New voice in Green Revolution

The question, originally posed in 2002, set off a project that would review a broad scope of agricultural policies and strategies and make recommendations ranging from food production and land stewardship to social justice issues for the developing world. That such a wide swath of participants—ranging from Greenpeace to biotech behemoth Syngenta—were brought to the table created some challenges for the project, known as the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD).

Science magazine published an article March 14, 2008, highlighting some of these challenges, an article many of the people who worked on the IAASTD now say missed the big picture by focusing too much on a few dissenting opinions that were not indicative of the overall process.

According to the peice, when a draft document began to take shape that generally rejected biotechnology in favor of agroecological methods, regionally appropriate technology, indigenous and community based knowledge, and the opinions of social scientists, Monsanto and Syngenta walked out of the discussion. But Monsanto was never a part of the IAASTD process, several people close to the project said.

Critics of the Science article, entitled Dueling Visions for a Hungry World (membership or a one-time fee required to view), charge that it inaccurately portrayed a major rift between Green Revolution scientists supporting input-output farming methods and those who favored a more biological systems approach to agriculture in developing countries. Detractors of the piece said the article left the impression that without all the initial players on board the report might not be taken seriously. In the article, project leader Robert Watson, the World Bank’s chief scientist at the time the project got underway, was quoted as saying that while he felt he’d failed the process by not keeping everyone at the table, he was confident the IAASTD report would still go a long way in defining and meeting the needs of the rural poor in developing countries and in directing agricultural research toward projects that would actually help farmers.

While the report should still go a long way in serving these purposes, said Rodale Institute International Program Director and IAASTD co-author Amadou Makthar Diop, PhD, published inaccuracies so close to a scheduled summit meeting for countries to ratify the IAASTD report served no purpose. “Only Syngenta withdrew from the process,” Dr. Diop said, “and one or two people out of 400 authors leaving because their products were not showcased is of no significant at all.”

Diop and other IAASTD authors have collectively sent a letter to Science condemning the article and the unfair shadow they say in cast on a document that could be of monumental significance in fighting famine and social injustice while also tackling environmental concerns in the developing world.

“The article failed to include key findings, such as the need to include farmers in the development of common goods by researchers and the need to establish more resilient farming system,” said Dr. Diop. “This assessment is by far the most comprehensive and rigorous report of its nature, involving more than a thousand practitioners and scientists from all over the world.

“We all hope that the process will move on as planned and that governments will come to the April 2008 meeting in Johannesburg in great numbers to endorse the document and commit their ministers of agriculture to set off the mechanisms for implementing our recommendations on the ground."