AGRA gets make-up, not make-over - global issues

Statement by Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Timothy A. Wise (Boston and Kuala Lumpur)Tuesday 29 November 2022Inter Press Service

BOSTON and KUALA LUMPUR, Nov. 29 (IPS) — Despite its dismal record, the Gates Foundation-sponsored Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) announced a new five-year strategy in September after renaming itself by calling “Greens Revolution” had its name deleted.

Rebranding instead of reform Instead of learning from experience and changing the approach accordingly, AGRA’s new strategy promises more of the same. Ignoring evidence, criticism and pleas and demands from civil society, the Gates Foundation has committed an additional $200 million to its new five-year plan, bringing its total contribution to around $900 million.

Timothy A. WiseMore than two-thirds of AGRA funding comes from Gates, with African governments providing much more – up to $1 billion annually – in subsidies for Green Revolution seeds and fertilizers.

Impressed by criticism of its poor results, AGRA delayed announcing its new strategy by a year while its chief executive chaired the controversial 2021 UN Food Systems Summit. After that, AGRA used more rhetoric of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Hence the new slogan from AGRA – “Sustainably Growing Africa’s Food Systems”. Likewise, the new plan claims to “lay the groundwork for an inclusive agricultural transformation guided by sustainable food systems.” Such lip service aside, however, there is little evidence of meaningful commitment to sustainable agriculture in the $550 million plan for 2023-27.

Despite heavy government subsidies, AGRA’s promotion of commercial seeds and fertilizers has failed to significantly increase productivity, income, or even food security for only a few grain crops. But instead of addressing past shortcomings, the new plan still draws heavily on more of the same, though it failed to “catalyze” a productivity revolution among African farmers.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram’s alleged new strategy dashed any hopes that AGRA or the Gates Foundation would recognize the damaging social and environmental impacts of the green revolutions in India, Africa and elsewhere. AGRA offered no explanation as to why they dropped “Green Revolution” from their name.

The name change suggests that 16-year-old AGRA wants to distance herself from past failures, but without acknowledging her own flawed course of action. Recently, much higher fertilizer prices – following sanctions against Russia and Belarus following the invasion of Ukraine – have worsened the fate of farmers who rely on AGRA-recommended inputs.

It is time to change course with policies promoting organic farming by reducing dependence on synthetic fertilizers where appropriate. But despite the new slogan, AGRA’s new strategy looks different.

Last month, the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa dismissed the strategy and name change as “cosmetic”, “an admission of failure” of the Green Revolution project and “a cynical distraction” from the urgent need for a change of course.

Productivity Gains and Losses Despite spending well over a billion dollars, AGRA’s productivity gains have been modest, and only on a few more heavily subsidized crops such as corn and rice. And from 2015 to 2020, grain yields did not increase at all.

Meanwhile, production of traditional food crops has fallen under AGRA, with millet down by more than a fifth. In fact, cassava, peanuts and root crops like sweet potatoes also saw yields fall. For a basket of staple crops, yields increased just 18% in 12 years.

Farmers’ incomes have not increased, especially considering the increased cost of production. As for the hunger halving that Gates and AGRA originally promised, the number of “severely malnourished” people in AGRA’s 13 focus countries increased by 31%!

A donor-commissioned assessment confirmed many adverse outcomes for farmers. It turned out that the minority of farmers who benefited were mostly better-off men, not smallholder women for whom the program was supposedly intended.

That didn’t stop the Gates Foundation from getting more involved with AGRA, despite its dismal track record, failed strategy, and poor progress-tracking oversight. Judging by the new five-year plan, we can expect even less accountability.

The new plan doesn’t even set measurable targets for yields, income or food security. As the saying goes, don’t estimate what you don’t measure. Apparently, AGRA places no value on agricultural productivity, although it is still at the heart of the organization’s strategy.

Last month, the Rockefeller Foundation, AGRA’s other founding donor and a leader of the first Green Revolution in the 1950s, announced a cut in its grant to AGRA and a significant step away from the Green Revolution approach.

Its grant to AGRA supports school feeding initiatives and “alternatives to fossil-fuel fertilizers and pesticides by promoting regenerative agricultural practices such as growing nitrogen-fixing beans.” Responsible businesses AGRA’s new strategy builds on a number of ‘business lines’, eg the ‘Sustainable Agriculture business line’ is coordinated with the ‘Seed Systems business line’ to sell inputs. Private Village Based Advisors are designed to provide training and planting advice in this privatized, commercial reincarnation of the government or quasi-government advisory services of an earlier era.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations successfully promoted peer learning of agroecological practices via Farmer Field Schools after successfully testing them in the field. This comes after research showed that “brown hoppers” thrived on Asian rice farms after Green Revolution pesticides eliminated the insect’s natural enemies.

China lost a fifth of its rice crop to the pest in 2007/08, triggering a price hike in the little traded world rice market. A Chinese delegation sought help from the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines and found that the Department of Entomology had lost most of its previous capacity due to underfunding.

Previous international collaborations in agricultural research related to the first Green Revolution – particularly on wheat, corn and rice – appear to have broken down and surrendered to corporate and philanthropist interests. This bitter experience encouraged China to step up its agronomic research efforts with a greater focus on agroecology.

Empty promises? The new strategy promises “AGRA will promote increased crop diversification at farm level”. But its advisors and vendors have a vested interest in selling their wares, rather than good local seeds that don’t need to be bought repeatedly every planting season.

AGRA does not build resilience by promoting agroecology or reducing farmers’ dependence on costly inputs such as fossil fuel fertilizers and other, often toxic, agrochemicals. Despite many proven African agroecological initiatives, support for them remains modest.

The new strategy emphasizes irrigation, key to most other Green Revolutions but conspicuously absent from Africa’s Green Revolution. But the plan is deafeningly silent on how cash-strapped governments are supposed to provide such critical infrastructure, especially given mounting water, fiscal and debt pressures, compounded by global warming.

It is often said that stupidity keeps doing the same thing and expecting different results. Perhaps this is due to the technophile conceit that a favored innovation is superior to everything else, including science, processes and agroecological solutions.

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