Meme… What effect do international seed companies …?

Bethany Sheppard, Priscila Garcia, Grace Kinner, Kenny Nelson

Africa’s economy places emphasis on agricultural growth and exporting as a chief source of income for many communities on the continent. As it continues to be the continent that grows many of the crops exported to other areas of the world today, it has become a prime market for corporate seed companies to pursue. Of the world’s top ten seed companies, two can be found in Japan, four in Europe, and three in the United States. Monsanto, the world’s largest seed corporation, sells about 23% of the seed found in the global seed market, and is located in the United States. There is an ever present push from these corporations to establish connections to African agricultural producers, in order to expand their own markets. Even though these industries are pushing for a presence in Africa, their genetically modified crops have not been largely adopted throughout the continent. There is significant wariness towards implementing GMOs that is widespread across the continent, resulting in only Sudan, Burkina Faso, and South Africa utilizing them in high quantities.

While GMOs, which are largely backed by these corporate seed companies, can be particularly effective at increasing crop yields, and easing farmer’s production practices, there are definitely some drawbacks to their usage. For instance, South African farmers have experienced a few directly related to pest control. Monsanto experienced significant backlash during their attempts to implement MON810, a strain of Bt maize, for a project called Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA). The goal of this program was to develop and introduce water efficient maize varieties to small-scale farmers in several countries including South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and Mozambique. These maize varieties were also to contain insect resistant characteristics. However, after fifteen years of MON810 being introduced for this project, there was significant accumulated genetic resistance from the pests that the Bt maize was supposed to protect against. This caused substantial losses to the farmers who were participating and cost Monsanto more money in the end to pay compensation to farmers who experienced crop failure. In an effort “to deal with the pest infestation, Monsanto has compensated South African farmers who experienced more than 10% damage on their genetically modified (GM) insect resistant crops – some farmers experienced as high as 50% insect infestation” (Swanby pg. 4). The uncertainty of the duration of effectiveness for GM crops is cause for hesitancy for implementation on the continent.

          Despite the general hesitancy to introduce GM crops to African agricultural systems, in the recent past there have been instances of government backing of their introduction and implementation. An example of this is that in 2002, the South African government, in partnership with Monsanto, launched the Massive Food Production Program (MFPP) in the country's Eastern Cape Province, a program designed to bring about agrarian transformation through a "green revolution”. The program grants subsidies and credit to small farming communities to purchase fertilizers, pesticides and GM or hybrid seeds. Through MFPP, Monsanto became a government “extension agency” responsible to educate and train farmers about GM seeds and modern agricultural techniques. As a company which actually produces GM seeds, they certainly did not share with farmers the potentially disastrous effects of planting their land with GM crops. Rather, they strongly encouraged them to buy and use them to boost their yields. They also convinced them to only plant GM maize, as a monoculture, instead of intercropping as they have done to ensure their food security (Siqwana-Ndulo). It is also important to mention that the cost of the inputs can be, often times, too high for small farmers to afford on their own, without continuing to accumulate debt. The worst thing is that indebted farmers are at direct risk of losing land tenure to the benefit of large agro-companies since they are working towards acquiring land tenure in fertile tropical African agricultural zones (Ashton).

Because industrial agriculture is where the majority of the money is emphasized, the small farm holders are often forgotten or ignored. The lack of  “institutional and pro-poor policies that are sensitive to women’s circumstances undermine the impact that many South African policies have on the local, particularly the poor” (Thamaga-Chitja). Rather than investing in the grassroots movements of the poorer families, the nation tends to focus their policies on benefitting the larger, industrial agriculture systems that interact with other countries, not the local economy. These small-farm holders seem to have three main disadvantages - the lack of inputs, the lack of financial ability, and the lack of  accessibility to markets (“A Framework”). Industrial agriculture tends to monopolize the most profitable crops so small-scale farmers usually get stuck producing crops that cannot be sold beyond their local economy, leading to a lower profit.

Overall, the effects that international seed companies and corporate agriculture have are largely centered on accumulating the most profit from their products, without taking a multifaceted and lengthy approach to determining the best steps for the implementation of the product. This leads to mistakes being made, which are oftentimes overlooked because this kind of agricultural development falls under the guise of ‘welfare’ or ‘helping the poor farmers’ in nations on the continent of Africa. South African farmers are becoming increasingly aware of the deception that GM seeds and technologies will bring development and pull them out of poverty. Once they sign the contract with a seed company, they have to abide by the company's’ patent laws, which prohibit them from saving seeds from their harvest for the next season and sharing them with neighbors, relatives and friends. Therefore, farmers have to buy new seeds each season creating a dependency on corporate seeds. In general, agricultural corporations and international seed companies are and will continue to be very influential over African agriculture, impacting the lives of small farm holders and dominating exportation economies.

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