Guest Post by Stacy Malkan
As the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s annual Goalkeepers event convenes this week, pre-event press promises inspirational news for “thinkers and doers” who want to “save” dying mothers and nurture hope for a brighter world — but reporters should ask some key questions about the failure of the foundation’s “Green Revolution” in Africa.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s annual live-streamed Goalkeepers event convenes this week as world leaders gather for the 78th U.N. General Assembly.
Pre-event press promises inspirational news for “thinkers and doers” who want to “save” dying mothers and nurture hope for a brighter world.
If past Goalkeepers are a guide, this public relations event is likely to generate laudatory press coverage that ignores the global chorus of criticisms about the Gates Foundation’s agricultural development work in Africa.
Reporters who plan to cover Goalkeepers 2023 should inquire about these recent newsworthy developments.
Why is the Gates Foundation ignoring critiques from Africa-based groups?
In the wake of two important African food summits, a long list of food security and biodiversity experts; Africa-based farming, faith and seed sovereignty groups; and civil society groups around the world have documented the problems and failings of the Gates Foundation’s “green revolution” for Africa.
The Gates Foundation has largely ignored them all.
The Africa Climate Summit in Nairobi and the African Food Systems Summit in Tanzania (known as the African Green Revolution Forum before a recent rebranding) aimed to address the climate emergency and hunger crisis that has hit Africa hard.
The outcome? “False solutions and empty promises,” reports Million Belay of the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa.
The two summits “suffered from the same flaws — doubling down on failed policies, excluding farmers and civil society, and endorsing the talking points flown in from rich-county boardrooms.”
You can hear from these groups directly in this press conference and the recent wave of critical press coverage in Africa.
Where’s the data to justify continuing the green revolution approach?
The Gates Foundation’s own evaluations underpin these critiques.
As we reported last fall, the first major (publicly released) evaluation of AGRA suggests that the 15-year effort to expand capital-intensive, high-input agriculture has failed to achieve its goals of improving food security in Africa.
An earlier evaluation commissioned by the Gates Foundation in 2016 (and never publicly released; a summary is here) notes a lack of clarity, ambiguous identity, unrealistic goals, poor metrics and other shortcomings of the billion-dollar AGRA effort.
Independent assessments by Tufts Global Development and Environment Institute and African and German groups in 2020 provide further evidence, based on national-level data, that AGRA has not delivered significant yield or income gains for small farmers. The data shows that hunger grew by 30% across AGRA’s target countries during the AGRA years.
AGRA has disagreed with the Tufts research but has not provided data to rebut the findings.
Also worth noting: From the start, food policy experts predicted the green revolution for Africa would not solve hunger and poverty, and could make these problems even worse, because it ignored structural inequalities and the harsh lessons of the first green revolution in India.
How involved is the Gates Foundation in pushing laws that criminalize seed saving?
An exposé just out in The Nation by Alexander Zaitchik documents the effort by philanthropists and agribusiness companies to implement policies in Africa that criminalize seed saving.
According to The Nation:
“This past summer, the global trade regime finalized details for a revolution in African agriculture.
“Based on draft laws written more than three decades ago in Geneva by Western seed companies, the new generation of agricultural reforms seeks to institute legal and financial penalties throughout the African Union for farmers who fail to adopt foreign-engineered seeds protected by patents, including genetically modified versions of native seeds.
“The resulting seed economy would transform African farming into a bonanza for global agribusiness, promote export-oriented monocultures, and undermine resilience during a time of deepening climate disruption.”
The most direct beneficiaries of this plan, Zaitchik wrote, are:
“Four-company oligopoly that controls half the global seed market and 75 percent of the global agrichemicals market: Bayer (formerly Monsanto), Corteva (formerly DowDuPont), BASF, and Syngenta, a subsidiary of ChemChina.”
The article provides important historical context about the Gates Foundation’s role in the “new seed economy.”
Why is the Gates Foundation supporting writers who spread misinformation?
In a new peer-reviewed paper, molecular geneticist Michael Antoniou and colleagues analyzed a paper written by authors affiliated with the Gates Foundation-funded Alliance for Science, in which the authors try to equate critics of agricultural genetically engineered seeds and crops with people who make false claims about climate change, COVID-19 and vaccines.
The Antoniou study identified eight critical flaws in the paper — including inaccurate and potentially libelous accusations, misrepresentations of the science on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and pesticides, an inaccurate definition of ‘misinformation’ and more falsehoods — showing that the Alliance for Science paper about misinformation is itself misinformation.
Multiple scientists, food policy experts and food groups have taken time over the years to analyze the writings of Lynas and the Alliance for Science, and they have documented many inaccuracies and misleading tactics the group and its lead writer have used in their efforts to promote GMOs and pesticides in Africa, with support from the Gates Foundation.
Where is the accountability?
The misinformation coming from a Gates-funded group is ironic because the Gates Foundation is trying to position itself as an arbiter of misinformation.
As I reported in 2020, the Gates Foundation donated $10 million to the Alliance for Science specifically “to counter conspiracy theories and disinformation campaigns that hinder progress in climate change, synthetic biology, agricultural innovations.” That they are doing so with documented misinformation is newsworthy.
The Gates Foundation has sidestepped accountability, avoided a reckoning with race and power, given to the rich while claiming to help the poor and evaded serious scrutiny for a long time, as Timothy Schwab has documented in a series of articles in The Nation (and a new book out soon).
Reporters should consider asking the hard questions in their coverage of #Goalkeepers2030.
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Hmmm…looks like Gates is running low on Adrenachrome.
Assume you are speaking of the illustration within the article. Good observation. Note how his physiognomy is more and more resembling that of Soros.
They get the face that they deserve.
Once again, I have only 1 question:
Why the Hell would we want to do any of that over here?
That article is not by bill gates.
It is a real article, but you demean its validity when you share it with the falsehood that gates wrote it.
There is a major delusion that by spending more money, the climate in Africa will somehow allow an increase in food production that will then sustain the artificially created/supported population.
The climate in Africa and the population of Africa have managed to coexist for millennia. That is, until meddlesome do-gooders decided that more population is better.
Take away the support and let the population of Africa stabilize where the environment allows it to. We shouldn’t be sending them food, we should send them birth control.
Bill from the Gates of Hell has been sending them birth control … in fact, without their consent, he has given many women there birth control in a form meant to effectively sterilize them.
Not to worry, though … as africa’s population is expected to surge, the First World is going to be used as their destination … look at what they’ve done throughout the EU … and now they’re coming to the United States.
Recall, too … african nations have the very lowest jab rate — less than 3% — so they’re meant to survive the ‘pandemics’ that we’ve been told to expect over the rest of the 2020s.
The b lack women in Africa probably EAGERLY offer their kids up for injections if you give them a small bag of grain.
They apparently have little family love in some b lack communities there.
Once again, we are being counselled, lectured, cajoled, implored, and forced to do things by people who have no practical experience nor first hand knowledge of the topics or fields in which they are the taking these leadership roles.
The two summits “suffered from the same flaws — doubling down on failed policies, excluding farmers and civil society, and endorsing the talking points flown in from rich-county boardrooms.”
This seems like a bad idea if the thing you really want to do is to improve, promote, or make best use of resources associated with agricultural operations.
Yes. I have a really old high school friend whose daughter just became an environmental engineer (2nd one I know who graduated in this field- up and coming career/climate change dontcha know). I said (this by text) her daughter should start farming and gave her a Joel Salatin link.
She came back and said (basically) are you crazy? She’s going for her phd and makes a lot of money right out of school.
They happen to live on a small farm they don’t work, and I said perfect!
She changed the subject.
“Commenting on a New York Times op-ed contribution about sustainable farming and bovine methane production,[10] Salatin wrote, “wetlands emit some 95 percent of all methane in the world; herbivores are insignificant enough to not even merit consideration. Anyone who really wants to stop methane needs to start draining wetlands.“[11] Wetland methane emissions make up 20 to 39% of global methane emissions, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.[12] He also said that most livestock producers use “Neanderthal management” that exaggerates the amount of land required, and that modern technology allows for far more sustainable land usage”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Salatin
They don’t care a whit about improving anything — this agenda, like all of those of Bill from the Gates of Hell and the WEF, etc., are all about depopulating the world and/or spreading surveillance communism across the globe.
One may note some African countries had plenty of food until they decided the White farmers had to go or be murdered. Putin tried to get South African farmers to relocate to Russia. Not sure how many took him up on it.
Sure wish Jesus or satan or someone would shoot this PEDOPHILE in the face !
Since our Lord suggested such as these would be better off putting a millstone around their necks and jumping in the deep end of the pool and having never been born, I have a feeling He has something way worse than the Vermeer or Morbark in store for them.
.
If you are buying and using MS hardware or software you are enabling Bill Gates. Find alternatives.
Sorry, but blaming the African “food production crisis” on Gates?
Naw. I’ve seen the work ethic.
You can’t blame that on Gates.
African blacks are way different than American ghetto blacks. Many have a wonderful work ethic. Gates is a monster. You are ill informed. You are sentenced to more time on TBP and banishment from mainstream media.
Gates is doing the same thing he did with health in Africa. Using Africa as a test model to do worldwide. His dystopic vision for the world is surely guided by Satan himself.
Gates poisoned Africa, then gave pcs and high speed internet access to all the surviving princes with banking issues.