Chengal Reddy
P Chengal Reddy is President of the Federation of Farmers Associations (FFA) based in the city of Hyderabad in the Indian State of Andhra Pradesh. Although little known in India outside of Andhra Pradesh, he has been placed at the forefront of support for GM crops in India together with the Kisan Coordination Committee and the Liberty Institute.
The FFA claims to be an 'independent organisation representing some two million members from 500 farmers organisations in Andhra Pradesh', its real constituency appears to be quite small.
Pro-GM lobbyists, like AfricaBio, describe Reddy as speaking 'on behalf of small-holder farmers' but the FFA is actually a lobby for Andhra Pradesh's big commercial farmers.
Although Reddy sometimes presents himself as 'a farmer', in interviews he has admitted to knowing little about farming having never farmed in his life.
He is a member though of the Peddireddy Thimma Reddy Farm Foundation, a family Trust established in 1990. His family have long been a prominent rightwing political force in Andhra Pradesh -- his father having coined the saying, 'There is only one thing Dalits [untouchable caste members] are good for, and that's being kicked'.
He has worked closely with Monsanto since the mid-1990s, and features prominently in Monsanto glossy brochure A Celebration of Fifty Years in India (Monsanto 2000). The current www.monsantoindia.com website features at least ten separate items in which Reddy features.
Reddy appeared alongside GM lobbyist CS Prakash at a workshop organised by the FFA in 1999 and again a year later at a pro-GM Delhi conference organised by the extreme right-wing anti-regulation pressure group, the Liberty Institute at their Julian Simon Centre.
Reddy has been used by the GM lobby as a representative of 'Third World farmers' on a number of occasions, including at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002 where he was the guest of ISAAA and AfricaBio. India's Kisan Coordination Committee was also present and together with Reddy and TJ Buthelezi they participated in a carefully choreographed pro-GM demonstration at which Reddy was one of the speakers. He attacked organic farming and called for access to 'new technologies and especially to biotechnologies.'
