Seed monopolies: Who controls the world s food supply?
Seed laws criminalizing farmers for using diverse crops that stand a better chance of adapting to climate change are threatening food security. Seed sovereignty activists want to reclaim the right to plant.
More than half of the global seed market is in the hands of just a few corporations
For thousands of years of human agriculture, the intrinsic nature of a seed the capacity to reproduce itself prevented it from being easily commodified. Grown and resown by farmers, seeds were freely exchanged and shared.
All that changed in the 1990s when laws were introduced to protect new bioengineered crops. Today, four corporations Bayer, Corteva, ChemChina and Limagrain control more than 50% of the world s seeds. These staggering monopolies dominate the global food supply.
State pension money invested in ‘questionable’ Congo palm oil company
by Bobby Jordan
The South African Government Employees Pension Fund (GEPF) is invested in a Congolese palm oil business linked to past human rights abuses and land expropriation.
The Public Investment Corporation (PIC) has confirmed that pension funds are being indirectly invested in Plantations et Huileries du Congo (PHC). The funds are ploughed in via a US investment company, Kuramo Capital Management, PHC’s majority stakeholder. PHC’s previous owners include British multinational consumer goods company Unilever and Canadian company Feronia. Kuramo acquired a majority stake in PHC late last year.
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Planning documents for the 2021 United Nations Food Systems Summit shed new light on the agenda behind the controversial food summit that hundreds of farmers’ and human rights groups are boycotting. The groups say agribusiness interests and elite foundations are dominating the process to push through an agenda that would enable the exploitation of global food systems, and especially Africa.
The documents, including a background paper prepared for summit dialogues and a draft policy brief for the summit, bring into focus “plans for the massive industrialization of Africa’s food systems,” said Mariam Mayet, executive director of the African Centre for Biodiversity (ACB), who provided the documents to U.S. Right to Know.
By Fadekemi Ajakaiye
Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) will be partnering with Ecole Urbaine de Lyon in hosting her first School of Ecology (SoE) for 2021.
According to a statement by HOMEF, this partnership was officially announced at a virtual press conference held on Friday, 15 January 2021 to present the third edition of Ecole de l’Anthropocene (School of Anthropocene) 2021 organised by Ecole urbaine de Lyon (Lyon urban school) in France. The School of Anthropocene will run for one week, from 25th to 31st (Monday to Sunday) January 2021.
The SoE which will form one of the sections of A l’Ecole de l’Anthropocene, will be examining the roots of resource exploitation with particular focus on food, extractivism and ecology. This section will hold 26th to 28th that is, Tuesday to Thursday. Featuring in the SoE are Mariam Mayet of African Centre for Biosafety, South Africa and Mamadou Goita of IRPAD, Mali who will be speaking on “Who feeds the planet”; Firoze Manji