The USDA is not known for caring about black farmers. Here in the US, its massively discriminatory policies have resulted in reducing black farms from 2 million to less than 18,000 today.
"Black farmers have contended that white-dominated committees force foreclosures on black farms, which are then purchased by white farmers."
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Black+farmers+sue+USDA+for+$20.5+billion:+mismanaged+1999+settlement..
.-a0125832369
The National Black Farmers Association accused the department of discrimination between 1981 and 1996, but even though they won a settlement for what was done to them, it never yielded compensation for a majority of the growers who filed claims. Payments were denied to 81,000 of the 94,000 black farmers who sought restitution.
Perhaps Vilsack was referring to the USDA's more than decimation of black farmers ("decimation" would have left 200,000 farmers) when, in listing his priorities the other day, he mentioned "finally closing the sad chapter of the Department's struggle with civil rights. ... We need to do a better job of ... apologizing for mistakes when we make them ..."
But in the same breath,
Vilsack spoke of "investing in programs that alleviate hunger and suffering overseas."
Africa. Black farmers, again.
But Vilsack is not actually proposing helping them. The USDA did not suddenly become pro-black farmer (or any small farmer).
"[I]nvesting in programs that alleviate hunger and suffering overseas" is Monsanto-speak. It is code for forcing genetic engineering and patents over seeds onto Africa (and India and others).
But what Vilsack says sounds so compassionate and appealing to those liberals listening for change from the Obama administration and watching Vilsack to see if he will bring it.
But while his words are a neat combining of missionary and humanitarian language, Vilsack is still Monsanto's boy and he is talking about colonizing Africa at the level of DNA. At that level, liberals miss what is going on. Everything is dressed up in science and humanitarian relief for needy Africans.
In his article "Starved for Science: How Biotechnology is Being Kept Out of Africa, Robert Paarlberg, a Wellesley professor (my alma mater) combines literal hunger with an utterly new concept - "starvation" for biotech. His choice of words neatly triggers those who legitimately care about Africans in need, while actually suggesting stupidity and inadequacy on the part of Africans.
Paarlberg says with apparently no sense of the immense condescension involved, "U.S. agricultural aid is needed to help African scientists to do their own modification of food crops. Let them get comfortable with the technology, and let them sell it to their governments." [My italics to indicate how much "help" is suggested.]
http://www.opednews.com/...
Oh, dumb, dumb African scientists.
Vilsack uses this same approach. What he is pushing as a priority of the USDA is a take over of African agriculture and a subjugation of people through the foreign control of their food supply by Monsanto and other multinationals. One doesn't need guns and soldiers and visible take-overs. At the level of DNA, there are Monsanto laws and patents on seeds and lawyers and subtle or not so subtle elimination of access to normal seeds. All very neat and wrapped in humanitarian language. Science and suits come to Africa. But the end result is colonialism - farmers (and countries), against their will, becoming abjectly dependent and controlled from outside their country.
Mr. Obama is a Kenyan. Perhaps it would be appropriate for him to hear what Kenya farmers think about his new Secretary of Agriculture's plans to "alleviate hunger and suffering" by inflicting Monsanto's genetic engineering and the accompanying intellectual property laws and patents on them. And perhaps those who believe Africa is "starving for science" and too incompetent to think for itself, might listen as well.
The Thika Declaration on GMOs
Statement from the Kenya Small Scale Farmers Forum 20 August, 2004
We, the Kenya Small Scale Farmers Forum leaders, representing crop farmers, pastoralists and fisherfolk, do declare today, August 20th 2004, that farming is our livelihood and not just a trade. Farming has been passed down from generation to generation, and is now threatened by Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs).
GMOs are a danger to food security and our indigenous gene pool. Patented GMO crops threaten farmers' ability to save and share their indigenous seeds which have stood the test of time. Thus they will reduce our seed security and food security, without the long and short term effects on our health and environment being known. GMOs will hand control of our food systems to the multinational companies, who have created these seeds for financial gain, and not for our need.
These new seeds may create conflict between farmers due to the risks of cross pollination from GMO to non GMO crops leading to contamination between farms.
GMOs will increase costs for farmers. This new kind of agriculture has been produced using a complicated and expensive process called genetic engineering. To make their profits back from the farmers, the companies patent the GMO seeds, which leads to higher costs for farmers, who are then forbidden from saving and sharing their seeds for planting the following season. If the seeds fail, farmers are left in great destitution. The agrochemicals associated with GM crops will oblige farmers to pay the high prices set by the companies, and replace the need for paid farm labour, thereby threatening our livelihoods.
GMOs threaten Kenya's environment. A clean environment is a fundamental right for all. GMOs on the contrary are contaminative, unfriendly to our biodiversity, and pose a threat to the existence of our indigenous seeds, to organic farming systems, and to human and animal health in general.
Our government is being arm-twisted to accept GMOs by multinationals, without considering the effects on small scale farmers.
Small scale farmers in Kenya should be included in policy formulation on agriculture research and food security. Government should invest in irrigation, improvement of infrastructure, appropriate technologies, marketing, subsidies, credit, farm inputs and better rangeland management, and NOT ON GMOs.
We believe that God created life, and no one can own it, not even Monsanto, Syngenta or other multinational companies. We therefore reject all GMOs in agriculture, and call upon the Kenyan government to respect our indigenous expertise. Therefore to be able to fully understand the effects of GMOs on our livelihoods, health and environment, we demand a twenty-year moratorium on GMOs in Kenya.
http://www.grain.org/...
The alleviation of hunger and suffering Monsanto and industrial agriculture brought to India has resulted over the last 10 years in the suicides of over 180,000 Indian farmers, with farmers' deaths continuing at the rate of one every half hour.
http://www.zmag.org/...
In Iraq, the US under cover of war could be less coy about its actions. Using Bremer's order #81, http://www.alternet.org/... we set up Monsanto intellectual property laws, took over the indigenous seed banks holding the ancient and precious biological heritage of that country, and made it a crime for farmers to collect their own unpatented seeds.
http://au.messages.yahoo.com/...
Mr. Obama's speaks of transparency but Vilsack's words are a heavy PR masking of a Monsanto driven plan to force genetic engineering onto Africa (and more). Mr. Obama who came from Kenya is preparing to impose - against the will of the people, against the well-being of the people, against the health of its environment and soil - something that by its control through patenting is not only freedom-removing and anti-democratic but by its control over food, totalitarian. Mr. Obama speaks of the importance of grassroots while dismissing the urgent message from Africans who have rejected GMOs again and again, a message from those who are about as grassroots as it gets.
"What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say." Ralph Waldo Emerson
What Mr. Obama is doing is starting to speak.