Why we’re tracking Bill Gates’ plans to remake our food systems

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In a series of posts, U.S. Right to Know examines Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation’s plans to remake our food system. Why are we focusing on Bill Gates? Gates has an extraordinary amount of power over our food systems and he is using it. Gates is one of the world’s leading investors in biotechnology companies that patent food. He is the largest owner of farmland in the United States. His $50 billion tax-exempt private foundation exerts major influence over political negotiations and research agendas that guide how food systems develop in the Global South, and what food we all grow and eat.

Controversial agriculture agenda in Africa

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has spent over $5 billion on its efforts to transform food systems  in Africa, with investments  that are “intended to help millions of small farmers lift themselves out of hunger and poverty.” A growing chorus of critics say the foundation’s agricultural development strategies — based on the “green revolution” model of industrial expansion — are outdated, harmful and impeding the transformative changes necessary to feed the world and fix the climate.

The battle has been brewing for more than a decade as food sovereignty movements in Africa have resisted the push for chemical-intensive agriculture, patented seeds and monocrops. A better model, the food movements say, can be found in agroecological projects that are increasing productivity with lower costs and higher incomes for farmers, while also building climate resiliency . In 2019, a  high level UN panel of experts  on food security and nutrition called for a paradigm shift away from industrial agriculture and  toward agroecological solutions  they say can provide more abundant and nutritious foods, protect biodiversity and address the structural inequalities at the heart of the hunger crises.

Related: 

UN Food Systems Summit showdown

The debate is now headed for a showdown at the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit. Rather than following the advice of their own expert panel, the UN has allowed what critics describe as an agribusiness takeover of the food summit,   led by  the Gates and Rockefeller foundations and the World Economic Forum (WEF). These groups want to ramp up industrial agricultural development models that critics say are  harming the climate and failing to feed the hungry

Hundreds of civil society groups  are denouncing the Summit  and its leadership by Agnes Kailibata, president of the Gates-funded Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). The Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism for relations with the UN Committee on World Food Security — a group representing 550 civil society organizations with more than 300 million members — said in March it would  boycott the summit  and set up a parallel meeting.

Three UN Special Rapporteurs on the right to food are also  speaking out about the summit’s deep deficiencies. In an  open letter  to Kalibata in January, the current Special Rapporteur Michael Fakhri described how the summit is heavily skewed in favor of financiers and market-based solutions that cannot meet today’s food system challenges. Fakhri’s report on the Summit provides many details on the structural problems and concerns at the center of the summit debate. The stakes are high with billions of dollars in investments and government policies that will determine how food systems develop in the years ahead to deal with the multiple converging crises of hunger, climate change and pandemic conditions.

“There will be no real solutions if we focus on science and technology, profits and markets, without also addressing fundamental questions of equality, accountability, and governance,” Fakhri said.

Excerpt from letter from 176 organizations from 83 countries asking UN Secretary General António Guterres to revoke the Special Envoy appointment of Agnes Kalibata, president of AGRA:

Statements opposing the corporate agenda of the UNFSS

Articles

  • Farmers and rights groups boycott food summit over big business links, The Guardian (3.4.21)
  • UN Food Systems Summit: How Not to Respond to the Urgency of Reform, by Michael Fakri, Hilal Elver, Olivier De Schutter, IPS News (3.22.21)
  • Faiths institute asks Gates Foundation to change tactics in Africa, Catholic News Service (2.22.21)
  • We Should All Be Worried About The United Nations Food Systems Summit, by A Growing Culture, Medium (5.1.21)
  • The world needs a food movement based on agroecology and equity (commentary), by Pat Mooney, Mongabay (4.21.21)
  • UN Rapporteur to Agnes Kalibata: Food Systems Summit needs human rights at its core, by Lise Colyer,   Quota (1.14.21)

Hear Professor Michael Fakhri explain what’s at stake at the UN World Food Summit and why food systems are a major problem and also key solution for climate change.

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U.S. Right to Know is a nonprofit investigative research group focused on promoting transparency for public health. We are working globally to expose corporate wrongdoing and government failures that threaten the integrity of our food system, our environment and our health.

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