recently this was posted ...
As part of new initiatives to boost the production
of cocoa in the country, he said the Nigerian
Cocoa Research Institute had released eight new
hybrids of cocoa, adding that the Federal
Government has distributed 1.4 million cocoa
pods to farmers in cocoa producing states across
the country.


We all know the rockafella trained economist is pursuing the agenda of the white elite to wipe out natural occuring food in nigeria . increase diseases .. and make nigerian farmers solely dependent on the elite

gmo seeds and foods are not safe .. this is one of
the greatest scams .. that would reduce the
natural potency of food and also make us
subservent to the gmo companirs forever . Forget
that crap of it being locally produced .. there is a
patent for transfer of gmo technology and also
royalties would be paid.
I would give kudos to the minister of Agriculture ,
he is serving his paymasters well ... western
imperialism at its highest ... while european
countries are rejecting gmos .. we are embrscing
it whole heartedly .. Nigerians should wakeup and
smell the coffee


While Africa has long been
intransigent in its stance
against introducing
genetically modified crops,
cracks are forming in the
opposition, and the world's
leading biotechs -- DuPont,
Monsanto, and Syngenta
among them -- are poised to
take advantage of the
weakening stance and flood
the market with seed,
fertilizer, and pesticides.
With Europe effectively
closed off to GM crops, the
seed and chemical giants are
looking to Africa to be their
next growth market.
To pave the way for choking
off conventional seed stock
and replace it with GM seeds,
an African agricultural
organization issued a report
last week saying opposition in
Africa to GM crops is a
"farce" based on a "fear of
the unknown". Backed by the
former head of the United
Nations, Kofi Annan, and the
Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation, the Alliance for a
Green Revolution in Africa,
or AGRA, says GM crops have
been closely studied for
decades and are no riskier
than conventional crops.
The report goes on to note
that only four African
countries have permitted
fully commercialized GM
crops -- Burkina Faso, Egypt,
South Africa, and Sudan --
and of those four, South
Africa accounts for 82% of
the total.
That's why DuPont's
acquisition of South Africa's
largest seed company,
Pannar, was seen as an
important conquest. It gives
the chemicals company a
large handhold over maize,
one of the most important
crops on the continent, three-
quarters of which is already
genetically modified. DuPont,
through its Pioneer Hi-Bred
division, now has control
over one of the largest
collections of genetic
resources for the crop.
AGRA says enabling
environments for adopting
GM crops are being put into
place. Five countries are
conducting field trials of
biotech crops -- the final step
before adoption -- while most
others have signed on to
conventions and protocols
that set the stage for adopting
the necessary policy and
regulatory "frameworks".
If Africa does succumb to the
siren song of GM crops,
control of the food chain will
be taken from the hands of
the family farmer and placed
into those of the agri-giants.
No longer will the traditional
practices of seed saving from
one year to the next be
permitted, but farmers will
be forced instead to buy new
seed from DuPont or
Monsanto each year, or at the
least pay royalties. We've
seen that here in the U.S.,
where Monsanto has
successfully sued farmers
because they bought seed
from third parties and then
tried to grow crops
afterwards without rendering
royalties to the biotech.
Then starts a cycle of
becoming ever more reliant
on the herbicides and
pesticides necessary to grow
those crops. Why buy
Monsanto's Roundup-
resistant seed if you're not
going to spray the herbicide
afterwards? Unfortunately,
the overapplication of these
chemicals is leading to the
creation of superweeds and
superbugs and have been
linked with the destruction of
the honeybee population. For
farmers who wished to go
back to the old ways, their
fields would have to lie fallow
for years before the chemicals
poured onto them were gone,
a practical impossibility when
the harvests are used for
subsistence.

Africa is facing today the challenge of the introduction of GM (genetically modified) crops and
GM food aid. The pressure has stepped up in
recent years on African countries, and our
Governments are being strongly lobbied to accept
the tools of modern biotechnology to purportedly
solve poverty, hunger and malnutrition. GM cotton
and experimental crops such as GM sweet potato
and cassava are being portrayed as important
crops to tackle poverty and hunger in the
continent.
The environmental network Friends of the Earth
(FoE) in Africa opposes the introduction of GMOs
as it will constitute a threat to African biodiversity
and the continent’s food sovereignty, and will
make nothing to help Africa tackling poverty and
hunger. In Nigeria, Togo, Cameroon, Ghana,
Mauritius, Sierra Leone, South Africa and
Swaziland the local chapters of FoE are
campaigning for a moratorium on the introduction
of GM crops in the environment.
In 2004, FoE African groups officially created an
African Regional Campaign on GMOs to better
coordinate all regional activities on this issue.
ERA-FoE Nigeria was elected as regional
coordinator for the Campaign, as well as co-
coordinator for the International GMO Programme
of Friends of the Earth International (FoEI).
Friends of the Earth groups in Africa are members
of FoEI, the world's largest grassroots
environmental network, uniting 71 diverse national
member groups and some 5,000 local activist
groups on every continent.
Raising the awareness of the African public about
the impact of GMOs
Image FoE African groups have successfully
contributed to increase the awareness about the
impact of GMOs in Africa. They have organized
many activities against GMOs at national levels
since 2001. Solid coalitions and allies have been
built in countries such as Nigeria and Togo, and
significant media coverage through radio, TV,
local newspapers has appeared over the last
years in Africa. With the adoption of the regional
campaign in 2004 networking with other groups in
Africa and abroad intensified and the national
campaigns got increasingly solid.
Food aid, hunger and GMOs
For FoE Africa to challenge the myth of GM crops
as a solution to hunger and poverty, and the
imposition of GM food aid is a priority campaign
issue. FoEI was the first environmental group to
adopt a specific GM food aid campaign at the
international level in 2000. FoE African groups
particularly since the Southern Africa debate in
2002 increased its activities in Africa against the
imposition of GM food aid in the continent, and
organized in 2004 the first international
Conference on hunger, food aid and GMOs in
Mozambique together with a broad coalition of
partners.
FoE Nigeria and FoE affiliates, Earthlife in South
Africa, cooperated with many African groups such
as the African Center for Biosafety to stop the
push by the World Food Programme and USAID to
force Angola and Sudan to accept GM food aid
against their will. After a joint letter to the WFP
signed by over 60 African groups and intense
media activities, both WFP and USAID stopped its
open public harassment of both countries in 2004.
Challenging the corporate spin: GM crops are not
a solution to hunger
GM crops commercialized in Africa today are
products from big corporations as Monsanto.
Monsanto´s GM cotton in South Africa is
advertised as the “miracle” crop against poverty
by industry sources. Experimental crops such as
GM Sweet potato in Kenya and GM cassava in
Nigeria were also promoted as important crops to
tackle hunger and poverty. In reaction to this
publicity early in 2006 FoE Africa cooperated with
the African Center for Biosafety in the launch of a
report in Africa focused on Monsanto titled “Who
Benefits from GM crops”. The report released
simultaneously to an industry report celebrating
the benefits of GM crops by an organization
called ISAAA received worldwide coverage with
the message that GM crops failed to deliver any
benefit in the fight against hunger and poverty.
Even Monsanto in South Africa had to admit that
the first decade of GM crops have done little on
this aspect.
FoE Nigeria and Ghana organized also in 2006 a
corporate tour with Percy Schmeiser, famous for
his long fight against Monsanto in Canada. The
experience of farmers like Percy for the African
society is a very powerful message of the
consequences to Africa if the corporate model of
GM crops Monsanto is promoting is adopted.
Adopting strict GMO laws
In order to prevent the import of GMOs without
information or knowledge one necessary element
is the establishment of strict GMO laws at the
national level. FoE African groups are very active
in monitoring policy and regulatory Biosafety
developments in francophone and Anglophone
Africa. For example FoE Togo has been the lead
actor in the adoption of its law on GMOs in the
country and now is acting as civil society legal
adviser for other groups in Francophone Africa,
which desire to build a comprehensive Biosafety
regime. FoE Nigeria and Cameroon are also
actively involved in the national legislation and
have organized specific events together with civil
servants in order to adopt comprehensive
regimes. FoE Togo and FoE Nigeria link their
national efforts to the international fora of the
Biosafety Protocol, and have been present at all
Meeting of the Parties of this UN agreement.

Donating patented seeds, which takes
away the farmers' sovereignty, is not the way
to save the third-world poor. As reported by
Netline last year , Monsanto and other biotech
companies have collaborated with the Gates
Foundation via the Alliance for a Green
Revolution in Africa (AGRA) to promote the use
of genetically modified (GM) crops in Africa.
The Gates Foundation has donated hundreds of
millions of dollars to AGRA, and in 2006 Robert
Horsch was hired for the AGRA project. Horsch
was a Monsanto executive for 25 years. In a
nutshell, the project may be sold under the
banner of altruism and 'sustainability', but in
reality it's anything but. It's just a multi-billion
dollar enterprise to transform Africa into a GM-
crop-friendly continent.

say no to gmos and embrace organic farming

According to recent research out of
Brazil, tomatoes that are grown in
organic soil are far healthier than
tomatoes grown with non-organic soil.
Don’t let their small size fool you,
organic tomatoes pack a powerful
nutrient punch. Because organic farming
does not use nitrogen fertilizers, plants
are forced to activate their own defence
mechanisms which drives up their level
of antioxidants. The more stress a plant
is under, the greater the amount of
polyphenols it will produce. Polyphenols
are natural antioxidants that not only
protect the plants but as research has
found, protect us from such things as
cardiovascular and degenerative
diseases and even cancer.
Free Report: FLAT STOMACH PLAN -- 5
Day...
However, while many are embracing the
organic movement, working on building
the soil, there is still much genetically
modified research being conducted.
From seeds that resist pest infestation,
drought and disease to the latest
research on using a tomato as a carrier
for a cholesterol-lowering peptide, there
seems to be no stopping our attempt to
mess with what comes naturally.
In a mind-blowing study out of UCLA
school of medicine, a genetically
modified tomato was used to lower
inflammation in mice fed a typical
Western diet. The results of the study
showed that mice who consumed the
tomato had lower levels of inflammation
and bad cholesterol in their blood than
mice who did not eat the tomatoes.
What researchers say this means is that
conditions with a strong inflammatory
component such as ovarian and prostate
cancers, Alzheimer’s, asthma and more
could be treated by use of this peptide-
stuffed tomato. If this sounds scary to
you, it is because it is. The lack of long-
term studies on genetically modified
foods and what research is available,
raise a yellow caution flag to such
practices.
Why not just eat a healthy diet loaded
with organic fruits and vegetables and
avoid the inflammation that leads to
disease in the first place? Said the
organic tomato to the genetically
modified tomato ” I know I am…but
what the heck are you?”

under our watchdul eyes ...mosanto are secretly partnering with our research organisations to release cocoa, cassava, rice ...

are we asleep ... i detest this administration .. this is the greatest crime ... removing our food sovereignty and allowing these devils to plaunder africa again using their agents all n d name of globalisation
..

I don't know what to believe again...Confused