Kofi Annan reappointed UG Chancellor

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OLD SOLDIER 12 years ago

Source: Daily Guide...

All of a sudden nonentities want to portray to the world how close they were to the late President.

Those who had to chat with him for one hour everyday, those Deputy Ministers who had to call him ...
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Source: Daily Guide...

All of a sudden nonentities want to portray to the world how close they were to the late President.

Those who had to chat with him for one hour everyday, those Deputy Ministers who had to call him every morning before the man could even brush his teeth, and still those who would be called to the Castle by the late President to express his appreciation for job well done after they had gone to insult political opponents in the media on his behalf. Shameless id.iots raising their egos
GHFUO, BE SERIOUS NOT PRIDEFUL! 12 years ago

DO U SEE WHAT ELDER KOFI ANNAN IS DOING WITH LEGON SINCE HE CAME ON BOARD AS UNIVERSITY CHANCELLOR? YOU PPL HVNT EVEN SEEN NOTHING YET. THIS IS A TRUE LEADER, EYE OPEN MAN PAAA...I HOPE THE OTHER COLLEGE CHANCELLORS IN GH CAN ...
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DO U SEE WHAT ELDER KOFI ANNAN IS DOING WITH LEGON SINCE HE CAME ON BOARD AS UNIVERSITY CHANCELLOR? YOU PPL HVNT EVEN SEEN NOTHING YET. THIS IS A TRUE LEADER, EYE OPEN MAN PAAA...I HOPE THE OTHER COLLEGE CHANCELLORS IN GH CAN LEARN A THING OR TWO FROM KOFI ANNAN N HOW HE MANAGES LEGON.
Fuu-Fuu 12 years ago

What specifically has Kofi Annan done for Legon? Kindly provide us with the list of achievements. He is just as useless as the Asantehene (KNUST), and Jonah (Cape Vars). All these personalities were given these jobs as financ ...
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What specifically has Kofi Annan done for Legon? Kindly provide us with the list of achievements. He is just as useless as the Asantehene (KNUST), and Jonah (Cape Vars). All these personalities were given these jobs as financial rewards for their political support of the NPP.

The rich in Ghana just can milk the country enough!
ASEM BE BA DABI 12 years ago

Kofi Annan,please advice Justice Atukuba and his co. to be bold and come out with a clean ruling of the election petition case before them.

Kofi Annan,please advice Justice Atukuba and his co. to be bold and come out with a clean ruling of the election petition case before them.
william 12 years ago

Your request cannot be met because no 'Atukuba' in the whole of Ghana!!!

Your request cannot be met because no 'Atukuba' in the whole of Ghana!!!
Seth, UK 12 years ago

Mr Writer, we trust Mr Annan has both local and international reputation but don't get me wrong, we need specifics regarding what he actually did during the first term in the University of Ghana. Anyway, congrats Mr Annan.

Mr Writer, we trust Mr Annan has both local and international reputation but don't get me wrong, we need specifics regarding what he actually did during the first term in the University of Ghana. Anyway, congrats Mr Annan.
Wiseman 12 years ago

Seth, that's objective from you. The authorities are leaning on his "Secretary General" credentials.

Kofi Annan stuns; he would not condemn corruption nor would he our leaders indulgent in it. He would not voice his conce ...
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Seth, that's objective from you. The authorities are leaning on his "Secretary General" credentials.

Kofi Annan stuns; he would not condemn corruption nor would he our leaders indulgent in it. He would not voice his concerns about so many ills crippling the country. He would only give advices most of us give and he takes credit for being very smart.

Personally I see him as name seeker and a hypocrite.
foodsovereigntyghana.org/ 12 years ago

Why is Kofi Annan Fronting For Monsanto?

The GMO Assault On Africa

Posted by xcroc under Africa, agriculture, development, Ghana, globalization, GM crops, hunger, Monsanto, recolonize | Tags: AGRA, Gates Foundation, GM ...
read full comment

Why is Kofi Annan Fronting For Monsanto?

The GMO Assault On Africa

Posted by xcroc under Africa, agriculture, development, Ghana, globalization, GM crops, hunger, Monsanto, recolonize | Tags: AGRA, Gates Foundation, GMOs, Kofi Annan, USAID |
[11] Comments

Why do you bring your mistakes here?

Kofi Annan has joined with President Obama, Monsanto, AGRA, and the Gates foundation to promote and execute food aid that replaces bags of wheat, rice and corn (agricultural dumping) with bags of pesticides, herbicides, chemical fertilizers and genetically engineered seeds. The end result will be to starve people in Africa and feed corporations in the US and Europe.

Kofi Annan and farmers

Under the guise of “sustainability” the [Gates] Foundation has been spearheading a multi-billion dollar effort to transform Africa into a GMO-friendly continent. The public relations flagship for this effort is the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), a massive Green Revolution project. Up to now AGRA spokespeople have been slippery, and frankly, contradictory about their stance on GMOs.
…
If you had any doubts about where the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is really placing its bets, AGRA Watch’s recent announcement of the Foundation’s investment of $23.1 million in 500,000 shares of Monsanto stock should put them to rest. Genetic engineering: full speed ahead. (Eric Holt-Gimenez)

If you have questions about Monsanto’s agenda, here it is in brief:

At a biotech industry conference in January 1999, a representative from Arthur Anderson, LLP explained how they had helped Monsanto design their strategic plan. First, his team asked Monsanto executives what their ideal future looked like in 15 to 20 years. The executives described a world with 100 percent of all commercial seeds genetically modified and patented. Anderson consultants then worked backwards from that goal, and developed the strategy and tactics to achieve it. They presented Monsanto with the steps and procedures needed to obtain a place of industry dominance in a world in which natural seeds were virtually extinct. (Jeffrey M. Smith)

Monsanto: No food shall be grown that we don't own

Kofi Annan is Chairman of the Board of Directors for AGRA. He is convening a conference in Ghana in the first week of September. As detailed in this blog, and by others, both AGRA and USAID top positions are filled with people that come from Monsanto and Dupont.
Kofi Annan Calls For United Effort To Accelerate African Green Revolution

African heads of state, industry representatives, the international donor community and farmers will meet in Ghana at the African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF) in the first week of September. Delegates will create an action plan on the acceleration of a Green Revolution in Africa.

Samuel Amoako has reported on this as well: Kofi Annan Hosts Forum On Africa’s Food Security in the Ghanaian Times on August 11.

It is worrisome that Kofi Annan is connected with AGRA. Maybe he believes that US mechanized and chemical agriculture work well. Most people in the US do, aside from family farmers who see the effects first hand. I have a good friend who works for the US Dept. of Agriculture and thinks this kind of big agriculture really is the best and that Monsanto is a boon to mankind. We have had several heated discussions. In fact Monsanto is destroying land, causing chemically induced human diseases, creating super weeds, super insect pests, and economic havoc in many parts of the US farming areas, particularly in the midwest and the south. There have been countless protests all over India and Brazil. I’ve read many heartbreaking stories, including this comment from Pearl on this blog:

The farmers of southern Kentucky have been enslaved by Monsanto. The previous generation fell for an ad campaign called “Hi-bred” or “High-Bred”, and the current generation is stuck with fulfilling the contracts their fathers signed. The chemicals that Monsanto has contractually required be applied to those fields have so damaged the soil that the only way to get anything to grow in the fields now is to keep applying more of those blasted chemicals. So even if a person who inherited a contract WANTS to discontinue the agreement with Monsanto when the contract expires, they are unable to do so unless they want to leave the land fallow for many, many, many years. Most farmers cannot afford to do this, as this would mean little to no income for their families for somewhere between 5 to 20 years, depending on how long it would take for the soil to renew itself.

I’ve always had enormous respect for Kofi Annan, I do not understand his participation in this and it bothers me a great deal. Even though I admire and respect him there are no free passes with a subject like this.

Genetically modified crops produce less, not more, than conventional crops.

Alexis Baden-Mayer points out in Dupont, Monsanto, and Obama Versus the World’s Family Farmers that AGRA is basing its programs on myth:

Most of the world’s food is not produced on industrial mega-farms. 1.5 billion family farmers produce 75 percent of the world’s food.

The hunger problem is not caused by low yields. The world has 6 billion people and produces enough food for 9 billion people.

And as I’ve discussed before, the smaller the farm the greater the yield.

There is an inverse relationship between the size of farms and the amount of crops they produce per hectare. The smaller they are, the greater the yield.

In some cases, the difference is enormous. A recent study of farming in Turkey, for example, found that farms of less than one hectare are twenty times as productive as farms of over ten hectares(3). Sen’s observation has been tested in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Malaysia, Thailand, Java, the Phillippines, Brazil, Colombia and Paraguay. It appears to hold almost everywhere. (Monbiot)

The key to true food security is food sovereignty, and the key to food sovereignty lies in who controls the land. The problems of both starvation and obesity stem from injustice in the way farmland and food are distributed. AGRA policies will poison the land and water, destroy local seeds and seed gene pools that provide the true hope for food sustainability. Local agriculture in most parts of the world has developed seeds that are tough and resistant to local pests, weeds, and local environmental dangers such as droughts or floods. AGRA wishes to replace these seeds with ones that need expensive, continuous, and ever expanding chemical coddling. These chemicals will poison the land, the water, and the people.

Additionally the Gates Foundation, Monsanto, and other corporate interests are investing in a doomsday seed bank, in which they will own the world’s agricultural gene pool. They are storing seeds from all over the world. In the event of genetic disaster, they will own the surviving gene pool.

Jonathan Weiner, in The Beak of the Finch describes how chemicals drive the destruction of land and the creation of super weeds and super insect pests:

Some of the greatest opposition to evolution comes from the farmers of the Cotton Belt, and that is where Taylor is seeing one of the most dramatic cases of evolution in action on this planet.

… in the year 1940, cotton farmers began spraying their fields with the chemical compound dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, better known as DDT. These first insecticidal sprays killed so many insects, and killed so many of the birds that ate the insects, that in biological terms the cotton fields were left standing virtually vacant, like an archipelago of newborn islands – and out of the woods and hedgerows fluttered [the cotton destroying moth] Heliothis virescens.

In the next few optimistic years, pesticide manufacturers assaulted Heliothis with bigger and bigger doses of DDT. They also brought out more poisons from the same chemical family: aldrin, chlordane. The aim was nothing less than the control of nature, and pesticide manufacturers believed that control was within their grasp. The annual introduction of new pesticides rose from the very first product, DDT, in 1940, to great waves of chemical invention in the 1960s and 1970s. In those decades, dozens of new herbicides and insecticides were brought to market each year. Heliothis became on of the most heavily sprayed species in what amounted to a biological world war. Through it all, the moths clung to the cotton.

… The moths have become almost absolutely resistant to all pesticides, from your cyclodienes to your organophosphates to your carbamates, and most of your pyrethroids. …

“Its an extraordinarily potent example of evolution going on under our eyes,” Taylor says. “Visible evolution.”

A pesticide applies selection pressure as surely as a drought or a flood. The poison selects against traits that make a species vulnerable to it, because the individuals that are most vulnerable are the ones that die first. The poison selects for any trait that makes the species less vulnerable, because the least vulnerable are the ones that survive longest and leave the most offspring. In this way the invention of pesticides in the twentieth century has driven waves of evolution in insects all over the planet. Heliothis is only one case in hundreds. (from pp 251-255)

In short, pesticides and herbicides destroy most of the insects, plants, and often other animals in those fields where they are used. But nature fights back. Those insects and weeds that can resist the chemicals initially, breed and grow stronger. They have no competition except from the chemicals, and they quickly evolve immunity, even as the chemicals become stronger and more toxic. Stronger and more toxic chemicals are needed to fight the new insects and weeds, and the destructive cycle continues. The chemicals wind up in the food, and run off into the land and the water, creating an ever increasingly toxic environment for humans and many other plants and animals.

For the growth of super weeds world wide, see the following charts:

The vertical axis shows the number of species of weeds that have become chemical resistant, the horizontal axis shows the years. You can see the exponential increase starting about 1970 when Monsanto introduced Roundup, and continuing into 2010. (click to enlarge)

You can see the distribution, North America, Western Europe, and Australia have already been severely impacted. Africa is a huge new market that has not yet been ruined. You can see why it is so desirable, it is a huge wide open opportunity to Monsanto and other greedy chemical corporations. Most countries in Africa have not yet been touched or biologically recolonized by GMOs and agricultural chemicals. South Africa, which has allowed GMOs, is the most severely impacted to date. (click to enlarge)

Genetically modified seeds, GMOs, are designed to be used as part of a program involving chemical pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers. Their effect on farmers is usually to lock them into a cycle of debt, as described by Pearl above, and as experienced and protested in many countries including India and Brazil, as mentioned above. Terminator seeds, also known as suicide seeds or homicide seeds, will not regenerate, so instead of saving seeds, farmers have to buy new seeds each year, as well as investing in more, and more toxic chemicals each year that are necessary to make the GMO seeds grow. This cycle has created death and destruction in many places, including hundreds of farmer suicides in India.

I’ve heard that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and that is certainly the case for the insects and weeds targeted by chemical pesticides and herbicides. Those that don’t die become very much stronger. We have already have super bugs and super weeds, thanks to the efforts of companies such as Monsanto, Dupont and Syngenta. Evolution can move very fast, not just fast enough to observe, but fast enough to leave us humans struggling in its wake. Monsanto and the other agricultural chemical companies market each new product as though it is the end of some pest, that evolution stops at this point, and we can just relax. In fact each new chemical is the creator and the beginning of many more powerful threats. And the more powerful the chemical tools we use against these threats, the more those chemicals poison us and strengthen the insects and weeds we are fighting.

Although they have stopped talking much overtly about this, AGRA and the Gates Foundation speak about “land mobility” which means moving farmers off their farms so the land can be used for large scale mechanized agriculture. But there is no mention of where these people will go and live, and how they will be reemployed. What this means is thousands of displaced people moving to slums around the cities, which will grow and will be filled with unemployed people. This is politically and socially destabilizing. It breeds crime and political violence. This kind of policy also hits women particularly hard, because in western models such as corporate agriculture, their traditional rights to land are ignored. Women are the majority of agricultural workers, and will become even more impoverished and disenfranchised, not that it will bother AGRA or Gates or Monsanto, as they say:

Over time, this will require some degree of land mobility and a lower percentage of total employment involved in direct agricultural production.

Family farmers, who produce 75% of the worlds food, will gradually be displaced, driven off their land, and the land will be poisoned and ruined. There will be less food, less healthy food. More people will starve, while more corporations will get fat.

As Joan Baxter writes:

Back in the early 1990s when I was reporting from northern Ghana, an elderly woman farmer decided I would benefit from a bit of enlightenment. In a rather long lecture, she detailed for me the devastating effects that the Green Revolution – the first one that outside experts and donors launched in Africa in the 1960s and 1970s – had had on farmers’ crops, soils, trees and their lives. She said that the imported seeds, fertilizers, pesticides and tractors, the instructions to plant row after row of imported hybrid maize and cut down precious trees that protected the soils and nourished the people – even the invaluable sheanut trees – had ruined the diverse and productive farming systems that had always sustained her people. When she finished, she cocked an eye at me and asked, with a cagey grin, ‘Why do you bring your mistakes here?’

For more African farmers perspectives on this subject, see:

Africa: African Farmers and Environmentalists Speak Out Against A New Green Revolution In Africa PDF

Owura 12 years ago

Legon is still a chew and pour university. It is a money making machine for the so called Profs Lecturers....selling pamphlers for grades and sleeping with female students for better grades.....Mr. Annan should look into thos ...
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Legon is still a chew and pour university. It is a money making machine for the so called Profs Lecturers....selling pamphlers for grades and sleeping with female students for better grades.....Mr. Annan should look into those vices and bring sanity to our so called premier university.
zongo president 12 years ago

Kofi Annan is surppose to lead,he is rightful person to be president in our country not unisersity chancellor, .MR Annan is honest , he is more qualify to be our leader, WE need somebody like him to lead our country ....M ...
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Kofi Annan is surppose to lead,he is rightful person to be president in our country not unisersity chancellor, .MR Annan is honest , he is more qualify to be our leader, WE need somebody like him to lead our country ....MR ANNAN FOR 2016.....not corrupt politicians ,Mahama, and Akuffo Addo,they are the part of our problems today , their in the same page ,you CANT trust NDC, NPP ,THIEVES,CORRUPT ,SELFISH. GREEDY BASTARDS, ,,,,,OH MAMA AFRICA WHEN, WHEN,
WOFA YAW 12 years ago

Even when he is elected president of Ghana,the ministers he will chose will be so corrupt to destroy his government and his reputation.He don't have political classmates in Ghana.

Even when he is elected president of Ghana,the ministers he will chose will be so corrupt to destroy his government and his reputation.He don't have political classmates in Ghana.
william 12 years ago

The focus should be on you and me to help build strong institutions. If you cannot already see the opportunity unfolding then you have completely missed the road, countryman!

The focus should be on you and me to help build strong institutions. If you cannot already see the opportunity unfolding then you have completely missed the road, countryman!
Kofi Amponsah 12 years ago

Until you change you irresponsible, violent, lawless, indiscipline, tribalism, disobedience, lies, money grabbing and fabrications, the respectable Kofi Annan would not stoop to the gutters for the disordered politics in Ghan ...
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Until you change you irresponsible, violent, lawless, indiscipline, tribalism, disobedience, lies, money grabbing and fabrications, the respectable Kofi Annan would not stoop to the gutters for the disordered politics in Ghana. He would prefer to play the advisory and consultation role behind the scene. Kofi Annan does not need to establish himself. He is an experienced administrator to the highest level.
Venus 12 years ago

Dr Kofi Annan is more humble and meek than Prof. Mills. I d always admire Kofi. Stay blessed

Dr Kofi Annan is more humble and meek than Prof. Mills. I d always admire Kofi. Stay blessed
NANAKATA 12 years ago

MAKE HIM THE PRESIDENT OF GHANA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

MAKE HIM THE PRESIDENT OF GHANA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Akwasi 12 years ago

I'm very disappointed in Kofi Annan. Since he left United Nations, he has not been able to use his contact to help Ghana. Now he is even lowering himself to become a Chancellor of this unknown university.

I'm very disappointed in Kofi Annan. Since he left United Nations, he has not been able to use his contact to help Ghana. Now he is even lowering himself to become a Chancellor of this unknown university.
CONCERN CITIZEN 12 years ago

KOFI ANAN IS HOPELESS. WHAT DID HE DO FOR AFRICA? HE WAS THERE WHEN THOUSAND SLAUGHTER IN RWANDA, LIBERIA, IRAQ, ETC. WHAT ACTUALLY HE DID FOR GHANA IN EDUCATION NOT EVEN A COMMON LIBRARY

KOFI ANAN IS HOPELESS. WHAT DID HE DO FOR AFRICA? HE WAS THERE WHEN THOUSAND SLAUGHTER IN RWANDA, LIBERIA, IRAQ, ETC. WHAT ACTUALLY HE DID FOR GHANA IN EDUCATION NOT EVEN A COMMON LIBRARY
Fuu-Fuu 12 years ago

Instead of appointing worthwhile people with vision who can shape the universities to meet the countries needs for now and the future, the Chancellorships have been turned into political jobs-for-the-boys. And greedy as they ...
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Instead of appointing worthwhile people with vision who can shape the universities to meet the countries needs for now and the future, the Chancellorships have been turned into political jobs-for-the-boys. And greedy as they are they are all rich elites who just want more and more. Meanwhile the students suffer inadequate facilities and high costs.

Kwasi 12 years ago

Willingness to serve his country, congrats..

Willingness to serve his country, congrats..
DONGOMI 12 years ago

IN GHANA, YOU HAVE TO BE A HYPOCRITE OF SYCOPHANT TO SURVIVE OR GET MANY THINGS FOR FREE, INCLUDING DUTY ON IMPORTS.

LIKE GHANA'S EX-LEADERS, I'M 100% SURE MR. KOFI-ANNAN ENJOYS ALL THOSE PRIVILEGES FOR FREE, INCLUDING UTI ...
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IN GHANA, YOU HAVE TO BE A HYPOCRITE OF SYCOPHANT TO SURVIVE OR GET MANY THINGS FOR FREE, INCLUDING DUTY ON IMPORTS.

LIKE GHANA'S EX-LEADERS, I'M 100% SURE MR. KOFI-ANNAN ENJOYS ALL THOSE PRIVILEGES FOR FREE, INCLUDING UTILITY SERVICES.

WELL, WITH ALL THOSE FREE BENEFITS, HE CANNOT AFFORD TO BE AS OUTSPOKEN AS SEKOU NKRUMAH.
DONGOMI 12 years ago

IN GHANA, YOU HAVE TO BE A HYPOCRITE OR A SYCOPHANT TO SURVIVE OR GET MANY THINGS FOR FREE, INCLUDING DUTY ON IMPORTS.

LIKE GHANA'S EX-LEADERS, I'M 100% SURE MR. KOFI-ANNAN ENJOYS ALL THOSE PRIVILEGES FOR FREE, INCLUDING ...
read full comment

IN GHANA, YOU HAVE TO BE A HYPOCRITE OR A SYCOPHANT TO SURVIVE OR GET MANY THINGS FOR FREE, INCLUDING DUTY ON IMPORTS.

LIKE GHANA'S EX-LEADERS, I'M 100% SURE MR. KOFI-ANNAN ENJOYS ALL THOSE PRIVILEGES FOR FREE, INCLUDING EVEN UTILITY SERVICES.

WELL, WITH ALL THOSE FREE BENEFITS, HE CANNOT AFFORD TO BE AS OUTSPOKEN AS SEKOU NKRUMAH
Fuu-Fuu 12 years ago

Yes, a million freebies - which these arseholes could have paid for on their own with their immense wealth. But no, they must take and take and take from mother Ghana while the students suffer.

Like our useless but costly ...
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Yes, a million freebies - which these arseholes could have paid for on their own with their immense wealth. But no, they must take and take and take from mother Ghana while the students suffer.

Like our useless but costly MP'S, these political arseholes get pay, allowances, car with chauffeur and petrol allowance, catered meetings of no use, travel overseas to conferences at state expense...retirement benefits. It's endless luxury for the few while the many students suffer endlessly endless austerity!

Kofi Annan, Jonah the Traitor and the Asantehene have enough wealth of their own to live in comfortable retirement. But hell no - they must, are entitled to milk Ghana dry till they die!
Richard 12 years ago

Congratulations to you His Excellency Kofi Annan.

Congratulations to you His Excellency Kofi Annan.
Whatever 12 years ago

Kofi Annan will have to do a lot more because Legon didn't change that much under his first stewardship I'm sorry to say.

Kofi Annan will have to do a lot more because Legon didn't change that much under his first stewardship I'm sorry to say.
foodsovereigntyghana.org/ 12 years ago

A QUESTION KOFI ANNAN MUST ANSWER!
Why is Kofi Annan Fronting For Monsanto?

The GMO Assault On Africa

Posted by xcroc under Africa, agriculture, development, Ghana, globalization, GM crops, hunger, Monsanto, recoloniz ...
read full comment

A QUESTION KOFI ANNAN MUST ANSWER!
Why is Kofi Annan Fronting For Monsanto?

The GMO Assault On Africa

Posted by xcroc under Africa, agriculture, development, Ghana, globalization, GM crops, hunger, Monsanto, recolonize | Tags: AGRA, Gates Foundation, GMOs, Kofi Annan, USAID |
[11] Comments

Why do you bring your mistakes here?

Kofi Annan has joined with President Obama, Monsanto, AGRA, and the Gates foundation to promote and execute food aid that replaces bags of wheat, rice and corn (agricultural dumping) with bags of pesticides, herbicides, chemical fertilizers and genetically engineered seeds. The end result will be to starve people in Africa and feed corporations in the US and Europe.

Kofi Annan and farmers

Under the guise of “sustainability” the [Gates] Foundation has been spearheading a multi-billion dollar effort to transform Africa into a GMO-friendly continent. The public relations flagship for this effort is the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), a massive Green Revolution project. Up to now AGRA spokespeople have been slippery, and frankly, contradictory about their stance on GMOs.
…
If you had any doubts about where the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is really placing its bets, AGRA Watch’s recent announcement of the Foundation’s investment of $23.1 million in 500,000 shares of Monsanto stock should put them to rest. Genetic engineering: full speed ahead. (Eric Holt-Gimenez)

If you have questions about Monsanto’s agenda, here it is in brief:

At a biotech industry conference in January 1999, a representative from Arthur Anderson, LLP explained how they had helped Monsanto design their strategic plan. First, his team asked Monsanto executives what their ideal future looked like in 15 to 20 years. The executives described a world with 100 percent of all commercial seeds genetically modified and patented. Anderson consultants then worked backwards from that goal, and developed the strategy and tactics to achieve it. They presented Monsanto with the steps and procedures needed to obtain a place of industry dominance in a world in which natural seeds were virtually extinct. (Jeffrey M. Smith)

Monsanto: No food shall be grown that we don't own

Kofi Annan is Chairman of the Board of Directors for AGRA. He is convening a conference in Ghana in the first week of September. As detailed in this blog, and by others, both AGRA and USAID top positions are filled with people that come from Monsanto and Dupont.
Kofi Annan Calls For United Effort To Accelerate African Green Revolution

African heads of state, industry representatives, the international donor community and farmers will meet in Ghana at the African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF) in the first week of September. Delegates will create an action plan on the acceleration of a Green Revolution in Africa.

Samuel Amoako has reported on this as well: Kofi Annan Hosts Forum On Africa’s Food Security in the Ghanaian Times on August 11.

It is worrisome that Kofi Annan is connected with AGRA. Maybe he believes that US mechanized and chemical agriculture work well. Most people in the US do, aside from family farmers who see the effects first hand. I have a good friend who works for the US Dept. of Agriculture and thinks this kind of big agriculture really is the best and that Monsanto is a boon to mankind. We have had several heated discussions. In fact Monsanto is destroying land, causing chemically induced human diseases, creating super weeds, super insect pests, and economic havoc in many parts of the US farming areas, particularly in the midwest and the south. There have been countless protests all over India and Brazil. I’ve read many heartbreaking stories, including this comment from Pearl on this blog:

The farmers of southern Kentucky have been enslaved by Monsanto. The previous generation fell for an ad campaign called “Hi-bred” or “High-Bred”, and the current generation is stuck with fulfilling the contracts their fathers signed. The chemicals that Monsanto has contractually required be applied to those fields have so damaged the soil that the only way to get anything to grow in the fields now is to keep applying more of those blasted chemicals. So even if a person who inherited a contract WANTS to discontinue the agreement with Monsanto when the contract expires, they are unable to do so unless they want to leave the land fallow for many, many, many years. Most farmers cannot afford to do this, as this would mean little to no income for their families for somewhere between 5 to 20 years, depending on how long it would take for the soil to renew itself.

I’ve always had enormous respect for Kofi Annan, I do not understand his participation in this and it bothers me a great deal. Even though I admire and respect him there are no free passes with a subject like this.

Genetically modified crops produce less, not more, than conventional crops.

Alexis Baden-Mayer points out in Dupont, Monsanto, and Obama Versus the World’s Family Farmers that AGRA is basing its programs on myth:

Most of the world’s food is not produced on industrial mega-farms. 1.5 billion family farmers produce 75 percent of the world’s food.

The hunger problem is not caused by low yields. The world has 6 billion people and produces enough food for 9 billion people.

And as I’ve discussed before, the smaller the farm the greater the yield.

There is an inverse relationship between the size of farms and the amount of crops they produce per hectare. The smaller they are, the greater the yield.

In some cases, the difference is enormous. A recent study of farming in Turkey, for example, found that farms of less than one hectare are twenty times as productive as farms of over ten hectares(3). Sen’s observation has been tested in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Malaysia, Thailand, Java, the Phillippines, Brazil, Colombia and Paraguay. It appears to hold almost everywhere. (Monbiot)

The key to true food security is food sovereignty, and the key to food sovereignty lies in who controls the land. The problems of both starvation and obesity stem from injustice in the way farmland and food are distributed. AGRA policies will poison the land and water, destroy local seeds and seed gene pools that provide the true hope for food sustainability. Local agriculture in most parts of the world has developed seeds that are tough and resistant to local pests, weeds, and local environmental dangers such as droughts or floods. AGRA wishes to replace these seeds with ones that need expensive, continuous, and ever expanding chemical coddling. These chemicals will poison the land, the water, and the people.

Additionally the Gates Foundation, Monsanto, and other corporate interests are investing in a doomsday seed bank, in which they will own the world’s agricultural gene pool. They are storing seeds from all over the world. In the event of genetic disaster, they will own the surviving gene pool.

Jonathan Weiner, in The Beak of the Finch describes how chemicals drive the destruction of land and the creation of super weeds and super insect pests:

Some of the greatest opposition to evolution comes from the farmers of the Cotton Belt, and that is where Taylor is seeing one of the most dramatic cases of evolution in action on this planet.

… in the year 1940, cotton farmers began spraying their fields with the chemical compound dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, better known as DDT. These first insecticidal sprays killed so many insects, and killed so many of the birds that ate the insects, that in biological terms the cotton fields were left standing virtually vacant, like an archipelago of newborn islands – and out of the woods and hedgerows fluttered [the cotton destroying moth] Heliothis virescens.

In the next few optimistic years, pesticide manufacturers assaulted Heliothis with bigger and bigger doses of DDT. They also brought out more poisons from the same chemical family: aldrin, chlordane. The aim was nothing less than the control of nature, and pesticide manufacturers believed that control was within their grasp. The annual introduction of new pesticides rose from the very first product, DDT, in 1940, to great waves of chemical invention in the 1960s and 1970s. In those decades, dozens of new herbicides and insecticides were brought to market each year. Heliothis became on of the most heavily sprayed species in what amounted to a biological world war. Through it all, the moths clung to the cotton.

… The moths have become almost absolutely resistant to all pesticides, from your cyclodienes to your organophosphates to your carbamates, and most of your pyrethroids. …

“Its an extraordinarily potent example of evolution going on under our eyes,” Taylor says. “Visible evolution.”

A pesticide applies selection pressure as surely as a drought or a flood. The poison selects against traits that make a species vulnerable to it, because the individuals that are most vulnerable are the ones that die first. The poison selects for any trait that makes the species less vulnerable, because the least vulnerable are the ones that survive longest and leave the most offspring. In this way the invention of pesticides in the twentieth century has driven waves of evolution in insects all over the planet. Heliothis is only one case in hundreds. (from pp 251-255)

In short, pesticides and herbicides destroy most of the insects, plants, and often other animals in those fields where they are used. But nature fights back. Those insects and weeds that can resist the chemicals initially, breed and grow stronger. They have no competition except from the chemicals, and they quickly evolve immunity, even as the chemicals become stronger and more toxic. Stronger and more toxic chemicals are needed to fight the new insects and weeds, and the destructive cycle continues. The chemicals wind up in the food, and run off into the land and the water, creating an ever increasingly toxic environment for humans and many other plants and animals.

For the growth of super weeds world wide, see the following charts:

The vertical axis shows the number of species of weeds that have become chemical resistant, the horizontal axis shows the years. You can see the exponential increase starting about 1970 when Monsanto introduced Roundup, and continuing into 2010. (click to enlarge)

You can see the distribution, North America, Western Europe, and Australia have already been severely impacted. Africa is a huge new market that has not yet been ruined. You can see why it is so desirable, it is a huge wide open opportunity to Monsanto and other greedy chemical corporations. Most countries in Africa have not yet been touched or biologically recolonized by GMOs and agricultural chemicals. South Africa, which has allowed GMOs, is the most severely impacted to date. (click to enlarge)

Genetically modified seeds, GMOs, are designed to be used as part of a program involving chemical pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers. Their effect on farmers is usually to lock them into a cycle of debt, as described by Pearl above, and as experienced and protested in many countries including India and Brazil, as mentioned above. Terminator seeds, also known as suicide seeds or homicide seeds, will not regenerate, so instead of saving seeds, farmers have to buy new seeds each year, as well as investing in more, and more toxic chemicals each year that are necessary to make the GMO seeds grow. This cycle has created death and destruction in many places, including hundreds of farmer suicides in India.

I’ve heard that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and that is certainly the case for the insects and weeds targeted by chemical pesticides and herbicides. Those that don’t die become very much stronger. We have already have super bugs and super weeds, thanks to the efforts of companies such as Monsanto, Dupont and Syngenta. Evolution can move very fast, not just fast enough to observe, but fast enough to leave us humans struggling in its wake. Monsanto and the other agricultural chemical companies market each new product as though it is the end of some pest, that evolution stops at this point, and we can just relax. In fact each new chemical is the creator and the beginning of many more powerful threats. And the more powerful the chemical tools we use against these threats, the more those chemicals poison us and strengthen the insects and weeds we are fighting.

Although they have stopped talking much overtly about this, AGRA and the Gates Foundation speak about “land mobility” which means moving farmers off their farms so the land can be used for large scale mechanized agriculture. But there is no mention of where these people will go and live, and how they will be reemployed. What this means is thousands of displaced people moving to slums around the cities, which will grow and will be filled with unemployed people. This is politically and socially destabilizing. It breeds crime and political violence. This kind of policy also hits women particularly hard, because in western models such as corporate agriculture, their traditional rights to land are ignored. Women are the majority of agricultural workers, and will become even more impoverished and disenfranchised, not that it will bother AGRA or Gates or Monsanto, as they say:

Over time, this will require some degree of land mobility and a lower percentage of total employment involved in direct agricultural production.

Family farmers, who produce 75% of the worlds food, will gradually be displaced, driven off their land, and the land will be poisoned and ruined. There will be less food, less healthy food. More people will starve, while more corporations will get fat.

As Joan Baxter writes:

Back in the early 1990s when I was reporting from northern Ghana, an elderly woman farmer decided I would benefit from a bit of enlightenment. In a rather long lecture, she detailed for me the devastating effects that the Green Revolution – the first one that outside experts and donors launched in Africa in the 1960s and 1970s – had had on farmers’ crops, soils, trees and their lives. She said that the imported seeds, fertilizers, pesticides and tractors, the instructions to plant row after row of imported hybrid maize and cut down precious trees that protected the soils and nourished the people – even the invaluable sheanut trees – had ruined the diverse and productive farming systems that had always sustained her people. When she finished, she cocked an eye at me and asked, with a cagey grin, ‘Why do you bring your mistakes here?’

For more African farmers perspectives on this subject, see:

Africa: African Farmers and Environmentalists Speak Out Against A New Green Revolution In Africa PDF
ghanaba 12 years ago

osofo dadzie version of ghana,

osofo dadzie version of ghana,
GREAT NANA ANTWI 12 years ago

ARE YOU IN NEED OF A FAST POWERFULL SPIRITUALIST?THEN Google or go TO greatnanapowerfullspiritualist.blogspot.com

ARE YOU IN NEED OF A FAST POWERFULL SPIRITUALIST?THEN Google or go TO greatnanapowerfullspiritualist.blogspot.com
YAO 12 years ago

He who JAH blesses is a blessing, indeed, congrats Mr Annan!!!!

He who JAH blesses is a blessing, indeed, congrats Mr Annan!!!!

TOTOBI 12 years ago

Mr.Anan the former UN secretary could do more for Ghana, West Africa and Africa in general.This man could have fone a lot for us. Most countries could have come to Africa to donate.

Mr.Anan the former UN secretary could do more for Ghana, West Africa and Africa in general.This man could have fone a lot for us. Most countries could have come to Africa to donate.

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Kofi Annan reappointed UG Chancellor

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