Sowing the Seeds of Famine in Ethiopia
Prof Michel Chossudovsky
Author’s note
Based on research conducted in the 1990s, this article was first
published by The Ecologist in September 2000. It was subsequently
incorporated into the Second edition of The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order, Global Research, Montreal, 2003.
The research focussed on how GMO seeds were used as of the
mid-1990s to destabilize the agricultural cycle in Ethiopia. This
diabolical “free market” agenda was a dress rehearsal for a
agri-bio-tech conglomerates’ assault led by Monsanto on peasant
economies in all major regions of the World.
Michel Chossudovsky, May 23, 2014
The “economic therapy” imposed under IMF-World Bank jurisdiction is
in large part responsible for triggering famine and social devastation
in Ethiopia and the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, wreaking the peasant
economy and impoverishing millions of people.
With the complicity of branches of the US government, it has also
opened the door for the appropriation of traditional seeds and landraces
by US biotech corporations, which behind the scenes have been peddling
the adoption of their own genetically modified seeds under the disguise
of emergency aid and famine relief.
Moreover, under WTO rules, the agri-biotech
conglomerates can manipulate market forces to their advantage as well as
exact royalties from farmers. The WTO provides legitimacy to the food
giants to dismantle State programmes including emergency grain stocks,
seed banks, extension services and agricultural credit, etc.), plunder
peasant economies and trigger the outbreak of periodic famines.
Crisis in the Horn
More than 8 million people in Ethiopia – representing 15% of the
country’s population – had been locked into “famine zones”. Urban wages
have collapsed and unemployed seasonal farm workers and landless
peasants have been driven into abysmal poverty. The international relief
agencies concur without further examination that climatic factors are
the sole and inevitable cause of crop failure and the ensuing
humanitarian disaster. What the media tabloids fails to disclose is that
– despite the drought and the border war with Eritrea – several million
people in the most prosperous agricultural regions have also been
driven into starvation. Their predicament is not the consequence of
grain shortages but of “free markets” and “bitter economic medicine”
imposed under the IMF-World Bank sponsored Structural Adjustment
Programme (SAP).
Ethiopia produces more than 90% of its consumption needs. Yet at the
height of the crisis, the nationwide food deficit for 2000 was estimated
by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) at 764,000 metric tons
of grain representing a shortfall of 13 kilos per person per annum.1 In
Amhara, grain production (1999-2000) was twenty percent in excess of
consumption needs. Yet 2.8 million people in Amhara (representing 17% of
the region’s population) became locked into famine zones and are “at
risk” according to the FAO. 2 Whereas Amhara’s grain surpluses were in
excess of 500,000 tons (1999-2000), its “relief food needs” had been
tagged by the international community at close to 300,000 tons.3 A
similar pattern prevailed in Oromiya, the country’s most populated state
where 1.6 million people were classified “at risk”, despite the
availability of more than 600,000 metric tons of surplus grain.4 In both
these regions, which include more than 25% of the country’s population,
scarcity of food was clearly not the cause of hunger, poverty and
social destitution. Yet no explanations are given by the panoply of
international relief agencies and agricultural research institutes.
The Promise of the “Free Market”
In Ethiopia, a transitional government came into power in 1991 in the
wake of a protracted and destructive civil war. After the pro-Soviet
Dergue regime of Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam was unseated, a
multi-donor financed Emergency Recovery and Reconstruction Project
(ERRP) was hastily put in place to deal with an external debt of close
to 9 billion dollars that had accumulated during the Mengistu
government. Ethiopia’s outstanding debts with the Paris Club of official
creditors were rescheduled in exchange for far-reaching macro-economic
reforms. Upheld by US foreign policy, the usual doses of bitter IMF
economic medicine were prescribed. Caught in the straightjacket of debt
and structural adjustment, the new Transitional Government of Ethiopia
(TGE), led by the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front
(EPRDF) – largely formed from the Tigrean People’s Liberation Front
(PLF) – had committed itself to far-reaching “free market reforms”,
despite its leaders’ Marxist leanings. Washington soon tagged Ethiopia
alongside Uganda as Africa’s post Cold War free market showpiece.
While social budgets were slashed under the structural adjustment
programme (SAP), military expenditure – in part financed by the gush of
fresh development loans – quadrupled since 1989.5 With Washington
supporting both sides in the Eritrea-Ethiopia border war, US arms sales
spiralled. The bounty was being shared between the arms manufacturers
and the agribusiness conglomerates. In the post-Cold War era, the latter
positioned themselves in the lucrative procurement of emergency aid to
war-torn countries. With mounting military spending financed on borrowed
money, almost half of Ethiopia’s export revenues was earmarked to meet
debt-servicing obligations.
A Policy Framework Paper (PFP) stipulating the precise changes to be
carried out in Ethiopia had been carefully drafted in Washington by IMF
and World Bank officials on behalf of the transitional government, and
was forwarded to Addis Ababa for the signature of the Minister of
Finance. The enforcement of severe austerity measures virtually
foreclosed the possibility of a meaningful post-war reconstruction and
the rebuilding of the country’s shattered infrastructure. The creditors
demanded trade liberalization and the full-scale privatization of public
utilities, financial institutions, State farms and factories. Civil
servants including teachers and health workers were fired, wages were
frozen and the labor laws were rescinded to enable State enterprises “to
shed their surplus workers”. Meanwhile, corruption became rampant.
State assets were auctioned off to foreign capital at bargain prices and
Price Waterhouse Cooper was entrusted with the task of coordinating the
sale of State property.
In turn, the reforms had led to the fracture of the federal fiscal
system. Budget transfers to the State governments were slashed leaving
the regions to their own devices. Supported by several donors,
“regionalization” was heralded as a “devolution of powers from the
federal to the regional governments”. The Bretton Woods institutions
knew exactly what they were doing. In the words of the IMF, “[the
regions] capacity to deliver effective and efficient development
interventions varies widely, as does their capacity for revenue
collection”. 6
Wrecking the Peasant Economy
Patterned on the reforms adopted in Kenya in 1991 (see Box 9.1 ),
agricultural markets were wilfully manipulated on behalf of the
agribusiness conglomerates. The World Bank demanded the rapid removal of
price controls and all subsidies to farmers. Transportation and freight
prices were deregulated serving to boost food prices in remote areas
affected by drought. In turn, the markets for farm inputs including
fertiliser and seeds were handed over to private traders including
Pioneer Hi-Bred International which entered into a lucrative partnership
with Ethiopia Seed Enterprise (ESE), the government’s seed monopoly.7
At the outset of the reforms in 1992, USAID under its Title III
program “donated” large quantities of US fertilizer “in exchange for
free market reforms”:
[V]arious agricultural commodities [will be provided] in exchange for reforms of grain marketing… and [the] elimination of food subsidies…The reform agenda focuses on liberalization and privatization in the fertilizer and transport sectors in return for financing fertilizer and truck imports…. These program initiatives have given us [an] “entrée” …in defining major [policy] issues… 8
While the stocks of donated US fertiliser were rapidly exhausted; the
imported chemicals contributed to displacing local fertiliser
producers. The same companies involved in the fertiliser import business
were also in control of the domestic wholesale distribution of
fertiliser using local level merchants as intermediaries.
Increased output was recorded in commercial farms and in irrigated
areas (where fertilizer and high yielding seeds had been applied). The
overall tendency, however, was towards greater economic and social
polarisation in the countryside, marked by significantly lower yields in
less productive marginal lands occupied by the poor peasantry. Even in
areas where output had increased, farmers were caught in the clutch of
the seed and fertilizer merchants.
In 1997, the Atlanta based Carter Center – which was actively
promoting the use of biotechnology tools in maize breeding – proudly
announced that “Ethiopia [had] become a food exporter for the first
time”.9 Yet in a cruel irony, the donors ordered the dismantling of the
emergency grain reserves (set up in the wake of the 1984-85 famine) and
the authorities acquiesced.
Instead of replenishing the country’s emergency food stocks, grain
was exported to meet Ethiopia’s debt servicing obligations. Close to one
million tons of the 1996 harvest was exported, an amount which would
have been amply sufficient (according to FAO figures) to meet the
1999-2000 emergency. In fact the same food staple which had been
exported (namely maize) was re-imported barely a few months later. The
world market had confiscated Ethiopia’s grain reserves.
In return, US surpluses of genetically engineered maize (banned by
the European Union) were being dumped on the horn of Africa in the form
of emergency aid. The US had found a convenient mechanism for
“laundering its stocks of dirty grain”. The agribusiness conglomerates
not only cornered Ethiopia’s commodity exports, they were also involved
in the procurement of emergency shipments of grain back into Ethiopia.
During the 1998-2000 famine, lucrative maize contracts were awarded to
giant grain merchants such as Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) and Cargill
Inc. 10
Laundering America’s GM Grain Surpluses
US grain surpluses peddled in war-torn countries also served to
weaken the agricultural system. Some 500,000 tons of maize and maize
products were “donated” in 1999-2000 by USAID to relief agencies
including the World Food Programme (WFP) which in turn collaborates
closely with the US Department of Agriculture. At least 30% of these
shipments (procured under contract with US agribusiness firms) were
surplus genetically modified grain stocks. 11
Boosted by the border war with Eritrea and the plight of thousands of
refugees, the influx of contaminated food aid had contributed to the
pollution of Ethiopia’s genetic pool of indigenous seeds and landraces.
In a cruel irony, the food giants were at the same time gaining control –
through the procurement of contaminated food aid – over Ethiopia’s seed
banks. According to South Africa’s Biowatch: “Africa is treated as the
dustbin of the world…To donate untested food and seed to Africa is not
an act of kindness but an attempt to lure Africa into further dependence
on foreign aid.” 12
Moreover, part of the “food aid” had been channelled under the “food
for work” program which served to further discourage domestic production
in favour of grain imports. Under this scheme, impoverished and
landless farmers were contracted to work on rural infrastructural
programmes in exchange for “donated” US corn.
Meanwhile, the cash earnings of coffee smallholders plummeted.
Whereas Pioneer Hi-Bred positioned itself in seed distribution and
marketing, Cargill Inc established itself in the markets for grain and
coffee through its subsidiary Ethiopian Commodities.12 For the more than
700,000 smallholders with less than 2 hectares that produce between 90
and 95% of the country’s coffee output, the deregulation of agricultural
credit combined with low farmgate prices of coffee had triggered
increased indebtedness and landlessness, particularly in East Gojam
(Ethiopia’s breadbasket).
Biodiversity up for Sale
The country’s extensive reserves of traditional seed varieties
(barley, teff, chick peas, sorghum, etc) were being appropriated,
genetically manipulated and patented by the agribusiness conglomerates:
“Instead of compensation and respect, Ethiopians today are …getting
bills from foreign companies that have “patented” native species and now
demand payment for their use.”13 The foundations of a “competitive seed
industry” were laid under IMF and World Bank auspices.14 The Ethiopian
Seed Enterprise (ESE), the government’s seed monopoly joined hands with
Pioneer Hi-Bred in the distribution of hi-bred and genetically modified
(GM) seeds (together with hybrid resistant herbicide) to smallholders.
In turn, the marketing of seeds had been transferred to a network of
private contractors and “seed enterprises” with financial support and
technical assistance from the World Bank. The “informal”
farmer-to-farmer seed exchange was slated to be converted under the
World Bank programme into a “formal” market oriented system of “private
seed producer-sellers.” 15
In turn, the Ethiopian Agricultural Research Institute (EARI) was
collaborating with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center
(CIMMYT) in the development of new hybrids between Mexican and Ethiopian
maize varieties.16 Initially established in the 1940s by Pioneer
Hi-Bred International with support from the Ford and Rockefeller
foundations, CIMMYT developed a cosy relationship with US agribusiness.
Together with the UK based Norman Borlaug Institute, CIMMYT constitutes a
research arm as well as a mouthpiece of the seed conglomerates.
According to the Rural Advancement Foundation (RAFI) “US farmers already
earn $150 million annually by growing varieties of barley developed
from Ethiopian strains. Yet nobody in Ethiopia is sending them a bill.”
17
Impacts of Famine
The 1984-85 famine had seriously threatened Ethiopia’s reserves of
landraces of traditional seeds. In response to the famine, the Dergue
government through its Plant Genetic Resource Centre –in collaboration
with Seeds of Survival (SoS)– had implemented a programme to preserve
Ethiopia’s biodiversity.18 This programme – which was continued under
the transitional government – skilfully “linked on-farm conservation and
crop improvement by rural communities with government support
services”. 19 An extensive network of in-farm sites and conservation
plots was established involving some 30,000 farmers. In 1998, coinciding
chronologically with the onslaught of the 1998-2000 famine, the
government clamped down on seeds of Survival (SoS) and ordered the
programme to be closed down. 20
The hidden agenda was to eventually displace the traditional
varieties and landraces reproduced in village-level nurseries. The
latter were supplying more than 90 percent of the peasantry through a
system of farmer-to-farmer exchange. Without fail, the 1998-2000 famine
led to a further depletion of local level seed banks: “The reserves of
grains [the farmer] normally stores to see him through difficult times
are empty. Like 30,000 other households in the [Galga] area, his family
have also eaten their stocks of seeds for the next harvest.”21 And a
similar process was unfolding in the production of coffee where the
genetic base of the arabica beans was threatened as a result of the
collapse of farmgate prices and the impoverishment of small-holders.
In other words, the famine – itself in large part a product of the
economic reforms imposed to the advantage of large corporations by the
IMF, World Bank and the US Government – served to undermine Ethiopia’s
genetic diversity to the benefit of the biotech companies. With the
weakening of the system of traditional exchange, village level seed
banks were being replenished with commercial hi-bred and genetically
modified seeds. In turn, the distribution of seeds to impoverished
farmers had been integrated with the “food aid” programmes. WPF and
USAID relief packages often include “donations” of seeds and fertiliser,
thereby favouring the inroad of the agribusiness-biotech companies into
Ethiopia’s agricultural heartland. The emergency programs are not the
“solution” but the “cause” of famine. By deliberately creating a
dependency on GM seeds, they had set the stage for the outbreak of
future famines.
This destructive pattern – invariably resulting in famine – is
replicated throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. From the onslaught of the debt
crisis of the early 1980s, the IMF-World Bank had set the stage for the
demise of the peasant economy across the region with devastating
results. Now, in Ethiopia, fifteen years after the last famine left
nearly one million dead, hunger is once again stalking the land. This
time, as eight million people face the risk of starvation, we know that
it isn’t just the weather that is to blame.
Notes
- Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Special Report: FAO/WFP Crop Assessment Mission to Ethiopia, Rome, January 2000.
- Ibid
- Ibid
- Ibid
- Philip Sherwell and Paul Harris, “Guns before Grain as Ethiopia Starves, Sunday Telegraph, London, April 16, 2000.
- IMF, Ethiopia, Recent Economic Developments, Washington, 1999.
- Pioneer Hi-Bred International, General GMO Facts, http://www.pioneer.com/usa/biotech/value_of_products/product_value.htm#.
- United States agency for International Development (USAID), “Mission to Ethiopia, Concept Paper: Back to The Future”, Washington, June 1993
- Carter Center, Press release, Atlanta, Georgia, January 31, 1997.
- Declan Walsh, America Find Ready Market for GM Food, The Independent, London, March 30, 2000, p. 18).
- Ibid.
- Maja Wallegreen, “The World’s Oldest Coffee Industry In Transition”, Tea & Coffee Trade Journal, November 1, 1999.
- Laeke Mariam Demissie, A vast historical contribution counts for little; West reaps Ethiopia’s genetic harvest, World Times, October, 1998).
- World Bank, Ethiopia-Seed Systems Development Project, Project ID ETPA752, 6 June 1995.
- Ibid
- See CIMMYT Research Plan and Budget 2000-2002 http://www.cimmyt.mx/about/People-mtp2002.htm#).
- Laeke Mariam Demissie, op. cit
- “When local farmers know best”, The Economist, 16 May 1998)
- Ibid
- Laeke Mariam Demissie, op. cit.
- Rageh Omaar, “Hunger stalks Ethiopia’s dry land”, BBC, London, 6 January, 2000.
- An earlier version of this article was published in The Ecologist, September 2000.
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