The Grameen Bank's June 25th announcement that it will accept
US$150,000 from Monsanto Corporation (St. Louis, MO. USA) to launch
the Grameen Monsanto Center for Environment-Friendly Technologies is
stirring up a storm of controversy throughout agricultural and rural
organizations around the Third World. The surprise move was unveiled
jointly by Muhammad Yunus, Managing Director of the Grameen Bank and
Robert Shapiro, Monsanto's Chair and CEO. The company's initial grant
is for soft loans to Bangladeshi farmers. The loans are available to
buy agricultural and rural technologies including Monsanto's own
proprietary herbicides, hybrid rice, hybrid maize, and cotton seeds.
Monsanto is the world's largest crop chemical company and third
largest seed enterprise. Monsanto, which is completing a $33.5
billion merger with the conglomerate, American Home Products has
spent $8.1 billion in the past two years buying agricultural
biotechnology companies. Its most recent acquisition - the
international seeds operations of Cargill Inc. (for $1.4 billion)
together with its May takeovers of U.S. maize and cotton seed firms
makes the "Monster" the world leader in cotton seed sales (an
important Bangladesh export crop) - and number two in maize seed - a
crop with growth potential in South Asia. (For further details on
these and other Monsanto-related mergers, please see here.)
[The parenthetical sentence above points to this WWW link:
http://www.rafi.ca/misc/terminator.html
BioSafety Pressure: While Monsanto has stated that it will not
provide transgenic crop seed because Bangladesh does not have a
regulatory framework for the approval of genetically-modified
organisms, the Grameen/Monsanto announcement is expected to put
political pressure on the government to adopt biosafety rules
amenable to Monsanto's extensive line of herbicide-tolerant crops.
Yunus and Shapiro have said, however, that the joint venture will
begin by selling hybrid seeds to poor farmers. Hybrid rice and maize
are biologically incapable of breeding "true" in the second
generation. The seeds are either sterile or they produce often
unwelcome genetic "throwbacks".
Although some scientists regard hybrids as a boon to crop yields,
there is a growing opinion that the real advantage is that farmers are
forced back to the market every year to buy new seeds. Traditionally,
Bangladeshi rice farmers - among the poorest of the poor - not only
save seed for replanting, but women breed diverse seed types in order
to have varieties suited to their immediate ecosystems and economies.
Hybrid seeds could more than quadruple seed costs as well as end
forever the process of poor farmers adapting plants to their
resource-poor soils. "It doesn't take many years of buying new seed
before the traditional varieties lose their germination level or are
eaten," Pat Mooney, RAFI's Executive Director notes, "Trying to get
off the Grameen-Monsanto treadmill of seed purchases is impossible
once the old seeds die." Hope Shand, RAFI's Research Director agrees,
"We'll lose both farmers and a lot of crop genetic diversity."
Offers that can't be refused? "The Monster's grant could simply
subsidize the sale of its own products," Shand says. "Because the
Grameen Bank operates in 36,000 Bangladeshi villages and is often
the farmers' only route to credit, poor farmers could find themselves
under intense pressure to buy Monsanto's seeds and herbicides,"
Mooney adds.
A Bankers' "Mother Theresa": Since its founding in 1983, the Grameen
Bank has pioneered the concept of "micro-credit" whereby the poor -
very often women, obtain small loans (often less than $100) without
collateral. Muhammad Yunus, the Bank's founder, has shown that the
poorest of the poor will repay their debts 98% of the time - a rate
far superior to the record of commercial banks either in the South or
in industrialized countries. Today, about 8 million families obtain
micro-credit to launch tiny but profitable ventures such as the
purchase of chickens to sell eggs. Almost half of the micro-credit
activity continues to centre around the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh.
The Bank's success has made it a hero in the developing world and
turned Muhammad Yunus into a kind of bankers' Mother Theresa. A
World Bank-sponsored conference on micro-credit in Washington last
year accorded Yunus rock-star status and corporate gurus from George
Soros to Ted Turner have flocked to his side. "They see him as the
proof that a kinder, gentler capitalism can work for the poor," says
Pat Mooney.
But now, concerned environmentalists such as Vandana Shiva of the
Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology in New Delhi,
fear that Grameen has turned mean - or lost sight of its founding
goals. In an open letter to Yunus dated July 4th, Shiva, wrote,
"Monsanto's technologies are not environment friendly or sustainable.
They pose a threat to ecosystems and agriculture."
Pinkertons for peasants: This kind of capitalism can also turn poor
but independent farmers into poorer and dependent peasants. "If
farmers are pressured to stop saving and developing their own plant
varieties, their costs will sky-rocket. The crops they plant will be
those designed for the large fertile lands of big farmers - not for
their own fragile ecosystems," Hope Shand points out. According to
critics like Shand, the Grameen connection is a great deal for
Monsanto, "They've bought a cheap distribution and finance system
that not only reaches into half the villages of Bangladesh but also
guarantees that the poor will repay their loans." In North America,
Monsanto has hired Pinkertons (private police) to enforce farm
contracts and technology licencing agreements. The "Monster" has
gone after farmers threatening criminal charges wherever they suspect
them of trying to save patented seed. "In Bangladesh, the Grameen
credit network can do Pinkertons' work for the company at no cost,"
Mooney argues.
The Loan Terminator: The "Monster's" strategy goes beyond Bangladesh
and well beyond increasing sales for Roundup, its flagship herbicide.
Once Grameen uses its prestige to make South Asia's governments tow
the line on biosafety legislation (the company believes that
transgenic crops are perfectly safe for consumers and the environment)
the region will become an important new market for agricultural
biotechnologies. Indeed, Civil Society Organizations in South Asia
fear that poor farmers will become the guinea pigs for untried new
biotech products and processes. As of May this year, the "Monster" is
co-owner (with the US Department of Agriculture) of the Terminator
Technology. (For further information, please see here.) The Terminator
can render the seed of any crop infertile in the second generation
whether or not it is a hybrid. This makes it the ideal platform for
companies to introduce patented genetic traits they don't want farmers
to save from season to season. Monsanto's own genes for
Roundup-tolerance or insect-resistance can all be loaded onto the
Terminator "platform" and sold to farmers with Grameen Bank loans. The
Terminator's inventors have already suggested that the vast rice and
wheat lands of South Asia are ideal for the Terminator (known formally
within the Monster as the "Technology Protection System"). Both the
intergovernmental Convention on Biological Diversity and the
Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) have
expressed their concern about the impact of this technology on farmers
and the environment.
Re-Green Grameen: On July 3rd, RAFI wrote to Muhammad Yunus asking him
to reconsider the Monsanto relationship and to come out clearly
against any linkage between corporate grants and the purchase of the
grant-giver's products. RAFI also asked Grameen to join the opposition
to Terminator Technology and to support the traditional right of
farming communities to save, exchange, and develop plant varieties.
RAFI asked for a response by Tuesday, July 7. "Grameen has been
crawling all over our website," Hope Shand of RAFI comments, "but they
have not given any indication that they will reply." "For the sake of
the credibility of the micro-credit movement," Pat Mooney adds, "and
to protect the independence of Civil Society Organizations, we have to
speak out against deals such as this. We have no choice but to work
with partner organizations among farming and rural communities to
challenge the Grameen/Monsanto strategy. Hopefully, this is just a
clumsy mistake that can be corrected quickly. We want a green and not
a mean Grameen." In her July 4th letter to Yunus, Vandana Shiva
concluded, "We call on you to withdraw from this partnership with
Monsanto and invite you to join the growing worldwide movement of
people against Monsanto and against genetic engineering and patents on
life."
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Michele Gale-Sinex, communications manager
Center for Integrated Ag Systems
UW-Madison College of Ag and Life Sciences
Voice: (608) 262-8018 FAX: (608) 265-3020
http://www.wisc.edu/cias/
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