Cape Argus E-dition

Faith leaders urge Gates Foundation to stop push for mono-farming

TARRYN-LEIGH SOLOMONS tarryn-leigh.solomons@inl.co.za

THE approach to food security in the face of the intensifying climate crisis will do more harm than good on the continent, says Southern African Faith Communities Environment Institute (SAFCEI) executive director Francesca de Gasparis.

Speaking during a virtual briefing on the real-life examples of the negative impacts of the Industrial Agricultural model in Africa and the alternatives, De Gasparis said African farmers needed support to find communal solutions that increased climate resilience, rather than the top-down profit-driven, industrial-scale farming systems proposed.

On behalf of faith leaders, the institute wrote an open letter to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation appealing to the foundation to reconsider its approach to “food security and food production”, and to stop its push for “input-intensive crop” monoculture agriculture and industrial-scale farming in Africa.

De Gasparis said in addition to damaging ecosystems, threatening local livelihoods and increasing climate vulnerabilities, monocrop farming ignored and undermined smallholder farmers, whose efforts promote sustainable food production and protect the environment.

“When it comes to the climate, African faith communities are urging the world to think twice before pushing a technical and corporate farming approach.”

Faith leaders in Africa have yet to receive a reply or acknowledgement from the Gates Foundation.

According to De Gasparis, what was being promoted in sub-Saharan Africa was based on a fossil fuel and extractive business model and reduced farmers to “food factories”, rather than meaningful stakeholders and contributors of the global food system.

The N2Africa project, which was funded by the Gates Foundation, pushed toward a modernisation agenda which would only benefit a few. She explained that while soil health and nutritional benefits were used to justify investment in legume commercialisation, the actual baseline measurement for success was production for external markets. “As a result, local legume crops and varieties that are within existing seed banks and have been grown for generations in ecosystems are bypassed in favour of imported commercial varieties that are developed for industrial feed and processing markets.”

She said another concern of the foundation’s work in the continent was how laws were being altered.

“The foundation is working to fundamentally restructure seed laws, which protect certified varieties but criminalise non-certified seed. This is particularly problematic for smallscale farmers in Africa, who nourish their families and their communities through seeds that are not certified.”

SAFCEI’s climate justice co-ordinator, Gabriel Manyangadze said through initiatives, they had seen that the foundation put its full faith in technological fixes without seeking to address the vitally important issues of morality and political economy involved.

“People of faith, with reverence to the Almighty and with concern and respect to creation, must stand for agro-ecology. Faith leaders across Africa are witnessing the negative impact of industrialised farming.”

SAFCEI has thus called for the Gates Foundation to stop pushing profit-driven industrial agriculture that imposed technologies and seeds that were controlled by companies with vested interests, under the guise of a green “revolution”.

METRO

en-za

2021-08-04T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-08-04T07:00:00.0000000Z

http://capeargus.pressreader.com/article/281612423448015

African News Agency