At the annual World Economic Forum this past weekend in Davos, Switzerland, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Director Rajiv Shah stood beside CEOs from Monsanto and other infamous giant corporations, and announced U.S. support for a “New Vision for Agriculture.”
Yes, you should be worried.
Claiming that “large-scale private sector partnerships [can] achieve significant impact on global hunger and nutrition,” Shah introduced the initiative’s 17 agribusiness “champions”: Archer Daniels Midland, BASF, Bunge Limited, Cargill, Coca-Cola, DuPont, General Mills, Kraft Foods, Metro AG, Monsanto Company, Nestlé, PepsiCo, SABMiller, Syngenta, Unilever, Wal-Mart, and Yara International.
What!?! Are you kidding me? Most of these agribusiness giants could be listed in an edition of Who’s Who in Environmental Destruction, Hunger and Human Rights Violations. A few minutes’ of investigation on GRAIN, CorpWatch, Food & Water Watch or PAN’s chemical cartel page will prove this point.
Feeding the corporations
The plan, USAID tells us, is for the U.S. to leverage private sector investments for agricultural “growth,” using our taxpayer dollars through Obama’s Feed the Future initiative. Back in September, I wrote about the corporate Trojan Horse lurking within Feed the Future. There’s always been some green window dressing scattered throughout the plan, claiming that the initiative will follow Southern country priorities, support gender equity, respect local and Indigenous knowledge, etc.
Read the Full Article Here: http://www.panna.org/blog/us-looks-monsanto-feed-world