Browsing: Alliance for a Green Revolution (AGRA)

The reason farmers are forced to buy seeds is that projects like AGRA take away traditional organic seeds by giving subsidized GMO seeds, which cannot be replanted hence after harvest, the farmers must buy new batches of seeds to replant the next season.

In effect, forcing the farmers to rely on new purchases of seeds every year means the peasants are unwittingly caught in a cycle of dependency and poverty, for that matter.

Worse still, projects like AGRA that claims to introduce ‘modern agriculture technologies’ focus on using chemical-based fertilizers and pesticides and also push for monoculture, which locks the farmers in the dependency cycle; they have to buy more fertilizers to keep their lands productive, and they have to buy the same pesticides because of monoculture.

It is for such reasons that last year, AFSA released an open letter with over 200 signatories alleging that AGRA did not increase …

Worse still, the institute points to a much deeper conspiracy to force African farmers to buy agro-inputs from large corporations. In its report, the Oakland Institute says AGRA ‘imposes a regime in which farmers lose power over their own seeds and are forced to buy them back from large corporations year after year.’

“This system may also contribute to the marginalization of women.9 million smallholder farmer households, who are witnessing increased food security through AGRA’s direct interventions,” reads the report in part.

Then there is the matter overarching matter of climate change. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warns that the use of synthetic nitrogen fertiliser will increase nitrous oxide emissions, which increase the atmospheric temperature significantly.…

A report released at the African Green Revolution Forum in Accra finds that millions of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) rarely are dependent on big multinationals for their raw materials but directly rely upon millions more smallholder farmers across Sub-Saharan Africa.

The report finds that, overall, only about 20 percent of the volume of food consumed in Africa fits the conventional notion of subsistence agriculture—food consumed directly by the farming households that grow it.

“All this represents a profound turnaround from mere decades ago, ” said Dr. Thomas Reardon of Michigan State University, a lead author of the report. “There has been a ‘Quiet Revolution’ in agrifood private sector value chains linking small farmers to burgeoning urban markets and growing towns in Africa. This has spurred farmers’ participation in food and farm input markets.”

SMEs provide a range of services, from transport and logistics to the sale of inputs such …