Multinational companies that want to control seeds distribution are behind the push to have GMOs in the country, lobbies have said.
Four organisations yesterday said international companies have been pressuring the government to have the Kenya Seed Company privatised.
They are Route to Food Initiative, Kenya Biodiversity Coalition, Africa Biodiversity Network and Greenpeace Africa. “We see these actions as an attempt to introduce GMOs, despite the current legislative disposition,” Kenya Biodiversity Coalition national coordinator Anne Maina said in a joint statement at the Stanley Hotel. In 2012, the Health ministry banned GMOs in crops.
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Maina was accompanied by African Biodiversity Network regional programme coordinator Karen Nekesa, Food For Life campaign manager Renee Olende and project lead of the Route to Food Initiative Layla Liebetrau.
She said once Kenya Seed is privatised, promoters of GMO will use local companies to sell their seeds.
Kenya Seed’s mandate is to research, develop, market and avail certified high-yielding agricultural seeds.
Maina said GM seeds and farm produce represent “a corporate takeover of the food systems.”
She said over-dependence on corporates for seeds and farm inputs has increased Kenya’s vulnerability to shocks related to food production.
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Maina said this has lured farmers into the use of agro-chemicals and stands in the way of sustainable solutions such as ecological agriculture.
GMO crops supporters say they are high-yielding, resistant to disease and pests and drought-tolerant.
Maina said they were shocked after President Uhuru Kenyatta on Mashujaa Day directed the ministries of Health, Agriculture and Trade to quickly revive the cotton sector, including the possibility of farming Bt cotton, a genetically modified variety.Maina said it showed the government had made a unilateral decision to adopt GMOs.
Olende said Kenya has enough food to feed its people without adopting GMOs. “Food wasted in Africa is enough to feed three million people,” she said. Olende said climate change cannot be solved by GMOs.
Nekesa said 40 per cent of Bt cotton is going to textile while 60 per cent is eaten as oil and animal feeds.