Excerpt:

+ WAMBUGU'S 'AFRICA HARVEST' GETS $16.9 MILLION 
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is to pour $16.9 million into a 
consortium headed by Africa Harvest, of which Florence Wambugu is the CEO. The 
consortium includes Pioneer Hi-Bred International, a subsidiary of DuPont. 

One African activist commented, "These guys really know how to waste money!"  
==========================================

Subj: MONTHLY REVIEW - JULY 2005    
Date:    8/5/2005 7:56:14 AM Central Daylight Time    
From:    [log in to unmask] (GM WATCH)
Sender: [log in to unmask] (GM WATCH)
To:    [log in to unmask] ([log in to unmask])
   

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MONTHLY REVIEW – JULY 2005

from Claire Robinson, editor 

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+ AFRICANS NEED SAFE FOOD AND CLEAN WATER - NOT GMOs

Amadou Kanoute, Director of Consumers International Regional Office for 
Africa, spoke in Edinburgh on 6 July about debt relief and foreign aid, and 
attended the G8 in Gleneagles (7-8 July). He says: "Some companies and governments 
are trying to promote GM as a miracle solution to world hunger. But the 
long-term effects of GMOs on human health and the environment are unknown. African 
consumers need basics like access to clean water and safe food - not GMOs."

http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5462



+ G8 CREATES "DISASTER FOR THE WORLD'S POOR

Responding to the outcome of the G8 summit, World Development Movement (WDM) 
Head of Policy, Peter Hardstaff said: 



"… The deals on debt and aid fall way short of what is needed to achieve 
global poverty reduction targets and on trade it's business as usual as the G8 
attempt to bulldoze more liberalisation out of the poor. These tiny sums of money 
are nothing more than a sticking plaster over the deep wounds the G8 are 
inflicting by forcing failed economic policies such as privatisation, free trade 
and corporate deregulation, on Africa."

http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5486

http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5476



+ WAMBUGU'S 'AFRICA HARVEST' GETS $16.9 MILLION 

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is to pour $16.9 million into a 
consortium headed by Africa Harvest, of which Florence Wambugu is the CEO. The 
consortium includes Pioneer Hi-Bred International, a subsidiary of DuPont. 



One African activist commented, "These guys really know how to waste money!" 
Wambugu previously headed the disastrous Monsanto GM virus-resistant sweet 
potato project. Three years of field trials showed the project, which has cost 
over $6 million, to be a total failure, delivering lower yields than 
conventional crops and no virus resistance!

http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5443



+ AFRICA NEEDS NON-GM AGRICULTURE

In a typically incisive article, Dr Colin Tudge, Research Fellow at the 
London School of Economics, spells out why Africa can only flourish by building on 
traditional agriculture.



EXCERPT: The notion that [African countries] actually need GMOs to provide 
sufficient yields is simply a misunderstanding, or a straightforward lie... 
their introduction suppresses local production and increases the dependency of 
poor countries on those who supply the new technologies. The argument in favour 
of GMOs, supported not least by Tony Blair, rests on the assumption that they 
are necessary. If they are not needed, there is no point in taking any risk at 
all.

http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5466



+ GHANA STOPS IMPORTATION OF GM FOODS

Ghana's Food and Agriculture minister Ernest Debrah said that the country 
would reject, without hesitation, the importation of any GM foods, crops and 
materials into the country.

http://allafrica.com/stories/200507280825.html



+ BT AND ORGANIC COTTON IN AFRICA

Paul Desmarais, director of the Kasisi Agricultural Training Centre in 
Zambia, reports: "We have successfully grown organic cotton for two years now at 
Kasisi. We have good control of insects and there is not resistance built in the 
system as there is even with Bt cotton. Our yields are double the national 
yields.



"Farmers using the conventional route are barely ekeing out an existence with 
the price of cotton dropping and the price of inputs climbing up. We have 
just had the seed cotton tested for fibre length, micronair, etc. and our cotton 
did very well on all the scores. Let us pursue the growing of organic cotton. 
It is possible and it is sustainable."



Meanwhile, Andrew Taynton reports: "There are allegations circulating in 
South Africa at the moment that where NGO's have taught organic and sustainable 
methods of farming, government officials come in and tell these farmers they 
will never make money that way and distribute chemicals and GM seeds."

http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5534



+ US PROMOTING GM IN AFRICA

For an interesting commentary + links on how the US is pushing Africa to 
accept GM on American terms: 

http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5544



+ U.S. BRINGS GMOs AND NUKES TO INDIA

In a new US-India move to increase scientific cooperation, the US has pledged 
to provide India with nuclear reactors and materials and technology to deal 
with crop pests and diseases and food storage problems. That translates as GMOs.

http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5544



+ INDIA: GOVT STUDY SHOWS GM COTTON FAULTS

Indian government scientists have acknowledged flaws in the GM Bt cotton 
plants under commercial cultivation, endorsing what NGOs have long claimed and 
contradicting Monsanto's hype.



In a study released 25 July, scientists at the Central Institute of Cotton 
Research (CICR), Nagpur said the amount of protein varies across different 
varieties and, in some plants, decreases to levels inadequate to protect the plants 
110 days after sowing.



Their experiments also revealed that production of the protein is lowest in 
the bollworms' most favoured sites of attack - the plants' ovaries found in the 
flowers and the thick green peel of the cotton boll from which cotton blooms.



Because the findings have been kept under wraps and apparently not passed on 
to regulators, a series of fresh releases of Bt cotton in India have been made 
possible. 



One of the researchers at the CICR commented, "The decline in resistant power 
means that the farmer has to apply more chemical pesticides to save his crop. 
Already, the cost of Bt cotton seeds are high and added to this, he incurs 
additional costs on pesticides. Eventually, he lands up in heavy debts." 

http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5559

http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5542

http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5547







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