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Nuanced rhetoric and the path to poverty: AGRA, small-scale farmers and seed and soil fertility in Tanzania


March 17, 2015

Source: African Centre for Biosafety

African Centre for Biosafety (ACB) hast today released its new research report entitled “Nuanced rhetoric and the path to poverty: AGRA, small-scale farmers and seed and soil fertility in Tanzania”. The report is an outcome of research conducted by ACB in partnership with a farmers’ organisation, Mtandao wa Vikundi vya Wakulima Tanzania (MVIWATA) and Sustainable Agriculture Tanzania (SAT), in Morogoro and Mvomero Districts in the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania (SAGCOT) during 2014. SAGCOT is a priority agribusiness investment corridor, connecting Zambia and the hinterlands to the port at Dar es Salaam. Morogoro is located centrally in the corridor.

The report indicates a well-coordinated effort by selected states especially the US and in the EU, philanthropic institutions like AGRA, multilateral institutions like the World Bank, donors and multinational corporations (MNCs) including Yara, Monsanto and Pioneer to construct a Green Revolution that aims to produce a layer of commercial surplus producers. This is an explicit goal and they are not shy of saying it. However, the long-term social and ecological impacts of this agenda are questionable, with concerns about loss of land, biodiversity, and sovereignty.

Farmers in the Mvomero sites were exposed to Green Revolution fertilizer interventions and as a result fertilizer use was higher than national averages. The report found that despite AGRA’s Integrated Soil Fertility Management (ISFM) approach, which proposes a combination of organic soil fertility techniques with the application of synthetic fertilizers, AGRA tends to favour the introduction of synthetic fertilizers in the work it sponsors, even in its maize-legume intercropping support work.

Tanzanian seed laws have been revised to open the way for private commercial involvement. These include intellectual property laws to allow for private ownership of germplasm and private profit from the production and distribution of seed, an essential input to the livelihoods of millions in Tanzania. There is public sector capacity to produce quality seed, but public sector institutions are being roped into public-private partnerships (PPPs) with MNCs. This results in public resources being channelled into supporting corporate profit instead of public-farmer partnerships. AGRA is playing an important role in preparing the institutional and technical grounds for PPPs.

Interventions aimed at expanding access to improved OPV and hybrid seed varieties are still in their infancy in the study areas. 80% of farmers continue recycling seed, especially maize, legumes and rice. Public and farmer control of this seed and germplasm is under threat of privatisation and confiscation. The Green Revolution is premised on the idea that seed managed and circulated by farmers is poor quality. However, more than three-quarters of farmers rated the quality of the seed they used in the past season to be good, even though most of this is recycled seed and farmers’ own varieties.

The ACB strongly recommends ditching Green Revolution technologies in favour of practical alternatives to the Green Revolution based on agro-ecological and democratic practices, co-operation and shared assets and resources.

Click here acbio.org.za for the full report, including the summary



Published: March 19, 2015



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