This briefing interrogates ways in which approaches to reduce rural poverty through agriculture in what has been called the 'second green revolution' will affect rural farmers, especially women. As African governments face pressure to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), there are growing fears that the proposed technological approaches to poverty reduction may be implemented too hastily, without taking into account lessons learnt during the 'first green revolution'. Experts fear that irreversible harm will be caused to both the environment and farmers, expecially due to the expected accelerated use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in rural agriculture. This briefing suggests that introduction of changes to rural agriculture should take cognisance of the fact that rural communities are socio-cultural systems in which farmers have extensive knowledge of their ecosystems and developed farming techniques accordingly. External factors may not necessarily bring positive change to rural agriculture unless farmers are included in planning and implementation processes from the beginning. Of concern also are issues of violation of farmers' human rights, particularly those of women farmers, low skills levels and inadequate access to resources and information to make informed decisions. If these are not corrected, the 'second green revolution' will not succeed.
From: Agenda 73 (2007)
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One needs to look no further than India and the damage done by GM crops there, the overselling of what they could do and the overuse of pesticides that followed the planting of the GMOs and the thousands of farmer suicides when they went broke because they couldn't sell their GM crop or thir land was confiscated by Monsanto to pay off a contract the farmer never understood in the first place Two points I would like to stress here. No one ever asked for GMOS; Not the consumer who definitely doesn't want them, and not the farmer who gets no benefit from them. And Secondly, If GMOs are all they're cracked up to be, then why is that the caterer for Monsanto's employee cafeteria took GMO food off the menu at the employees insistence?
We don't need GMOs to feed the world - there are numerous studies showing that indeed the most efficacious method for farmers in developing countries would be smaller family style organic/ biointensive farms producing a variety of crops and some meats mostly intended to be sold and consumed locally. This would be low cost in the wsy of start up and maintainenance initially whle allowing for education and infrastructure to be built up and in the meantime people would still have access to healthy and wholesome food w/o destroying the soil and befouling the water w/ synthtic inputs or contaminating native species w/ foreign trnsgenes.
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