Links to recent articles about the Ministerial

I posted this in response to another article, but I thought it might justify a stand alone posting.

If it weren't for the upcoming protests, you wouldn't be seeing the newspaper coverage of the issues associated with the conference. Everyone would be acting like the conference is a bland, consensus, generally inoffensive event.

In the last week or so, I have seen:

(1) an article from last Sunday on the front page of the Sacramento Bee, questioning the utility of biotechnology in fighting world hunger:

http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/story/6858814p-7808816c.html

(2) a lengthy piece in the alternative newspaper, the Sacramento News and Review, describing the conference and its opponents:

http://www.newsreview.com/issues/sacto/2003-06-12/cover.asp

(3) an opinion piece in today's Chronicle, challenging Monsanto's biotechnology, and its ruthless use of it to create GMO seeds that contaminate the crops and seeds of nearby farms, force everyone to use its seeds, and pay royalties for the privilege of doing so

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/06/20/ED111049.DTL

and, finally, this piece, from the Davis Enterprise:

[Ag expo to hear Davis voices

By Cory Golden/Enterprise staff writer

Take a good look around at the Davis Farmers' Market.

The vegetables there, local protesters say, are exactly what ministers from 180 countries won't see during next week's U.S.-sponsored international Ministerial Conference and Expo on Agricultural Science and Technology in Sacramento.

Instead, they say, the U.S. will use the event, June 23-25, to pressure countries for support of a globalization agenda of corporate farming and genetically engineered crops -- one that will not feed the poor, as promised, but will make fat cats fatter.

Community activist Nancy Price and others from Davis will join busloads of protesters taking part in a planned mix of educational events and nonviolent action coinciding with the invitation-only, closed door conference. They will open with a teach-in Saturday, from 11 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. at Cal State Sacramento and a festival Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in Land Park.

"If (Davis residents) want to see our organic and family farms survive and they enjoy the things we do in our farmers' market, they should come out," Price said. "It's important we show (the ministers) there is not a complete buy-in to the American government's policy, and that they can take strength from that."

Details about conference activities at UC Davis are not being released, to protect the visitors and because the campus has been vandalized by protesters before, said Sylvia Wright, a UCD spokeswoman. Ag ministers are also expected to tour area agricultural-science and nutritional-science facilities -- tours coordinated by the UC Agricultural Issues Center at UCD.

Also at the conference, Martina Newell-McGloughlin, director of the University of California Systemwide Biotechnology Research and Teaching Program, will moderate a panel on combating hunger and raising personal incomes.

But backers of what's being called the Sacramento Mobilization don't believe the conference is about the needy at all, but biotechnology for profit.

Plenty of food is produced, protesters say -- it's distribution that's the problem. Meanwhile, they say, industrial agriculture and biotechnology has: failed in America, increased the gap between rich and poor, undermined democracy, as well as threatened the environment, public health and worker rights.

To them, the conference represents an opportunity for U.S. officials to bring other countries in line before an upcoming World Trade Organization meeting with agricultural agreements on the agenda.

Price calls it an "arm-twisting" event, one which flies in the face of self-determination at home (because taxpayers will not be allowed in) and abroad.

"The real issue for me is democracy," she said. "Right now the rules of free trade are being written in such a way that people will have little chance to be able to make choices about the food that's produced and the food they eat.

"The corporate pressures on our officials are so great -- and the commitment to the corporate model of agriculture is so deep -- that choice will ultimately be, if these trade agreements pass, something that we talk about nostalgically."

Bill Liebhardt, the former head of the UC Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program, and Steve Temple, an agronomist for UC Cooperative Extension, plan to protest too.

Both grew up on family farms in the Midwest, where they say corporate farming and U.S. policy has failed, and both said their experiences abroad has further illustrated how wrongheaded the U.S. agenda can be.

On trips to Africa, Liebhardt said it became clear to him farm problems there were most often due to poor soil quality, lack of water, an absence of farm management instruction and cultural differences. That, on top of unrest and the AIDS epidemic.

"Biotech isn't going to touch that," he said. "The idea that these farmers are going to benefit from this technology is ludicrous."

Liebhardt also said his time in Europe made clear how skeptical people there are of biotechnology and government regulators: "The U.S. government is trying to force something on the consuming public they don't want. It is so stupid -- it's like cutting butter with an ax."

Temple spent 11 years working for the Columbia-based International Center for Tropical Agriculture, much of it on the road in 23 countries. He called biotechnology "the super hook" which makes first farmers, then their countries, dependent on foreign, profit-minded interests.

The U.S. should instead back the teaching skills like soil maintenance, combined uses of plants and animals, improved tillage and using beneficial insects, he said.

Liebhardt worries about genetically engineered crops that turn out to be susceptible to disease, points to studies showing they won't produce higher yields and fears the unknown health effects of combinations of pesticides.

Biotechnology leads to homogenized agriculture, he said, not strength through diversity of plants and practices.

"Sustainability is a broad concept, biotechnology is a tool," Liebhardt said. "To me a lot of the biotechnology companies, and the people on the UCD campus who are passionate about it, are like the carpenter running around with a hammer -- everything they see is going to be fixed with a hammer.

"It might be new science, but it is the same old thinking of control and domination of nature instead of working with nature."

That ministers will apparently be exposed to only a narrow range of ideas at UCD and the conference is "disingenuous," Temple said.

It's unfortunate they won't see the small farms in Yolo County or the farmers' market; if they did, he said, it might look more like home than any industrial model.

"I feel very, very sad (for the ministers) and very, very betrayed by whoever is organizing this secret -- or sheltered -- tour," he said.

For a full schedule of protest events, see http://www.sacmobilization.org.]

And these articles probably just scratch the surface.