[ssf] [Fwd: Agribusiness ruining 10,000yrs of Iraqi tradition]

[Chris Malins]

Bunch of sticking capitalist twattymuffins. Lets blow shit up.

Chris

This article reduced me to tears of rage.
___________________________________
Order 81

The Ecologist, Jeremy Smith, 21/01/05

Under the guise of helping get Iraq back on its feet, the US is setting
out to totally re-engineer the country's traditional farming systems
into a US-style corporate agribusiness. They’ve even created a new law ­
Order 81 ­ to make sure it happens.

Coals to Newcastle. Ice to Eskimos. Tea to China. These are the acts of
the ultimate salesmen, wily marketers able to sell even to people with
no need to buy. To that list can now be added a new phrase ­ Wheat to
Iraq.

Iraq is part of the ‘fertile crescent’ of Mesopotamia. It is here, in
around 8,500 to 8,000BC, that mankind first domesticated wheat, here
that agriculture was born. In recent years however, the birthplace of
farming has been in trouble. Wheat production tumbled from 1,236,000
tons in 1995 to just 384,000 tons in 2000. Why this should have happened
very much depends on whom you ask.

A press release from Headquarters United States Command reports that
‘Over the past 10 years, this region has not been able to keep up with
Iraq’s wheat demand. During the Saddam Hussein regime, farmers were
expected to continuously produce wheat, never leaving their fields
fallow. This tactic degraded the soil, leaving few nutrients for the
next year’s crop, increasing the chances for crop disease and fungus,
and eventually resulting in fewer yields.’ For the US military, the
blame clearly lies with the ‘tactics’ of ‘Saddam’s regime’.

However, in 1997 the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) found:
‘Crop yields... remain low due to poor land preparation as a result of
lack of machinery, low use of inputs, deteriorating soil quality and
irrigation facilities’ and ‘The animal population has declined steeply
due to severe shortages of feed and vaccines during the embargo years’.
Less interested in selling a war perhaps, the FAO sees Iraqi agriculture
suffering due to a lack of necessary machinery and inputs, themselves
absent as the result of deprivation ‘during the embargo years’.

Or it could have been simpler still. According to a 2003 USDA report,
‘Current total production of major grains is estimated to be down 50
percent from the 1990/91 level. Three years of drought from 1999-2001
significantly reduced production.’

Whoever you believe, Iraqi wheat production has collapsed in recent
years. The next question then, is how to get it back on its feet.

Despite its recent troubles, Iraqi agriculture’s long history means that
for the last 10,000 years Iraqi farmers have been naturally selecting
wheat varieties that work best with their climate. Each year they have
saved seeds from crops that prosper under certain conditions and
replanted and cross-pollinated them with others with different strengths
the following year, so that the crop continually improves. In 2002, the
FAO estimated that 97 per cent of Iraqi farmers used their own saved
seed or bought seed from local markets. That there are now over 200,000
known varieties of wheat in the world is down in no small part to the
unrecognised work of farmers like these and their informal systems of
knowledge sharing and trade. It would be more than reasonable to assume
that somewhere amongst the many fields and grainstores of Iraq there are
samples of strong, indigenous wheat varieties that could be developed
and distributed around the country in order to bolster production once
more.

Likewise, long before Abu Ghraib became the world’s most infamous
prison, it was known for housing not inmates, but seeds. In the early
1970s samples of the many varieties used by Iraqi farmers were starting
to be saved in the country’s national gene bank, situated in the town of
Abu Ghraib. Indeed one of Iraq’s most well known indigenous wheat
varieties is called ‘Abu Ghraib’.

Unfortunately, this vital heritage and knowledge base is now believed
lost, the victim of the current campaign and the many years of conflict
that preceded it. But there is another viable source. At the
International Centre for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA) in
Syria there are still samples of several Iraqi varieties. As a revealing
report by Focus on the Global South and GRAIN comments: ‘These comprise
the agricultural heritage of Iraq belonging to the Iraqi farmers that
ought now to be repatriated.’

If Iraq’s new adminstration truly wanted to re-establish Iraqi
agriculture for the benefit of the Iraqi people it would seek out the
fruits of their knowledge. It could scour the country for successful
farms, and if it miraculously found none could bring over the seeds from
ICARDA and use those as the basis of a programme designed to give Iraq
back the agriculture it once gave the world.

The US, however, has decided that, despite 10,000 years practice, Iraqis
don’t know what wheat works best in their own conditions, and would be
better off with some new, imported American varieties. Under the guise,
therefore, of helping get Iraq back on its feet, the US is setting out
to totally reengineer the country’s traditional farming systems into a
US-style corporate agribusiness. Or, as the aforementioned press release
from Headquarters United States Command puts it: ‘Multi-National Forces
are currently planting seeds for the future of agriculture in the
Ninevah Province’

First, it is re-educating the farmers. An article in the Land and
Livestock Post reveals that thanks to a project undertaken by Texas A&M
University’s International Agriculture Office there are now 800 acres of
demonstration plots all across Iraq, teaching Iraqi farmers how to grow
‘high-yield seed varieties’ of crops that include barley, chick peas,
lentils ­ and wheat.

The leaders of the $107 million project have a stated goal of doubling
the production of 30,000 Iraqi farms within the first year. After one
year, farmers will see soaring production levels. Many will be only too
willing to abandon their old ways in favour of the new technologies. Out
will go traditional methods. In will come imported American seeds (more
than likely GM, as Texas A&M's Agriculture Program considers itself ‘a
recognised world leader in using biotechnology’). And with the new seeds
will come new chemicals ­ pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, all sold
to the Iraqis by corporations such as Monsanto, Cargill and Dow.

Another article, this time in The Business Journal of Phoenix, declares:
‘An Arizona agri-research firm is supplying wheat seeds to be used by
farmers in Iraq looking to boost their country's homegrown food
supplies.’ That firm is called the World Wide Wheat Company, and in
partnership with three universities (including Texas A&M again) it is to
‘provide 1,000 pounds of wheat seeds to be used by Iraqi farmers north
of Baghdad.’

According to Seedquest (described as the ‘central information website
for the global seed industry’) WWWC is one of the leaders in developing
proprietary varieties of cereal seeds - ie varieties that are owned by a
particular company. According to the firm’s website, any ‘client’ (or
farmer as they were once known) wishing to grow one of their seeds,
‘pays a licensing fee for each variety’.

All of a sudden the donation doesn’t sound so altruistic. WWWC gives the
Iraqis some seeds. They get taught how to grow them, shown how much
‘better’ they are than their seeds, and then told that if they want any
more, they have to pay.

Another point in one of the articles casts further doubt on American
intentions. According to the Business Journal, ‘six kinds of wheat seeds
were developed for the Iraqi endeavour. Three will be used for farmers
to grow wheat that is made into pasta; three seed strains will be for
breadmaking.’

Pasta? According to the 2001 World Food Programme report on Iraq,
‘Dietary habits and preferences included consumption of large quantities
and varieties of meat, as well as chicken, pulses, grains, vegetables,
fruits and dairy products.’ No mention of lasagne. Likewise, a quick
check of the Middle Eastern cookbook on my kitchen shelves, while not
exclusively Iraqi, reveals a grand total of no pasta dishes listed
within it.

There can be only two reasons why 50 per cent of the grains being
developed are for pasta. One, the US intends to have so many American
soldiers and businessmen in Iraq that it is orienting the country’s
agriculture around feeding not ‘Starving Iraqis’ but ‘Overfed
Americans’. Or, and more likely, because the food was never meant to be
eaten inside Iraq at all.

Iraqi farmers are to be taught to grow crops for export. Then they can
spend the money they earn (after they have paid for next year’s seeds
and chemicals) buying food to feed their family. Under the guise of aid,
the US has incorporated them into the global economy.


What the US is now doing in Iraq has a very significant precedent. The
Green Revolution of the 1950s and 60s was to be the new dawn for farmers
in the developing world. Just as now in Iraq, Western scientists and
corporations arrived clutching new ‘wonder crops’, promising peasant
farmers that if they planted these new seeds they would soon be rich.

The result was somewhat different. As Vandana Shiva writes in Biopiracy
­ the plunder of nature and knowledge: ‘The miracle varieties displaced
the diversity of traditionally grown crops, and through the erosion of
diversity the new seeds became a mechanism for introducing and fostering
pests. Indigenous varieties are resistant to local pests and diseases.
Even if certain diseases occur, some of the strains may be susceptible,
but others will have resistance to survive.’

Worldwide, thousands of traditional varieties developed over millennia
were forsaken in favour of a few new hybrids, all owned by even fewer
giant multinationals. As a result, Mexico has lost 80 per cent of its
corn varieties since 1930. At least 9,000 varieties of wheat grown in
China have been lost since 1949. Then in 1970 in the US, genetic
uniformity resulted in the loss of almost a billion dollars worth of
maize because 80 per cent of the varieties grown were susceptible to a
disease known as ‘southern leaf blight’.

Overall, the FAO estimates that about 75 per cent of genetic diversity
in agricultural crops was lost in the last century. The impact on small
farmers worldwide has been devastating. Demanding large sums of capital
and high inputs of chemicals, such farming massively favours large
scale, industrial farmers. The many millions of dispossessd people in
Asia and elsewhere is in large part a result of this inequity. They
can’t afford to farm anymore, are driven off their land, either into
their cities’ slums or across the seas to come knocking at the doors of
those who once offered them a poisoned chalice of false hope.

What separates the US’s current scheme from those of the Green
Revolution is that the earlier ones were, at least in part, the
decisions of the elected governments of the countries affected. The
Iraqi plan is being imposed on the people of Iraq without them having
any say in the matter. Having ousted Saddam, America is now behaving
like a despot itself. It has decided what will happen in Iraq and it is
doing it, regardless of whether it is what the Iraqi people want.

When former Coalition Provisional Authority administrator Paul Bremer
departed Iraq in June 2004 he left behind a legacy of 100 ‘Orders’ for
the restructuring of the Iraqi legal system. Of these orders, one is
particularly pertinent to the issue of seeds. Order 81 covers the issues
of ‘Patent, Industrial Design, Undisclosed Information, Integrated
Circuits and Plant Variety’. It amends Iraq’s original law on patents,
created in 1970, and is legally binding unless repealed by a future
Iraqi government.

The most significant part of Order 81 is a new chapter that it inserts
on ‘Plant Variety Protection’ (PVP). This concerns itself not with the
protection of biodiversity, but rather with the protection of the
commercial interests of large seed corporations.

To qualify for PVP, seeds have to meet the following criteria: they must
be ‘new, distinct, uniform and stable’. Under the new regulations
imposed by Order 81, therefore, the sort of seeds Iraqi farmers are now
being encouraged to grow by corporations such as WWWC will be those
registered under PVP.

On the other hand, it is impossible for the seeds developed by the
people of Iraq to meet these criteria. Their seeds are not ‘new’ as they
are the product of millennia of development. Nor are they ‘distinct’.
The free exchange of seeds practiced for centuries ensures that
characteristics are spread and shared across local varieties. And they
are the opposite of ‘uniform’ and ‘stable’ by the very nature oftheir
biodiversity. They cross-pollinate with other nearby varieties, ensuring
they are always changing and always adapting.

Cross-pollination is an important issue for another reason. In recent
years several farmers have been taken to court for illegally growing a
corporation’s GM seeds. The farmers have argued they were doing so
unknowingly, that the seeds must have carried on the wind from a
neighbouring farm, for example. They have still been taken to court.
This will now apply in Iraq. Under the new rules, if a farmer’s seed can
be shown to have been contaminated with one of the PVP registered seeds,
he could be fined. He may have been saving his seed for years, maybe
even generations, but if it mixes with a seed owned by a corporation and
maybe creates a new hybrid, he may face a day in court.

Remember that 97 per cent of Iraqi farmers save their seeds. Order 81
also puts paid to that. A new line has been added to the law which
reads: ‘Farmers shall be prohibited from re-using seeds of protected
varieties or any variety mentioned in items 1 and 2 of paragraph (C) of
Article 14 of this Chapter.’

The other varieties referred to are those that show similar
characteristics to the PVP varieties. If a corporation develops a
variety resistant to a particular Iraqi pest, and somewhere in Iraq a
farmer is growing another variety that does the same, it’s now illegal
for him/her to save that seed. It sounds mad, but it’s happened before.
A few years back a corporation called SunGene patented a sunflower
variety with a very high oleic acid content. It didn’t just patent the
genetic structure though, it patented the characteristic. Subsequently
SunGene notified other sunflower breeders that should they develop a
variety high in oleic acid with would be considered an infringement of
the patent.

So the Iraqi farmer may have been wowed with the promise of a bumper
yield at the end of this year. But unlike before he can’t save his seed
for the next. A 10,000-year old tradition has been replaced at a stroke
with a contract for hire.

Iraqi farmers have been made vassals to American corporations. That they
were baking bread for 9,500 years before America existed has no weight
when it comes to deciding who owns Iraq’s wheat. Yet for every farmer
that stops growing his unique strain of saved seed the world loses
another variety, one that might have been useful in times of disease or
drought.

In short, what America has done is not restructure Iraq’s agriculture,
but dismantle it. The people whose forefathers first mastered the
domestication of wheat will now have to pay for the privilege of growing
it for someone else. And with that the world’s oldest farming heritage
will become just another subsidiary link in the vast American supply
chain.

http://www.theecologist.org/archive_article.html?article=487&category=52