Introduction
The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) has been analysed and debated in many ways since its inception in 2006 by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, for it proposes to transform African farming systems to make them look like Iowa: large-scale monoculture using manufactured seeds, fertilisers and pesticides, addicted to fossil fuels and large quantities of water and capital. Most of the few farmers who remain on American soil are contract farmers who have relinquished production decisions to agribusiness, transforming their contribution from one as an entrepreneur to a worker. Another criticism of the AGRA approach is that its goal is to link African food producers and consumers to the global markets, more than to local food supplies. As Americans choose to ‘buy local’, Africans will find their food sources more global, for African food producers and consumers represent untapped markets, both for agricultural inputs of brand-name seeds, fertiliser, pesticides and for consumption of processed and fast foods. Agribusiness and corporate food retailers control both global markets.1 These debates make serious enough charges and will continue, but this analysis focuses on more fundamental, even more grave, goals of AGRA: to access and privatise African's genetic wealth. The appropriation of Africa's genetic wealth now goes much beyond patenting, only one tool of many to enclose Africa's seed treasures, removing them from their heritage, to be possessed by one corporation.
To analyse the new ways of appropriation, this paper employs two theories for disclosing appearances, to assist in understanding and in explanation. The first theory refers to the concept created by David Harvey (2003), ‘accumulation by dispossession’, to signal the necessity of global corporations to minimise the costs of production inputs, from the use of forced labour for mining minerals to land grabs and to removal of genetic wealth. That theory will only be briefly summarised for it has gained critical acceptance, enhancing debates across several disciplines. The second theory elaborates the concept coined by The Economist in 2006: philanthrocapitalism. Starting with corporate leadership's idea of ‘venture philanthropy’, this paper contributes to the debates by demonstrating that philanthrocapitalism is a systemic change in the way large foundations are replacing the public sector, remaking it in their own business image. I am suggesting that the theory of ‘accumulation by dispossession’ helps us to understand why AGRA and its allies2 are appropriating African genetic wealth, and the theory of philanthrocapitalism, as I elaborate it here, explains how that appropriation is occurring. Introducing and analysing several methods well beyond simply patenting a living organism, this paper employs the theory of philanthrocapitalism to show that the various acts of African seed access and appropriation are neither disparate nor unconnected, but rather, reflect a systemic change. The conclusion will briefly discuss the international instruments of ABS (access and benefit sharing) trying to constrain the privatisation of plant and animal biodiversity, the source of all future food.
Because philanthrocapitalism is a system that operates at the global market level, this study remains at the macro level of analysis, in order to pursue understanding of systemic goals and operations. Although examples of the penetration of philanthrocapitalism into southern Africa come from regional and national levels of analysis, where this system is first operative, this macro analysis only provides a framework, for example simply distinguishing industrial from smallholder food production.3 Further, it mainly addresses resistance to philanthrocapitalism at the international level where civil society organisations have successfully incorporated benefit sharing into treaties. A single paper, however, cannot address the rich alternatives planted by smallholders across the African continent explained in micro, village-specific studies. The goal here is for this macro-level framework to help explain seemingly disparate micro projects, in order to draw attention to how a system is working to appropriate African genetic wealth and knowledge.
Accumulation by dispossession
David Harvey (2003) elaborated the theory of accumulation by dispossession from the analysis of primitive accumulation by Karl Marx (1867), who designated it as a transitional stage in the development of capitalism. Subsequent theorists followed Marx by emphasising the one-time ‘stage’ of primitive accumulation, saying it occurs before relations of capitalist production are fully developed, either historically as in Europe or spatially as in Africa, where pre-capitalist relations of production (e.g. patron–client) persist next to full proletarianisation. In this interpretation, the act of primitive accumulation disappears as capitalist relations of production prevail, because the workers provide continuous surplus value through their unpaid creative production, more reliable for increasing the rate of profit than occasional usurpation of land or other commons.
Agreeing with Harvey, however, other theorists emphasise the contradictions of capitalist relations, to suggest that ‘primitive’ accumulation can occur throughout the development of capitalism (Glasman 2006, 621–622; Hart 2006). Accumulation by dispossession involves
the commodification and privatisation of land and the forceful expulsion of peasant populations; the conversion of various forms of property rights (common, collective, state, etc.) into exclusive private property rights … ; the commodification of labour power and the suppression of alternative (and indigenous) forms of production and consumption; colonial, neo-colonial and imperial processes of appropriation of assets … ; (Harvey 2003, 145)
To sustain an increasing rate of profit, capitalists must exchange products in the market, but if labour is too impoverished to purchase commodities, market demand does not grow sufficiently to reach equilibrium with supply. Driving down the costs of inputs through innovation, economies of scale, externalising costs or other means can sustain profit, which eventually again increases production, creating the cycle to begin again.
From Luxemburg (1913), Arendt (1968), Amin (1974) to Harvey (2003), theorists analyse that the contradictions of surplus accumulation (not enough demand for supply, along with lowering the rate of profit, from the changing organic composition of capital) require corporations to lower the cost of inputs even during advanced stages of capitalism. Taking land out of collective or communal production remains central to accumulation through dispossession but it also refers to the expropriation of many other means of production (Arrighi, Aschoff, and Scully 2010, 425; Kloppenburg 2010; Watts 2006). For example, a way to offset the falling rate of profit is to lower costs of ‘raw materials’, and for this analysis, that means accessing seeds and their genetic wealth for free (although seeds are not ‘raw’ materials but highly bred and cultivated, more like steel than iron ore).
Freely sharing seeds is as old as agriculture, for both the donor and receiver benefit. Giving seed away increases wealth, as the seeds diversify to adapt to different climes, and as new varieties are shared back. The importance of freely sharing was institutionalised globally in the 1960s by setting up 16 public international gene banks, under the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). This universal practice of freely accessing seeds via public international and national seed banks was further encouraged by the international legal principle of ABS or access and benefit sharing, first promulgated by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD 1993). The CBD defines access to genetic resources as the ability of ‘a country, its subjects, or representatives to obtain the right to sample, study or use particular specimens of genetic material’. Equally important, the principle of ‘fair and equitable sharing of the benefits’ refers to the right of cultivators of plants to benefit from commercial utilisation of genetic strains they have developed (CBD 1993, Article 8). Clarification of this reciprocity has further been advanced by the 2004 International Treaty for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture and the 2010 Nagoya Protocol addition to the CBD, both of which will be discussed more below. The point here emphasises that the principle of reciprocity is enshrined in several international laws.
A further goal of ABS is to protect traditional ecological knowledge associated with genetic resources. The CBD (1993, Article 8j) calls upon ‘Member States to respect, preserve and maintain knowledge, innovations, and practices of indigenous and local communities embodying traditional lifestyles relevant for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity’. Indigenous communities across the globe have played a major role in the conservation of biological diversity through nurturing and transforming traditional ecological knowledge to changing climates. The legal principle of ABS gives recognition to this vital role of communities and their farmers in promoting and conserving biodiversity of human food, for thousands of years.
The seed represents not only genetic wealth but also precious indigenous knowledge, both essential for future breeding. As a breeder crosses two varieties of a plant and chooses an offspring with a favoured characteristic, s/he is selecting some genetic traits over others. As one arrives at the ‘best’ maize or ‘best’ cattle, closely similar strains cannot be crossed without losing reproductive vigour and vitality of the offspring. That ‘perfect’ plant must be crossed with one not too closely related, which is why there was so much excitement about the cloning of Dolly the sheep. Once a ‘perfect’ sheep is bred, the goal is to replicate it exactly. However, with the failure of cloning, the most advanced biotechnologists must still return to parent genetic materials to continue breeding. The gene pool for a variety contains its past, present and, certainly, its future. The ABS principle recognises the vital importance of sharing the gene pool, as well as the contribution of traditional knowledge to past and future biodiversity for all human food.
Africa's genetic wealth remains free for the taking, for African governments have been unanimous in refusing to patent any living organism. AGRA and its partners do access Africa's genetic treasures, sometimes by just walking into a field and taking a plant. That act alone is not appropriation or theft. What becomes an act of theft is when the AGRA partners reject the reciprocity of ABS and first, refuse to recognise the source of the plant taken and second, refuse to share the benefits of any commercial gains or indeed, to share the new variety from the offspring. They deny benefit sharing and prevent access to the new variety, after freely accessing the African parent material. Without benefit sharing, the AGRA partners have ‘dispossessed’ the African farmers of revenue from commercialisation and further, of use of the newly bred genetic strain. This dual accumulation by dispossession is most readily understood by the patenting of a ‘new’ plant variety which may have only one gene different from the African cultivar. Because the corporation privatises the whole genetic strain, without recognition or benefit sharing, this step is called ‘biopiracy’. Patenting, however, has become only one means of biopiracy by the AGRA project, and this analysis will demonstrate the various ways it occurs under philanthrocapitalism. Access to the vast genetic diversity across Africa, its gene pool wealth – without recognition or benefit sharing – drives the agenda of the AGRA project. And this accumulation by dispossession abrogates international law.
Philanthrocapitalism
Many names exist for the role played by large philanthropic foundations in the twenty-first century, with those related to the foundations preferring to call it ‘venture philanthropy’ (Bill Gates of the Gates Foundation), ‘strategic philanthropy’ (Paul Brest of Hewlitt Foundation), new mega-philanthropy or global philanthropy. This study employs the term ‘philanthrocapitalism’, for the concept invokes more than a single transaction or relationship, but rather nothing less than a systemic change, to employ huge sums of private capital for solving social problems using business methods (Edwards 2008a, 2008b, 2010, 2011).
Many characteristics of philanthrocapitalism remain quite similar to previous philanthropy of the twentieth century: much of the activity serves to increase the reputation of the corporate parent, legitimising either its monopoly acquisition in the name of a free market or the deleterious effects of its products (e.g. tobacco, pesticides, oil spills). Building libraries or concert halls (favourites of the Carnegie Foundation a century ago) or paying the salaries of orchestras and ballet companies attract favourable press coverage, stories that rarely raise questions about the origins of the surfeit. Wealth spent for a social good, from a grand building to a rural health clinic, attracts flattering headlines, for the gift projects a social consciousness, a concern for the community, placing the foundation's name on the public list of the benevolent (Cohen, Küpçü, and Khanna 2008; Zunz 2004). Philanthropic foundations have also been tax havens, providing tax write-offs for charity giving. Although donations might not directly increase profits, the charitable expenditures do no harm.
Philanthropy weaves interstices between the private and the public, such as the Rockefeller Foundation contributing to the first ‘green revolution’ in Asia and Latin America, which greatly profited fertiliser and pesticide corporations (both reliant on fossil fuels indirectly benefiting Standard Oil), but also, creating a public network of international gene banks for seeds. Some refer to this approach as working on a third level that is neither public nor private (Cheng and Mohamed 2010; Ramdas 2011). However, this analysis will show that they entwine both, making them inseparable, rather than creating a third terrain.
Many philanthropic foundations still carry these traditional characteristics but the system of philanthrocapitalism is distinguished by the goal of remaking the public sphere into its own image. Not content to share their wealth for public services or arts or education, philanthrocapitalists work to extend their business methods of operation onto the public sector. They refer to the task as ‘getting the job done’, ‘doing well by doing good’, strongly advocating that social needs can best be met by business tactics. Kumashiro (2012, 15) explains as follows:
Whereas traditional philanthropists view their giving as donations that support what others were doing, venture philanthropists view their giving as entryways into that work. That is, philanthropists themselves are now getting significantly involved in goal setting, decision making, and evaluating progress and outcomes to ensure that their priorities are met. This hands-on role allows venture capitalists to affect public policy more directly and substantially, particularly in a climate where their financial aid is so desperately needed.
The first business practice is tabulation or ‘results-based’ outcomes, measured in quantifiable units (‘quantiphilia’ according to Bosworth 2011, 382). Music is less for enjoyment, way too qualitative an assessment, but rather measured by the size of the audience or sale of DVDs. Specific targets draw attention, such as children's test scores, for they meet the specification criterion. That education is a totally different task from instruction, especially of young minds, can disappear as a topic of conversation or debate. Another measurement expectation is linear progression over quite short periods of time, not unlike the quarterly measure of the ‘bottom line’. This measurable, linear progression over very short periods offers a sense of ‘management’, of accomplishment.
To convince sceptics that this timely linear progression is the best measurement of social worth or of health or of education, what is measured is carefully chosen. A ‘good’ teacher has high attendance of students, high test scores or student grade point averages, and high rates of graduation over the designated time period. ‘Hard data’ (enumeration) is more business-like. What makes philanthrocapitalism systemic is that its business practices replace, not complement, others. Having chosen the measures that will be considered ‘normal’, only one system of accounting counts. No one has invented a unit measure to tabulate insight or creativity or experience so they disappear as indicators of education. In agriculture, the single measure is carried to an extreme, in that ‘yield’ has become the dominant measure of production success, diminishing attention to many other production factors, such as soil or water degradation or fossil fuel requirement per hectare.
Philanthrocapitalism is systemic also because it remains consistent in its goal of seeking greater revenue: charitable ‘giving’ becomes another form of investment. While twentieth-century philanthropists might have been content to donate to a cause with only a positive return on their reputations, venture philanthrocapitalists seek increased revenue, along with the reputation assets. Venture philanthropy is not just the business methods of management and calculation, but also a cash return (Bosworth 2011, 387). For this, the timeline may be longer than for their corporate parent investments, but the expected return is explicit. For example, the Gates Foundation makes no attempt to engage in socially responsible investment of foundation funds. The CEO of the Gates Foundation since 2008, Jeffrey Raikes, states, ‘I prefer our approach where we're either investing to create a return that will grow our endowment and give us more resources to be able to do our programmatic work, or we're investing in our programmatic work without trying to set some goals regarding returns’ (Preston 2011, 2). As the Los Angeles Times exposed (Piller, Sanders, and Dixon 2007), it means the Gates Foundation invests in corporations (the ‘venture’ side) causing air pollution adversely affecting human health, while one of its programmes (the ‘philanthropy’ side) donates to rural health clinics in the same location that treats the respiratory ailments of newborns. The Times estimated that over 40% of the Gates Foundation's assets derive from companies whose operations contradict foundation goals, and even after such a public exposure, the Foundation continues to reject any socially responsible criteria for its portfolio, as Raikes states above (Boseley 2007). To be analysed below, this expectation that even the ‘philanthropic’ foundation will engender profit is especially candid for the Alliance for a Green Revolution for Africa (AGRA).
Timing: the rise of philanthrocapitalism
Two parallel, interacting economic transformations made the emergence of philanthrocapitalism possible. From about 1980, the neoliberal assault on governments' participation in any economic sphere has been global and comprehensive. (Some date it from the 1973 military coup against Salvador Allende in Chile.) It began with removing government from the production sector, declaring all parastatals as inefficient, and more importantly, incapable of organising production relations for mines or industries. A few strategic economies, such as South Korea and Japan, were able to forestall the privatisation sweep, but only a few. In agriculture, it meant the removal of any state farms, from the USSR to Mozambique and Zimbabwe, even ones experimenting with new varieties of seeds or rationalising production on degraded soils. In southern Africa, the sweep extended to removing government partnerships in seed breeding, a long tradition of public sector interest for national food security. Agricultural extension workers, including highly trained women, almost disappeared, to be replaced by the commercial seed company representative who could teach how to plant Brand X but not much more in the complex endeavour of farming (Zerbe 2001). Private banks took over government credit schemes designed for farmers, with the banks making demands for collateral that only the relatively wealthy could meet.
As government debts increased, African agricultural budgets decreased to 2–3% of total government budget allocations by the end of the 1990s, even though 70–80% of the populations still relied on agriculture for their livelihoods and even though local farmers were key to food security. Credit, agricultural research and agricultural extension all fell victim to the neoliberal project of reduction of government ‘intervention’. The systematic removal of public investment in agriculture over three decades of course did not occur in the USA nor in Europe, as they both sustained very high levels of agricultural subsidies, simply renamed to fit into the World Trade Organization framework of the ‘green box’ (Stoneman and Thompson 2007). Although it quickly became clear that the private sector in southern Africa could not replace the government and provide the necessary financial and market networks, along with adequate infrastructure, the ban on government participation remained strong. Private traders would not collect produce from distant farmers, for transport reduced profits; mounds of food rotting became harvest pictures, from Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia to Mozambique. Lack of agricultural extension harmed the landed poor the most, the very ones who could exponentially increase production with a bit of advice to overcome a season's weather plight (Mushita and Thompson 2007, 159–165).
By the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, 30 years later, the international players (IMF, USA, EU) criticised African governments for not allocating sufficient percentages of their budgets to agriculture, finally recognising data that this productive sector incorporates the African majority and demonstrates resilience and innovation, without much capital. As will be discussed more below, in the midst of this financial drought of 30 years, African farmers invested natural capital and social capital; both kept people alive and most likely strengthened the smallholder farmer networks.
The second process of neoliberalism, parallel and interacting with the reduction of government revenues and expenditures, was the global deregulation of capital movement, allowing for many schemes to create innovative financial ‘securities’. From 2000, global traders could speculate in grains and other food crops, rendering their prices vulnerable to a computer click for speculative gain, more than to supply or demand. Further, deregulation facilitated mergers into global cartels and near monopolies. Wealth derived from legal controls over intellectual property (patents, trade secrets) and over the global market via business partnerships and mergers, all while public controls over capital movements disappeared. The neoliberal issue, as many have shown (Chang 2008; Roubini and Mihm 2010), was not one of regulation versus non-regulation but one of who is the regulator, the elected governments or the few exercising exclusive property rights and dominating the market, from the drug companies refusing to release patents on life-preserving retrovirals in South Africa in 1999 to banks colluding to reset LIBOR or launder drug money, 10 years later. In the name of globalisation, switching from government regulation of individual corporate behaviour to corporate regulation of property rights and control over the global market were important factors in the exponential increase in wealth of the global upper class over the same 30 years.
Into this financial void created by explicit policies, walk the philanthrocapitalists. What they bring that is new from over a century of corporate philanthropy is that they not only want to reduce the size of the public sector, they want to systemically transform it into their own image, quantifying social relationships and mainstreaming their business measures of ‘progress’ or ‘success’. Further, this corporate incursion into the public sector greatly reduces transparency.
Philanthrocapitalism in African agriculture
This introductory overview of philanthrocapitalism as a system can be better specified by analysing its process in African food production, long a target for improvement by outsiders. White settlers in southern Africa systematically favoured, through land grabs, price subsidies and infrastructure, their own food production, based on their ‘comfort food’ of maize and wheat, over indigenous sorghum and millets. Through land enclosures and market restrictions, they eliminated African producers from the expanding regional food market (for the mines and towns) (Bundy 1979; Mhone 1982; Schmidt 1992; Van Onselen 1976). However, they did not destroy African food production and several scientists even acknowledged its superiority for the ecosystems. A recent study by Helen Tilley (2011) thoroughly documents the Europeans who, a century ago, were not afraid to acknowledge how Africans successfully experimented and planned their food systems, to adapt to diverse ecological terrain. To give just a glimpse of her extensive archival findings, Tilley quotes Harold Shantz, an American working for the British immediately after World War I:
The agricultural methods of the Natives [sic] in Africa have often been condemned as shiftless, wasteful and destined to decrease the productivity of the country … one meets continually the statement that the Native knows nothing about crop production. These statements, in a way, reflect the attitude of the European toward the Native, the assumption being that since he does not follow our methods and our practices he must be essentially wrong. But there are many testimonies in the literature to the effect the Native is an excellent agriculturalist. (Tilley 2011, 135–136)
Local food production for local consumption continued along with the increasingly large-scale agricultural production of the white settlers, not only for the region but for the global market (e.g. Rhodesian tobacco, South African sugar, Tanganyika tea, coffee and sisal). Local food production meant that the crop diversity for food was also sustained, with Africans still having a food base of over 2000 plants (Mushita and Thompson 2007, 7).
In contrast to those above, the hubris of most of the colonial settlers about the superiority of their food production emerged in subtle ways. Today, the highly nutritious (much more than maize or wheat or rice) sorghums and millets are still referred to as ‘coarse grains’ or ‘small grains’ or ‘orphan crops’. That we continue to misunderstand African food production is exemplified by scholars of agriculture still referring to smallholder producers as ‘subsistence’ farmers, while at the same time, Americans and Europeans are trying to return to ‘buying food locally’. We need to ask why the latter is upscale and ecologically wise (‘locivore’), while the former is inferior. Today AGRA's Program for Africa's Seed System (AGRA 2012, 1) perpetuates the assumption that Africa's seeds are inferior:
Africa is facing a shortage of quality seeds. Poor seed combined with climate change will exacerbate the already critical food shortage situation in sub-Saharan Africa … . Most farmers plant varieties that were released more than 30 years ago or land races (farmer collection seeds).
One aspect of the agricultural project for philanthrocapitalism (seed, pesticide, fertiliser and retail food corporations) will link small-scale commercial African farmers beyond their local deliveries to the ‘global food value chain’, as the cartels (Appendix 1) name it. Providing African small-scale farmers with patented or trademark seed, pesticides and fertilisers would greatly extend the corporate market reach across the continent. The process of philanthrocapitalism in agriculture follows closely the approach that one business model will overcome African food insecurities, and the philanthropic giving will guide Africans in how to do it. It is to be a partnership of philanthrocapitalists' acumen and cash with African soil, water and labour. ‘Farming is a business,’ Bill Gates (2011) asserts, and he is convinced his foundation can ‘get the job done’, via superior technology and management. The Gates Foundation's model for agriculture is the American industrial agriculture approach of huge economies of scale for both production and marketing. Monoculture allows the corporations to manufacture nature – ploughing to level fields, irrigating and spreading massive amounts of chemical fertilisers across thousands of hectares. Breeding short crops facilitates machine harvesting. Seed is genetically modified to tolerate the pesticide, not for taste or nutrition, for flavour and nutrients do not come from living soil, sunshine and water, but from artificial additives during food manufacturing (Mushita and Thompson 2007, 81–105).
Linking local food production to the ‘global value chain’ means chaining vital production to the commands of corporate boardrooms, who view food commodities as no different from mother-boards or ethanol. Corporations are trying to capture the innovations and production of farmers in order to link them to the global market, for only then can such wealth be registered in the corporate boardrooms. AGRA's goal is no less than this ‘revolution’ of African farming systems. The transformation, however, will emerge from philanthropic foundations penetrating public institutions in the name of providing food security, not from competitive market transactions.
A new way to influence the whole continent to embrace farming as a business was found via the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), set up by the African Union but with outside funding (Mushita 2011, 5). As AGRA and other Gates' partners increased their funding, the model of CAADP started looking familiar (AU/NEPAD 2010). Although some CAADP documents mention the priorities of agricultural policy for smallholders recommended by the International Assessment of Agriculture, Science, and Technology for Development, practice is overriding principles. For example, while claiming the CAADP endeavour addresses the needs of smallholder farmers, those farmers are excluded from workshops and consultations. The stakeholders are corporate interests and their employee scientists. The consultations privilege the elitist approach to research, only seeing science occurring in laboratories by those with white coats, not out in the fields among the barefooted (ActionAid International 2011). By excluding the core stakeholders and their innovations, the ‘efficient’ labs generating quantifiable data respond to their corporate sponsors' demand for ‘evidence-based results’. Increasing food production across the continent becomes a technological problem, not a social or systemic one. Technological innovation is privatised, defining and directing research. As funds privilege one approach, other investigations, less manageable by outsiders, using different measures, are denigrated as not ‘science’ or ‘research’ at all.
CAADP research advances the large-scale monoculture approach to food production and reinforces the assumption that genetically modified innovation will solve the new demands of climate change. As Mushita (2011, 6) concludes:
It is of concern that CAADP's FARA [Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa] coauthored a report with Syngenta minimising the threats of GMOs. Further, the patenting of plant genetic resources, derived from traditional African knowledge systems, raises the question of benefit sharing back to the original breeders. Even though benefit sharing is not occurring, CAADP does not address the issue of this removal of African wealth. Indeed, access with benefit sharing (ABS) could be a source of finance for CAADP goals.
CAADP supporters cannot claim their findings are ‘results based’, because the data show that the other sciences, those of the farmers, are best at providing resilient alternatives. The genetically modified sweet potato failed in both yield and resistance to viruses in comparison with one conventionally bred in Uganda (Mittal and Moore 2009, 16). ‘Golden Rice’ failed because of the large quantity a child must eat daily to obtain the requisite Vitamin A. The farmers' intercropping, providing both rice and greens, a nutritious mixture readily digested, remains the simple, affordable answer. But the intercropping of local rice varieties and local greens does not submit crops to the global market, so no cartel profit can be made, while ‘Golden Rice’ is patented and can be distributed by the cartels, in the global market. The latest advertising acclaims Monsanto's new ‘water efficient’ maize (MON87460), but again, independent testing concludes: ‘Like conventional corn, MON 87460 is still subject to yield loss under severe water-limited conditions’ (Drought Tolerant Corn 2011, 65). Developed over thousands of years, Africans already have drought-resistant grains, always used as alternatives during years of less than average rains: the sorghums and millets (also more nutritious than maize). Again, however, those seeds and their successful cultivation remain in the hands of farmers, while Monsanto patented ‘its’ maize. If the industrial farming business approach were really ‘evidence based’, then the philanthrocapitalists would be funding the farmer scientists, as much as institutes full of laboratories.
Production of food by African smallholders is much more than a business transaction; it is a way of life, of sharing, of defining family, of spirituality. Across the continent, one's identity remains the village, kumusha, vijijini, kraal. Across southern Africa (South Africa the exception), children born in urban townships are sent ‘home’ to grandparents during long holidays to sustain family traditions. Urban and overseas relatives contribute remittances to the family homestead. In cattle societies, the animals still represent wealth (not just ‘beef’) signifying bonds across clans, as practised by brideprice still offered by families with multiple PhDs among the members.
Most representative of the ideas of livelihood, identity, spirituality and sharing is seed. Although they are exchanged in a marketplace, seeds are mainly freely shared, even to the global cartels (via public seed banks). Seeds represent genetic wealth, much more precious than cash that can disappear overnight in a speculative binge. The seed provides roots.
Remaking the public sector into philanthrocapital's own image has further expressions beyond transforming the farming system discussed above. At the international level, a major target has been the 16 international public seed banks, coordinated by CGIAR.4 As public institutions, the germplasm remains available to any request and all archival information is transparent; accountability for seeds and finance derives from the transparency. Since the formation of AGRA in late 2006, the Gates Foundation, its various off-shoots (e.g. the Challenge Program of HarvestPlus and Generation) and allies (e.g. the World Bank, US government) have contributed 45–50% of the CGIAR genebank funding (Community Technology Development Trust 2010, 4–10). As the share of AGRA funding increased, the policies turned more and more to favouring private interests of the agricultural industry, as CGIAR (2011, 35) announced:
Managing for results is a business concept that has been taken up by the public sector in a number of realms, including international development. The Independent Review of the CGIAR System, completed in 2008, highlighted the advantages of this approach for the CGIAR. The idea is to manage and implement investments in a way that focuses on the results desired and uses information on progress towards these results to improve decision-making.
Expressing this policy, The International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) in Zimbabwe ceased sharing foundation seed with the smallholder farmer sector, from whom the germplasm came in the first place. In 2010, the centre changed to selling the foundation seed to commercial seed companies (interview with Justice Nyamangara, ICRISAT-Matopos, 2 June 2010). Foundation seed comes from breeders and with a successful strain, it must be outgrown into larger quantities for commercial sales. Smallholder farmers in Matabeleland were successfully outgrowing ICRISAT-Matopos foundation seed, according to strict certification criteria, and then selling it to small commercial seed companies. The new requirement to purchase the foundation seed from ICRISAT meant that the smallholders were excluded, because they have skill, labour, soil and water (social and natural capital) but little cash (finance capital). What had been a practice of benefit sharing, following the ABS principle, became a commercial transaction, privileging private seed companies. ICRISAT is both rejecting the international law of benefit sharing and depriving the smallholders of any share of the market, for they cannot buy into it.
Another example of changing behaviour within CGIAR, outside Africa, showing it is systemic, is the agreement made by the International Centre for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA) with beer brewers for barley. The public seed banks are not to privilege any one recipient of their seeds, and certainly not give exclusive rights. Quite the opposite, they are to publicise who is using what, and Standard Material Transfer Agreements (SMTAs) record how the acquired accession is bred and the offspring used. This full transparency, including breeding and use of the next generation, recognises that freely sharing seed and knowledge is the key to continuing biodiversity and innovation. However, ICARDA reveals it has entered into an exclusive contract with three major brewers (one owned by Heineken and two in which Anheuser-Busch has 50% ownership): ‘The centrepiece of the 3-year research agreement are provisions that allow for exclusive private sector ownership and control of ICARDA's advanced barley lines’ (ETC Group 2012, 20). When inquiries were made, ICARDA tried to defend its violation of non-exclusion by saying that eventually, there will be results useful and available to all farmers, calling it the ‘international spill-over’ effect. To those who know the ‘trickle-down’ (of wealth) logic of the last decades, it seems that ICARDA has simply renamed it ‘spill-over’. CGIAR rules are clear: no exclusive rights. The corporate sector is trying to transform that international law into its own image of exclusion for a ‘short time’ to encourage innovation, and then eventually, everyone will know and benefit. It transforms free sharing of seeds into privatisation, in a new way, beyond patenting.
The penetration by philanthrocapitalism of this international public sector becomes ‘practice’, using separate, seemingly small agreements that violate principles. Yet if enough deals occur in various ways, the practice becomes more ‘normal’ and exclusive private access becomes acceptable because it encourages ‘innovation’ that eventually will ‘spill over’ to all. Convinced of their own superior ways, the philanthrocapitalists fund the international public seed banks, preserving their ‘open access’ principle of freely sharing seeds. But then, their business practices (marketing of foundation seed, exclusion to encourage innovation) begin to transform and replace public social relations (recognition of benefit sharing, full transparency). Philanthrocapitalists donate to open access practices in order to achieve privatisation for their partners – a major source of their profits. The revenue flow does not return directly to the Gates Foundation but to the corporations in which the foundation invests, as an expression of ‘venture philanthropy’.5
Another way for AGRA business practices to usurp established public policies involves strong lobbying within the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to legislate a uniform regional seed law. In the name of efficiency, seed corporations prefer to apply for one regional permission to introduce a new seed across the 16 member states, without interference from specific national environmental standards. Because individual country laws in southern Africa have deterred the spread of genetically modified (GM) seeds from the commercial South African market into the rest of the region, one way to disseminate undesired seed is to create one seed law for the whole region. If the GM seed enters South Africa legally, a uniform SADC seed law minimising customs inspections would circumvent national biosafety laws and their enforcement. Efficiency of seed dissemination would be gained to the detriment of the precautionary principle, exercised by national governments to reduce GM pollution of local varieties. Genetic contamination is another means for appropriating local varieties, for they will no longer ‘breed true’. Further, the seed company has proprietary rights over the genetically modified gene, and if it is found in a farmer's variety s/he can be sued for usurpation of a patent. The argument for ‘efficiency’ of a regional law sounds sensible until one realises that a uniform law would render national biosafety laws null and void. Smallholder farmers in SADC prefer the first agenda to be regional biosafety protocol, removing GM seed from South Africa, and then perhaps they could choose the efficiency of a uniform seed law.
At the national level, another method of access without recognition or benefit sharing involves the purchase of shares in local seed companies by global corporations to acquire ownership over seed banks. Monsanto has 5% share of Seed Co, originally a Zimbabwean cooperative and now the major private seed corporation in Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi and Zambia. Zimbabwe has been breeding its own varieties of maize, adapted to local conditions, since the 1930s. As a shareholder, Monsanto can access that knowledge and wealth, along with indigenous varieties of sorghum and millet. More portentous, in August 2012, a South African appeals court ruled against strong civic organising to prevent Pioneer Seed (DuPont) from acquiring South Africa's largest national seed company, Pannar Seed. The courts are allowing the merger to proceed, turning over those indigenous genetic treasures to a single private American corporation.6 Although ‘legal’, this global corporate privatisation of local genetic wealth greatly diminishes any hope of African food sovereignty. The remaining large seed company, Klein Karoo Seed, will hold only 5% of total cultivars in South Africa (African Biosafety Centre 2012, 5).
International resistance
Because of the serious implications of the privatisation of biodiversity via the system of philanthrocapitalism, international laws honouring the reciprocity of ABS have not stopped with a simple declaration of principles. In 2004, the new International Treaty for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) called for sharing commercial profits from any germplasm taken from the public seed banks (e.g. CGIAR centres), setting up SMTAs to trace the seeds from the international depositories to new strains sold for commercial profit. SMTAs are the instrument to enforce the prohibition on patenting of any of the treaty-protected varieties (only 69 but they account for about 75% of human food crops) and to request benefit sharing (0.7% of profit) for any materials providing commercial benefits. However, while CGIAR centres can provide access to over 694,000 seeds, the benefit sharing of SMTAs remains dysfunctional for lack of funding and enforcement. By the end of 2011, eight countries had pledged $10 million for the treaty's Benefit-Sharing Fund, but the agreed goal of raising $116 million by 2014 seems remote (ITPGRFA 2011, 3). This international instrument for implementing benefit sharing is in place, agreed upon through extensive international negotiations, but remains inoperative for lack of funding.
By 2010, the Nagoya Protocol of the Convention on Biological Diversity on ‘Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising From Their Utilisation’ headlined the benefit-sharing side of ABS, but again, its provisions remain inoperative for lack of funds. During the 2012 CBD Convention of the Parties (COP 11), CBD Executive Secretary, Braulio Ferreira de Souza Dias, emphasised that work on the Nagoya Protocol is about three priorities: ‘implementation, implementation, implementation’ (IISD 2012). With two international laws in place and ready to implement, it appears quite explicit on the part of ‘venture philanthropy’ to ignore with impunity the benefit-sharing reciprocity requirement for free access.7 At the least, the Nagoya Protocol represents continuing international recognition that access continues unabated, without benefit sharing, abrogating both the ITPGRFA and the CBD.
In contrast, African farmers' networks’ organising at every level, from local to global, were the first to alert the international community about the seizure of genetic materials at the World Social Forum (2007, 1):
Africa is the source of much of the world's agricultural knowledge and biodiversity. African farming represents a wealth of innovation: for example, Canada's main export wheat is derived from a Kenyan variety called ‘Kenyan farmer’; the US and Canada grow barley bred from Ethiopian farmers’ varieties; and the Zera Zera sorghum grown in Texas originated in Ethiopia and the Sudan. This rich basis of biodiversity still exists in Africa today, thanks to the 80% of farmers in Africa that continue to save seed in a range of diverse eco-systems across the continent … .
[The] push for a so-called ‘green revolution’ or ‘gene revolution’ is being done once again under the guise of solving hunger in Africa … . The push for a corporate-controlled chemical system of agriculture is parasitic on Africa's biodiversity, food sovereignty, seed and small-scale farmers … . Agricultural innovation must be farmer-led, responding to local needs and sustainability.
Today African governments and civic organisations counter the private usurpation of seeds conserved in the public sector with continuing calls for farmers' rights (to plant, exchange and breed any seeds), another principle recognised as international law by the ITPGRFA. In southern Africa, Zimbabwe's unity government passed Statutory Instrument 61 in 2009 to regulate access, requiring prior informed consent from local communities before any removal of genetic resources or indigenous knowledge, the first statute of its kind on the continent. Workshops continue to train others on how southern African governments can adapt this model law and make it appropriate for their national laws (Chishakwe and Mafuratidze 2010).
Although the Nagoya Protocol addresses benefit sharing between states, it requires governments to foster community protocols, reaffirming prior informed consent, originally mentioned, but not defined, in the CBD 21 years ago. Communities are to decide, not national governments, whether and how to permit use of either traditional ecological knowledge or local genetic resources (Swiderska 2012, 1). Retaining power in the communities that breed the biodiversity reflects the above Zimbabwean 2009 statute, and southern Africans were key in writing it into the 2010 protocol.
Reasons, however, why AGRA targets Africa may not be only because the continent is food insecure but because very few effective African laws exist to protect bioresources. In contrast, several countries in Latin America, such as Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico and Peru, have passed stringent laws and effective enforcement to protect their genetic resources from biopiracy; from Brazil, for example, one cannot legally remove the wings of the smallest insect or a few seeds without fulfilling numerous reporting requirements. Although the international principles and protocols are key steps toward recognising and conserving biodiversity, most all require ‘domesticating’ the international regime: interpreting the protocol, implementing and enforcing it, in accordance with national laws. Although African governments lost much capacity during the era of neoliberalism, the burden is still put on them to adapt international protocols into their own laws (Medaglia, Perron-Welch, and Rukundo 2011, 69). There is no reciprocity expected of the recipient governments and corporations, to register receipt and acknowledge debt to the African donor communities.
Africans know well the full value of their genetic wealth and are working at the international, national and local levels to protect it, while continuing to share. It is remarkable, given these multiple and serious incursions into African public seed sectors and into agricultural initiatives by the philanthrocapitalist project of the Gates Foundation's AGRA, that African farmers and their governments still refuse to patent living organisms. They demonstrate well the strength of their traditional ecological knowledge in refusing to join in the removal of genetic biodiversity from public sectors. They not only know the value; they know the future of humans on the planet depends on their vigilant resistance.