Genetically Modified Seeds
Imposed on Farmers in
Developing Countries Trigger
Famine and Social Devastation
Sowing the Seeds of
Famine in Ethiopia
by Michel
Chossudovsky
Professor of Economics,
University of Ottawa
The Ecologist,
September 2000
Posted at
globalresearch.ca 10 September 2001
The "economic therapy" imposed under IMF-World
Bank jurisdiction is in large part responsible for triggering famine and social
devastation in Ethiopia and the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, wreaking the
peasant economy and impoverishing millions of people.
With the complicity of branches of the US government, it has
also opened the door for the appropriation of traditional seeds and landraces
by US biotech corporations, which behind the scenes have been peddling the
adoption of their own genetically modified seeds under the disguise of
emergency aid and famine relief.
Moreover, under WTO rules, the agri-biotech conglomerates
can manipulate market forces to their advantage as well as exact royalties from
farmers. The WTO provides legitimacy to the food giants to dismantle State
programmes including emergency
grain stocks, seed banks, extension services and agricultural credit, etc.),
plunder peasant economies and trigger the outbreak of periodic famines.
Crisis
in the Horn
More than 8 million people in Ethiopia - representing 15% of
the country's population – had been locked into "famine zones". Urban
wages have collapsed and unemployed seasonal farm workers and landless peasants
have been driven into abysmal poverty. The international relief agencies concur
without further examination that climatic factors are the sole and inevitable
cause of crop failure and the ensuing humanitarian disaster. What the media
tabloids fails to disclose is that - despite the drought and the border war
with Eritrea - several million people in the most prosperous agricultural
regions have also been driven into starvation. Their predicament is not the
consequence of grain shortages but of "free markets" and "bitter
economic medicine" imposed under the IMF-World Bank sponsored Structural
Adjustment Programme (SAP).
Ethiopia produces more than 90% of its consumption needs.
Yet at the height of the crisis, the nationwide food deficit for 2000 was
estimated by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) at 764,000 metric tons
of grain representing a shortfall of 13 kilos per person per annum.1 In Amhara,
grain production (1999-2000) was twenty percent in excess of consumption needs.
Yet 2.8 million people in Amhara (representing 17% of the region's population)
became locked into famine zones and are "at risk" according to the
FAO. 2 Whereas Amhara's grain surpluses were in excess of 500,000 tons
(1999-2000), its "relief food needs" had been tagged by the
international community at close to 300,000 tons.3 A similar pattern prevailed
in Oromiya, the country's most populated state where 1.6 million people were
classified "at risk", despite the availability of more than 600,000
metric tons of surplus grain.4 In both these regions, which include more than
25% of the country's population, scarcity of food was clearly not the cause of
hunger, poverty and social destitution. Yet no explanations are given by the
panoply of international relief agencies and agricultural research institutes.
The
Promise of the "Free Market"
In Ethiopia, a
transitional government came into power in 1991 in the wake of a protracted and
destructive civil war. After the pro-Soviet Dergue regime of Colonel Mengistu
Haile Mariam was unseated, a multi-donor financed Emergency Recovery and
Reconstruction Project (ERRP) was
hastily put in place to deal with an external debt of close to 9 billion dollars that had accumulated during
the Mengistu government. Ethiopia's outstanding debts with the Paris Club of
official creditors were rescheduled in exchange for far-reaching macro-economic
reforms. Upheld by US foreign policy, the usual doses of bitter IMF economic
medicine were prescribed. Caught in the straightjacket of debt and structural adjustment,
the new Transitional Government of Ethiopia (TGE), led by the Ethiopian People's
Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) - largely formed from the Tigrean People's
Liberation Front (PLF) - had committed itself to far-reaching "free market
reforms", despite its
leaders' Marxist leanings. Washington soon tagged Ethiopia alongside Uganda as
Africa's post Cold War free market showpiece.
While social budgets were slashed under the structural
adjustment programme (SAP), military expenditure - in part financed by the gush
of fresh development loans – quadrupled since 1989.5 With Washington supporting
both sides in the Eritrea-Ethiopia border war, US arms sales spiralled. The
bounty was being shared between the arms manufacturers and the agribusiness conglomerates. In
the post-Cold War era, the latter positioned themselves in the lucrative
procurement of emergency aid to war-torn countries. With mounting military spending
financed on borrowed money, almost half of Ethiopia's export revenues was earmarked
to meet debt-servicing obligations.
A Policy Framework Paper (PFP) stipulating the precise
changes to be carried out in Ethiopia had been carefully drafted in Washington
by IMF and World Bank officials on behalf of the transitional government, and
was forwarded to Addis Ababa for the signature of the Minister of Finance. The
enforcement of severe austerity measures virtually foreclosed the possibility
of a meaningful post-war reconstruction and the rebuilding of the country's
shattered infrastructure. The creditors demanded trade liberalization and the full-scale
privatization of public utilities, financial institutions, State farms and factories.
Civil servants including teachers and health workers were fired, wages were
frozen and the labor laws were rescinded to enable State enterprises "to
shed their surplus workers". Meanwhile, corruption became rampant. State
assets were auctioned off to foreign capital at bargain prices and Price
Waterhouse Cooper was entrusted with the task of coordinating the sale of State property.
In turn, the reforms
had led to the fracture of the federal fiscal system. Budget transfers to the
State governments were slashed leaving the regions to their own devices.
Supported by several donors, "regionalization" was heralded as a
"devolution of powers from the federal to the regional governments".
The Bretton Woods institutions knew exactly what they were doing. In the words
of the IMF, "[the regions] capacity to deliver effective and efficient development
interventions varies widely, as does their capacity for revenue
collection". 6
Wrecking
the Peasant Economy
Patterned on the reforms adopted in Kenya in 1991 (see Box
9.1 ), agricultural markets were wilfully manipulated on behalf of the
agribusiness conglomerates. The World Bank demanded the rapid removal of price
controls and all subsidies to farmers. Transportation and freight prices were
deregulated serving to boost food prices in remote areas affected by drought. In turn, the markets for farm
inputs including fertiliser and seeds were handed over to private traders
including Pioneer Hi-Bred International which entered into a lucrative partnership
with Ethiopia Seed Enterprise (ESE), the government's seed monopoly.7
At the outset of the
reforms in 1992, USAID under its Title III program "donated" large quantities
of US fertilizer "in exchange for free market reforms":
[V]arious agricultural commodities [will be provided] in
exchange for reforms of grain marketing... and [the] elimination of food subsidies...The
reform agenda focuses on liberalization and privatization in the fertilizer and
transport sectors in return for financing fertilizer and truck imports....
These program initiatives have given us [an] “entrée" ...in defining major
[policy] issues... 8
While the stocks of donated US fertiliser were rapidly
exhausted; the imported chemicals contributed to displacing local
fertiliser producers. The same companies involved in the
fertiliser import business were also in control of the domestic
wholesale distribution of fertiliser using local level
merchants as intermediaries.
Increased output was recorded in commercial farms and in
irrigated areas (where fertilizer and high yielding seeds had been
applied). The overall tendency, however, was towards greater
economic and social polarisation in the countryside, marked by
significantly lower yields in less productive marginal lands
occupied by the poor peasantry. Even in areas where output had
increased, farmers were caught in the clutch of the seed and
fertilizer merchants.
In 1997, the Atlanta based Carter Center - which was
actively promoting the use of biotechnology tools in maize breeding -
proudly announced that "Ethiopia [had] become a food
exporter for the first time".9 Yet in a cruel irony, the donors ordered
the dismantling of the emergency grain reserves (set up in the wake of the
1984-85 famine) and the authorities acquiesced.
Instead of replenishing the country's emergency food stocks,
grain was exported to meet Ethiopia's debt servicing obligations.
Close to one million tons of the 1996 harvest was exported,
an amount which would have been amply sufficient (according to
FAO figures) to meet the 1999-2000 emergency. In fact the
same food staple which had been exported (namely maize) was
re-imported barely a few months later. The world market had
confiscated Ethiopia's grain reserves.
In return, US surpluses of genetically engineered maize
(banned by the European Union) were being dumped on the horn of
Africa in the form of emergency aid. The US had found a
convenient mechanism for "laundering its stocks of dirty grain". The
agribusiness conglomerates not only cornered Ethiopia's
commodity exports, they were also involved in the procurement of
emergency shipments of grain back into Ethiopia. During the
1998-2000 famine, lucrative maize contracts were awarded to
giant grain merchants such as Archer Daniels Midland (ADM)
and Cargill Inc. 10
US grain surpluses peddled in war-torn countries also served
to weaken the agricultural system. Some 500,000 tons of maize
and maize products were "donated" in 1999-2000 by
USAID to relief agencies including the World Food Programme (WFP)
which in turn collaborates closely with the US Department of
Agriculture. At least 30% of these shipments (procured under
contract with US agribusiness firms) were surplus
genetically modified grain stocks. 11
Boosted by the border war with Eritrea and the plight of
thousands of refugees, the influx of contaminated food aid had
contributed to the pollution of Ethiopia's genetic pool of
indigenous seeds and landraces. In a cruel irony, the food giants were
at the same time gaining control - through the procurement
of contaminated food aid - over Ethiopia's seed banks. According
to South Africa's Biowatch: "Africa is treated as the
dustbin of the world...To donate untested food and seed to Africa is not an act
of kindness but an attempt to lure Africa into further dependence on foreign
aid." 12
Moreover, part of the "food aid" had been
channelled under the "food for work" program which served to further
discourage
domestic production in favour of grain imports. Under this
scheme, impoverished and landless farmers were contracted to work on rural
infrastructural programmes in exchange for "donated" US corn.
Meanwhile, the cash earnings of coffee smallholders
plummeted. Whereas Pioneer Hi-Bred positioned itself in seed distribution
and marketing, Cargill Inc established itself in the markets
for grain and coffee through its subsidiary Ethiopian Commodities.12
For the more than 700,000 smallholders with less than 2
hectares that produce between 90 and 95% of the country's coffee
output, the deregulation of agricultural credit combined
with low farmgate prices of coffee had triggered increased indebtedness and
landlessness, particularly in East Gojam (Ethiopia's breadbasket).
The country's extensive reserves of traditional seed
varieties (barley, teff, chick peas, sorghum, etc) were being appropriated,
genetically manipulated and patented by the agribusiness
conglomerates: "Instead of compensation and respect, Ethiopians
today are ...getting bills from foreign companies that have
"patented" native species and now demand payment for their
use."13
The foundations of a "competitive seed industry"
were laid under IMF and World Bank auspices.14 The Ethiopian Seed
Enterprise (ESE), the government's seed monopoly joined
hands with Pioneer Hi-Bred in the distribution of hi-bred and
genetically modified (GM) seeds (together with hybrid
resistant herbicide) to smallholders. In turn, the marketing of seeds had
been transferred to a network of private contractors and
"seed enterprises" with financial support and technical assistance
from
the World Bank. The "informal" farmer-to-farmer
seed exchange was slated to be converted under the World Bank
programme into a "formal" market oriented system
of "private seed producer-sellers." 15
In turn, the Ethiopian Agricultural Research Institute
(EARI) was collaborating with the International Maize and Wheat
Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in the development of new
hybrids between Mexican and Ethiopian maize varieties.16
Initially established in the 1940s by Pioneer Hi-Bred
International with support from the Ford and Rockefeller foundations,
CIMMYT developed a cosy relationship with US agribusiness.
Together with the UK based Norman Borlaug Institute,
CIMMYT constitutes a research arm as well as a mouthpiece of
the seed conglomerates. According to the Rural Advancement Foundation (RAFI)
"US farmers already earn $150 million annually by growing varieties of
barley developed from Ethiopian strains. Yet nobody in Ethiopia is sending them
a bill." 17
The 1984-85 famine had seriously threatened Ethiopia's
reserves of landraces of traditional seeds. In response to the famine,
the Dergue government through its Plant Genetic Resource
Centre --in collaboration with Seeds of Survival (SoS)-- had
implemented a programme to preserve Ethiopia's
biodiversity.18 This programme - which was continued under the transitional
government - skilfully "linked on-farm conservation and
crop improvement by rural communities with government support
services". 19 An extensive network of in-farm sites and
conservation plots was established involving some 30,000 farmers. In
1998, coinciding chronologically with the onslaught of the
1998-2000 famine, the government clamped down on seeds of
Survival (SoS) and ordered the programme to be closed down.
20
The hidden agenda was to eventually displace the traditional
varieties and landraces reproduced in village-level nurseries. The
latter were supplying more than 90 percent of the peasantry
through a system of farmer-to-farmer exchange. Without fail, the
1998-2000 famine led to a further depletion of local level
seed banks: "The reserves of grains [the farmer] normally stores to
see him through difficult times are empty. Like 30,000 other
households in the [Galga] area, his family have also eaten their
stocks of seeds for the next harvest."21 And a similar
process was unfolding in the production of coffee where the genetic base
of the arabica beans was threatened as a result of the
collapse of farmgate prices and the impoverishment of small-holders.
In other words, the famine - itself in large part a product
of the economic reforms imposed to the advantage of large
corporations by the IMF, World Bank and the US Government -
served to undermine Ethiopia's genetic diversity to the benefit of the biotech
companies. With the weakening of the system of traditional exchange, village
level seed banks were being replenished with commercial hi-bred and genetically
modified seeds. In turn, the distribution of seeds to impoverished farmers had
been integrated with the "food aid" programmes. WPF and USAID relief
packages often include "donations" of seeds and fertiliser, thereby
favouring the inroad of the agribusiness-biotech companies into Ethiopia's
agricultural heartland. The emergency programs are not the "solution"
but the "cause" of famine. By deliberately creating a dependency on
GM seeds, they had set the stage for the outbreak of future famines.
This destructive pattern - invariably resulting in famine -
is replicated throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. From the onslaught of the
debt crisis of the early 1980s, the IMF-World Bank had set
the stage for the demise of the peasant economy across the region
with devastating results. Now, in Ethiopia, fifteen years
after the last famine left nearly one million dead, hunger is once again
stalking the land. This time, as eight million people face
the risk of starvation, we know that it isn't just the weather that is to
blame.
Endnotes
1.Food and
Agriculture Organization (FAO), Special Report: FAO/WFP Crop Assessment Mission
to Ethiopia,
Rome, January
2000.
2.Ibid
3.Ibid
4.Ibid
5.Philip Sherwell
and Paul Harris, "Guns before Grain as Ethiopia Starves, Sunday Telegraph,
London, April 16, 2000.
6.IMF, Ethiopia,
Recent Economic Developments, Washington, 1999.
7.Pioneer Hi-Bred
International, General GMO Facts,
http://www.pioneer.com/usa/biotech/value_of_products/product_value.htm#.
8.United States
agency for International Development (USAID), "Mission to Ethiopia,
Concept Paper: Back to The
Future",
Washington, June 1993
9.Carter Center,
Press release, Atlanta, Georgia, January 31, 1997.
10.Declan Walsh,
America Find Ready Market for GM Food, The Independent, London, March 30, 2000,
p. 18).
11.Ibid.
12.Maja Wallegreen,
"The World's Oldest Coffee Industry In Transition", Tea & Coffee
Trade Journal, November 1,
1999.
13.Laeke Mariam
Demissie, A vast historical contribution counts for little; West reaps Ethiopia's
genetic harvest, World
Times, October,
1998).
14.World Bank,
Ethiopia-Seed Systems Development Project, Project ID ETPA752, 6 June 1995.
15.Ibid
16.See CIMMYT
Research Plan and Budget 2000-2002 http://www.cimmyt.mx/about/People-mtp2002.htm#).
17.Laeke Mariam
Demissie, op. cit
18."When local
farmers know best", The Economist, 16 May 1998)
19.Ibid
20.Laeke Mariam
Demissie, op. cit.
21.Rageh Omaar,
"Hunger stalks Ethiopia's dry land", BBC, London, 6 January, 2000.
22.An earlier
version of this article was published in The Ecologist, September 2000.
The URL of this
article is:
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO109B.html
Copyright Michel Chossudovsky, Montreal, November 2000. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to post this text on non-commercial community internet sites, provided the source and the URL are indicated, the essay remains intact and the copyright note is displayed. To publish this text in printed and/or other forms, including commercial internet sites and excerpts, contact the author at chossudovsky@videotron.ca, fax: 1-514-4256224.