AG: What was it that Michael Pollen said about fossil fuel-based agriculture?
TW: Looking at US corn, he said we are basically
“eating oil,” because our corn grows with such heavy applications of
fertilizers made from natural gas. They are a fossil-fuel input, as are
many pesticides and other agro-chemicals. With climate change
increasingly impacting farmers in Africa, it is crazy that donors are
actively campaigning to increase farmers’ dependence on fossil-fuel
inputs. AGRA may call it “climate-smart agriculture,” but dissident
African farmers call it “climate-stupid agriculture.”
AG: I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that Bill Gates imagines big technology monopolies will solve the world’s problems.
TW: He made his money as a technology monopolist,
from Microsoft, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that his solutions to
the world’s problems put big technology corporations at the center. The
Gates Foundation claims to be very scientific and data-driven, very
results-oriented, so AGRA’s failures, after $660 million in Gates
funding, should really prompt a reconsideration of such policies.
AG: Africans in the organizations you’ve worked with call this neocolonial agriculture, don’t they?
TW: They do, because again developed country “experts” are coming to Africa with their solutions to Africa’s problems, pushing theirindustrial
technologies, and promoting crops like corn that the United States and
other rich countries know how to grow, at least as industrial
commodities.
-- Ann Garrison speaking with Timothy A. Wise (Senior Advisor at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy), "The Gates Foundation’s “Green Revolution” in Africa: Agribusiness Wins, Small Scale Farmers Lose" (BLACK AGENDA REPORT).