uganda	46	Mostly for RUFORUM (two grants totalling over $30 million to support agricultural research universities in the region). RUFORUM was established as a programme of the Rockefeller Foundation in 1992 and became an independent Regional University Forum in 2004.
Kenya	43	Grants for Farm Concern International to create market-oriented value chains for a number of crops, and to a number of agribusiness companies active in the region to do the same.
Total top 10	2,742	$US2.7 billion, or almost half of all agriculture funding from Gates went to grantees in these 10 countries: over 90% to countries in the North.

1 GRAIN, “How does the Gates Foundation spend its money to feed the world?”, Nov 2014. https://grain.org/e/5064

2 See: Luke Savage “Bill Gates Chooses Corporate Patent Rights Over Human Lives” In Jacobin, 2021. https://jacobinmag.com/2021/04/bill-gates-vaccines-intellectual-property-covid-patents, and: Tim Schwab, “The Fall of the House of Gates?”, in The Nation, May 2021, https://www.thenation.com/article/society/gates-me-too-divorce/

3 Timothy A. Wise, “Failing Africa’s Farmers: An Impact Assessment of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa”, Tufts University, July 2020. https://sites.tufts.edu/gdae/files/2020/07/20-01_Wise_FailureToYield.pdf

4 See: https://www.acbio.org.za/publications?search_api_fulltext=Gates&sort_by=field_publication_date

5 See: https://usrtk.org/category/bill-gates-food-tracker/

6 The original Gates database is available from their website: https://www.gatesfoundation.org/about/committed-grants. The GRAIN database which includes a grouping of different types of grantees can be downloaded from https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-ItZGNKANeY00Rv-LRxotRVjStoSXyor/view?usp=sharing and

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xjg8JYU_TTa2q5VvY9Aob0o_SUOcecE6/view?usp=sharing

7 See also: GRAIN, “Barbarians at the barn: private equity sinks its teeth into agriculture”, 2020, https://grain.org/e/6533

8 For a more in-depth look at each category, visit GRAIN’s Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/grain_org/

9 See: https://www.oxfam.org/en/what-we-do/about/our-finances-and-accountability

10 Timothy A. Wise, “Failing Africa’s Farmers: An Impact Assessment of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa” Tufts University, July 2020. https://sites.tufts.edu/gdae/files/2020/07/20-01_Wise_FailureToYield.pdf

11 See: “Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Statement on Creation of Nonprofit Agricultural Research Institute”, Seattle, January 21, 2020. https://www.gatesfoundation.org/ideas/media-center/press-releases/2020/01/gates-foundation-statement-on-creation-of-nonprofit-agricultural-research-institute

12 See: https://www.afdb.org/en/events/high-level-virtual-dialogue-feeding-africa-leadership-scale-successful-innovations

13 See: https://agrf.org/dealroom/

14 See: “The unholy alliance”, Oakland institute, 2016. https://www.oaklandinstitute.org/sites/oaklandinstitute.org/files/unholy_alliance_web.pdf

15 GRAIN, “Biofortified crops or biodiversity? The fight for genuine solutions to malnutrition is on,” 4 June 2019: https://grain.org/e/6246

16 See: https://www.state.gov/leaders-summit-on-climate/

17 See: https://www.geekwire.com/2021/bill-gates-shares-3-steps-clean-energy-economy-message-leaders-summit-climate/

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Agriculture

Hemp for Victory

Published

2 months ago

May 23, 2021

Daniel Franco

WWII propaganda poster

The Big Picture: An anonymous bunch of hippies saw a grave injustice happening, made a plan to remedy it, and then executed that plan over 3 decades. As of this post, near total success is at hand, at long last.

For the Record: I’m always casting about for good examples to share with Mobilized readers. The world needs more awareness of what’s going on and it does get tiring seeing only bad news every day. So in light of the upcoming Soil Summit, it sure seems right to talk about a farming-related story that may inspire folks to action.

When I was a college student in a small Ohio town, it was a big deal to grow one’s hair long and get about pretending that the 1960’s never ended. “Townies” wanted to fight, “Frat boys” wanted to boot you off the campus, and the ladies were not all that impressed (which kinda negated the whole effort, honestly). But it did open a few doors, and one such door led to a farm over the state line in even-more-rural Indiana. Run by kids from the nearby college, they had goats and chickens and all manner of interesting ways. And they had friends. Friends with even bigger farms. This led to many educational trips, and overall it left this writer with a real sense of closeness with the land. The rhythms of a farm are immutable. If the animals are not tended to constantly, they die. If the soil is not tended to nearly as much, it too dies. And also there are times of harvest and celebration, as much a part of the farm life cycle as the rain and the sun.

At one of these celebrations, a giant weekend-long pancake breakfast and amateur music festival, I met a bunch of folks about my age. They worked on that farm, but were not the main farmers. They had a very different role, it turned out. What they did was organize musical acts and speakers, and those folks went out to every college that would host them. They called themselves “Hemp For Victory”, and they had 1 clear mission. That goal: to eradicate the unjust laws in America around marijuana and hemp growing.

I will admit to you, reader, that I thought they were insane at the time. Shows how much I knew… They were armed with a sense of righteousness, a long historical knowledge, and most importantly, a plan. It wasn’t enough to teach college kids that founding father Geo. Washington grew hemp on his plantation, no sir. It wasn’t enough to share that industrial hemp was crucial to the World War II war effort, and that in those days the Federal Government did all it could to promote the plant’s growth. No, these ideas were useful in changing minds, but the goal was the goal. And to do that, they knew it was going to be a long fight.

Against them, was every District Attorney in the land, every FBI agent, and the entire Congress. On their side: facts. That’s it. All they had was the fact that the plant was not the evil bogeyman the other side had made it out to be, and the less obvious fact that the other side was propping up anti-Pot propaganda because it suited their purposes and kept them flush with cash. It’s worth noting most of those purposes were nakedly racist, and only barely hidden.

Their plan had only a few steps, easy to learn and remember. Educate, first and foremost. Spread out, secondly. And third: take the battle to the states. Start small and grow slowly.

Fast forward to this post, in mid-2021. These folks are largely still around, although by choice they are still largely anonymous. But you need only look to California’s 1996 Prop 216 legislation, and later bills passed since then, to see their authorship. And skimming the laws of other states which have legalized Pot you will see their names as well. For all intents and purposes, the tide has turned. Marijuana is still a Schedule One drug, according to the Feds. It has “no legal value”, according to the DEA. But not for long. Each of the last 5 Congresses has moved to end this fiction, and pretty soon that will get signed into law. And – – it really doesn’t matter what the Feds are saying anymore. Most states with large populations have taken on the matter and are remedying the unjust laws, followed by letting out of jail the folks who were imprisoned for having a bag or two of twigs. The rest of the states are largely right behind them, now that they see how legalizing and taxing hemp helps fill their coffers.

Next Steps: It really is the beginning of the end for repressive drug laws in this nation. Common sense, facts, and sheer orneriness pushed an idea that was seen as ‘radical’ so far into the mainstream awareness that barriers are now falling everywhere. Credit is justly due to these anonymous activists, among many others. Their lesson is for you, reader. What was once unthinkable has become inevitable. It didn’t take an armed rebellion, didn’t take outrageous headlines to get the task done. There is a time and a place for everything, of course; sometimes change can only happen via great drama. But what you can take away from the efforts to legalize marijuana is this: Facts will out.

If you have facts on your side, you will win. No matter how few you are. Draw allies to your cause, with facts. And a heck of a lot of patience. Don’t assume you are going to need endless piles of money, or an army, to make positive change. You only need facts, and a plan. That’s it.

What they’re saying:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemp_for_Victory

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