CGIAR NGO Committee Report International Centers Week 1997

After Cairo's MTM 1997 the NGOC engaged in a series of activities including centers visits, national and regional consultations, a thematic workshop on soil fertility replenishment in Africa and interactions with TAC, System Review Secretariat and CGIAR Secretariat revolving around committees composition and perspectives on biotechnology and other relevant topics.

1. African soil fertility replenishment workshop at ICRAF.

Last June 3-6,1997 the NGOC and ICRAF in collaboration with TSBF and UNDP-SANE co-sponsored a workshop entitled "Approaches to replenishing soil fertility depletion in Africa; NGO perspectives." The workshop was attended by 80 participants from 13 African countries representing NGOs, local universities, NARIS, private sector representatives, international organizations and farmers.

At the workshop NGOs slated that although important, the use of chemical fertilizers has perpetuated the misconception that soil fertility means only replenishing the "nutrient status" of soils, disregarding the importance of physical properties and biological activity. In fact, many soils deteriorate where chemical fertilizers are used as the exclusive tool to maintain soil fertility, and when physical and biological properties deteriorate, yields remain low no matter how much fertilizer is used. There is even growing evidence that much of the decline in soil fertility is being marked by advances in technology, particularly the increasing use of chemical fertilizers which have led to intensified cereal cropping, elimination of fallow periods and reduced use of legumes.

For these reasons, NGOs insisted in the need for a more holistic approach to soil fertility replenishment in Africa one that views soils as complex living ecosystems and that is centered upon the integrated management of physical, chemical and biological properties that confer soil fertility. Such approach should conceive soil restoration as a long-term investment in the rebuilding of the natural capital of smallholder farming systems.

A conclusion of the work shop was the need to implement an effective plan of action by key partnership between farmers organizations, NGOs, IARCs, and NARS and must be able to address the technical, environmental and socioeconomic dimensions of the African soil fertility question.

On the technical-environmental side, the plan of action should focus on the collaborative search for ways to:

• Increase fertilizer-use efficiency by better targeting recommendations to site-and season-specific conditions, especially adjusting fertilizer use to seasonal rainfall patterns.

• Develop improved fertilizer management techniques appropriate for smallholders, focusing on correct timing, placement and dosage and combinations with organic amendments. More attention should be paid to tailoring fertilizer technologies to farming circumstances where seasonal labor is in short supply.

• Enhance and spread the use of organic sources of nutrients, rotations, improved follows and green manures, as well as efficient use of crop residues and animal manures.

• Develop biological approaches to enhance phosphorous availability, especially through enhancement of organic acids in the soil produced by organic matter decomposition, root and microbial exudates.

Key research questions that may be addressed by on NGO-NARIS-IARCs collaborative partnership include:

• Increasing fertilizer-use efficiency in semi-arid environments

• Fitting nutrient management to suit specific soil conditions

• Combining inorganic and organic inputs

• Identifying legumes species that add organic matter and N to the soil while still producing acceptable grain yields

• Identifying late-maturing legumes that exhibit good emergence and growth in intercropping systems in semi-arid areas

• Develop legume rotations for restoring soil fertility

• Test effects of selected legumes in improved fallow especially in areas where land is limiting.

• Identify promissory tree species to improve crop yields in agroforestry systems that are not competitive nor too labor intensive

A publication will soon be available summarizing the work's reports and some recommendations.

2. NGOC visits and consultations

Visit to IITA

From May 12-19, 1997 NGOC Members, Assetou Kanoute from Mali and Jaenot Minla Mfoviou visited IITA station at Yaounde and Cotonou and also heodpurrters at Ibadon. In all places NGOC members held meetings with IITA staff as well as NGOs and farmers. According to opinions expressed by local NGO and farmers organization representatives, NGOC members concluded that:

• There is a grate gap between IITA and NARIS in terms of scientific expertise and human-material resource base, and links between IITA and NARIS are not as strong as desired. There is an urgent need to stablish institutional communication links between IITA, NARIS, NGOs and farmers organizations.

• IITA's research programs are not (?) responsive to grassroots needs, thus mechanisms to bring the voice of NGOs and farmers to re-(?) IITA's research agenda should be created. In particular there is need for a mechanism for IITA to between capitalize farmers know-how and farmers and NGOs practical experiences.

Consultation in Mali and Cameroon.

During October 1997 NGOC members, Assetou Kanoute and Jaenot Minla organized NGO-IARCs-NARIS consultation in Mali and Cameroon respectively.

In Cameroon representatives of 3 IARCs (IITA, ICRAF and CIFOR) met with members from 10 NGOs, 10 farmers organizations and the Cameroon NARIS. Recommendations from the consultation were as follows:

• Building of a permanent platform of collaboration between the various partners.

• Implementation of concrete collaboration projects directed at in-situ genetic resources conservation, local seed production and enhancement of soil fertility.

In Mali, representative of ICRAF and ICRISAT met with NGOs and arrived at the following set of recommendation:

• Establish mechanisms to enhance professional capacities of NGOs through and improving validity of scientific information.

• Develop proposals for joint collaboration including research projects and financial mechanisms.

Andean Consultation

On October 2-3, 1997, NGOC member Carmen Felipe-Morales in collaboration with Red de Agroecología del Perú (RAE) convened a workshop to discuss research priorities and partnerships in the Andean Region. Representatives from 20 local NGOs, 4 national NGO networks (SEPIA, IPROGA, CCTA, RAA and CEA) visited CIP and also the Universidad Nacional Agraria - La Molina to engage in discussions on key themes of research agenda and on issues relating to biodiversity and biotechnology.

According to de group, among the priority research lines that IARC-NGOs-University partnership should focus on, include:

• Agroecological management of soil and water resources

• Ecological pest management

• Conversion and management of functional biodiversity

• Agroeconomic possibility of agroecological products

• Policies for sustainable agriculture

In relation to biodiversity the group felt that the following actions require immediate attention:

• Promote community level in-site biodiversity programs

• Encourage active participation of local populations in conservation and use of biodiversity.

• Establish mechanisms for compensation or incentives for small farmers that lead to biodiversity conservation.

• Develop agreements among NGOs, public sector, IARCs, Universities and farmers organizations in order to develop equitable biodiversity conservation local programs.

Issues on biotechnology included:

• Rescue and reevaluation of farmers biotechnological practices.

• Do not allow release of transgenic crops until all bisafety (?) and impact assessment studies have been completed.

• Biotechnology should be minted to serve the interests of the small frames

• NGOs must influence the ethical control in the development and application of transformational products.

Latin American Regional Consultation

From October 13-17, 1997 the chair of NGOC convened at CIAT a regional consultation of NGOs, IARCs, Universities and NARIS to discuss the research challenge facing Latin America present agriculture in the met country.

The event was well attended by regional (CLADES, MAELA, RIAD) and national NGOs, University profession and administrations. University the presence of NARIS was minimal, and also IARCs were underrepresented (CIMMYT and CIP had me representative and CIAT representatives attended sporadically).

The group was concerned that the present sector with its complex knowledge systems and diversified production strategies are being subjected to a persistent impoverishment, via low prices or wages, the promotion of an adequate technology, emigration of young people and the degradation of its resources base. To reverse these trends the working groups emphasized several points:

• Goals of rural development: to focus on increasing income generation, food security at the household and community level, to improve condition and positioning of women and enhance environmental sustainability

• Tools for rural development: favor appropriate technological innovations that valves the contributions of traditional agriculture but that emphasizes the sustainability goals and the efficient use of productive resources. It is also of fundamental importance the free access to information about markets and the results of technical abundance. Access to land is also been as a pre-condition to provide viability to present farming families. Moreover the training of women and young presents on the (?) options to get ahead collectively.

• The process of rural development: given the heterogeneity of present world it must be reorganized that there are not receipts. However there are principles extractable form successful community projects that can illuminate what can be done in other communities facing different agroecological and socio-economic constraints. All actions should reinforce the capacities and skills so as to assist (?) in confronting with imagination on aggressive and unusable outside world and market.

• Institutions and policies for rural development: existing institutions have not been able to potentiate the roll that open society most play today's world. Institutions must have a reason that enriches the Latin America society with the contradiction of the present world.

 

Polices must emphasize the articulation of institutional efforts in order to create synergistic dynamics in (?) of present agricultural, as well as to provide incentives for small farmers to move towards sustainable goals.

 

CGIAR and Biotechnology

At MTM 97 presented a position paper on the CGIAR and biotechnology that raised some key concerns and questions:

* By strongly endorsing biotechnology as the main strategy for agricultural production enhancement, the CGIAR will alienate much of the NGO community (and also many farmers organizations) who will consider that the CGIAR's real intentions are that of a Green Revolution replay by spearheading research into genetic engineering of crops.

* Although many NGOs share a widespread recognition of the potential value of appropriate biotechnology in LDC agriculture, the central concern of NGOs context in which biotechnology is presently being developed. At the technology is being heavily privatized, mainly by large TNCs, the direction of the research is biased towards a "high-tech" to agriculture of no relevance to problems of LDC small and peasant farmers. Private biotechnology R and D toward LDC agriculture is likely to emphasize a limited range of agricultural technologies for which (which what?)

* There is concern about the bisafety products such as herbicide resistant varieties which would stimulate rather than substitute for herbicide usage. In addition to its high cost for poor farmers, genes inserted into such crops are capable of rapidly moving to relative weeds, thus potentially creating "super weeds." Another priority is the development of Bt transgenic crops for insect control, but again cost and the potential development of pest resistance makes the technology socioeconomically and ecologically unfit for LDC agriculture.

* As the CGIAR Chairman has suggested, the CGIAR will have "to reach special arrangements with the private sector on the use of the new technologies for the poorest parts of the world". A key question however is how to reach such an agreement given the relatively precarious economic condition (and therefore leverage) of the CGIAR with respect to the billion dollar biotechnology research budgets of MTCs? In this regard, the CGIAR must be well advised by NGOs and farmers organizations in biotechnology matters, as such alliance has the potential to be one of the few international mechanisms that could reverse the privatization of biotechnology and challenge the direction of current privately led research. The critical question is then how to position the CGIAR to assume the historic and ethical responsibility in the development and deployment of socioeconomically and environmentally desirable biotechnology.

Through its chairman the NGOC was also present at two important associated events of the fifth World Bank conference an environmentally and socially sustainable development. At the event on "Free ethics of biotechnology" the NGOC chair raised several questions regarding transformational biotechnology:

• Who benefits? Who losses?

• What are the environmental and health consequences?

• What have been the alternatives foregone?

• To whose needs does the biotechnology respond?

• How does the technology affect what is being produced, how it is being produced and for what and for whom?

• What are the social goals and ethical criteria that guides research problem choices?

• * Biotechnology for achieving what social and agronomic goals?

Also the NGOC's chair raised some concerns about what the general NGO community perceives as false promises or myths of biotechnology (especially trasngenic craps). The questions of the myths can be summarized as follows:

Myth #1 Biotechnology will benefit Third World farmers

Reality:

If green revolution technology bypassed small and resource-poor farmers, biotechnology will exacerbate marginalization even more as such technologies are under corporate control and protected by patents, are expensive and inappropriate to the needs and circumstance of indigenous
people.

Biotechnology products will undermine exports from Third World countries especially from small-scale producers.

Nearly 10 million sugar farmers in the Third World may face a loss of livelihood as laboratory-produced sweeteners begin invading world markets.

Myth #2: Biotechnology production promises will be a blessing for the poor and hungry of the Third World.

Reality:

Biotechnology is primarily a commercial activity, a reality that determines priorities of what is investigated, how it is applied and who is to benefit. While the world may lack food and suffer pesticide pollution, the focus of MCNs is profit, not philanthropy.

Investors design GMOs for new marketable quality or for import substitution, rather then for greater food production.

Myth #3: Biotechnology will not attempt against the ecological sovereignty of the Third World.

Reality

The Third World is now witnessing a "gene rush" as governments and multinational corporation aggressively scour forests, crop fields and coasts in search of the new genetic gold

Indigenous people and their biodiversity are viewed as raw material for the MCNs

Corporations have made billions of dollars on seeds developed in US labs from germplasm that farmers in the Third World had carefully bred over generations.

Peasant farmers go unrewarded for their millenary knowledge of what to grow, while MNCs stand to harvest royalties from Third World countries estimated at billions of dollars

Myth # 4: Biotechnology is ecologically safe, offering softer technologies and will launch a period of chemical-free agriculture

Reality:

There are many unanswered ecological questions regarding the impact of the release of transgenic plants and microbes into the environment. Approaches must be developed and employed for assessing and monitoring future predictable risks.

Biotechnology will exacerbate the problems of conventional agriculture and will also undermine ecological methods of farming such as rotation and polycultures.

Transgenic crops are likely to increase the use of pesticides and to accelerate the evolution of "superweeds" and resistant insect pest strains.