Terror Defense No Al Qaida Terror

Reject the affirmative’s one-size-fits-all solution- they can never effectively combat the complexities of famine

Context matters Solutions are going to be different from place to place. There are no silver bullets — no one right answer for everyone (not GMOs, not agroecology). People on the ground should be able to choose the tools that work in their unique context. So what does this mean for someone interested in helping to feed the world? In the public debate, I hear farmers saying that, if the world’s going to eat, they have to drive down the price of food by producing more of it. And I hear progressives saying that we already have plenty of food, we don’t need more ag technology, all we have to do is make sure everyone gets a fair share. These guideposts I’ve set out suggest that both are wrong. Here’s why: First, while it’s true that there would be enough food to go around if everyone shared equitably, humanity has never been all that good at sharing. The idea that we could have completely equitable distribution of food is much more unrealistic than the idea that we could eliminate poverty. Second, 70 percent of the world’s poor depend, at least in part, on farming. Helping them produce more, and make a little money, is a smart strategy for addressing poverty. But third, “feeding the world” only makes sense if it’s bottom up rather than top down. It doesn’t help relieve poverty when super-efficient farmers in the U.S. outcompete poor farmers in the global south. Feeding the world is noble if it means that some of those poor farmers will become as rich as Americans and produce a lot more food on a lot less land. But it’s not at all noble if it means competing at an unfair advantage against the less fortunate. Here’s what I think we should be doing instead of repeating those talking points: Listening to poor farmers. When you listen to those farmers, and the people who work closely with them, they say they want agricultural technology (like high-yielding seeds), affordable loans, and education for their children. We should also listen when they say they’d rather do something else than farming. Even though agriculture touches most of the poor people around the world, in some places the most effective ways of helping will have nothing to do with farming. Investments in agriculture do have a good track record of improving the standard of living. Nevertheless, if the goal is to improve conditions for humans and minimize our collective impact on the environment (I argue that the two are one and the same), we’ve got to stay focused on reducing poverty instead of fixating on any one particular means of getting there. Fighting poverty is complicated, but it’s not all that complicated. We know enough to help, and even agree on a lot of it across partisan lines. Also: It’s a hell of a lot simpler than producing babies tuned for photosynthesis.

Severity of famines has gotten much better and even the use of the word makes malnutrition harder to solve

Ó Gráda 14—University College Dublin (Cormac, “Famine is not the problem: a historical perspective,” 10 SEP 2014, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-2281.12080/full). WM

In terms of their demographic toll, the world's most recent famines – apart, perhaps, from Somalia in 2011–12 – by contrast have been ‘very small’ by historical standards. Although Malawi's president pleaded in April 2002 for aid to deal with a crisis that had put three-quarters of the population at risk, prompting United Nations (U.N.) agencies and non-governmental organizations (N.G.O.s) to set about addressing the country's ‘worst food crisis in half a century’, the eventual death toll in Malawi was miniscule. The best estimates available – those proposed by famine specialist Stephen Devereux at the University of Sussex – imply an increase of about 1 per cent above the normal rate. [7] These numbers matter because they reduce the impact – if not the veracity – of claims, common at the time, that pressure from the International Monetary Fund to reduce buffer stocks caused the famine. [8] In the case of Niger a few years later, estimates of 3.5 million people out of a population of around twelve million at imminent risk of starvation – almost invariably including 0.8 million children – were much recycled in July–August 2005. But again, as it turned out, crisis-induced excess mortality in Niger was almost certainly minimal. [9] The crisis in Niger, one of the poorest countries in the world, [10] led to a controversy about the definition of famine and the role of N.G.O.s. The crisis first came to global attention with Hilary Andersson's report from Zinder province on B.B.C.1's nine o'clock news on 20 July 2005, and attracted global attention thereafter. [11] But if famine is taken to mean ‘a shortage of food or purchasing power that leads directly to excess mortality from starvation or hunger-induced diseases’, then it is doubtful whether the Niger crisis of 2005 qualified. [12] For N.G.O.s the controversy reflected tensions between those interested in development aid and those specializing in emergency relief, with ‘the former commonly charging the latter with mobilizing disproportionate resources in a counterproductive way unable to address the deep-seated causes of primarily chronic crises’. [13] A key grievance concerned the validity of using a highly emotive but effective warning signal inappropriately: the Irish aid agency Concern Worldwide, for example, chose not to employ the description ‘famine’ at all. In Niger itself, the context of usage was primarily political: President Mamdou Tandja ‘would fly into a rage at the very mention of the word famine’. [14] Anthropologist and historian Benedetta Rossi has noted how Niger's poverty blurred the distinction between ‘emergency’ and ‘development’ as categories employed by competing N.G.O.s. In her words, ‘“chronic emergency” is perceived as an oxymoron by institutions whose approaches are predicated, alternatively, on “emergency” or “chronic poverty” rationales’. [15] The controversy prompted a Norwegian activist based in Niger to complain: As long as major institutions within the aid industry can continue [to] take credit for saving people from catastrophes that have never taken place, casting blame on those who say otherwise (often the local governments), the poor will be even poorer, as hasty relief campaigns built on untruthful events leave people and societies in lesser-known parts of the world worse off than before the intervention. There is something gone badly wrong when the world of aid – born out of a desire to help – has become an industry that in its desire for monetary growth is willing to tamper with the truth, not caring for the dignity and independence of the people whom they claim to assist. [16]

Plan can’t solve food security-reforming regional governments key

De Schutter, 12--UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food- (Oliver, “World hunger can't be solved with more food,” The Drum, 18 Jun 2012, http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-06-19/de-schutter-hunger-is-political/4077824). WM

What is clear is that there is no simple macro-economic recipe for addressing hunger and malnutrition. What best practices show is that hunger hinges on cross-cutting, distributional factors which are as much about access and social inclusion as they are about economics. This is why cities and provinces can succeed in reducing hunger while a country fails, and why a country can make progress while the rest of a region continues to struggle. We must therefore understand hunger as the highly political question that it is – political in the sense that the mechanisms of participation and accountability that engage people with political processes are the very same things that provide a buffer against the social marginalisation at the heart of hunger. As Amartya Sen once remarked, "the law stands between food availability and food entitlement". What he meant is that unless we take seriously our duties towards the most marginalised and vulnerable, and the essential role of legal entitlements in ensuring that the poor have either the resources required to produce enough food for themselves or a purchasing power sufficient to procure food from the market, our efforts at increasing production will hardly change their situation. For people are hungry not because there is too little food: they are hungry because they are marginalised economically and powerless politically. Securing the right to food is therefore the only path to durably tackling hunger. The importance of improving the incomes of the poor, facilitating internal and foreign investment, and increasing agricultural yields cannot be downplayed in the hunger equation. But for genuine, sustainable progress to be made in tackling hunger and malnutrition, political processes must first be made accountable, participative, and attuned to the cross-cutting complexities of the hunger question. Only when the political process is human rights-proofed in this way can we be confident that the reinvestment in a country and its agriculture will truly benefit the poor and food insecure.

Food Distribution

Food transportation solves now- airdrops

BARIYO 14— reporter (Nicholas, “Airdrops Aim to Ease South Sudan Suffering,” the Wall Street Journal, Sept. 8, 2014, http://www.wsj.com/articles/food-airdrops-aim-to-relieve-suffering-in-south-sudan-1410172436). WM

KAMPALA, Uganda—The World Food Program has started emergency airdrops of food to millions of people isolated by conflict and rainy conditions in South Sudan, the agency said on Monday, in the latest effort to address an unfolding crisis in the world's youngest nation. The WFP is conducting the daily drops out of bases in South Sudan, Uganda and Ethiopia to provide food and nutrition assistance to at least 2.9 million people in the three oil-rich states of Upper Nile, Unity and Jonglei by the end of the year, said Lydia Wamala, WFP spokeswoman in Uganda. The process is expected to continue over the next two months but could last longer as a civil war continues to ravage South Sudan, Ms. Wamala said. The current conflict, which began in December, has splintered the country along ethnic lines, pitting President Salva Kiir's Dinka community against former Vice President Riek Machar's Nuer tribesmen. Inadequate security and infrastructure in South Sudan have compelled the food agency to use Ugandan and Ethiopian airspace to reach people in dire need of food, officials said. "WFP is using land, air and water to deliver food to people who are isolated by conflict and facing intense hunger," said Alice-Martin Daihirou, the organization's country director. "While WFP's team here in Uganda is providing this critical logistical support to our colleagues in South Sudan, we are also assisting a growing number of South Sudanese refugees."

Food transportation is becoming increasingly easier for aid programs

BARIYO 14— reporter (Nicholas, “U.N. Steps Up Food Aid to South Sudan,” the Wall Street Journal, Dec. 30, 2014, http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-n-steps-up-food-aid-to-south-sudan-1419964155). WM

KAMPALA, Uganda—The United Nations started delivering food aid by barge to South Sudan as fears grow that the country’s civil war will lead to widespread famine early next year. The vessel transported the food Monday from Sudan by way of the Nile, an aid route that has been closed since 2011, when the Khartoum government cut off all commercial traffic on the river after South Sudan became independent. The U.N.’s World Food Program said Tuesday it expects in the next few days to ship some 21,000 metric tons of U.S.-donated food to South Sudan’s Upper Nile state, where fighting for control of the country’s only functioning oil fields is raging. The reopening of the Nile route, which follows talks between officials from both governments, was welcomed by the U.N. and other aid agencies, which have been forced to rely heavily on airplanes to ship food. Such deliveries are up to seven times as expensive as ground and water transport, the U.N.’s World Food Program said. Stephen Kearney, the agency’s acting director in South Sudan, said the opening of the Nile to aid shipments and the reduced transport costs come at a critical time.

GMOs

GMO biotech sector inherently exaggerate harms- multiple studies prove

Todhunter 14—an extensively published independent writer and former social policy researcher (Colin, “India: Selling Out To Monsanto. GMOs and the Bigger Picture,” Global Research, August 08, 2014, http://www.globalresearch.ca/independent-india-selling-out-to-monsanto-gmos-and-the-bigger-picture/5395187). WM

Monsanto in India In India, small farms account for 92 percent of farms and occupy around 40 percent of all agricultural land. They form the bedrock of food production. However, there is a concerted effort to remove farmers from the land. Hundreds of thousands of farmers have taken their lives since 1997 and many more are experiencing economic distress or have left farming as a result of debt, a shift to (GM) cash crops and economic liberalisation [3]. Monsanto already controls the cotton industry in India and is increasingly shaping agri-policy and the knowledge paradigm by funding agricultural research in public universities and institutes. Its practices and colonisation of institutions have led to it being called the ‘contemporary East India Company’ [4], and regulatory bodies are now severely compromised and riddled with conflicts of interest where decision-making over GMOs are concerned [5]. In the meantime, Monsanto and the GM biotech sector forward the myth that GM food is necessary to feed the world’s burgeoning population. They are not. Aside from the review by GRAIN, the World Bank-funded International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge and Science for Development Report stated that smallholder, traditional farming (not GMOs) can deliver food security in low-income countries through sustainable agri-ecological systems [5]. The Standing Committee on Agriculture in Parliament unequivocally concluded that GM seeds and foods are dangerous to human, animal and environmental health and directed the former Government of Manmohan Singh to ban GMOs [6]. Despite such evidence and the recommendations to put a hold on open field GM trials by the Supreme Court-appointed Technical Expert Committee, the push is on within official circles to give such trials the green light. Monsanto cannot be trusted The GM biotech sector cannot be trusted. As its largest player, Monsanto is responsible for knowingly damaging people’s health and polluting the environment and is guilty of a catalogue of decades-long deceptive, duplicitous and criminal practices [7]. It has shown time and again its contempt for human life and the environment and that profit overrides any notion of service to the public, yet it continues to propagate the lie that it has humanity’s best interests at heart because its so-called GMO ‘frontier technology’ can feed the hungry millions. The sector attempts to control the ‘science’ around its products by carrying out inadequate, secretive studies of its own, placing restrictions on any independent research into its products and censoring findings that indicate the deleterious impacts of its products [8]. It has also faked data [9] and engages in attacking scientists who reach conclusions not to its liking [10,11]. It cannot demonstrate that yields are better, nutritional values are improved, health is not damaged or that harm to the environment does not occur with the adoption of GMOs. Independent studies and evidence, not inadequate industry funded or back ones, have indicated yields are often worse and herbicide use has increased [12,13,14], health is negatively impacted [15,16], soil is damaged [17] and biodiversity is undermined [18], among other things. GRAIN found that around 56 percent of Russia’s agricultural output comes from family farms which occupy less than 9 percent of arable land. Russia does not need or want GM crops, which the Russian Prime Minister has described as amounting to little more than a form of biological warfare weapon [19]. And here lies the real heart of the matter. Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once said that if you control oil you control nations, but if you control food you control people. GMOs are not needed to feed the world. Science cannot justify their use. They are a weapon. In India, there is a drive to remove small/family farms, which are capable of ensuring the nation’s food security, and eventually replace them with larger biotech-controlled monoculture farms with GM crops for Western styled processed-food supermarkets and export [20]. It is no surprise that the likes of Syngenta, Monsanto and Walmart had a direct hand in drawing up the Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture, which was in turn linked to the US sanctioning the opening up of India’s nuclear power sector. Despite India not being a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, US corporations are now actively involved in helping India develop its civil nuclear capabilities. Payback appears to come in the form of handing over the control of India’s agricultural land and food system to the US via that country’s biotech companies. GMOs and the bigger picture Russia is correct to conflate bio-terror and GMOs. The oil-rich Rockefeller family set out to control global agriculture via the petrochemical-dependent ‘green revolution’. The destruction of traditional farmer-controlled agriculture was actively supported by the US government and its Trojan horse agritech corporations under the agenda set out by Kissinger. GMOs now represent the ultimate stranglehold over food via ‘terminator’ seed technology, seed patenting and intellectual property rights.

GMOs can’t solve hunger and prop up big business

Cassidy 15—EWG research analyst(Emily, “FEEDING THE WORLD WITHOUT GMOS,” Environmental Working Group, MARCH 2015, http://cdn3.ewg.org/sites/default/files/EWG%20Feeding%20the%20World%20Without%20GMOs%202015.pdf?_ga=1.197427245.300763632.1436300092). WM

Much of the investment in genetic engineering has been spent on crops that do very little to expand the global food supply. Globally, corn and soybeans account for about 80 percent of the land area devoted to growing genetically engineered crops, and both are overwhelmingly used for animal feed and biofuels. Most of the investment in GE crops ends up feeding cows and cars, not people. Moreover, seed companies’ investment in improving yields in already high-yielding areas does little to improve food security; it mainly helps line the pockets of seed and chemical companies, large-scale growers and producers of corn ethanol. The narrative that GE crops will help feed the world ignores the fact that hunger is mostly the result of poverty. It is true that about 70 percent of the world’s poor are farmers and that improving their crop yields could help raise them out of poverty, but what truly limits the productivity of small farmers is the lack of basic resources such as fertilizer, water and the infrastructure to transport crops to market. If Big Ag companies truly want to guarantee that poor farmers can feed themselves, the cheapest way would be to ensure that they have the right mix of fertilizers and to help with infrastructure improvements such as roads to market. In regions such as Africa, farmers can only afford a tenth of the fertilizer recommended for their crops.8 Industry supported research found that it can take more than $100 million to research and develop9 a single genetically engineered variety, money that would be better spent to address the factors that frequently limit crop yields. By comparison, it typically costs only about $1 million to develop a new variety by traditional breeding techniques.10,11 In Africa, moreover, traditional crossbreeding has so far outperformed genetic engineering in improving crops’ drought tolerance and efficiency of resource use.

GMO companies aren’t structured to solve problems

Specter 14—staff writer at The New Yorker (Michael focuses on diseases and agricultural biotechnology in the developing world, “Seeds of Doubt,” The New Yorker, August 25, 2014, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/08/25/seeds-of-doubt). WM

Molecular biology transformed medicine, agriculture, and nearly every other scientific discipline. But it has also prompted a rancorous debate over the consequences of that knowledge. Genetically modified products have often been advertised as the best way to slow the impact of climate change, produce greater yields, provide more nutrients in food, and feed the world’s poorest people. Most of the transgenic crops on the market today, however, have been designed to meet the needs of industrial farmers and their customers in the West. Shiva and other opponents of agricultural biotechnology argue that the higher cost of patented seeds, produced by giant corporations, prevents poor farmers from sowing them in their fields. And they worry that pollen from genetically engineered crops will drift into the wild, altering plant ecosystems forever. Many people, however, raise an even more fundamental objection: crossing varieties and growing them in fields is one thing, but using a gene gun to fire a bacterium into seeds seems like a violation of the rules of life.

GMOs cant solve- make it harder for local farmers and cant solve barriers inhibiting hunger solvency

Portfolio 21 2014 (Portfolio 21 is a global equity fund. Actual authors names withheld. “The Case Against GMOs: An Environmental Investor’s View of the Threat to our Global Food Systems,” Sept. 30, 2014, http://portfolio21.com/wp-content/uploads/dlm_uploads/2014/10/Portfolio-21-The-Case-Against-GMOs.pdf). WM

The question remains, what exactly are these impacts? Purveyors of transgenic products claim that GM farming boosts yields and farming incomes by saving on fossil fuels, pesticides, and labor. Another claim arising from this assumption is that GM farming represents a step toward environmental sustainability by decreasing emissions and the use of agricultural chemicals. GM advocates also maintain that these products pose no health risks to either the farmers or consumers. None of these arguments have held up over extended periods of use or in the face of independent testing. Pesticide and herbicide-resistant crops (by far the most widely used GM varieties) actually lead to an increase in pesticide and herbicide use over time horizons of as little as four years.3 Financial gains, which farmers make through increased yields, are offset by increased spending on patented seeds, fertilizer, and herbicides or pesticides, leading to a net decrease in income for all but the largest mega-farms. These higher input costs are especially damaging when small, more marginal farmers experience crop failure. Elevated levels of bankruptcy and consolidation have frequently occurred following the deployment of GM crops. Perhaps the most pervasive argument for GM crops is centered on the message that these crops are needed to “feed the world.” The underlying assumptions of this argument, however, are simply incorrect. At current levels of global production, there is enough food for every person on earth to have 3,000 calories per day.4 The problem lies with distribution, income, and food waste. GM crops can actually exacerbate hunger issues by pressuring farmers in marginal areas to grow cash crops for export or extensive processing. Farmers who make the switch to GM products usually get an initial increase in their yields, but this can be attributed to the varieties used as a base for the commercially available transgenic varieties. Furthermore, in repeated tests, conventional breeding has been just as or more successful at delivering “climate-ready” crops that incorporate drought or flood resistance. For environmental, social, and governance (ESG) focused investment strategies, agricultural biotech represents an unacceptable level of risk across a wide range of factors. The problem lies less with individual companies or products, but rather with how GM agriculture in its current iteration jeopardizes the whole agricultural system. Just as these risks are system-based, the consequences would manifest themselves by changing the very biological, economic, and social framework of food systems.

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