On Tuesday, the EU Parliament adopted a resolution that criticises an EU-backed development initiative, which critics have said is pushing damaging pesticides and corporate dominance on farmers in the ten African nations where it is active. MEPs said the G8’s New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition (NAFSN) needs greater transparency, as well as safeguards to prevent land-grabs and protect farmers’ rights and the environment.

The EU has invested millions of Euros in the Alliance, which was launched in 2012 and aims to relieve poverty by working with private companies in Sub-Saharan Africa, the global region with the highest levels of hunger. However, social justice organisations have said the scheme is working on false assumptions and claimed states are encouraged to adopt political measures that favour big ag over smaller farmers in return for investment. MEPs acknowledged that some features of NAFSN risk causing harm and expressed grave concern that small farmers and their representatives have been excluded from negotiations on the scheme.

This week, the EU Parliament voted to accept the EU Development Committee’s report on NAFSN, which received funding from the UK government. The report raises a number of concerns, including:

• A lack of consultation with civil society groups in Africa ahead of the launch of the scheme;
• Corporate-based solutions, including introducing and spreading certified seeds in Africa, risk increasing smallholders’ dependence on relatively powerful companies, eroding agricultural diversity and increasing the likelihood of debt;
• A lack of investment in agro-ecological farming practices in developing countries.
• A lack of safeguards against land-grabbing, and no independent grievance mechanisms for communities affected by land dispossession.

Green MEP Maria Heubuch, who acted as the Parliament’s rapporteur on the issue said, “Supporting family farmers and smallholders would be the most effective way to fight hunger in many African regions. Instead, the EU is contributing its scarce development funding to the New Alliance, which actually undermines sustainable small-scale food production and local food systems. As recent studies showed, there are cases of land grabbing by private companies, which the EU co-funded indirectly.”

Heubuch added, “If the New Alliance does not address the severe problems that we witness, the EU should withdraw from the initiative.”

MEPs make recommendations

In their resolution, MEPs said private companies need to create appeal mechanisms and publish publicly accessible annual reports. To protect farmers’ land rights and prevent land grabbing they want all investments to be subject to independent prior impact studies.

They also want restrictions on pesticide use and proprietary GM crops (which would have implications for biodiversity and seed saving), and advised against "replicating the mistakes of the Asian ‘Green Revolution’ model of the 1960s” in Africa, by ignoring the possible negative social and environmental impacts of industrialised agriculture. Given the knowledge we now have of public health and environmental consequences of this model of farming, MEPS said NAFSN must restrict use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides and ensure that irrigation doesn’t restrict access to water for small-scale farmers.

Parliamentarians stressed that agricultural investment policies are meant to support the development of the local economy, and said local governments should invest in local food systems to boost rural economies and ensure decent jobs and labour rights. They also stressed the need to uphold farmers’ rights to produce, exchange and sell seeds freely, as this underpins 90% of agricultural livelihoods in Africa and is vital to building resilience to climate change.

The resolution was adopted by a huge majority; 577 MEPs voted in favour of the report, 24 against and 69 abstained.

The Greens-EFA, rapporteur Heubuch’s group in the European Parliament, welcomed the adoption on Tuesday. They said NGOs in Africa and Europe have been highlighting the flaws of the New Alliance over recent months, and took Parliament’s stance as a sign that the awareness raising is beginning to pay off. The greens pointed to research commissioned by the EU Parliament’s human rights committee, which has recently shown that the EU needs to improve its mechanisms for ensuring that the projects it funds comply with human rights obligations.

Reacting to the Parliament’s resolution, Aisha Dowell, a food campaigner with Global Justice Now said, “This is the most high profile and damning report so far of the New Alliance, and proves that this is a scheme that has been cooked up to benefit big agribusiness companies rather than to help small-scale farmers or vulnerable communities. There needs to be an urgent inquiry as to why DFID [the UK government's Department for International Development] is continuing to support such a fundamentally flawed initiative.

Responding to questions about the UK government's support for the New Alliance, a spokesperson for DFID said, “New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition does not receive DFID funding,” though the Department did respond to parliamentary questions about its involvement in the Alliance in February.
     
Even so, Global Justice Now's Aisha Dowell continued, “There’s plenty of good reasons why the UK should be committed to contributing a fixed amount of GDP in aid money, but we need to be critically examining how that money is spent. The current fixation on corporate partnerships is based on an ideological vision of development that that is dangerously dated.
     
“Small scale farmers across the globe produce 70% of the world’s food, often using techniques that are much more sustainable and climate-friendly than big agribusiness. There are plenty of ways that aid money could be used to improve the lives and livelihoods of these people. But the New Alliance is doing exactly the opposite by facilitating big agribusiness’ takeover of food systems in different African countries.”

**Edited 13/06/2016 - DFID comment added**