THURS Aug 19, 10-11:30am PDT
How the Gates Foundation Sponsors the Corporate Capture of Global Food Systems
A webinar co-hosted by Community Alliance for Global Justice and the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa
10-11:30 AM PDT (1-2:30 PM EDT / 5 – 6:30 PM GMT / 8 – 9:30 PM EAT)
Please register to receive the Zoom link and event updates.
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With the UN Food Systems Summit set to take place this September in New York City, this roundtable discussion aims to raise public and media awareness about the powerful interests working to capture our global food systems, and chart a course for participants to take action for food sovereignty. Speakers will bring attention to Bill Gates’ and the Gates Foundation’s roles in advancing harmful industrial agriculture models in Africa and around the world. Though deeply flawed in many ways, this model of agricultural development is becoming dominant and edging out proven agro-ecological alternatives.
Featuring:
Anne Maina, The Biodiversity and Biosafety Association of Kenya (BIBA-Kenya) and Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA)
Anne Maina is a development worker who has been actively working on challenging false solutions being pushed in Africa like Genetically Engineering, the push for a green revolution in Africa, biofuels and carbon markets as a strategy to cope with climate change in Africa. She has worked with various civil society organisations and regional networks such as the African Biodiversity Network (ABN), Participatory Ecological Land use Management (PELUM) Association on campaigning, advocacy and lobbying and other work. She has been very instrumental in the growth and development of the Eastern and Southern Africa Small Scale Farmers’ Forum (FORUM), the birth of Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) and other networks in Africa. Anne is currently working for the Biodiversity and Biosafety Association of Kenya (BIBA-K)–formerly the Kenya Biodiversity Coalition (KBioC)–based in Thika, Kenya.
shakara tyler, Black Dirt Farm Collective
shakara tyler is a returning generation farmer, educator and activist-scholar who engages in Black agrarianism, agroecology, food sovereignty and climate justice as commitments of abolition and decolonization. She obtained her PhD at Michigan State University in Community Sustainability (CSUS) and works with Black farming communities in Michigan and the Mid-Atlantic. She also serves as Board President at the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network (DBCFSN), board member of the Detroit People’s Food Co-op (DPFC) and a member of the Black Dirt Farm Collective (BDFC).
Jim Thomas, ETC Group
Jim Thomas is a Co-Executive Director and Researcher with the ETC Group, currently based in Val David in Quebec, Canada. He has over 25 years international experience tracking the impact of emerging technologies on human rights, biodiversity, equity and food systems, as well as engaging in governance questions around new technologies. Jim has authored or co-authored many of ETC Group’s reports addressing developments in synthetic biology, geoengineering, nanotechnology, big data and other emerging technology platforms. He has been an active observer in UN processes, most closely at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, where he serves in that body’s Ad Hoc Technical Expert Group on Synthetic Biology.
Stefano Prato, Society for International Development and Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism
Stefano Prato is the Managing Director of the Society for International Development (SID) and the Editor of SID’s Quarterly Journal “Development”. He is a very active participant of the Civil Society Mechanism (CSM) of the Committee on World Food Security and co-facilitates the CSM Working Groups on Nutrition, Sustainable Agriculture and Livestock and SDGs. His most recent areas of interest address the democratization of global economic governance, the architecture of nutrition governance, the corporate capture of food, agriculture and nutrition, and the political economies of inequalities, particularly in the African context.
Moderated by Matt Canfield, CAGJ/AGRA Watch and Leiden Law School in the Netherlands
Participation is free; You must register to receive the Zoom link!
About AGRA Watch:
AGRA Watch is a grassroots, Seattle-based program of Community Alliance for Global Justice, that challenges the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s questionable agricultural programs in Africa, including its Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). The Gates Foundation and AGRA claim to be “pro-poor” and “pro-environment,” but their approach is closely aligned with transnational corporations, such as Monsanto, and foreign policy actors like USAID. They take advantage of food and global climate crises to promote high-tech, market-based, industrial agriculture and generate profits for corporations even while degrading the environment and disempowering farmers. Their programs are a form of philanthrocapitalism based on biopiracy.
