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How 4H Is Helping Big Ag Take Over Africa
Lasrick writes 4H is in Africa, helping to distribute Big Ag products like DuPont's Pioneer seeds through ostensibly good works aimed at youth. In Africa, where the need to produce more food is especially urgent, DuPont Pioneer and other huge corporations have made major investments. But there are drawbacks: "DuPont's nutritious, high-yielding, and drought-tolerant hybrid seed costs 10 times as much. While Ghanaians typically save their own seeds to plant the next year, hybrid seeds get weaker by the generation; each planting requires another round of purchasing. What's more, says Devlin Kuyek, a researcher with the sustainable-farming nonprofit Genetic Resources Action International, because hybrid seeds are bred for intensive agriculture, they typically need chemicals to thrive."
I'd like to, but Big Ag and GMO proponents have lobbied hard to keep labels on food from saying if it is GMO or not. If this shit is soooooo good for us, then label it and let the market decide.
GMO foods are harmful in exactly the same way that homeopathy can cure major illnesses. i.e. it may be true, but nobody has proven it yet, so it hasn't entered the pages of peer reviewed research, just like homeopathy hasn't penetrated Western medicine. I would guess that's the reason that laws about labeling of GMO foods aren't ubiquitous. If you are aware of respectable studies that prove otherwise about GMO foods, I'd love to see them -- seriously.
If he is, he has the weight of evidence supports him.
http://www.plosone.org/article...
In short, after factoring in the higher costs of using GM seed, GMO crops help developing farms substantially. Even more so than the farmers in developed markets.
OK, if that's really how it works, why do American farmers plant so much agribusiness seed? Are they all wrong, and losing money? Because if there's one thing that a farmer will ask when you suggest a change to his growth protocol, is how is it going to make him more money.
Hybrid vigor is a thing, and the only way to maintain said vigor across generations is to grow inbred plants, and then cross them purposefully. This works without GMOs, and is easy to prove.
Again, for your option to be true, hundreds of thousands of farmers in the US are making terrible choices, season after season. 95% of soybeans planted in America come from agribusiness: The seeds people had just can't compete in yield. How do you explain farmer's behavior?
Africa is a victim of corrupt resource management. Nothing can be done until that is addressed.
Africa is not monolithic. There are certainly corrupt countries in Africa. But Ghana, the subject of TFA, is one of the least corrupt, and most prosperous countries on the continent. The are a democracy, with well functioning institutions, a free press, near universal literacy, and a per capita GDP of about $4k, which makes them a middle income country.