New from GRAIN
22 September 2006
http://www.grain.org/nfg/?id=440

GREEN REVOLUTION IDEA FOR AFRICA RESURRECTED

Two leading US private charitable foundations -- Rockefeller and Gates -- have proclaimed a "new" Green Revolution for Africa. $150 million are to be poured into the continent in the form of new seeds, and in efforts to get small farmers to grow them.

Yet none of this is new. It is the same recipe, using the same ingredients, and pushed by the same agency that perpetrated the original Green Revolution starting in the 1950s. It failed in Africa then because it failed to listen to -- failed even to ask -- the indigenous farmers, who had worked their land for generations.

There is no reason to suppose that the same technological "fix", reapplied this time by private charities rather than governmental agencies, will work any better now. But there is reason to worry that these and other similar initiatives will further push the privatization of agricultural research and plant breeding in Africa into the hands of a few big corporations.

Read the full report, "Another silver bullet for Africa?" here:
http://www.grain.org/articles/?id=19