Summary by AGRA Watch Intern Connor Nakamura
AGRA Watch’s research on the Cornell Alliance for Science was featured recently in the “Gates to a Global Empire” report published by Navdanya. The report includes contributions from a variety of leading experts and civil society movements leaders, aiming to highlight “the dangers of philanthrocapitalism, which is boosting the corporate takeover of our seed, agriculture, food, knowledge and global health systems, manipulating information and eroding our democracies.”
CAGJ’s Director Heather Day presented a summary of our research in the webinar, featuring multiple activists documenting the role of the Gates Foundation around the world. Watch the report launch webinar.
Relevant to AGRA Watch is the section “Bt Brinjal: The Alliance for Crooked Science & Corporate Lies” by Farida Akhter, Executive Director of UBINIG in Bangladesh. In the chapter, Akhter writes about how the Gates-funded Cornell Alliance for Science is using Bangladesh as a testing ground for Bt Brinjal (eggplant). “She exposes the false claims of BT brinjal proponents that Bt Brinjal has become popular with farmers both in cultivation and with the public in the markets, to show the success of the BT crop. Farida instead shows how the crop has in fact not been readily accepted by the people of Bangladesh and has failed in field use, in favor of native varietals, as well as in market sales…corporations, with the Bt Brinjal patent and its proponents, actively lie in order to keep public discourse in their favor.”
