GRAIN is an international non-governmental organisation which promotes the sustainable management and use of agricultural biodiversity based on people's control over genetic resources and local knowledge.

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Nerica - another trap for small farmers in Africa

January 2009

Nerica rice varieties, a cross between African and Asian rice, are being hailed as a “miracle crop” that can bring Africa its long-promised green revolution in rice. A powerful coalition of governments, research institutes, private seed companies and donors are leading a major effort to spread Nerica seeds to all the continent’s rice fields. They claim that Nerica can boost yields and make Africa self-sufficient in rice production. But outside the laboratories, Nerica is not living up to the hype. Since the first Nerica varieties were introduced in 1996, experience has been mixed among farmers, with reports of a wide range of problems. Perhaps the most serious concern with Nerica is that it is being promoted within a larger drive to expand agribusiness in Africa, which threatens to wipe out the real basis for African food sovereignty-- Africa’s small farmers and their local seed systems.

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Seized: The 2008 land grab for food and financial security

October 2008

A new report from GRAIN

Today’s food and financial crises have, in tandem, triggered a new global land grab. On the one hand, “food insecure” governments that rely on imports to feed their people are snatching up vast areas of farmland abroad for their own offshore food production. On the other hand, food corporations and private investors, hungry for profits in the midst of the deepening financial crisis, see investment in foreign farmland as an important new source of revenue. As a result, fertile agricultural land is becoming increasingly privatised and concentrated. If left unchecked, this global land grab could spell the end of small-scale farming, and rural livelihoods, in numerous places around the world.

1. Summary and announcement

2. The full report is available on this page , also available in PDF format.

3. The Annex to this briefing is a table with over 100 cases of land grabbing for offshore food production as presented in this report.

4. GRAIN has released a blog with full-text news clippings

Food exports and free trade agreements

October 2008

In FTAs little attention is paid to clauses like the following one: "... no Party may adopt or maintain any prohibition or restriction on the importation of any good of another Party or on the exportation or sale for export of any good destined for the territory of another Party...". In other words, governments know that they are renouncing their right to control food exports and imports when they sign FTAs.

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Seed aid, agribusiness and the food crisis

October 2008

The world food crisis, rapidly defined by those in power as a problem of insufficient production, has become a trojan horse to get corporate seeds, fertilisers and, surreptitiously, market systems into poor countries. As past experience shows, what looks like “seed aid” in the short term can mask what is actually “agribusiness aid” in the long term. We look at what is going on. An editorial in the October Seedling 2008.

See also "The food crisis by numbers"

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Seedling October 2008

October 2008

In this issue of Seedling:

- Seed aid, agribusiness and the food crisis

- Lessons from a Green Revolution in South Africa - a case study of the outcome of the Green Revolution model used in the Eastern Cape.

- TRIPS - close call in Geneva - The collapse of the WTO talks has somewhat unexpectedly created a further opportunity to fight a last ditch battle against the proposed patenting of life in the TRIPS Agreement.

- Resisting transnationals – the experience of farming families in south-west Benin - Communities in south-west Benin show how they are still able to control and manage their seeds.

- Interview with Ulrich Oslender - social movements and spaces of resistance in Latin America

And more...

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An agenda for domination - Latin America’s FTAs with the European Union

August 2008

The European Union is promoting "association agreements" or "cooperation agreements" with Latin American countries. These agreements appear weaker and more flexible than the equivalent agreements that the USA is signing with countries in the region. But behind this affable facade the EU is tough: it is insisting that the countries agree to extend periodically what has been agreed and to undertake an undefined number of legal, administrative, economic, technical and social reforms, the objective of which is to grant European countries ever more favourable conditions in all aspects of national life.

This amounts to a new Conquest (as the 1492 European "discovery" of the Americas is often referred to). It will lead to transantional corporations taking control over communications, water, the banking system, oil, biodiversity, all kinds of raw materials and fishing, as well as being able to use Latin American countries as bases for exports. Eventually European companies will take the place of state companies and be responsible for establishing norms, certification and patents. Tariff barriers, taxes, phytosanitary standards, quality controls and any other regulation seen as a barrier to the expansion of European companies and their trade will be swept away.

If these agreements are negotiated in secret and their implementation becomes the responsibility of the executive branch of government, civil society and the parliaments of the countries involved will not be allowed to protest or to investigate properly what is going on.

It is hoped that this briefing will promote discussion about what is happening and help Latin American society to stand up to the new European invasion.

Now also available in PDF format:

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