By Simba Chikanza | Do not take advice from whites on food, says Matinyarare.

Where does Rutendo Matinyarare’s video claiming that white people are out to colonise Africa using GMO seed, sit on the fence of facts seeing that the group of white innovators led by govt advisor, Brian Oldrieve are the planet earth’s leading advocates of conservation farming (pfumvudza) which is organic seed farming?

Popular farmer and activist, Benjamin Freeth, MBE, speaking to ZimEye passes the following comments saying:

Rutendo Matinyarare sounds very racist in content and expresion, as he makes noise over what is common practice all over the world, where farmers are regularly being drawn to grow GMO seed. This puts the world under a system where if they want to eat then the farmers in those nations have to grow those kind of seeds. The seed is being controlled all over the place, it’s not only in Africa, it is everywhere.

There is a solidarity among all farmers across the world. To try and turn this into a racism issue is utterly misleading.

One of the things we are doing in Zimbabwe is growing open polinated seed, and giving it out to people so that they do have that ability to feed themselves and keep their seed for next year, and grow it again.

And he is absolutely right on the fact that you can grow food for zero dollars, and thats one of the things we are trying to promote, is people being to grow seed for zero dollars, and using open pollinated varieties, using compost making so that you don’t need fertilisers, using manures, using melt on the surface of the soil, using conservation tillage, you can literally grow your food supply for zero dollars without having to depend on the big companies to be able to feed your family. Obviously on a commercial level, this is difficult, we need to try and work out ways of doing this on a commercial level.

But the whole seed issue and the way that agriculture has gone in recent years, the world, I believe is serious concern.

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