[permaculture-oceania] submission about new "Green Revolution"

[Tanzi Smith]

Dear Cameron

I thought people on this list would be very interested in the article  
below. I've only just signed up to the list so I am just getting the  
hang of the kind of postings that people usually make. I just  
received this message through another list I am on and hope to make  
sure as many people know about it as possible - there is no mention  
of sustainable practices in this new proposal to save African farmers  
- just the same old approach that has already been proven to not work  
for the people, just of for the corporations!

Thanks very much

Tanzi

Another silver bullet for Africa?

Two leading US private charitable foundations - Rockefeller and Gates -
have proclaimed a "new" Green Revolution for Africa. $150 million are to
be poured into the continent in the form of new seeds, and in efforts to
get small farmers to grow them. Yet none of this is new. It is the same
recipe, using the same ingredients, and pushed by the same agency that
perpetrated the original Green Revolution starting in the 1950s. It
failed in Africa then because it failed to listen to - failed even to
ask - the indigenous farmers, who had worked their land for generations.
There is no reason to suppose that the same technological "fix",
reapplied this time by private charities rather than governmental
agencies, will work any better now. But there is reason to worry that
these and other similar initiatives will further push the privatization
of agricultural research and plant breeding in Africa into the hands of
a few big corporations. (Grain, September 2006)

http://www.dev-zone.org/cgi-bin/knowledge/jump.cgi?ID=11532