An effort by US donors and multinational agribusiness Monsanto to partner with Nepal to boost local maize production with imported hybrid seeds has met civil society opposition calling – instead – for home-grown solutions.
“If an organization like USAID [US Agency for International Development] wants to help us with a company like Monsanto, we would hope that they would help us to actually develop our own hybrids instead, not to import their foreign seeds,” said Hari Dahal, spokesperson for the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives, at a recent parliamentary hearing on food sovereignty, as reported in local media.
USAID announced last September its intention to set up a pilot training partnership with Monsanto and the Nepali government, which promotes hybrid maize seeds to boost yields in a country where 41 percent of the population is estimated to be undernourished.
Maize is a staple of the local diet, especially in the maize-producing hilly central interior of the country, which suffers from chronic food insecurity.
In addition, Nepal grows only half of the maize demanded by the animal feed industry and imports the shortfall of 135,000 tons annually, according to USAID.
Demand for hybrid maize seeds, used primarily in the animal feed industry, has increased as animal feed has constituted a growing source of income for commercial farmers.
Opponents of the proposed partnership say it would substitute one form of dependence for another – from the currently imported maize to maize seeds from abroad.
According to the government, the country required 22,656 tons of maize seed in 2011* – less than 1 percent of which was supplied by registered imports.
Calling the US-headquartered Monsanto a “biotech Goliath”, local activists have taken to social media to block the company’s expansion in Nepal, citing concerns of loss of local seeds, dependence on seed imports and environmental damage to the land and surrounding communities.
Known for its genetically-engineered products worldwide, Monsanto has been sued – and settled out of court – in the Americas throughout the last decade multiple times for alleged health and environmental damages linked to its practices. It has also sued farmers whom it accused of patent infringement.
Read more of the story here at the IRIN news service:
NEPAL: Nepal’s Monsanto debate spotlights seed sovereignty
