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Relying on GM Crops to Battle Climate Change 'Suicidal,' Indian Activist Charges
LONDON - Faced with growing demand for food and increasingly unpredictable weather, many developing nations are debating whether to relax restrictions on the use of genetically modified crops.
Students from the department of environment studies pose with their painted faces during a protest against "bacillus thuringniensis" Bt brinjal in the northern Indian city of Chandigarh February 2, 2010. (REUTERS/Ajay Verma) Seed developers promise that a coming generation of genetically modified (GM) food crops will have climate-resilient features, from drought resistance to saltwater tolerance.
But widespread adoption of GM varieties by small farmers would be "suicidal in terms of climate change," said Vandana Shiva, an Indian social activist, environmentalist and proponent of small-scale farming.
"The (GM) system is more about companies making money from farmers than food security," she told AlertNet in an interview in London.
Adopting GM crops puts small farmers at greater financial risk because they often have to borrow money to buy more expensive GM seeds. If their crops fail, particularly repeatedly, they can find themselves unable to repay the loans, she said.
Worldwide, crop failures are increasingly harder to predict because the climate is becoming more erratic.
In recent years there has been an unprecedented spate of suicides by heavily indebted cotton farmers in Central India, Shiva said. More than three quarters of the suicides, her research shows, have been committed by farmers using GM cotton seed and struggling to repay loans.
GM suppliers sell their seeds on the condition that farmers buy fresh seed each year - something many growers can't afford if their crop fails. A decade ago, 80 percent of Indian farmers saved part of their harvest as seed to plant the following season's crops, Shiva said.
EXISTING SOLUTIONS
Plenty of drought- and flood-resistant traditional crop varieties already exist and simply need to be brought back to market, supporters of traditional farming say.
Shiva said India has hundreds of varieties of rice, and many that show resistance to flooding, drought and saltwater are now being carefully bred at Indian research institutes to increase yields and are then re-released to farmers.
In India's northeast Assam province, where fields have been flooded for weeks after intense rains, demand has surged for two rice varieties that can survive weeks under water and also produce well even in dry conditions.
Planting a broader variety of crop strains - rather than a couple of GM varieties - should help protect the world food supply and insure it against emerging climate threats, including an expanding range of crop pests.
While a pest might decimate some varieties of crops, it is unlikely it could destroy a wide range of varieties, she said.
"Resilience is built through diversity," Shiva said.
Keeping small farmers on their land is also key, she said, because small farmers are more productive per acre than big-scale growers, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation's figures.
"The majority of people in the world are still farming on small farms," she said. "If we're addressing food security we'd better enhance the security of small farms."
India's government recently delayed releasing a GM aubergine, which would have been the country's first GM vegetable, calling for more testing in the face of protests by environmentalists and some farmers.
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35 Comments so far
Show Allwell, everything else we do is 'suicidal', so i don't expect this will make much difference to our demise in the long run......
and anyway, who will listen to ms. shiva?.................
So true, coco. And as long as the world take over by the corporate powers continues, our slide into oblivion will just keep getting faster.
Hey coco, I listen to Ms Shiva, and have for many years.
hi peaceman.........how's it going?
i was referring to governments when i asked that question. i know people like you and me understand and listen when someone talks sense..........
btw, i caught up with kem on motherjones..........he's still battling the methane war...............
just as one lie forces the telling of another to cover the first, and so on...
chemical devastation requires chemical effort to repair, which cause further damage, and so on...
too dumb to manage this...too dumb to know...
Big Money overwhelms the grassroots. Are we going to rant and rave about it, or are we going to push our reps to introduce bills to get money out of politics?
Try talking to "our" reps without a checkbook in your hand and see what it gets you. money out if politics? in the u.s.a.? hey this is the capital of capitalism. can't happen.
We had ALL better learn how to grow food, protect water resources and fight against GM seed and food.
Vandana Shiva is an incredible woman doing incredible things. When she speaks we'd be wise to listen and heed her warnings. GM seed producers are the worst kind of liars and, as Shiva stated, are in it for the money only. Healthy and abundant food is NOT a concern they share with the rest of us. Same goes for other crops, such as cotton.
TOTALLY true
Michael Pollen relates that we get a vote. Every day we get to vote, hopefully, three times a day with the choices we make with our food dollar, Euro, or whatever.
Terran
That would be true if we knew what we were buying. Occasionally, you can track down where your food came from. Most times you can't. At least, not in America. Food does not have to be labled GM in this country. In Europe, my understanding is that it does.
Looking for non-GM food? Here is a list of products and manufacturers which do and do not use GM http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/news/true-food-shopping-list
Let your local grocer know that it makes a difference to you. Share the list with them. Send it to the major markets, and vote every time you put something into your mouth.
The only way to stop Monsanto and factory farming is to make your actions louder than you distain. One mosquito is a bother, a thousand? ... think about it.
Thank you greenchick for the link. I will take this list to every store I go to.
In the face of increasing environmental stress,
Its better to have more varieties of plants, not less.
More kinds that take advantage of local conditions and needs.
Not just adapted to corporate profits like genetically modified seeds.
All unique local experiments make all differences count with nature.
Find better solutions than research aligned to ownership patent law.
A massed produced solution creating dependents for shareholder wealth.
Steals from every small farmer struggling with poor climate health.
If the Indians are smart, they will ban MonINSANEto right off the bat. Making a deal with that devil is like handing control of the stock market to Bernie Madeoff.
But I'm sure Big-M's "Economic Hit Men" are already in country, trying to corrupt public officials who know only too painfully the big debt scam big M caused India's farmers the last decade.
Just say no to big monopolies. Just refuse to do business with them.
TJ
oh Indians are plenty smart- look at Vandana herself for example. But "smart"
has never been able to combat capitalism.
Big Ag goes to India, cuts a deal with the prime minister, and here comes monsanto and there go the small farmers. that;'s how it happens all over.
TJ, the overall direction of India in recent times should cause *serious* concern to Indians themselves. It's not clear whose side the government is on. The yearly national budget is a big thing there - not just as a revenue/expenditure account, but as a direct indicator of government policies. It turns out that this year, the government has dropped all pretensions of any vestigial socialist leaning from the past. I check out this site, 'Frontline' (a magazine) from time to time:
http://www.frontlineonnet.com
Walmart is already in India. Monsanto has been doing business there. Goldman Sachs is there too - but cleverly registered in Mauritius, because India has a treaty to avoid double taxation with that island nation, so most of the profits are even tax free. Insurance companies are slowly starting to spread their operations. Earlier, all the big insurance companies were in the "public sector", meaning, owned by the people, through the government. But western insurance companies have been putting enormous pressure to open up this sector for foreign investment. Some recent policy changes allow direct involvement of foreign companies to involve more directly in agriculture-related activities.
On the one side, the rich in India are getting phenomenally rich. But the funny thing is, most of these people are neo-rich, whereas traditional business houses that have pioneered such industries as iron and steel, automobiles (building trucks and buses), aviation (before being taken over by the government to form 'Air India'), etc., haven't seen much change in their fortunes. Extreme monopolies are taking shape in the lucrative cellphone business, and even in retail business, driving countless number of small traders and shopkeepers out of business.
Biodiversity is seriously threatened due to such monopolies because the big retail corporations establish supply chains that directly control what the farmers grow. So, instead of buying an unbelievable variety of fruits and vegetables from roadside vendors and small shopkeepers as in the past, you can now buy an extremely limited variety of them from these flashy supermarkets.
Unfortunately the popular media (TV) in India reflect an urban viewpoint, and all the suffering of the poor are basically footnotes to the main story of 'economic growth'. I have had heated arguments with people from India - mainly because they are convinced that any form of socialism that existed in the past acted only to keep India "backward". What they don't see is the extreme inequality and unsustainable nature of today's policies. If they see, they seem to think it's a necessary price to pay for development. When I challenge them with the question, 'development for whom, and at whose expense', I don't get a rational reply. Especially when I bring up the topic of people being evicted for dam construction, mining, etc. And I seriously doubt whether these yuppie Indians have even the remotest clue of the workings of global capitalism, and the *fact* that when a powerful corporation or a bank or an insurance company forces itself into an economy, it sucks *much more* out of it than whatever little it feeds into it. The East India Company quickly moved on to establish control in pockets of 18th-19th century India, raised revenue through taxation, put Indians to work, and carried on trade, producing phenomenal profits, before the British 'Crown' took direct control around 1860. While the outward appearances might have changed, I doubt that the mindset of big corporations has become any more benign today.
Many young Indians have a poor understanding of what Gandhi stood for. Above all, Gandhi stood for human dignity, fairness and self reliance. And though he did not talk about 'ecological sustainability' (to my knowledge), his policies were entirely consistent with a sustainable ecosystem - mainly because of his insistence on simplicity. These seem to have been the first casualties in the rush to 'development'. I hope that voices of people like Vandana Shiva can grow louder and are strong enough to take on the damn powerful global capitalist forces licking their chops to control the Indian economy and agriculture.
Great post Alcyon,
Thank you for it,
TJ
Vandana Shiva is the voice of reason in a mad world, the voice for small farmers all over the world. And for all of us.
go here
http://www.vandanashiva.org/
Diversity and small farming are excellent survival strategies.
Depending on how climate change plays out (historically, with speed and violence, to steal a phrase) even the infrastructure to distribute replacement bogus GM seeds wil likely be broken.
Monoculture, mass-farming is an extremely poor choice for the challenges we face.
Clearly.
Joe
And the same 'snake oil' salesmen still at it. How about creating a 'corrupt-proof' homo sapiens? One that can't be bought at any price. And most of the public gullible as always.
They have, ...you and me.
Great comments here, ...maybe there's hope after all. I especially liked, "Resilience is built through diversity." Indeed, just as nature itself is, and exactly why it's successful.
This website has the best commentors. Thanks guys/gals
We live under a kakistocracy and nothing substantive ever changes except the exponential growth of our collective demise.
Having been to India, I have seen the growing debate between the yuppie style capitalist followers and those who know better of the consequences. India cannot afford to follow the USA's path to being a lost soul of a nation. Capitalism may have made the caste system look less glaring to the Indian community but people had better realize that they cannot afford to ignore the dangers of such yuppie style capitalism which only strengthens the caste system under their noses.
I have to agree with Alcyon's understanding of the Indian population to some extent. Brainwashing has happened through the generations to the point of almost making India a lost soul of a nation. Even today when suicide among farmers is up, the Indian media is just as dishonest and deceptive as the American media in hiding the truth. My wife and I had met a student in Mumbai who laughed when I asked him about the farmers' plight and he'd say that they weren't working hard enough. Of course, there are a variety of people of all ages who would be quick to blame socialism instead of the caste system for the economic inequality. There was so much to witness in that nation and probably more that I missed since I wasn't there long enough but I must say that any Indian standing up for small farmers against GM is significant. I think that Monsanto is playing a different kind of divide and conquer in India from the US. In the US, they divide people among the uninformed but in India, it's pitting intelligence against intelligence. As to the young people misunderstanding Gandhi, it's not necessarily misunderstanding him. Some of them know a lot about him but they also allow macho values of both the East and West to delude them into believing that Gandhi is useless and there are reports of a growing Hindu segment entertaining the idea of copying Israel ! As for insurance companies, universal health care still exists but the insurance companies just like Monsanto are counting on yuppie style capitalists to sabotage even that weak system and totally privatize health care just like the USA. This will inevitably result in millions more deaths at a faster rate.
>>>maxpayne wrote: I think that Monsanto is playing a different kind of divide and conquer in India from the US. In the US, they divide people among the uninformed but in India, it's pitting intelligence against intelligence.
Excellent observation - although I'll be careful with the use of the word "intelligence". It's more like pitting one school of thought (limited knowledge) against another. From time to time, you'll see articles and reports in the Indian English language media arguing in favor of GM crops, quoting "experts". These "experts", though knowledgeable in their own field of research, routinely make statements certifying the safety of GM crops, and using a patronizing tone when they talk about people being needlessly afraid of and opposed to GM crops.
Indian farmers are not at all against using hybrid seeds and crops, and there is still a great deal of trust placed on the scientists. But they have also learned from experience not to trust everything thrown at them in the name of "science". On the other hand, people with zero exposure (not experience) to farming are often put in a position to make policies. The lack of such exposure among media reporters doesn't help either. Just as to many Americans, the USA is like the world, to many city-dwelling Indians, their urban setting represents "India". You can see the psychology that made a statement like "Let them eat cake" when you talk with some of these people.
If you think in terms of "divide and conquer", these urban yuppie Indians are already "conquered" in a sense, by all the glitz and glamor of the western world. They'll be happy to help with the conquest of the rest of India. Of course, that won't be easy. I still like to have faith in human intelligence. Having seen or read about people like Sundarlal Bahuguna, Medha Patkar, Vandana Shiva, P. Sainath, etc., I think the fight is on - although it seems to be becoming more and more unequal with every year.
There is also another form of "divide and conquer" strategy that seems to be at work - that is pitting one sector of the economy against another. I came across this news story recently:
"Below the radar, a new agribusiness pact with the U.S.":
http://www.hindu.com/2010/02/24/stories/2010022463341400.htm
[Quote]
The government quietly secured Cabinet approval for a new agreement with the United States that aims at promoting the privatisation of agricultural extension services and facilitating collaborations between American agribusiness and the Indian farm sector.
...
The stated justification for the MoU is that it would enable India to work with the U.S. as a partner to bolster “India’s agriculture and contribute to sustained growth and commercial viability of the farm sector.”
An India-U.S. Agriculture Knowledge Initiative is already in place that allows for U.S.-based private multi-national trading and seed giants like Cargill and Monsanto to be appointed on the board, enabling them to bear influence on the country’s farm research.
...
According to geneticist Suman Sahai of Gene Campaign, while India could gain from improved weather forecast technology in the proposed MoU, the bilateral collaboration on S&T, food and nutrition security will give access to the U.S. to India’s great genetic diversity of crop plants for commercialisation in its interest. “The opening of food security policy dialogue is also a matter of concern as it will impose on India the U.S. model of agribusinesses and vertical integration of food chain, impacting diversity and consolidating monopolies,” she said.
[End quote]
Overall, I can see that it's getting harder and harder for countries like India to safeguard their own vital interests - especially when one segment of their population is co-opted by the global capitalist system.
Alcyon, same here on excellent observation from your part. I can't tell you how dumb most of the progressive blogosphere except for this site is to still believe that the Congress Party of India is progressive populist but they are the same sites who still think that the Democratic Party is progressive populist so not too surprising. As for farming and agriculture, I found this out years ago as my wife was not only in total grief but also somewhat traumatized from the death of one of her uncles who was one of those farmers to commit suicide after being forced into bankruptcy. Those corporatists can do all their food production controlling, weather manipulation and I'm betting they're doing it for fashion changing purposes to distract and destroy, and whatever other research on cosmetic coverups but I don't see a bright future in doing all of this and I still wanna snatch all those skin lightening makeups and burn those companies to the ground for poisoning people's faces like that !
maxpayne, sorry to hear about your wife's uncle. There is very little by way of a "safety net" for farmers in many parts of India.
Speaking of emerging monopolies in the retail business, I have seen shops owned by such a large corporation as Reliance (called "Reliance Fresh", selling vegetables and fruits) competing with small-time vendors and shopkeepers. I think it's shameful and outrageous that such a large corporation should get into this business. I also read that Walmart entered India in collaboration with the Bharti Group - that also ownns Airtel in India. Bharti Wal-Mart CEO Raj Jain can't wait for India to open up its retail business sector to foreign investment, seems to be lobbying hard to this end. No one is even asking - what exactly is the need for a Walmart in India? How is it even possible in this day and age that people are not aware of what such corporations have done elsewhere? It's not like the time when the East India Company got in and the people didn't have a clue about what they were getting into.
These kinds of corporations don't do just buying and selling - they end up controlling the entire supply chain. In the case of groceries, starting with the farmers and what they grow - just so that they can bargain hard, driving down prices, while stocking "uniform" merchandise across their stores. It will be a sad day when vegetables and fruits start to carry "brand-names" in India - a tropical country with countless varieties of fruits and vegetables. The only "branding" in the past was the place names attached to some of the produce - to indicate their place of origin or the particular species.
Airtel was bad enough when we tried them out just to have a cell phone to communicate. I don't want to know what Walmart will do with it. I just wish India would repair its pathetically broken down roads for what it's worth. The Walmartization of India looks like it already has happened even before Walmart got in but how convenient for them. I would say those sad days of "brand names" on everything are already catching up. About the only places one could get brandless name products are in the middle of the dirty streets and who wants to do that if they're concerned about keeping their health? More than the Christians and Muslims, the vested business interests are doing horrendous damage and it's not just in India. I would add that if Christians in India really wanted to have it all, they would have fought for Walmart's entry a long time ago. Religious conflicts are small potatoes compared to unregulated capitalism.
Vendana Shiva is a physicist with an scientific mind and an activist's heart. She has watched chemical farming devastate her homeland’s farming industry and knows, first hand, the horror that GM seed and it’s enslavement of farmers to the associated pesticides and herbicides can cause.
GM seed, and the associated chemicals are all part of the ball and chain securely locked around the contracted farmer’s ankle. The chemicals destroy his soil so that no other seed will grow in it and pollute the runoff waters. The seed prices always continue an upward trend as do the chemicals needed to grow the seeds. The health dangers for the farmers and their families are well documented and, in America, we have seen farmers severely punished if their non-GM fields are polluted with pollen blown from neighboring GM crop fields. It is a vicious and capricious grab for total dominance with an untested science that could potentially put all life in peril world wide.
GM seed producers have made greed a virtue by veiling these seeds in terms that lead people to believe they can solve world hunger. World hunger, loss of access to clean water, and depletion of local resources are among the many issues that have grown from corporate greed, world wide.
Every breath, every heart beat, every word and deed should be used to stop the spread of GM seeds and their associated herbicides and pesticides. If it was a safe growing process and if the chemicals did not damage the soil, environment and general health, we would see the results of those tests heavily advertised. Instead, we see photo-image propaganda using the time honored professional, the farmer, as a photo prop, when in reality GM seed and the associated chemicals are an anti-life, pro corporate profit process that drains cash out of farming and food industries and into the bank accounts of monolithic chemical companies. Let it be added, this is done at a severe cost to the health of the planet and the life that clings to it.
Indian Farmer Suicides Not GM Related, Says Study
> New finding runs counter to arguments cited by NGOs
> Report also finds increased cotton yields in GM crops
James Randerson
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 5 November 2008
Excerpt:
The new analysis suggests that if anything, suicides among farmers have been decreasing since the introduction of GM cotton by Monsanto in 2002. "It is not only inaccurate, but simply wrong to blame the use of Bt cotton as the primary cause of farmer suicides in India," said the report from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington DC. "Despite the recent media hype around farmer suicides," it added, "fuelled by civil society organisations and reaching the highest political spheres in India and elsewhere, there is no evidence in available data of a 'resurgence' of farmer suicide in India in the last five years." It also found that the adoption of pest-resistant Bt cotton varieties had led to massive increases in yield and a 40% decrease in pesticide use.
If GM has nothing to do with a great deal of the farmer suicides, then why are farmers up in arms against it? GM isn't the only cause of farmer suicides no doubt and you can thank all those multinational corps for throwing farmers off their farmlands and destroying those lands to set up their slave labor concentration camps.
What should be so obvious from this article is that no one is pointing a gun at the farmers' heads and forcing them to buy GM seeds. If they wanted to, they could continue to plant their local varieties and continue to save seeds from year to year. The fact that they chose not to says a lot about the value of the particular seeds in question. And despite the latent opinions of the "elites" in the article and on this comment section, these farmers are not stupid. They can evaluate seeds and crop production as well as any scientist.
As for the huffing and puffing about not being able to save seeds, the same argument applies to hybrid seeds that have been in existence since at least the 50's. You have to buy seeds each year because the F2 doesn't give you a good harvest. But you don't hear any complaining about hybrid seeds. Why not?
The answer is that hybrid seeds don't elicit a religious-like response the way GM seeds do. So far the GM opponents haven't been able to show that there is anything intrinsically harmful with genetic manipulation, but they "know" there must be something wrong with it because it "isn't natural." So their response is akin to the creationists reacting to the overwhelming evidence for evolution and the denialists reacting to the overwhelming evidence for global warming. The same type of picky, irrelevant arguments and distortion of data go on with all three groups.
There are no such things as hybrid seeds and it's all a misnomer kinda like that "hybrid health care plan" aka "public option". If they can't get away with their known scams, just make it look like a "hybrid" and dumb down enough people. Works every time !