Lati­nAmer­ica Press

A move­ment of Hait­ian farm­ers and other small-scale pro­duc­ers, have rejected a dona­tion by US agri­cul­tural giant Mon­santo. The Peas­ant Move­ment of Payaye has said it will burn 60,000 sacks of veg­etable and corn seeds total­ing 475 tons at a value of $4 mil­lion that the com­pany donated, in part­ner­ship with USAID, fol­low­ing the deadly Jan­u­ary earthquake.

Other farm­ers´ groups have long-protested the use of genetically-modified seeds, argu­ing they threaten the poor nation´s biodiversity.

Sev­eral thou­sand farm­ers and activists marched in Hinche in Cen­tral Haiti on June 4 against the donation.

Cha­vannes Jean-Baptiste, leader of the Peas­ant Move­ment of Papaye and spokesper­son for the National Peas­ant Move­ment of the Con­gress of Papaye, called the entry of Mon­santo seeds into Haiti “a very strong attack on small agri­cul­ture, on farm­ers, on bio­di­ver­sity, on Cre­ole seeds… and on what is left of our envi­ron­ment in Haiti.”

The farm­ers argued that the seeds require large amounts of chem­i­cals and would enslave the pro­duc­ers to buy­ing more Mon­santo prod­ucts. Oth­ers said the seeds would con­t­a­m­i­nate native crops and over all, threaten Haiti´s pre­car­i­ous food secu­rity and sovereignty.

“The foun­da­tion for Haiti´s food sov­er­eignty is the abil­ity of peas­ants to save seeds from one grow­ing sea­son to the next,” said Baze­lais Jean-Baptiste, an agron­o­mist who directs the “Seeds for Haiti” project in New York City. “The hybrid crops that Mon­santo is intro­duc­ing do not pro­duce seeds that can be saved for the next sea­son, there­fore peas­ants who use them would be forced to some­how buy more seeds each season.”

“Fur­ther­more, these seeds require expen­sive inputs of syn­thetic fer­til­iz­ers and pes­ti­cides that Haiti´s farm­ers sim­ply can­not afford,” he con­tin­ued. “This cre­ates a dev­as­tat­ing level of depen­dency and is a com­plete depar­ture from the real­ity of Haiti´s peas­ants. Hait­ian peas­ants already have locally adapted seeds that have been devel­oped over gen­er­a­tions. What we need is sup­port for peas­ants to access the tra­di­tional seeds that are already available.”

http://www.eurasiareview.com/201006203590/monsantos-unwelcome-donation.html