ETC Group – https://www.etcgroup.org/
World Food Systems Summit is part of a three-pronged corporate food policy power grab
February 12, 2020—A corporate alliance (consisting of Big Ag, the World Economic Forum, philanthro-capitalists and others) have spearheaded three separate initiatives (the Food Systems Summit, restructuring research institutions, acceleration of data collection) which threaten to converge and utterly transform the multilateral food and agriculture system.
If successful, these initiatives would further force-feed the failed industrial food system to the public sector and world agriculture, binding governments to a corporate agenda that marginalizes farmers, civil society, social movements and agroecology.
In a new Communiqué, The Next Agribusiness Takeover, ETC Group describes in detail the history and implications of the three initiatives – for which the World Food Systems Summit is setting the framework.
System change across the multilateral food and agricultural community is much needed, but to adopt the vision of the World Economic Forum and big agribusiness would be a disaster for the Global South, biodiversity and food sovereignty. The resulting shifts will be damaging for the poor, malnourished and peasants farmers, and could derail the advancement of agroecology.
1. The World Food Systems Summit (WFSS)
In October 2019, the UN Secretary-General’s official announced a World Food Systems Summit to be held in New York in 2021, with a pre-conference in Rome. Although the WFSS concept paper calls for “multi-stakeholder” participation, there is no reference to civil society, farmers, fisherfolk or livestock keepers ,and no acknowledgement of Indigenous peoples.
So bold is the agribusiness imprint on the WFSS, that its special champion is a noted industrial agriculture cheerleader. On February 10, 176 organizations from 83 countries, wrote to condemn the appointment of Agnes Kalibata, President of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), a Gates-funded group “centered on capturing and diverting public resources to benefit large corporate interests,” as Special Envoy from the UN Secretary-General to the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit.
In this same context, the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC) launched a petition raising concerns about the Food Systems Summit and calling for the UN to drop its partnership with the World Economic Forum. The petition states that “the UN-WEF strategic partnership agreement … casts a cloud on the integrity of the UN as a multilateral system.”
2. CGIAR “unification”
A high-powered group led by the Gates and Syngenta Foundations has tabled a plan to restructure public research focused on the Global South via the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). If adopted, the CGIAR’s 15 centres would come under the governance of a single board, with power concentrated in a three-person management structure, deliberation and debate would be cut short.
The result: a single corporate entity with stronger-than-ever connections to agribusiness. The CGIAR umbrella currently includes an annual budget of roughly $850 million; approximately 1500 scientists and other professionals; eleven of the world’s most important international gene banks that collect, store and exchange much of the South’s plant breeding material (773,000 seed accessions and counting); training facilities for South scientists; advanced laboratories; and enormous socio-political influence – particularly among the most marginalized G-77 states.
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ETC Group
Mission
What we do:
ETC Group works to address the socioeconomic and ecological issues surrounding new technologies that could have an impact on the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people. We investigate ecological erosion (including the erosion of cultures and human rights); the development of new technologies (especially agricultural but also other technologies that work with genomics and matter); and we monitor global governance issues including corporate concentration and trade in technologies. We operate at the global political level. We work closely with partner civil society organizations (CSOs) and social movements, especially in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
We are..
- Dedicated to the conservation and sustainable advancement of cultural and ecological diversity and human rights. To this end, ETC Group supports socially responsible developments of technologies useful to the poor and marginalized and we address international governance issues and corporate power.
- Working in partnership with other CSOs for cooperative and sustainable self-reliance within disadvantaged societies, by providing information and analysis of socioeconomic and technological trends and alternatives. This work requires joint actions in community, regional, and global fora.
- Developing strategic options based on research and analysis of technological information (particularly but not exclusively plant genetic resources, biotechnologies and biological diversity), and in the development of strategic options related to the socioeconomic ramifications of new technologies.
- Focused on global and regional (continental or sub-continental) levels. ETC Group supports partnerships with community, national, or regional CSOs, but does not make grants or funds available to other organizations. We do not have members.
