20 December 2007
analysis
Washington, DC — "Sharing of seed is the essence of our planet's agricultural biodiversity. Without the open palm offering seeds, we all lose.
Current policies, however, are closing the fist around seed, evident in the strong drive for individual access and monopoly ownership of genetic resources, as opposed to open access and collective principles of communities." - Andrew Mushita and Carol B. Thompson
In their new book, Biopiracy of Biodiversity: Global Exchange as Enclosure, Andrew Mushita and Carol Thompson explore a wide range of issues related to food security, biodiversity, and the conflict between pressures for industrial agriculture and preservation of the lives and livelihoods of small farmers, particularly in Southern Africa. But the issues discussed go beyond one region, posing questions about the sustainability of agriculture and the environment in both rich and poor countries.
This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains a small number of brief excerpts from the book, touching on only a fraction of the issues raised by the authors on the basis of extensive first-hand experience and research, with full credit given to the traditional wisdom and scientific ingenuity of African farmers themselves. The book is available from the publisher, Africa World Press
(http://www.africaworldpressbooks.com).
Among recent reports and website on related issues, see particularly:
"A New Green Revolution for Africa?" December 2007
http://www.grain.org/briefings?id=205
"An African Call for a Moratorium on Agrofuel Development" November 2007
http://www.grain.org/agrofuels/?moratoriumen
Outcome of Meeting of African Farmers' Groups in Mali, December 2007
http://www.moreandbetter.org and
http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/44955
Updates and reports on trade and agriculture
For links to previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on agriculture and related issues, see http://www.africafocus.org/agexp.php
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Biopiracy of Biodiversity: Global Exchange as Enclosure
by Andrew Mushita and Carol B. Thompson
Africa World Press, 2007
Selected Excerpts
From Acknowledgements
Biodiversity is a marvel of complexity, for many species are situated in one place, unique to a site; yet biodiversity spreads and grows only if the species are exchanged and travel across the ecosystem to new sites, adapting slowly to new climes. ...
Sharing of seed is the essence of our planet's agricultural biodiversity. Without the open palm offering seeds, we all lose.
Current policies, however, are closing the fist around seed, evident in the strong drive for individual access and monopoly ownership of genetic resources, as opposed to open access and collective principles of communities. ...
This study comes to the conclusion, startling to most of those outside the continent, that Africa has answers to its food deficits and food insecurity. It is not one answer but rather, reflects the vast diversity of soils, terrains, waters and species on the continent. Plowing that diversity into monoculture for increased yields or into privatization in the name of incentives perpetuates general models that have failed. Other approaches, some very old and some quite new, will sustain Africa'?s biodiversity, and therefore, its food security.
The story extends much beyond Africa in that the alternative policies offer lessons for other countries and other peoples, especially those eating chemical foods. Africa demonstrates that none of the dominant international policies - from food production to patenting to trade - is inevitable. Viable and sustainable alternatives are not only possible, but already exist. Resisting biopiracy in order to harvest biodiversity, African alternative approaches show how to sustain the open palms exchanging seeds.
...
From Chapter I
"If someone asks you for seed, you cannot refuse her." - Zimbabwean farmer
The essence of seed exchange is sharing, for plants reproduce themselves without human intervention. ... Because seeds are a gift to each one of us, they are a gift to all. Ancient cultures increased this wealth by sharing seed, by giving it away. Such an action, reflecting nature's example, increased biodiversity across the globe. ...
In this way, the maize seed has traveled from central Mexico across the Great Plains to Canada. In less than 300 years from the 1500s, it traveled around the globe and became established as a major food crop?from the Mayans and Aztecs to the Shona and Lunga in Africa, to Sikkim and Bhutan in the Himalayas to China, the Philippines, and Indonesia.1 Maize has become the staple food, the center of spiritual rituals, the seed of healing for highly diverse peoples.
Yet the terrible other side of this story is that all this richness, beauty, and wealth - germinating from sharing - is now threatened. It is being destroyed by refusal to share, by hoarding for a false, ephemeral prosperity. It is being destroyed in the name of science, of law, and "just reward," in the name of innovation, power, and of profit.
The open palm offering seed to share is received by a clenched fist, symbolizing enclosure of the global gene pool. ...
Maize in Southern Africa has often been cited an exception [to the dominance of cash crops] because it is both a cash crop and a food crop, eaten three times a day by many families while supplies last. However, maize became more and more a cash crop, including after independence from colonialism, for it entered the formal market, was valued by governments for food security storage, and for export to earn foreign exchange. Almost exclusively, the amount of the maize harvest or storage defines "food surplus" or "food shortage" in Southern Africa. This formal perspective dominates any other; if there is not enough wheat, maize could substitute. But if maize supplies are insufficient, it is announced by international monitors that "famine" is pending. A crop may feed millions, but if there are inaccurate international figures about the tonnage exchanged informally ("illegal" cross-border trade), it does not exist on official statistics. Yet Africa devotes more hectares to sorghum and millet than to all other food crops combined, and it remains a major food grain in the Southern African region.
After more than a decade of clarion calls for emergency food aid to save starving Southern Africans, followed by reduced international responses, somehow the "millions" rarely starved.
Why? Was the international response so quick, so efficient in getting to remote areas that the disaster was averted? Yes, partially. International agencies do not imagine the drought crisis, but report the conditions of cash crops accurately; the agencies are vital to thousands and save lives every crisis year.
But the millions? They are saved by their own production of alternative foods. They are saved by the biodiversity of food sources; many of the 2000 indigenous food crops are still preserved in the rural areas (not only sorghum and millets but bambara nuts, many tuber and root crops, fruits - monkey orange, water berry, marula, baobab). Traditional ecological knowledge designates some highly drought- resistant plants to be eaten only in times of dire need. Botswana alone has 250 plants that are used specially as "famine food." The millions are also saved by urban agriculture, where minuscule plots of spare land are planted, not in flowering shrubs copying European gardens, but in food crops; in Lesotho, Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, many an urban family sustains themselves, not with less than below- poverty-level wages, but with urban agriculture. ...
[Yet] In many areas of Southern Africa, government resources were directed to develop maize and diverted from sorghum. ...In Southern Africa, maize became overwhelmingly the commercial food staple.
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