December 2002
News from the Stakeholders
Farmers' Organizations
Non Governmental Organizations
Network of CSOs in Agricultural Research West and Central Africa launched
Non-government and farmers' organizations involved in agricultural research for development held a sub-regional workshop on 14-16 October 2002 in Bamako, Mali.
During the Sub-Regional workshop on strengthening NGOs and FOs participation in Agricultural Research for Development in West and Central Africa, participating organizations established their network of civil society organizations (CSOs) in the sub-region.
The network, called Reseau Ouest et Centre Afrique pour la recherche participative agricole/West and Central Africa Network for the Promotion of Participatory Agricultural Research (ROCAPA/WECANPAR), is envisioned to facilitate efficient and effective partnership based on mutual trust and complementarity, while respecting differences in sharing roles and responsibilities.
The ROCAPA/WECANPAR will focus on activities that respond to the needs of resource poor farmers and gender equity in order to ensure food security, environmental sustainability to reduce poverty through true partnership.
As a coordinating body, WECANPAR/ROCAPA will serve as an interface between NGOs and FOs in the sub-region and will help in enhancing existing farmers and non-government organizations in the sub-region. It will promote the involvement of all stakeholders in priority setting, decision making, planning of research and technology activities. It will endeavour to coordinate research-related activities as well as capacity building of civil society organizations in relation to agricultural research institutes at the national, sub-regional and regional levels. Participants have developed ROCAPA's strategies and workplan. They have also elected Mrs. Bagna Halima Tiousso from the Coordination nationale de la Plate Forme paysanne du Niger (CNPF/Niger) and Mr. Sonni George of Association of NGOs (TANGO) in Gambia as the FO and NGO representatives, respectively, to Conseil pour la Recherche et le Développement Agricole en Afrique de l'Ouest et du Centre/West and Central African Council for Research and Development (CORAF/WECARD). Association pour le Developpement des Activité de Production et de Formation (ADAF-Gallè), a local Malian NGO based in Bamako, was requested to host the ROCAPA Secretariat until the next General Assembly with Ms Assetou Kanouté as its Acting Coordinator.
The workshop was attended by some 50 representatives from NGO networks, umbrella farmer organizations, farmer unions and cooperatives from Burkina Faso, Cameroon, The Gambia, Ghana, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo. National Agricultural Research Institutions of Mali and Ghana were represented in the workshop as well as three international research centres namely International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC). International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT); and International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA). The workshop was supported by GFAR, the NGO Committee of the CGIAR, IFDC-Africa, Sassakawa Global 2000 and CORAF.
O.O.
Assetou Kanouté
ADAF-Gallè
Farmers' OrganizationsUnity Statement of the Peoples' Street Conference
We, the farmers, representatives of farmers organizations, peoples' movements and civil society from throughout the Philippines and around the world who gather here for the People's Street Conference against the Annual General Meeting of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) uphold this statement of unity.
The Street Conference is an independent initiative to claim space for critiques of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and for the presentation of alternatives.
The CGIAR, including the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), has consistently failed to meet the needs of poor farmers throughout the world. From the start of the Green Revolution, the research centers of the CGIAR have promoted a top-down, one-size-fits-all approach to research that ignores the knowledge and experience of farmers, farming communities, and indigenous people. The agriculture promoted by the CGIAR, with its dependence on pesticides, fertilizers and other chemicals, is environmentally and socially unsustainable. Farmers have been plunged into debt, their health and the health of their families has suffered, their knowledge, culture and social systems have been exploited, and the agro-environment of their farms has been severely degraded.
Despite decades of effort by civil society, by farmers and farming communities both requesting and demanding reform of the system, the CGIAR has shown itself unable or unwilling to reform. Despite participation in conferences, on committees, writing papers, and letters, despite interviews, speeches, briefings and meetings, by millions of farmers throughout the world, we do not see any significant change in the CGIAR approach. For this reason we are forced to take to the streets.
The following issues are of particular concern to us:
- Accountability and governance: The CGIAR has never been accountable to whom it claims to serve. This is reflected in its governance structure which is fundamentally controlled by four rich countries of the North. It has never attempted to solve its problems of accountability and continues to refuse attempts to genuinely involve farmers' organizations in its decision-making processes.
- The Green Revolution to the Gene Revolution: The Green Revolution continues to cause immense damage. Far from learning from the mistakes of the Green Revolution, the CGIAR are frantically chasing the tail of the latest mythological "one-technology-fixes-all": genetic engineering. GMOs are associated with genetic privatization through patenting and IPR; genetic contamination; market rejection; threats to farmers' rights through increasing monopolization in agriculture; negative health effects; environmental damage, and a deepening of the structural inequalities between rich and poor. The failure of the CGIAR to defend genetic diversity in the light of contamination is disgraceful.
- Trusteeship and biopiracy: The inability of the CGIAR to protect material it holds in its genebanks from biopiracy is a betrayal of the trust of farmers and farming communities. The FAO-CGIAR trust agreement has been handled inadequately and must be fundamentally restructured. Germplasm, its components and derivatives must be kept free of intellectual property control.
- Worker health and safety: The relationship between CGIAR centers and the national workforces facilitates exploitation including, in some instances, immunity from national labor laws. Illness and death of workers, contractualization of labor, unfair dismissals and worker harassment result. Workers have the right to stable, ongoing, safe employment with adequate remuneration protected by national and international law.
- Business as usual: The ever strengthening links with the private sector and capitulation to private sector values and agendas brings into question the independence and integrity of the CGIAR. The stated aims of corporations (to make money) and the CGIAR (supposedly to increase food security) are completely different. Biopiracy, the undermining of public-oriented research agendas and a continuing flow of knowledge and resources from the South to the North are the result.
- The CGIAR have grossly failed to recognize and enforce farmers' rights despite their rhetoric.
The CGIAR has shown itself to be unable to change. The use of nice language and pro-farmer rhetoric to clothe the same unsustainable approach does not constitute change. For this reason and the reasons listed above, the Peoples' Street Conference calls for a dismantling of the current international agricultural research system and the reorientation of public funds into responsive, pro-poor, pro-farmer, sustainable approaches.
New models of agricultural research:
The work of many of the farmers, Peoples' Organizations and NGOs attending this street conference is illustrative of the wide range of farmer-centered research that is being pursued throughout the world including farmer-breeding initiatives, participative research, and the maintenance and development of community knowledge. Farmer-led and farmer-oriented approaches, however, are chronically underfunded, unsupported and marginalized by the mainstream approach to research.
Call to action:
It is imperative that agricultural research is farmer-centered, farmer-led, pro-poor, and rooted in the principle of farmers rights, genuine land reform and food sovereignty. Alternatives to the a mainstream approach to agriculture must be strengthened and developed.
Funding for socially and environmentally sustainable agriculture must be strengthened. We call upon donors to reorient their funding from research on GMOs, hybrids and other damaging techno-fixes to agro-ecological, farmer led approaches.
Public research on agriculture must be maintained free from the influence (direct and indirect) of profit-oriented private companies. We call on all the international scientific community to join farmers in conducting farmer-led, farmer-oriented participatory research.
We demand that there be no patents on life or any kind of intellectual property. The international scientific community must join peoples' movements in explicitly rejecting patents on life, and in proactively protecting plants, animals and agricultural processes from patents and other forms of IPR.
The international research community must work to ensure adherence to human rights, and labor rights in accordance with all national and international laws.
None of these demands can be achieved without the full implementation of farmers' rights at national and international levels. The international research establishment must recognize and advance farmers' rights in all its policies and actions.
The current system of international agricultural research, particularly the CGIAR, has blighted the development of responsible public science by diverting resources and subverting knowledge, technologies and agendas. There has been a stifling of creativity, a marginalization of farmer science and a tragic narrowing of analysis and goals of research. We call upon ourselves, the international scientific community, donors, and governments to start anew in agricultural research.
Uphold People's Control on Agriculture! Assert Farmer-centered Agricultural Research and Systems!
MASIPAG - Farmer Scientist Partnership for Development
PHILIPPINES
Small Farmers' Convergence
In Johannesburg, South Africa, over 250 small farm leaders and representatives from 19 countries gathered together during the World Summit on Sustainable Development held August 26 - September 1, 2002. Farmers' enthusiasm at this Small Farmers' Convergence (SFC), was translated into the proposal to set up a Regional Forum of small-scale farmers, pastoralists and traditional fisherfolk. The Forum aims to organize a biennial meeting, strengthen links between farmers and increase their visibility within civil society and to policy-makers. They also intend to collaborate with other networks with similar goals around the world. Ms. Esta Nnassanga Kiwazi, a small scale farmer from Uganda, was elected as president of the SFC.
This initiative was facilitated by PELUM (Participatory Ecological Land Use Management) along with sister organizations INADES and APM, and coordinated by the PELUM Secretary General, Mr. Mutizwa Mukute. The bulk of the farm leaders came from East and Southern Africa, principally Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Namibia, South Africa and Lesotho.
There were three strategic activities organized by the Small Scale Farmers' Convergence: a caravan from Zambia to South Africa; visits for four small farmer projects; and a protest on the last day of the convergence.
A four day caravan to Johannesburg, called the Solidarity March, was kicked off in Lusaka, by the Minister of Agriculture of Zambia and was joined by over 120 farmers. The caravan was an important community building experience among farmers of Africa and a remarkable exhibit of solidarity. The second major activity consisted of visits to four small farmer projects along the route of the caravan, two in Zimbabwe and two in South Africa. These visits provided farmers with new ideas to take back to their home communities and the opportunity for exchange with others. The third activity was the protest held on the last day of the Convergence. The principal issues opposed by the those present were GMOs in Africa and "free" trade. The protest was well attended by many members of civil society, thus further building and demonstrating solidarity among all parts of civil society.
The participants used various methods of lobbying, including t-shirts, caps printed in Kenya with the slogan "Recognize small scale farmers", banners, pamphlets, song, dance and drama. Journalists held interviews prior to and during the event and produced more than 50 stories for television, radio and print. Meetings were held among leaders and country visions were produced.
The main funding partners for the Convergence were Hivos (the Netherlands) and MISEREOR (Germany), with additional support from Bread for the World, Veco-Zimbabwe, FOS-Belgium, NOVIB, and the NGOC. Other organizations involved include International Partners in Sustainable Development, Via Campesina, World Forum for Fisheries, ROPPA, IPSA, Gaia Foundation, SADAC - Namibia, Network for Ecofarmers and NECOFA.
For further information on the WSSD Civil Society Secretariat, please visit http://www.worldsummit.org.za/.
The SSFC can be contacted through Ms. or through her deputy .
IARCsAgricultural Research for Development: Moving from Words to Action
Agriculture for Growth and Development was the theme of the 2002 annual general meeting (AGM) of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) that concluded in Manila on Friday, November 1, 2002.
"Increased support to public goods agricultural research, expanded public-private partnerships, and opportunities to engage with and listen to farmers are the major outcomes of the Manila AGM" said Ian Johnson, CGIAR Chairman. "Agricultural development is essential for creating responsible growth, reducing poverty, and protecting our environmental commons."
More than 500 participants from over 40 countries attended the meetings hosted by the Government of Philippines. The AGM was held outside of Washington for the first time. The Philippines joined CGIAR in 1980, and hosts the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), birthplace of the Green Revolution. Manila was chosen because of the Philippines' international reputation in agricultural research.
Significant outcomes of the Manila meetings include:
- Increased commitment from Canada, USA, Netherlands, and Spain for generating farming solutions that benefit poor farmers of the developing world, particularly Africa.
- Strengthened partnerships: four new members - Israel, Malaysia, Morocco, and Syngenta Foundation - joined the CGIAR alliance. Twenty-four developing and 22 industrialized countries, four private foundations, and others now constitute the strengthened CGIAR alliance. Malaysia hosts the WorldFish Center.
- Valuable consultations on innovative research-for-development "Challenge Programs" focusing on water for food and bio-fortification of crops for improved human nutrition and incomes. Challenge programs build on core CGIAR competencies while attracting additional financial, technical, and human resources, engaging a broader range of partners, and tackling development issues of global significance.
- Conferment of CGIAR Science Awards for boosting chickpea production, integrated pest management, improved water policies, and saving biodiversity. Recognizing the critical importance of communicating the outcomes of scientific work to the general public, two new communication and journalism awards were announced and conferred.
- Successful Interaction with stakeholders on important issues such as streamlining governance, catalyzing innovation and promoting technical change in agriculture, combating desertification, aligning research to achieve objectives of international conventions on biodiversity and desertification, and strengthening national agricultural research capacities.
From the CGIAR website
ARIsJIRCAS Symposium and PhAction Annual Meeting,
Tsukuba, Japan
15-18 October 2002
The annual PhAction meeting was organized to coincide with the annual JIRCAS symposium, held in Tsukuba, Japan, 15- 18 October 2002. GFAR participated actively in the discussions and many positive outcomes were reached. A stronger collaboration between GFAR and the PhAction group was envisaged for the future.
In particular, GFAR will facilitate the creation of a GPP in the post harvest and agroindustries research sector and the topic of Linking Farmers to the Market was identified as a strong cross-cutting issue. In addition, the participation in the PhAction meeting and JIRCAS symposium was a good occasion to strengthen the collaboration on the GIPhT initiative undertaken by FAO/AGST and GFAR in previous months. GFAR is facilitating the involvement of main R&D stakeholders interested in the development of small and medium sized enterprises and discussions on the subject are ongoing with the AGST division of the FAO. The aim will be to also involve additional potential partners from the South and the private sector.
GFAR Secretariat
c/o FAO, SDR, Viale delle Terme di Caracalla - 00100 Rome, Italy
Tel. +39.06.5705.3413 Fax +39.06.5705.3898
E-mail: