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On May Day , 2013 Navdanya launched the campaign “No to GMO bananas” and the associated “creation myth” that Bill Gates and James Dale are imposing by claiming their GMO bananas are an “innovation” to save Indian Women from childbirth deaths due to iron deficiency anemia.
Genetically engineered bananas are being offered by Bill Gates, who is funding Dr Dale in Queensland University of Technology, Australia, to develop genetically engineered bananas and transfer them to India. In addition our tax money is also funding this project.
India’s Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC) will provide AUD$1.4 million (US$1.44 million) towards the QUT component of the project and INR80 million (US$1.43 million) towards the cost of the Indian component.
Partners for the GM banana project will also include Australia’s National Agri-Food Biotechnology Institute, India’s National Research Centre for Bananas, the Indian Institute of Horticulture Research, the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre and Tamil Nadu Agricultural University.
Dr Dale does not have a single paper related to iron fortification of bananas . This work has been done by the Bhabha Atomic Research Team.
So the research on GM banana is Indian, the finance comes from India, yet Dr Dale and Bill Gates strut around the world as if their research, their brains and their money is making a Technology transfer of GM bananas possible to India to save Indian Women.
GMO bananas are in any case not a solution to anemia. Bananas are rich in nutrition but have only 0.44mg of iron per 100 grams of edible portion. All the effort to increase iron content of bananas will fall short the iron content of our indigenous biodiversity. According to the BARC scientists, they can achieve a 6 fold increase in iron content in GMO bananas.This makes it 2.6mg, which is 3000% less than iron in turmeric, or niger ,or lotus stem, 2000% less than Amchur (mango powder). The safe ,biodiverse alternatives are multifold.
Navdanya states that:
“The knowledge of growing this diversity and transforming it to food is women’s knowledge. That is why in Navdanya we have created the network for food sovereignty in women’s hands – Mahila Anna Swaraj .
The project is a waste of money, and a waste of time. It will take 10 years and millions of dollars to complete the research. But meantime, governments,research agencies, scientists will become blind to biodiversity based, low cost, safe, time tested , democratic alternatives in the hands of women .The National banana research centre while conseving 200 varieties of bananas, has already put the development of GMO bananas in its Vision Document 2030.
Just as Bt cotton has taken over 95%cotton in India inspite of having failed to increase yields or control pests,GM bananas will take over and destroy our rich biodiversity, even though they will fail to remove iron deficiency.
The real objective is to get access to our rich biodiversity through Biopiracy and control banana production through patents in the country with the highest production and consumption of bananas. Scientists like Dale already hold many patents on banana transformation. Just as Monsanto controls our cotton seed supply through IPRs by adding a toxic gene to cotton, Dale and MNC’s will start owning our banana through patents linked to genetic engineering. In fact that seems to be the main aim of the GMO banana project.
There is no need for introducing genetically engineered banana , which is a sacred plant and sacred food in India, ,when banana brings us many health benefits and we have so many affordable, accessible, safe and diverse options for meeting our nutritional needs of iron.
We have to grow nutrition by growing biodiversity, not industrially “fortify” nutritionally empty food at high cost, or put one or two nutrients into genetically engineered crops.”
As the Navdanya report Health per Acre shows when an acre of farmland is used for organic mixed cropping in place of conventional mono cropping, 39 g of extra iron is produced. This amount is sufficient to nourish 16,250 lactating mothers with iron for a day. On a national scale, the extra amount of iron produced organically would be sufficient to meet the requirement of 20 billion hypothetical lactating mothers.Even if only part of this iron is absorbed, biodiversity offers us the potential of ending iron deficiency anemia. There need be no iron deficiency if we intensify biodiversity in our farms and gardens and food.
We don’t need irresponsible and wasteful experiments like GMO bananas, imposed by powerful men in distant places, who are totally ignorant of the biodiversity in our fields and thalis, and who never bear the consequences of their destructive power by creating new threats to our biodiversity , our seed sovereignty, knowledge sovereignty, and our health , We need to put food security in women’s hands so that the last woman and the last child can share in nature’s gifts of biodiversity.
The solution to malnutrition lies in growing nutrition, and growing nutrition means growing biodiversity, it means recognizing the knowledge of biodiversity and nutrition among millions of Indian women who have received it over generations as “Grandmothers Knowledge” .For removing iron deficiency, iron rich plants should be grown every where, on farms, in kitchen gardens, in community gardens, in school gardens, on roof tops ,in balconies….Iron deficiency was not created by Nature. And we can get rid of it by becoming co-creators and co-producers with Nature.”
For Further information: RFSTE_Banana Booklet_29-4-2013
Contact: Navdanya@gmail.com
No GMO bananas!
GMO banana’s for India, that’s nice, must be some consolation for the families of the 250,000 GMO cotton farmer suicides. Well done Bill, you sick mf.
No surprise that Billy Boy is in on this shit!
Bill Gates should stick to what he knows best!
Bill should just keep overcharging for copycat bloatware like he always has. he knoes nothing about agriculture or health. He seemed to be fairly good at pedaling inferior software.
Monocultures of ANYTHING do not survive in the long run! Screw GMO’s – Screw monocultures! Variety is the spice of life! In the case of food, it’s the key to life!
please stop this insanity. You are not helping anyone by giving them toxic food. Please think what you are doing.
Bill Gates, don’t you get it ? that nobody in the world wants gmos . They are harmful to the soil, to the animals, to the humans and to the planet.
Bill Gates’ genocidal intentions are far more reaching than Adolf Hitler’s. Why does no one stop him? It’s all about money. Everybody wants a piece of the action. They’re too greedy and stupid to realize that once Bill is finished there will be no place to spend it [the soli will be depleted] and nothing left to eat. The “fruits of his labor” has already caused 300,000 suicides. Bill’s catching up to Hitler rather quickly.
Bill Gates can stick the gmo banana where the sun don’t shine.
The Chiquitagates Scandal
I wonder if M. Bill Gates eats these GMO and why is a man of this intelligence and stature not informed on what he’s clearly doing. Wake up time.