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Photo courtesy of AFSA A lliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa Moderator’s Note:   We just received this press release from the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa, dated July 2 2015. We are reposting  at the request of the activists  concerned with the problems of a  proposed  African regional framework for the protection of plant varieties. Because of the significance of this issue for the future prospects of food self-sufficiency and autonomy in the African countries, we call on our readers to support the work of AFSA, the grassroots alternative to the Gates  Foundation and its   ‘Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa’  (AGRA); see our post of October 8, 2010 . AFSA Calls On African Governments at Arusha Meeting to Shun Protocol AGREEEMENT SEEN AS UNDERMINING SOVEREIGNTY & FARMERS’ RIGHTS TO SEED AFSA Press Release | Arusha, Tanzania | 2 July 2015 Nineteen African nations, members of the African Regional Intelle...

EU No Patents protest. Munich. Photo credit: No Patents on Seed! Monsanto wants patent on severed broccoli heads NO PATENTS CAMPAIGN IN EU OPPOSED TO OWNERSHIP OF NON-GMO SEEDS Devon G. Peña | Shoreline, WA | March 10, 2014 The No Patents on Seeds Campaign is reporting out of Munich (12.3.2014) that there is very strong and broad opposition against the European patent EP 1597965 granted to Monsanto-owned Seminis, Inc.  Capitalist copycats seem to always want to imagine that they have invented things that exist that are actually by-products of the creativity of farmers and plant breeders. The target this time is a variation of the broccoli plant, derived from conventional breeding, and seen by the Gene Giant as an invention because “it grows in such a way as to allow mechanical harvesting.” The No Patents on Seeds organization states that, if granted, “…the patent covers the plants, the seeds, and the ‘severed broccoli head’ as an invention” and also “covers a ‘plurality of broccol...

GMO Agricultural ‘Coexistence’ Rule COEXISTENCE ≠ GMO CONTAMINATION PREVENTION Comment deadline:  March 4, 2014 Action Needed! Devon G. Peña | Shoreline, WA | February 9, 2014 Obama’s Agriculture Department wants to act on a specific set of implicit anti-science assumptions that undergird a coexistence policy for GMO and nonGMO farmers. This involves the genetic science equivalent of climate change denial: It requires we ignore the threats and damages posed by the indisputable facts of introgression, horizontal gene transfer, resistance of targeted organisms, and other effects meticulously documented by an emergent predictive ecology of transgenic crops and their impacts on native land race heirloom varieties and their wild relatives. The USDA is asking for public comments on a proposed policy for agricultural “coexistence”. This can be read as an attempt to impose a policy of détente between GMO and non-GMO farmers and handlers. How will this relationship of coexistence and ...