Hundreds of farmers and human rights groups are boycotting the 2021 United Society Food Systems Summit because they believe it regards agribusiness interests, society organizations and the using of African food systems. 1
The Summit claims it is convening to “launch bold new actions to transform the way the world induces and consumes food, ”2 but connoisseurs say it is biased toward industrial, corporate farming while leaving out those in regenerative agricultural products and the knowledge of indigenous people. 3
The controversy began right from the beginning, when U.N. secretary general Antonio Guterres gave Agnes Kalibata as the event’s head. Kalibata is the onetime Rwandan agriculture minister who is now the president of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa( AGRA ), an organization funded by the Bill& Melinda Gates Foundation. 4
AGRA is essentially a Gates Foundation subsidiary, and although some of the research project appear to be beneficial, most of its goals are centered on promoting biotechnology and chemical fertilizers.
Corporate Interests Dominating Food Summit
After Kalibata was appointed special envoy to the 2021 United People Food Arrangement Summit in December 2019, 176 civil society organizations and farmer radicals from 83 countries insisted Guterres to withdraw the appointment due to Kalibata’s clear conflicts of interest with corporate interests.
A second testimony, signed by more than 500 professors and organizations, too resisted Kalibata’s appointment to, and her organization of, the Summit. 5 AGRA is known to promote the interests of agribusiness, conducting civil society organizations to argue that Kalibata’s appointment was a clear conflict of interest.
“This concern over Kalibata’s nomination has been largely borne-out by Kalibata’s top-down approach to organizing the Summit and her exclusion of those most affected by food insecurity and malnutrition in the planning process, ” according to an August 2020 report by AGRA Watch. 6
A dozen men representing development banks, academic institutions and the private sector came forward in support of Kalibata, but “1 1 had past or current connections to the Gates Foundation, ” AGRA Watch reported, adding: 7
“These obtains summarize the impact of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation( BMGF) on world nutrient and agricultural plan. AGRA Watch has continually documented the role of the BMGF in influencing agricultural progress, which has grown vastly in recent years.
That Gates Foundation seeks to exercise influence not only through its funding of projects and influencing of knowledge, but also in funding the governance scaffolds that determine food and agricultural program. This persona of the BMGF in driving policy decisions based on its proprietary and technological model of agricultural development is often overlooked.”
Precision Agriculture, Genetic Engineering Take Center Stage
Concerns that the Summit was dominated by corporate industry deepened when its concept paper included precision agriculture, data collection and genetic engineering as pillars for addressing nutrient defence while leaving out regenerative agriculture.
As reported by The Guardian, Michael Fakhri, the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to nutrient, wrote to Kalibata stating that the Summit was focused on “science and technology, money and markets” while leaving fundamental questions about inequality, accountability and governance unaddressed :8
“It[ sounds] heavily skewed in favor of one type of approach to food items, namely market-based solutions … it leaves out experimental/ traditional knowledge that has the acute effect of excluding indigenous peoples and their learning. The relevant sectors has is a component of the problem of food systems and has not been held accountable.”
The 300 million-member Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism announced plans to boycott the Summit and set up a gratify of their own, while others, including Sofia Monsalve Suarez, head of nutrition liberties radical Fian International, questioned the Summit’s legitimacy: 9
“We cannot jump on a train that is heading in the wrong direction … We transmit a note last year to the secretary general about our concerns. It was not answered. We routed another last month, which has also not provided a response. The elevation materializes most biased in favor of the same performers who have been responsible for the menu crisis.”
Other nutrition experts also expressed the need for the Summit to be more inclusive of initiatives such as agro-ecology and food sovereignty.
Food Group Calls on UN to Sever Ties With WEF
A group of 148 groups from 28 countries likewise called on the U.N. to annul their 2019 strategic partnership constituted with the World Economic Forum( WEF ). WEF’s involvement with the Summit has been called a form of “corporate hijacking” that would infringe on people’s rights to nutrient and food production. Harmonizing to the People’s Coalition on Food Sovereignty: 10
“The WEF will employ the Summit to streamline neoliberal globalization, which it has espoused for the past 50 years. It is the perfect venue to push for the role of’ Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies’ to transform food items, which the WEF has been championing since 2017.
A corporate-led FSS[ Food Organization Summit] would be a great advantage to the political privilegeds and corporate billionaires, enabling them to pose hypocritically as responsible entities that promote healthier nutritions and climate action.
… The sidelined and marginalized spheres in civilization — the poorest of the poor farmers, works, The indigenous peoples, herders, pastoralists, fisherfolks, urban good, wives, Dalits, and youth — should change these corporate moguls in shaping the Summit’s proceedings and reforms.”
Beyond the Summit, WEF’s takeover of the U.N. has been denounced by more than 400 civil society and 40 international networks, which claim it will merely accelerate the move toward a privatized, undemocratic world-wide merger. Monsalve Suarez territory: 11
“Corporations in the global industrial food chain alone destroy 75 billion tons of topsoil annually and are responsible for the annual loss of 7.5 million hectares of forest. This destruction, along with other factors, leaves 3.9 billion underfed or malnourished beings. The WEF represents the interests of those who destroy the environment and defamation our human rights. It cannot be considered a strategic partner in solving the world’s crises.”
Africa’s Traditional Food Systems Under Attack
Planning documents for the Summit also reveal plans for a “radical transformation shift” in Africa, away from traditional agriculture practices and toward industrial farm — even describing its full potential as the “new oil.”1 2 The African Centre for Biodiversity( ACB ), which released the above-mentioned documents, said the plans recycle the “same false answers … with the same narrow welfares accruing to a limited number of actors.”1 3
For instance, one section of the documents is named “the promise of digital and biotechnologies and the transformation of food systems, ” and describes “the significant potential for capturing large financial, social and environmental payoffs from the use of biotechnology commodities … In West Africa, for instance, farmers can benefit enormously from the adoption of Bt cotton.”1 4
Technology and improvement take centre stage, along with “strengthening the use of big data” for decisions on things like fertilizer help, genetically engineered cultivates and “accessing markets.” As noted by U.S. Right to Know: 15
“This agenda aligns perfectly with the plans of the agrichemical manufacture, the Gates Foundation and its prime agricultural development curriculum, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, which fosters African countries to pass business-friendly policies and scale up markets for patented seeds, fossil-fuel based fertilizers and other industrial inputs “theyre saying” are necessary to boost food production.”
“The main problem with AGRA, ” Global Justice Now asks, “is that it is laying the groundwork for the deeper penetration of African agriculture by agribusiness firms, ” and 😛 TAGEND
“The BMGF, through AGRA, is one of the world’s largest promoters of chemical fertiliser. Some grants given by the BMGF to AGRA have been specifically intended to’ aid AGRA construct the fertiliser afford chain’ in Africa. One of the largest of AGRA’s own gifts, worth $25 million, was to help establish the African Fertiliser Agribusiness Partnership( AFAP) in 2012 whose unusually goal is to’ at least doubled total fertiliser use’ in Africa.”1 6
Bill Gates Is the Biggest Owner of US Farmland
The BMGF’s involvement in the Summit is also self-serving, as Bill Gates owns more farmland in the U.S . than any other private farmer, having bought a total of 242,000 acres — much of consideration be some of the richest soil in the U.S. — at a manic gait over the past few years. 17
Gates, however, isn’t interested in regenerative agriculture but instead is furthering an agricultural schedule that supports agrochemicals, patented grains, fake meat and corporate verify — interests that subvert regenerative, sustainable, small-scale farming. One of the key players in this agenda is the widespread adoption of synthetic meat.
Gates has made very clear that he imagines swapping to synthetic beef is the solution to reducing methane releases that come from animals parent on centralized animal feeding actions( CAFOs ). 18
The strong recommendation to replace beef with bullshit flesh is made in Gates’ book “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Answers We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need, ” which was released in February 2021.19 In an interrogation with MIT Technology Review, he goes so far as to say that people’s demeanors should be changed to learn to like impostor meat and, if that doesn’t work, regulations could do the trick. 20
What numerous aren’t aware of, nonetheless, is that Gates is either personally invested in, or invested in via Breakthrough Energy Ventures, forgery meat fellowships like Beyond Meats, Impossible Foods, Memphis Flesh and other business he actively promotes. 21
When asked whether he imagines plant-based and lab-grown meats could “be the full solution to the protein problem globally, ” he says that, in middle- to above-income countries, yes, and that people can “get used to it.”2 2
Small Farmers, Regenerative Agriculture Are the Answer
The U.N. Food Summit is poised to bow down to corporate ideology instead of embracing the small farmers and regenerative patterns that have true potential to feed the world countries and heal countries around the world. If you’re brand-new to this discussion, you can find the top six reasonableness to support regenerative agriculture here. As Timothy Wise, major consultant at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, told The Guardian: 23
“A originating number of farmers, scientists and development professionals now preach a shifting from high-input chemical-intensive agriculture to low-input ecological farming. They complemented by an array of new experiment documenting both the risks of continuing to follow our current practices and the potential benefits of a transition to more sustainable farming.”
Read more: articles.mercola.com
