Stains on the Escutcheons of World's Best Publicized Philanthropists

Howard Buffett has come out with some strong criticism ofgenetically modified seeds and high tech farming methods as 'solutions' to foodshortages in developing countries when they are used 'on their own'. He feels that, far from being of benefit, they may do a lot of harm. He should know. He is part of the world's most expensive attempt at foisting genetically modified organisms (GMO) on African countries.

Buffett (senior and junior), Gates (Mr and Mrs), the Rockefeller Foundation and various other well heeled parties with long experience of interfering in developing countries are all involved in an elaborate front for the GMO industry called AGRA, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa. They have even recruited a few Africans to give themselves a bit of street-cred.

While Buffett junior points out that soil is more important than seed, he fails to mention that there isn't a shortage of food globally, nor even in some of the areas that are experiencing starvation and famine. There is a lack of access to food because people are poor and food supply is controlled by rich people, who can sit on surpluses until the price goes up to a level they feel is worth selling for.

It must have been an odd experience to hear Buffett making such statements about GMOs with representatives from Monsanto, and even AGRA, present. But given that Monsanto has 'donated' seed, genetic materials and other agricultural inputs to recipients of AGRA's largesse, this sounds like part of a 'softly, softly' approach to shoving GMOs down people's throats, whether they like it or not.

It's interesting that Buffett speaks from his own experience of growing GMOs in the US, pointing out some of the drawbacks that the industry have spent years denying and trying to cover up. But telling the truth against such a sustained background of lies doesn't mean that AGRA have some honorable intentions, in addition to their desire for world domination for high tech agriculture and food production companies.

If, as Buffett says, the world needs to concentrateattention on African needs, people need to know the truth about GMOs, that theyhave failed to provide any commercial growers with increased yields, lowercosts, lower levels of environmental degradation, increased nutritional levels,or any of the benefits claimed by the industry for so long, with ampleassistance from the likes of Buffett.

Despite the total failure of GMOs and fact that they aremost damaging in poor economies with fragile environments, Buffett and otherscontinue to push them. Pushing a whole range of inappropriate technology on people does not make the failure any less, but this appears to the upshot of Buffett's well publicized 'honesty'. He seems to be saying 'let's not just palm them off with seeds, let's throw in fertilizers, pesticides and a whole range of profitable but damaging technologies'.

Monsanto/Gates/Rockefeller connections run deep and it'sremarkable how much money supposedly earmarked for health is actually spentpromoting GMOs and other exploitative technologies. But the best performing agricultural techniques and seeds are still organically grown and developed ones, not genetically modified ones. They are also cheap to develop, can be developed by existing techniques in developing countries and are not hazardous to the environment.

The post was written to coincide with World Food Day and Blog Action Day.