The Gates Foundation is playing nearly *no* role in delivering biotech solutions to African farmers. That’s because the Foundation is perpetually hounded by EU/EC-funded activists who demand that Africa remain ‘GM Free’. In spite of the largesse the Foundation can independently wield, it is very politically sensitive.

A related problem is that, even though about 80 percent of Africa’s international trade in food production remains in Africa, nearly all of the rest goes to Europe — in exchange for the “hard currency” that many African nations lack. They have atrocious money supply issues, with some local currencies running over 1,000% (one thousand percent) per year.

African leaders, i.e., those concerned about preserving exports to Europe in exchange for Euros, compared to those concerned about surviving the traditional “hunger season” (this coincides with the “Christmas season” in the Northern hemisphere), are keen to ensure that they do not lose the European export market.

Europe will shut down African exports, in a heartbeat, from those African nations bold enough to allow the use of engineered crops.

Which means there’s big money at stake in this game. The Gates Foundation has to get along with African leaders who want the European export market, and any biotech crops the Foundation would allow farmers to have would require the approval of those Euro-hungry leaders.

This is an abysmal situation, and the Foundation, facing a real-world dilemma, doesn’t have much of a way forward, other than marker-assisted selection and tissue culture. That’s good tech, but in the end, it still restricts you to genetic resources which are not new.

As for your final question, GMObelus has not one, but *eight* rss feeds. This is for the convenience of those who fear their feed-reader will be swamped. You can subscribe to Politics, or Sci/Tech, for instance. Although, subscribing to all of them won’t be much of a burden, as one man can only write so much.

Andy.

It is terribly frustrating that the WEM will take so long to be released because so much of the process is just unnecessary hoops. Didn’t the Gates Foundation play a part in the development, ensuring that subsistence and low income farmers won’t have to pay royalties? That is really exciting to me, because it counteracts the argument that farmers won’t benefit from the seed because they can’t afford it.

A quick question about GMObelus: is there an RSS feed for new news? I’d like to add it to my Google Feed reader. I may have asked you this before, I’m sorry if I misplaced the answer.

In an interesting accompaniment to this article, you might want to look at FAO Biotechnology Forum, Conference 16, which was recently convened online. You can read the entries discussion thus far at
http://www.fao.org/biotech/logs/c16logs.htm

One obvious consensus among scientists in developing nations is that biotechnology has failed in developing nations because developing nations don’t get to use biotechnology.

This is, unfortunately, not new news. See the article at
http://www.gmobelus.com/news.php?viewStory=374

Bottom line: who gets to use biotech is determined by who has the money. In the US, you plant biotech if you can afford it. In the EU, you *don’t* plant biotech because you’re a hired gardener on the public dole and can make just as much money growing weeds.

If you need biotech to survive, but you and your fellow farmers don’t have enough economic significance to make it legal, you’re not going to get biotech. And EU-paid activists will help make sure you don’t get biotech.

Andy.