President Bush on Food Security

Plus: the 'Deconstructing Dinner' Cross-Canada Trike Tour.
Read more [The Tyee]

Deconstructing Dinner: "President Bush on Food Security / Cross-Canada Trike Tour I"

President Bush addressed the latest global food crisis in a press conference from the White House. The Oakland Instituteand#039;s Anuradha Mittal responds. Plus; the first in an ongoing series covering two Canadians cycling across the country to raise aware
Read more [Radio4All]

Analytical Monthly Review, “India’s Emerging Food Security Crisis: The Consequences of the Neoliberal Assault on the Public Distribution System”

–An analysis on the consequences of neoliberal policy with a focus on food distribution. A timely article by the AMR given the current crises in food distribution.
Read more [Left News]

Woman donates shopping spree to food bank

A woman who won a shopping spree at a Charlottetown grocery store has donated the results to the city's food bank.
Read more [CBC - PEI]

Flour, baked goods scarce at St. John's food banks

The high cost of flour is causing problems with food banks in the St. John's area, an advocate says.
Read more [CBC - Newfoundland]

Bread donations to food bank plummet

There has been a dramatic drop in donations of bread to the Charlottetown food bank.
Read more [CBC - PEI]

Province and pork producers work to support Alberta food banks

Over half a million pounds of ground pork will soon be available to needy Albertans through local food banks.

The Government of Alberta, the Alberta Food Bank Network Association and the province’s pork industry have agreed to work together to help distribute the meat generated from the federal government’s Cull Breeding Swine Program.
Read more [Alberta Government News Feed]

Castro warned of food crisis

HAVANA -- As global fears about food security mount with riots in Africa and panic buying elsewhere, one world figure can sit back and say he warned a year ago of a coming food crisis -- Fidel Castro.

Price surges in Thailand

BANGKOK -- Rice prices in Thailand, the world's top exporter, surged to $1,000 a tonne on Thursday as concerns about food security first triggered by a handful of Asian export bans spread. This week's five-per-cent jump takes prices to nearly three times their level at the start of the year, intensifying fears of social unrest.
Read more [Vancouver Sun (News)]

"Almost None of 45 People Tracked Were Better Off": Study Contradicts Government Welfare Claims

by Frances Bula - April 23, 2008

[British Columbia's] welfare system makes people homeless, sometimes forces women to turn to prostitution and relies on food banks and charities to help provide the basics to its clients, according to an unprecedented in-depth study of welfare recipients.

read more

$500,000 in culled hogs will go to food banks

Up to 150,000 kg of ground pork will be heading to the tables of Manitoba's hungry in the coming weeks and months, thanks to $500,000 in funding announced by the province Wednesday and a massive hog cull underway across Canada. The money will be used to process up to 5,000 culled sows, which the province says is between 10 and 20 per cent of all the animals that will likely be killed in Manitoba as part of a country-wide program to keep the hog industry from collapsing.
Read more [Winnipeg Free Press]

Don Kossick: Saskatoon's Community Activist of the Year

Dear Friends, Thank you very much for selecting me as community activist of the year. The recognition is truly appreciated. I would also like to recognize the tremendous energy for social change that exists in Saskatoon. The turn out for the walk to support Station 20 West was stupendous. The 2,500 people who walked throught the CORE neighborhoods for justice and equity for all showed the true spirit of this city. Station 20 West will become a reality yet because of this deep desire to make a city that works for everyone. To be on the cutting edge in placemaking that really addresses the right of everyone to food security, good health and affordable housing and the building of bridges between community. With our collective energy We can do that here! In community, Don Kossick
Read more [Making the Links Radio - Saskatoon]

PREMIER ANNOUNCES MAJOR FOOD DONATION TO FOOD BANKS

The Province of Saskatchewan announced a major donation to Saskatchewan Food Banks today.

Price of staple foods on the rise: Winnipeg Harvest audit

The cost of some basic foods has skyrocketed in Winnipeg and low-income families are feeling the crunch, according to research by the province's largest food bank.
Read more [CBC - Manitoba]

The price of food: mapping a crisis, Heidi Fritschel

Prices are surging for food commodities worldwide, posing a tough policy challenge for developing countries - can they protect poor consumers without crushing new opportunities for farmers?

Heidi Fritschel is a writer and editor.
This article is also published on the website of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). Poor consumers across the globe are protesting about their rising food bills. In December 2007, Mexicans rioted in response to an enormous jump in tortilla prices, which quadrupled in some parts of the country; in January 2008, Indonesians took to the streets to protest high soybean prices; in February, protesters in three major towns in Burkina Faso, angry about the rising cost of food and other basic goods, attacked government offices and shops; unrest linked to food markets has occurred also in Guinea, Mauritania, Morocco, Senegal, Uzbekistan, and Yemen.

The new "agflation" that has riled poor consumers marks a sharp break with the generation following the mid-1970s, a period generally characterised by years of slowly falling food prices. The Economist reports that in 1974-2005, real food prices declined by 75%; but 2005-08, they have risen by 75% percent (see "The end of cheap food", 6 December 2007). Moreover, the price increases affect nearly every food commodity. Prices of wheat, butter, and milk have tripled since 2000; those of maize, rice, and poultry have nearly doubled; those of meat, palm oil, and cassava have all gone up, too. Overall, the food-price index of the United Nations's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) rose by nearly 40% in 2007, compared with a 9% increase in 2006; in the first months of 2008, prices are higher than they have been in decades.

The years of falling food prices were good for consumers, but not so good for farmers. Now, while consumers in urban areas cannot be expected to welcome soaring food prices that eat into their wallets, the higher prices should theoretically reward farmers with greater profits and better livelihoods. "Many media are reporting that high prices are good for farmers, which is true for much of the sector, but it's more complex than that", Daniel Gustafson, director of the FAO's liaison office for north America, said at a recent International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) seminar. "Many poor farmers in developing countries are net food buyers."

The task for governments is to help farmers take advantage of higher prices to increase productivity - and thereby production and incomes - in order to improve their living standards and ensure that poor consumers who are already living on the edge are not pushed into destitution. This balancing-act will not be easy.

Why have they risen?

A confluence of factors underlies the dramatic rise in food prices. They include major new sources of demand for agricultural products. Millions of people in developing countries, especially fast-growing China and India, are benefiting from rising incomes; and their food preferences are shifting from grains and other staple crops to high-value products like meat, dairy, fish, fruits, and vegetables. The new urban middle class in countries where diets were once based on rice or maize is now developing a taste for products made from wheat. And demand for meat is surging - per-capita consumption of meat in China, for example, more than doubled between 1990 and 2005 and is still growing, leading to rapid increases in demand for feed-grain.

At the same time, with petroleum prices up by 19% in February 2008 alone and now hovering around an all-time high of $100 a barrel, it has become profitable to divert maize and other feed and food-crops to biofuel production; new biofuel subsidies further encourage this trend. The United States produced a record maize harvest in 2007, but one-third of the harvest went to ethanol production as a market reaction to the new subsidies. The profitability of biofuels, in turn, leads to higher prices in other commodities by causing farmers to switch from growing food-crops to growing biofuel feedstocks. "The biofuel boom is ratcheting up demand for maize and other energy crops", says Mark Rosegrant, director of IFPRI's environment and production technology division, "and farmers react accordingly." High oil prices also make it more expensive to operate farm machinery and to transport agricultural products, and raise the cost of petroleum-based fertiliser.

Climate has played a role as well. Australia, one of the world's largest wheat producers, has been desiccated by drought since 2002 - its worst drought in a century. Recent rains have led farmers to hope that the worst may be over, but the loss of much of the country's last wheat crop was a serious blow to world markets. Extreme weather in other parts of the world - such as floods in West Africa and Mozambique - has also cut agricultural production.

In addition, speculation in commodity markets, stimulated by rising commodity prices, has contributed to more volatile prices. Speculation about future commodity prices influences current prices, exacerbating price increases, which in turn encourages more speculation. The volume of traded global agricultural futures and options increased by almost 30% in 2006.

A model assessment

The factors driving food prices go beyond the "invisible hand" of self-correcting cycles of supply and demand. In such a cycle, for example, demand goes up, causing prices to rise. In response to higher prices, producers increase production and consumers reduce their demand, and prices thus fall. In this case, however, rising consumer demand from rapidly growing countries, higher energy prices, and even extreme weather related to climate change appear likely to continue. "All indicators suggest that food prices are unlikely to fall any time soon and, in fact, may rise much more depending on countries' decisions about biofuels", says Rosegrant.

IFPRI researchers have used the "international model for policy analysis of agricultural commodities and trade" (Impact) to project world food prices under various scenarios. The model projects that if countries stick with their current biofuel investment plans, by 2020 the prices of maize and oilseeds will have risen by 26% and 18% respectively over a baseline scenario, with slower growth in biofuels. If countries double their planned biofuel investments and mandates, maize prices will soar by 72% and oilseed prices by 44% by 2020. Under a longer-term scenario in which governments take no major steps to deal with climate change, world cereal prices are projected to rise 30%-40% beyond their current levels by 2050, and meat prices are projected to rise by 20%-30%.

It is possible that the impact of biofuel production on food prices could be reduced. The high prices for energy crops like maize and soybeans could restrict the profitability of biofuel production and thus push down demand for these crops for biofuel. Some processing plants have already been shut down. Cristina Amaral, senior agronomist at FAO's investment centre, says that scientists are working to develop economical ways of producing biofuels using feedstocks like grasses and agricultural-waste products.

These second-generation biofuels could reduce the pressure on foodcrops - but only if they do not compete with land and water for food and feed (see James Painter, "Indonesia: the biofuel blowback" [30 August 2007]). Joachim von Braun, director-general of IFPRI, points out that simply becoming more productive in biofuels will not reduce the competition between food and fuel but will actually increase it if farmers find it is more profitable to grow fuel rather than food.

An opportunity for farmers?

High food prices should present a golden opportunity for poor farmers to increase both production and profits. The FAO's Daniel Gustafson sees evidence that certain countries will significantly raise agricultural production. South Africa is expected to increase its planted area by 8%, he says, and farmers in Malawi and Zambia are likely to increase their production owing to subsidised input programmes in those countries.

A number of countries, especially in Asia, have been producing record harvests in recent years anyway, so future large harvests may not represent large increases over past production. "We could see some significant increases in Indian cereal production", says Gustafson. "The price rise really is quite dramatic, and there are many parts of India where even if the local rise in prices doesn't match international ones, there could still be a big jump. There are other areas where people have left the farm, or some members of the family have left the farm, leaving land fallow, so if high prices prevail, which they probably will, we could see some of these people returning to what now may be a better option."

Still, national agricultural-pricing policies and the remoteness of some rural areas often prevent world prices from reaching domestic markets, and thus farmers may not have as much incentive to boost production as world price increases may imply. But some countries behave differently. India, for instance, has increased its investment in agriculture in its 2008-09 budget and has raised prices for farmers, while protecting its consumers from high price increases.

"In a perfect world, where producers have access to seeds, fertilizers, and other inputs and where marketing and transportation systems work well, the response to higher prices is higher output", says Stacey Rosen, agricultural economist at the United States department of agriculture's economic-research service (ERS). "In the real world, however, this isn't always the case."

David King, secretary-general of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers (IFAP), lists a host of steps that governments can take to exploit the current situation for farmers and agricultural development:

* allowing price signals to reach small-scale farmers

* improving services like research and development, extension, and veterinary services

* establishing a sound regulatory environment on issues such as food-safety systems and respect for contracts

* improving infrastructure like roads, communications, and small-scale irrigation

* setting policies that will translate any trade opportunities negotiated through the World Trade Organisation into real income gains for the poor.

"We agree that rising food prices are a golden opportunity to improve poor farmers' livelihoods", says King. "However, this opportunity will not be realised if farmers are not organised in the market, consulted as partners on policies to attract investment for modernising agriculture, and provided with improved services and infrastructure." Unfortunately, investments in agricultural infrastructure, institutions, and science and technology take time to put into operation and to bear fruit.

In the meantime, there is no guarantee that small farmers will be the ones to benefit from productivity increases and high prices. In many cases, larger landowners are in a better position to respond to market signals. And Regina Birner, an IFPRI senior research fellow, worries that higher food prices will raise the value of land in developing countries so much that there will be fierce competition for that resource, to the detriment of smallholder farmers and pastoralists. "Even now, new players like corporate enterprises are knocking on the doors of African governments to get access to land for primary production and energy plantations", she says.

The poor consumers' burden

High food prices are gouging the budgets of poor consumers, who spend a much larger share of their income on food than do wealthy consumers. Moreover, staple grains like maize and rice are often the main food source for the poorest people: they account for 63% of the calories consumed in low-income Asian countries, nearly 50% in sub-Saharan Africa, and 43% in lower-income Latin American countries. A study by the ERS shows that five low-income countries (Burundi, Eritrea, Haiti, Liberia, and Zimbabwe), whose people subsist on an average of less than 2,200 calories per day per person, import more than 40% of their food. For these countries, a decline in imports stemming from high prices could deal a serious blow to the diets of people who are already nutritionally vulnerable.

An expansion of biofuel production would - according to IFPRI's Impact model - lead to substantial declines in calorie availability in some countries. If biofuel production undergoes a drastic increase, calorie availability in sub-Saharan Africa is projected to fall by more than 8% in 2020, and the number of malnourished children in the region is projected to increase by 3 million. The World Bank offers a sobering comparison: 450 pounds of maize can be converted into enough ethanol to fill the twenty-five-gallon tank of an SUV with pure ethanol one time - or used to provide enough calories to feed one person for a year.

Some very poor countries - such as Ethiopia, Malawi, and Sierra Leone - have relied heavily on food aid even when food prices were low. Food aid will be more important to these countries than ever, but as food prices rise, food aid tonnage falls. "Food aid providers like the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the World Food Programme (WFP) are going to be hit hard as long as food aid is budgeted in dollars", says IFPRI research fellow Marc Cohen. Because aid donors such as the United States allocate a certain dollar amount to food aid each year, those dollars buy less food when prices are high.

In fact, food aid is already on the decline. The cost of commodities for USAID's office of food for peace (FFP) rose 41% in the six months up to February 2008, according to Jonathan Dworken, deputy director of FFP. "With these higher than anticipated prices, FFP now needs to set aside up to an additional $120 million for commodities already purchased, or in the process of being purchased, for emergency programmes", he says. "This means that up to $120 million must be cut from emergency food-aid contributions planned for the second half of the fiscal year."

Dworken points out that poor urban consumers, who purchase all of their food, will feel the most pain. Meeting their food needs through careful targeting of food-aid programmes will raise new challenges for food-aid agencies, which have traditionally worked in rural areas. But rural people also suffer from higher food prices. Millions of small farmers are, in fact, net food buyers, so higher food prices hurt them more than they help.

A coordinated approach

Poor developing countries face a thorny policy problem as they confront higher prices. A number of countries - Argentina, China, Egypt, Mexico, Morocco, and Russia among them - have responded by adopting price controls on food, which will limit the prices farmers receive for their goods. Many have also reduced restrictions on imports of staple foods while limiting or even banning exports of staple foods. "[Banning exports] will make the situation worse, especially for importing countries", says Amaral, the senior agronomist at FAO's investment centre.

Developed countries, on the other hand, have a responsibility to reduce the trade barriers that harm poor developing-country farmers and to expand and rethink their aid programmes. "Higher commodity prices may offer an unbeatable opportunity to conclude the protracted WTO Doha round negotiations", says Charlotte Hebebrand, chief executive of the International Food and Agricultural Trade Policy Council (IFATPC). "Higher food prices take away countries' arguments for their trade-distorting policies, be they price-linked domestic support, export subsidies, or inordinately high tariffs."

Also in openDemocracy on food security, trade and development:

Kevin Watkins, Jean-Pierre Lehmann, "World trade, poverty and the environment in the age of global governance"
(11 June 2002)

Zhou Qing, "China's food fears"
(29 September 2006)

Geoff Andrews,
"The slow revolution" (26 October 2006)

Stephen Haggard, Marcus Noland, "Famine in North Korea: markets, aid and reform"
(3 May 2007)

Paul Collier, "The aid evasion: raising the ‘bottom billion'"
(11 June 2007)

Stephen Browne,
"A green wall? Kenya, organics, and ‘food miles'"
(25 January 2008)

Also our debate, "food without frontiers" - from GM to wine, Sweden to India, biotech to allotments...

Economists generally agree on how developing countries ought to proceed: by providing income support to the poorest people via cash or vouchers to help them purchase the food they need. Then farmers can benefit from the higher prices, which should help raise production. At the same time, governments should increase their investments in agriculture, which have been in long decline. "The real solution lies in improving agricultural productivity through policy and development", says Dworken, "not just in providing food aid."

More specifically, developing countries need to strengthen their rural infrastructure and improve market access for small farmers, argues Maximo Torero, director of IFPRI's markets, trade, and institutions division. Africa in particular lacks the infrastructure that farmers need to get agricultural inputs like fertiliser into rural areas and to get their products out to markets. A study of rural transportation in the mid-1990s found that transport costs in Ghana and Zimbabwe were at least double those in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. With such costs, farmers often cannot profitably produce for the market, even when prices are high. "Market-oriented reforms alone are not enough to provide complete access to infrastructure in remote, poor rural areas", says Torero. "Public intervention is needed to close this gap."

The scientific community must also play a central role by focusing agricultural research and technology on increasing crop productivity through crop- breeding and water and soil management. IFPRI director-general Joachim von Braun points out that the "green revolution" of the 1960s led to cheaper and more plentiful food, benefiting both farmers and consumers in much of the world. "These accomplishments were spurred by significant investment in agricultural research and development", he says. "Unfortunately, from the 1990s agriculture fell from the priority list. After enjoying a half century of falling food costs, we now are paying the price for these years of neglect."

Joachim von Braun believes that most of the needed action must take place at the national level through a dual approach: social protection of the poor and productivity enhancement in agriculture. But a globally coordinated approach is also needed to bring together key players in agriculture - Europe, the United States, Brazil, China, India, and the major foundations and research institutions - to accelerate agricultural productivity to meet the current challenge. "Agricultural power has become more spread out around the world, with the result that there is no governance architecture that can generate appropriate political responses to the food and agriculture price and productivity crisis at the global and national levels", von Braun says. "A new agriculture, food, and nutrition governance architecture is needed. With so much at stake - the world's food supply, environmental threats to agriculture, and unacceptably high rates of hunger and poverty - a fresh response is needed. We cannot afford to be complacent."

Monsanto Meets Resistance in Mexico

Source:http://gnn.tv/articles/3540/Monsanto_Meets_Resistance_in_MexicoLede picture:Subhead:

Mexican farmers fight back against a genetically-engineered invasion.

After 14 years of the North American Free Trade Agreement’s (NAFTA) devastating effects on the majority of Mexican farmers, Mexico’s food system now faces another serious threat: Genetically Modified (GM) corn. Illegally planted and unknowingly imported since the late nineties, GM corn has contaminated farms all over Mexico, threatening the livelihoods of small farmers, endangering consumer health, and putting at risk the incredible genetic diversity of native Mexican corn varieties.

For over a year now, farmers, scientists, and activists all over Mexico have been mobilizing to the banner “Sin maíz, no hay país“—Without corn, there is no country. A nationwide campaign bearing the same name has been organizing protests and rallies against the importation of GM corn and in support of maiz criollo, known in English as ‘indian corn’ or maize.

At a Sin maíz, no hay país event in Huajauapan, Oaxaca, the long-time activist for indigenous rights and honorary Zapatista Commander Don Felix Serdán called for the prohibition of GM corn, saying that it represented a threat to food security and to Mexico’s sovereignty.

“If we lose our corn, we lose our sovereignty, our very dignity. We will depend on the U.S., we will have to buy their GM seeds. That will be slavery. Now, we’re no longer self-sufficient and there is no food security,” he said. “We have the responsibility to avoid the contamination by GM corn, to protect our communities.”

The sad story of Mexico

Mexico is one of the few countries that allows the importation of GM corn, technically only for use as feed corn for livestock, but since the late nineties enormous quantities of it have been entering—unlabeled—into Mexico’s food system. The European Union and Japan have banned the importation of GM corn until its possibly negative effects can be studied.

However in Mexico—where some 1.2 billion corn tortillas are consumed daily (that’s 12 a person)—GM corn is unknowingly consumed by humans despite serious concerns about its effects on human health. Farmers also unwittingly plant GM corn, and native varieties have been contaminated by GM corn all over the country—thanks to the fact that maize pollen can travel in the wind large distances and pollinate far away farms where native maize is being grown.

The Mexican government hasn’t taken any steps to slow or stop the influx of GM corn, nor has it attempted to study the consequences of GM contamination or the effects on human health. And despite the importance of Mexico’s native corn diversity and the fact that GM contamination has been discovered all over the country, GM corn keeps flooding into Mexico.

“Today, approximately 60% of the corn that enters Mexico is genetically modified,” says Cati Marielle, Director of the Sustainable Agricultural Systems division of the Environmental Study Group (GEA, in it’s Spanish initials), a NGO dedicated to helping indigenous farmers.

“It’s the sad story of Mexico, to be subordinate to the interests of the United States government, which in turn represents the interests of transnational corporations,” she continued.

Financial interests vs. health risks

The principal biotechnology corporations doing business in Mexico are Monsanto, DuPont-Pioneer, Syngenta and Dow, but Monsanto is the key player both in Mexico and worldwide, owning 90% of GM seed patents globally, a business worth 8.6 billion dollars in 2007.

Monsanto became well known in Europe when in the late nineties a German judge made public a study performed by Monsanto on one of the GM corn varieties it was marketing in Europe at the time, MON810.

“The confidential report by Monsanto said that its lab rats had been harmed by its own seeds,” said Marielle. “They had problems in kidneys, liver and the nervous system and had eaten nothing but GM corn.”

In the US, a variety of GM corn made its way into the Taco Bell fast food chain and caused a scandal, forcing Aventis, the biotech company that made it, to recall its seed and burn its fields. The corn, known as Starlink, had been marketed as feed corn, after showing to have negative health results in humans.

“Starlink corn was approved in the States for livestock only. In humans it produced serious problems in the digestive tract,” said Marielle. “The problem with Starlink corn was that suddenly they found it in Taco Bell. The scandal obligated the US government to punish the producers and make them re-label their products. But in Mexico we really don’t know if we’ve been eating Starlink corn because there are no controls {on GM seeds} in Mexican customs.”

Although Starlink is prohibited for human consumption in the U.S, in Mexico some 44 million tons of second-generation foodstuffs are produced annually from imported GM corn, including Starlink.

“The problem,” says Marielle, “is that it’s distributed as a grain, but without a label, without any indication that it’s GM corn.”

More than 11 million tons of GM corn were imported last year, of which 8 million was directed to internal food production, representing one third of the corn consumed annually in Mexico.

This has Marielle and health advocates worried, because corn products are the foundation of the Mexican diet.

“It’s not the same thing to be eating kilos of corn products every day in thousands of dishes, than to have a little snack once in a while,” she said.

“Officially, GM corn only enters for consumption by animals and for industrial products for human consumption. But if you go to the supermarket you’ll find an astonishing quantity of products that contain corn, although it appears that you aren’t buying corn,” Marielle added.

Greenpeace Mexico has published a list of commercial products that contain GM corn and it includes various commercial brands of tortillas, as well as snacks like Doritos and most brands of breakfast cereals. GM corn is also the basis for many industrial food products like corn syrup, fructose, and vegetable oils.

A Monsanto press representative, Darren Wallis, said that GM products have been eaten by humans since their inception, but did not comment on questions about GM corn’s possible negative effects.

“Biotechnologies, from Monsanto and may other companies,” said Wallis, “have been used in parts of the world now for more than a decade. Food products from staple crops like corn and soybeans have used ingredients from these crops for the same amount of time and have been widely consumed by people around the world.”

GM contamination, is it worth it?

The planting of GM corn has never been legal in Mexico, although some biotech companies have permission to plant small “pilot fields” to test out their GM varieties in the field. Yet in 2007 some nine thousand hectares of GM corn were commercially harvested in Chihuahua state, in northern Mexico. The government is aware of this, but has done nothing to stop it.

Pat Mooney, a Nobel prize contender for his work on the global seed situation, said in the national newspaper La Jornada that Mexico’s farmers and consumers have become “guinea pigs” for the biotech industry, pointing out the possibly “disastrous” results of the wide-spread GM contamination already taking place in Mexico.

“GM seeds and agrochemicals have become a huge industry with each having a world market of 25 billion dollars annually,” he said.

“The goal of the transnationals is to take control of the source of food, because seeds are the first link on the food chain.” added Mooney.

However, long-term effects of GM contamination on native maize are still unknown. In general, the science of genetic modification leaves much to be known. The bio-tech companies themselves are clueless as to exactly how and where their transgenes attach themselves to the DNA in the process of creating a GM corn variety.

“There is a part that the scientists call ‘trash’, because they don’t know what it is. The trans-genesis process is really up to chance. They don’t know where in the DNA sequence their transgenes land, and there is an enormous incertitude over what will happen in successive generations,” said Marielle.

When GM contamination of native maize was discovered in 8 states in 2001 by both independent and government studies, some plants were discovered to have been contaminated more than once, and by different GM corn varieties—including Starlink. Farmers in areas of contamination have also reported high rates of mutated cobs.

Although the real extent of contamination is uncertain because GM corn pollen can cross-pollinate fields dozens of kilometers away, it is clear that GM corn can seriously affect insect populations – both pests and those beneficial to crops – with possibly catastrophic results.

One of the most common types of GM corn is known as Bt corn, which produces its own insecticide thanks to the genetic fusing of a toxic bacteria, Bacillus thuringiensis, into the corn’s genome. Bt varieties are the primary contaminators of maize in Mexico, to the fears of many farmers and scientists. Studies have shown that it’s pollen is fatal to the larvae of Monarch butterflies, millions of which breed each year in central Mexico.

More alarming is that crop-destroying pests can become resistant to the Bt toxin, posing a threat not only to GM farms, but contaminated ones as well — which could lead to wide-spread crop failures in the not-so-distant future.

Even Monsanto has realized this. Although the company has published strategies on avoiding the development of Bt-resistant pests, it maintains that such a possibility is unlikely.

“[Bt corn] is a good tool for farmers because it is toxic to target pests like the corn ear worm in corn and specific pests in cotton and is something already found in nature,” said Wallis.

To protect non-GM corn varieties from contamination, Monsanto suggests separating some corn in “refuge areas” in order to maintain separate pest populations and avoid contamination from GM varieties.

“Monsanto has a rigorous stewardship plan that protects technologies, like Bt, and promotes its longevity. For Bt in particular, this comes in the form of natural refuge in cotton and refuge acres in corn,” said Wallis.

In spite of such efforts, Marielle feels that the risks just aren’t worth it.

“When we talk to Monsanto’s scientists who work with GM crops, they say, ‘what we know is really very little’”. With so much information lacking, they want to sell us a product that’s really not as safe as they say it is,” she said.

It’s the patents, stupid

Recently, Mexico has passed two laws relating to the planting and sale of GM seeds; in 2005 the Biosecurity Law—known as the Monsanto Law for that companies involvement its creation—and in 2007 the Law of Seed Production, Certification and Sale. Both laws set the stage for the legal planting of GM corn, as well as the criminalization of farmers found to have fields contaminated by GM corn. Neither requires that GM products be labeled as such.

These laws are part of a process to institutionalize the rights of the transnational biotech sector, similar to one already established in the US and Canada. After a few years of planting GM crops—in ‘pilot’ or test fields, or by farmers who’ve bought the seed—Monsanto takes farmers whose fields have been contaminated to court for patent violations, forcing these farmers to buy Monsanto’s GM variety, year after year.

In Canada, Monsanto won a case in 2001 against Percy Schmeiser, a Saskachewan canola farmer whose field was contaminated by GM canola from a neighboring field.

“The court ruled that regardless of how Monsanto’s genetically-altered canola gets on a persons land, it’s the property of Monsanto. And even if it cross-pollinates into your crop, then your plant becomes the property of Monsanto,” said Schmeiser in a 2001 interview in England. “A farmer should always have the right to be able to use his own seed,” he added.

Although the judge ruled that Schmeiser did not have to pay Monsanto, he is not yet free from their grasp. After hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees and almost ten years since his fields were discovered to have been contaminated, Monsanto’s GM canola keeps popping up in Schmeiser’s fields—despite all of his efforts to rid them of it—cross-pollinating his crop and contaminating his seed.

According to Marielle, in the end everything comes down to patents.

“Everything is tied to the patents, they’re what’s at play. For farmers, they represent a threat to a common good—maize—with the inheritance of hundreds of generations of farmers and seven thousand years of maize agriculture in Mexico. 59 maize races with over 1200 identified varieties are cultivated here. There is a continuous diversification of maize that creates varieties adapted to every ecological niche,” she said.

Monsanto wants to control the national market of seeds and fertilizers, turning every farmer it can into a life-long client, and in the process effectively wiping out the genetic diversity of maize.

“It’s not just the ingression of a GM gene into the native maize varieties, but the fact that the gene is the private property of Monsanto, entering into a public good,” Marielle emphasized.

In reality, Monsanto’s efforts to market its GM corn varieties in Mexico have only just begun.

This is the first of a two-part article looking into Monsanto’s activities in Mexico. The second part can be found here.

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Re-Open the Food Bank Now!

[ April 5, 2008; 4:00 pm; ] Last month the only food bank in the Downtown Eastside was closed. Please read the call-out below and if possible have your organisation endorse the demand that the food bank be re-opened immediately. There will be a Community Meeting featuring various organizations struggling for economic human rights. Together we will organise to take back what is [...]
Read more [Save Low Income Housing Coalition]

Pakistan’s tough inheritance, Irfan Husain

Even as newly elected legislators were sworn in at Islamabad’s imposing national assembly amidst tight security on 17 March 2008, Pakistanis remained unaware who their next prime minister is going to be. The reason for this uncertainty is that the leading member of the coalition formed after the elections of 18 February, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), has yet to name its candidate.

Behind this confusion lies a power struggle within Benazir Bhutto’s party. Before her tragic assassination on 28 December 2007, the PPP leader left a will in which she named her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, as her successor as party chairman. However, in a meeting of senior PPP figures immediately following her assassination, it was decided that the couple’s son, Bilawal, would be co-chairman alongside his father. But as the role of the 19-year old Oxford undergraduate is currently more symbolic than real, Zardari led the party to its election victory, and now commands authority within it.

At the same meeting, Makhdoom Amin Fahim, a feudal landlord from Sindh province, was named the party’s candidate as prime minister. This decision merely confirmed Benazir Bhutto’s wishes, as she had relied on Fahim to manage PPP affairs during her long exile abroad, and Zardari’s decade-long incarceration on corruption charges. 

This decision too has proved far from straightforward. In the last few weeks, rumours began to circulate that Fahim was no longer the frontrunner. One reason being given is that Zardari fears that Fahim might not be as pliable as some other possible candidates. The PPP co-chairman could not run in the elections as there were a number of corruption cases pending against him. However, now that they have all been thrown out for lack of evidence, he can contest for an assembly seat in one of the by-elections that are due shortly. This would make him eligible for the top slot. 

Adding weight to this speculation is the alacrity with which the courts have dismissed the charges against Zardari after scores of desultory hearings over the last twelve years. Indeed, this only reinforces Benazir Bhutto’s earlier assertion that the charges were politically motivated.  

From the perspective of Pervez Musharraf - a president wounded by his supporters’ electoral defeat, facing a hostile majority in parliament, but still defiantly seeking maximum advantage in straitened circumstances - Asif Ali Zardari would be the ideal prime minister. The PPP leader is the only politician who has said he could live with the strongman who has ruled Pakistan for nearly nine years. By contrast, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif - backed by his faction of the Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) - longs to eject Musharraf from power, a desire shared too by most senior PPP personnel. 

Against this backdrop of political manoeuvre and calculation, the terrorist attacks against military and civilian targets have, if anything, quickened in tempo. On 11 March, a suicide-bomber who drove a pick-up truck towards the seven-storied regional office of the Federal Investigation Agency in Lahore; the 200-kilogram bomb virtually demolished the building. Then, on 15 March, an explosion at an Italian restaurant in Islamabad on killed a Turkish woman and wounded a number of foreigners, including four Americans purportedly working for the FBI and attached to the American embassy. The attack was not the usual random suicide-bombing, and thus has provoked widespread speculation that its target was the head of the FBI in Pakistan (one of those wounded in the attack).

The next day, 16 March - probably by coincidence - American Hellfire missiles fired from Predator drones demolished a house outside Wana, the regional headquarters of one of Pakistan’s troubled tribal areas, South Waziristan. The dwelling targeted was allegedly being used as an al-Qaida or Taliban meeting- places or training-centre; the casualties (at least nine killed and another nine wounded, although some estimates put the fatalities at twenty) included Arabs, central Asians and a number of Punjabis from Pakistan’s plains. 

This is the latest in a series of such assaults, which are ordered on the basis of electronic and human intelligence collected by agencies from both the United States and Pakistan (though defence spokespeople from both countries often refuse to accept or deny responsibility).

The Lahore and Islamabad attacks represent just one of the problems that await the imminent choice of a new prime minister and government. But there are other issues apart from violence that the next cabinet will inherit: among them inflation (the caretaker government’s double rise in the price of petroleum products in the last week is just one example), repeated and nerve-fraying electricity breakdowns and “load-shedding”, and depletion of reservoirs (raising fears of a poor wheat crop at a time of concern over global food security).

Many of these problems are directly attributable to the administrative mismanagement of the Musharraf years. For instance, not a single megawatt of power has been added to the national grid during the general-president’s almost nine years of rule. This helps to explain why the people - when they got the chance - punished Musharraf and his allies at the polls. But they will now have high expectations of the new government; expectations it won’t be able to fulfil, at least in the short run. 

But the next government has agreed to tackle at least one issue almost immediately: the restoration to office of the chief justice (Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry) and the other judges sacked by Musharraf on 3 November 2007 when he declared a state of emergency. This was the price Nawaz Sharif extracted from Zardari in return for joining the coalition. The supreme court meets to discuss this and other matters on 19 March; constitutional experts agree that a simple resolution by a majority of national-assembly members is all that is required to restore the status quo ante of 2 November.

This decision would itself open new possibilities, and very unwelcome ones for Pervez Musharraf. For once the higher judiciary is reinstalled, it is sure to be presented with a number of challenges to Musharraf’s election as president by the assembly in place before the election. Indeed, Pakistan’s supreme court was hearing such appeals when Musharraf struck to save his presidency by nullifying them. This time, he does not have the political and military resources to mount a similar coup. 

But even if the president survives the rising legal waters, he will be unable to exercise the powers he has become accustomed to. In the Pakistani constitution, the president is a figurehead with no executive powers. As a military dictator able to rely on a pliant assembly, Musharraf could arrogate to himself the authority to sack a government. Now even his residual powers are likely to be voted away, leaving him even more a diminished figure.

Pervez Musharraf would do himself and all Pakistan a huge favour if he were to go quietly into the night before being kicked out. Then the hard work of an elected, civilian government - and a new phase in Pakistan’s troubled history - can begin.

Feed hungry with culled sows: Northcott

WINNIPEG Harvest is hoping Manitoba sows culled in a $50-million federal program to help pork producers will end up as sausages in food hampers for the hungry. David Northcott said Wednesday the food bank was made aware of the program outlined in the last federal budget.
Read more [Winnipeg Free Press]

N.S. food bank takes steps to battle future mouse infestations

Feed Nova Scotia is changing the way it operates after a Halifax warehouse became infested with mice last November, forcing it to dump nearly 200 pallets of food into a landfill.
Read more [CBC - Nova Scotia]