By Bev­erly Bell, Huff­in­g­ton Post

“We’re for seeds that have never been touched by multi­na­tion­als. In our advo­cacy, we say that seeds are the pat­ri­mony of human­ity. No one can con­trol them,” said Doudou Pierre, national coor­di­nat­ing com­mit­tee mem­ber of the National Hait­ian Net­work for Food Sov­er­eignty and Food Secu­rity (RENHASSA), in a recent inter­view. “We reject Mon­santo and their GMOs. GMOs would be the exter­mi­na­tion of our people.”

A march is being held in Haiti today for World Envi­ron­ment Day, called by at least four major national peas­ant orga­ni­za­tions and one inter­na­tional one. The march’s pur­pose is to protest the new arrival of Mon­santo seeds. The day’s slo­gans include, “Long live native seeds” and “Down with Mon­santo. Down with GMO and hybrid seeds.”

Sev­eral U.S. orga­ni­za­tions are plan­ning simul­ta­ne­ous events to protest the entry of the con­tro­ver­sial multi­na­tional in Haiti.

Last month, Hait­ian cit­i­zens learned the news that the giant agribusi­ness Mon­santo will be “donat­ing” 60,000 seed sacks (475 tons) of hybrid corn seeds and veg­etable seeds. While the seeds are free this year, peas­ant orga­ni­za­tions see a Tro­jan horse, with Mon­santo seek­ing to gain a foothold in the Hait­ian mar­ket. Hybrid seeds typ­i­cally do not regen­er­ate, so that farm­ers would have to buy them again each year, and they gen­er­ally require large quan­ti­ties of fer­til­izer and pes­ti­cides (two prod­ucts that also fill Monsanto’s annual cof­fers). And while the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture rejected Monsanto’s offer of genet­i­cally mod­i­fied [GMO] seeds this year because Haiti does not have a law reg­u­lat­ing their use, there may fol­low a push to get GMOs approved, in which case Mon­santo would be well-positioned. More­over, the Calypso tomato seeds con­tain the pes­ti­cide Thi­ram, whose chem­i­cal ingre­di­ent is so toxic that the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency has banned it for home use in the U.S.[1] (For more infor­ma­tion, see “Hait­ian Farm­ers Com­mit to Burn­ing Mon­santo Hybrid Seeds.”)

Mon­santo rep­re­sen­ta­tive Kath­leen Man­ning com­mented on Huff­in­g­ton Post on May 20, “It’s dis­ap­point­ing to see peo­ple encour­ag­ing Hait­ian farm­ers to ‘burn Mon­santo seeds,’ espe­cially when the ones hurt by that action will be Hait­ian farm­ers and the Hait­ian people–not those of us watch­ing on the sidelines.”

Yet the call to burn the seeds is based on a strong com­mit­ment of the Hait­ian peas­ant move­ment to food and seed sov­er­eignty, which is the abil­ity of local farm­ers to sup­port them­selves with local seeds for local con­sump­tion. Amongst the thou­sands of peas­ant orga­ni­za­tions which exist among mil­lions of peas­ant farm­ers, from village-level groups to national net­works, food and seed sov­er­eignty is a key prin­ci­ple. It has formed the basis of their national advo­cacy since the cat­a­strophic Jan­u­ary 12 earth­quake. The lynch­pin of the recon­struc­tion model that small farm­ers and many other sec­tors advo­cate is devel­op­ing the country’s agri­cul­tural poten­tial. This would pro­vide sta­ble employ­ment for the 60% to 80% of the pop­u­la­tion who are small farm­ers. It would improve prospects for food secu­rity, with an increase in con­sump­tion of domes­tic crops replac­ing the cur­rent depen­dence on imports, which now com­pose 57% of food con­sumed. Crit­i­cal ele­ments in strength­en­ing peas­ant pro­duc­tion include: gov­ern­ment invest­ment in agri­cul­ture, includ­ing tech­ni­cal sup­port; the pro­cure­ment of local food by USAID and other inter­na­tional agen­cies’ food aid pro­grams, instead of the prod­ucts of for­eign agribusi­ness; and restric­tion on the dump­ing of for­eign food and seeds.

Doudou Pierre said, “If Haiti isn’t sov­er­eign with its food, if the gov­ern­ment doesn’t pro­mote national pro­duc­tion, we’ll just always be open­ing our mouths to seeds and food aid so multi­na­tion­als can make money off of us. We’re for fam­ily agri­cul­ture which respects the envi­ron­ment.” The coali­tion which Doudou Pierre co-coordinates rep­re­sents 54 orga­ni­za­tions from dif­fer­ent sec­tors and regions through­out Haiti.

Below are some of the U.S.-based events which will protest the Mon­santo seeds today. Also below are a few of numer­ous U.S. ini­tia­tives which are help­ing Hait­ian farm­ers get organic, cre­ole seeds.

AGRA Watch in Seat­tle plans a march today which will end out­side the Gates Foun­da­tion office. AGRA stands for A Green Rev­o­lu­tion in Africa, which is a multi­na­tional corporation-driven, GMO-driven pro­gram now being launched in Africa. The Gates Foun­da­tion has been a key pro­moter of AGRA. The group says, “The dump­ing of toxic seeds in Haiti is the lat­est in a series of unsus­tain­able solu­tions that Mon­santo has pushed on farm­ers around the world. If the Gates Foun­da­tion wants to sup­port a truly sus­tain­able agri­cul­tural sys­tem in Africa, they must divorce them­selves from Mon­santo. Hait­ian farm­ers and African farm­ers have said NO! to cor­po­rate con­trol of their food sys­tems. The Gates Foun­da­tion and AGRA must say no to Monsanto.”

Ris­ing in Sol­i­dar­ity with Ayiti in Chicago urges, “From Haiti to Chicago, reclaim our right to con­trol our food and sov­er­eignty!” Today a group of urban farm­ers and com­mu­nity mem­bers will join in a rally to burn GMO seeds in protest of Monsanto’s “dona­tion” to Haiti. Par­tic­i­pants in the event will also plant organic and heir­loom seeds, and sign let­ters to USAID to protest the dis­tri­b­u­tion of Monsanto’s seeds in Haiti. The event will also fea­ture tes­ti­mo­ni­als about the lack of access to food secu­rity, par­tic­u­larly fresh fruits and veg­eta­bles, in neigh­bor­hoods in Chicago, and how this con­nects to the right to food sov­er­eignty in Haiti.

Com­mu­nity Action for Jus­tice in the Amer­i­cas, Africa, Asia, in Mis­soula, is host­ing a protest this evening. “Bring posters, signs, or just come. Wear black /white, or lab coats, dust masks, gog­gles or Tyvek suits or cre­ative cos­tume! Bring drums, pots & pans…” A per­sonal email from a mem­ber of the group says, “The peo­ple in Mis­soula, Mon­tana are pay­ing atten­tion and tak­ing action for farm­ers in Haiti.”

The Organic Con­sumers Association’s net­work sent more than 10,000 emails to USAID and Pres­i­dent Obama. Two dozen mem­bers have donated to the Seeds for Haiti project.

A coali­tion of U.S. churches and foun­da­tions are sup­port­ing Fon­da­tion FONDAMA, a Hait­ian fed­er­a­tion of farm­ers and local NGOs. The coali­tion has sent down sev­eral mil­lion dol­lars to pur­chase 86,000 kilos of local corn seed and 59,000 kilos of local pea seeds. (Seeds are avail­able in Haiti, but small farm­ers have not had the money to buy them.) All of the farm­ers who belong to mem­ber orga­ni­za­tions in Foun­da­tion FONDAMA have got­ten seeds, allow­ing them to pro­ceed with plant­ing their spring crop. The dona­tions have also pur­chased 13,300 machetes and 9,200 hoes. The U.S. coali­tion has, more­over, sent a Mass­a­chu­setts farmer to the vil­lage of Papay for today’s march, and will host the leader of the Peas­ant Move­ment of Papay in New York and Wash­ing­ton for pub­lic, media, and Con­gres­sional meet­ings next week.

Like numer­ous other sup­port­ive groups in the U.S., Groundswell International’s approach to seed sov­er­eignty in Haiti pre-dates Monsanto’s announce­ment. Through its Hait­ian part­ner Part­ner­ship for Local Devel­op­ment, Groundswell is strength­en­ing the capac­ity of peas­ant orga­ni­za­tions in Haiti to sus­tain­ably improve their agri­cul­tural pro­duc­tion, income gen­er­a­tion, food secu­rity, health, and nat­ural resources man­age­ment. A Groundswell staff­per­son writes, “A key thing we’ll be work­ing on is try­ing to pro­mote the alter­na­tive, which is Hait­ian pro­duc­tion of 100% of their seeds so they don’t need imports.“
[1] Exten­sion Tox­i­col­ogy Net­work, Pes­ti­cide Infor­ma­tion Project of the Coop­er­a­tive Exten­sion Offices of Cor­nell Uni­ver­sity, Michi­gan State Uni­ver­sity, Ore­gon State Uni­ver­sity, and Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia at Davis, http://pmep.cce.cornell.edu/profiles/extoxnet/pyrethrins-ziram/thiram-ext.html. Mon­santo denies that Thi­ram con­tains the toxic chem­i­cal eth­yl­ene bis­dithio­car­ba­mates (EBDCs).

Bev­erly Bell has worked with Hait­ian social move­ments for over 30 years. She is also author of the book Walk­ing on Fire: Hait­ian Women’s Sto­ries of Sur­vival and Resis­tance. She coor­di­nates Other Worlds, www.otherworldsarepossible.org, which pro­motes social and eco­nomic alter­na­tives. She is also asso­ciate fel­low of the Insti­tute for Pol­icy Studies.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/beverly-bell/groups-around-the-us-join_b_600941.html