Gated Development

3. Supporting industrial agriculture
The BMGF is promoting a number of specific
priorities through its agriculture grants, several of
which are undermining the interests of small farmers
while claiming to support them. These include
promoting a model of industrial agriculture, the
increasing use of chemical fertilisers and expensive,
patented seeds, the privatisation of extension
services and a very large focus on genetically
modified seeds. Indian scientist Vandana Shiva has
called the Gates Foundation the “greatest threat to
farmers in the developing world”. 159
The Foundation bankrolls the
Alliance for a Green Revolution
in Africa in pushing industrial
agriculture
The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)
has become Africa’s most prominent organisation
ostensibly aiming to eradicate hunger across the
continent. It was established by the Gates and
Rockefeller Foundations in 2006 to “improve African
agriculture, and to do so as rapidly as possible”. 160
Since then, the BMGF has given grants of around
$420 million to AGRA 161 , which is in practice a
BMGF subsidiary. Former Gates Foundation CEO
Jeff Raikes and its director of agriculture, Pamela
Anderson, both sit on the Board of AGRA 162 , which
has been described by the BMGF as the “African
face and voice for our work”. 163
By no means all of AGRA’s work is negative. Some of
its projects support soil health and women farmers,
for example, and are likely to be beneficial, although
there are few if any independent evaluations of
these programmes. However, the thrust of AGRA’s
work, as its name suggests, is to support industrial
agriculture – with a main focus on promoting
technology such as hybrid seeds and chemical
fertiliser. The main problem with AGRA is that it is
laying the groundwork for the deeper penetration
of African agriculture by agribusiness corporations.
Pushing chemical fertiliser
The BMGF website is disingenuous on its support for
industrial agriculture. It says that “we encourage
farmers to embrace and adopt sustainable
practices that help them grow more with less
land, water, fertiliser, and other costly inputs
while preserving natural resources for future
generations”. 164 Yet the precise thrust of AGRA’s work
is to promote such “costly inputs”, notably fertiliser,
despite evidence to suggest chemical fertilisers
have significant health risks for farm workers,
increase soil erosion and can trap small-scale
farmers in unsustainable debt. 165 The BMGF, through
AGRA, is one of the world’s largest promoters of
chemical fertiliser. Some grants given by the BMGF
to AGRA have been specifically intended to “help
AGRA build the fertiliser supply chain” in Africa. 166
One of the largest of AGRA’s own grants, worth
$25 million, was to help establish the African
Fertiliser Agribusiness Partnership (AFAP) in 2012 167
whose very goal is to “at least double total fertiliser
use” in Africa 168 . In fact, the then president of
AGRA, Namanga Ngongi, a former UN official, left
his AGRA position to become the founding (and
current) chair of AFAP in 2012. 169
In August 2014, AGRA released a major report,
lamenting the “under-use” of chemical fertiliser by
African farmers. It noted that AGRA is supporting
AFAP “to develop new fertiliser production, storage
and retail operations, with an initial focus on
providing an additional 225,000 tons of fertiliser to
farmers in three countries” (Ghana, Mozambique
and Tanzania). 170 The AFAP project is being pursued
in partnership with the International Fertiliser
Development Centre, a body which represents
the fertiliser industry. 171
26 I Gated Development: Is the Gates Foundation always a force for good?