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Resisting the Corporate Theft of Seeds
We are in a food emergency. Speculation and diversion of food to biofuel has contributed to an uncontrolled price rise, adding more to the billion already denied their right to food. Industrial agriculture is pushing species to extinction through the use of toxic chemicals that kill our bees and butterflies, our earthworms and soil organisms that create soil fertility. Plant and animal varieties are disappearing as monocultures displace biodiversity. Industrial, globalized agriculture is responsible for 40 percent of greenhouse gases, which then destabilize agriculture by causing climate chaos, creating new threats to food security.
Community seed banks help preserve local biodiversity. (Photo credit: GREEN Foundation)
But the biggest threat we face is the control of seed and food moving out of the hands of farmers and communities and into a few corporate hands. Monopoly control of cottonseed and the introduction of genetically engineered Bt cotton has already given rise to an epidemic of farmers’ suicides in India. A quarter-million farmers have taken their lives because of debt induced by the high costs of nonrenewable seed, which spins billions of dollars of royalty for firms like Monsanto.
I started Navdanya in 1987 to address the challenge of GM seeds, seed patents and seed monopolies.
We have been successful in reclaiming seed sovereignty and creating sixty community seed banks to reclaim seed as a commons. We have proven that biodiverse ecological agriculture produces more food and nutrition per acre than monocultures, while reducing costs to the planet and to farmers.
But our efforts are like a little lamp in a very dark room. We keep the lamp of possibilities and alternatives burning. The food emergency, however, calls for a much wider response.
The food movement must become more integrated, from seed to table, from village to city, from South to North. We need to be stronger in challenging the corporate control of our food system and the role of governments in increasing, rather than stopping, the corporate abuse of our seeds and soils, our bodies and our health. Michelle Obama has an organic garden at the White House, but the Obama administration is embracing GMOs in the United States and around the world. The US-India agriculture agreement—signed by President Bush and Prime Minister Singh in 2005, at the same time as the signing of the US-India nuclear deal—has on its board representatives from Monsanto, ADM and Walmart. The hijacking of our food systems is the hijacking of our democracy.
That is why we have to make food democracy the core of the defense of our freedom and survival. We will either have food dictatorship for a while and then a collapse of our food systems and our societies, or we will succeed in building robust food democracies, resting on resilient ecosystems and resilient communities. There is still a chance for the second alternative.
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19 Comments so far
Show AllThe Corp patenting of seeds & genomes [IE: Life] is one of the most Dangerous & Insidious things to have been 'legalized' in our life-times. Seeds are what insures that people can eat Freely from Mother-Nature Perpetually -YET- Now we see the Monsanto's of this World trying to seize control of that Divine Right- for Profit, Power & Control!
Too many of us so-called 'sophisticated' folks think that seedless fruit is a 'good' thing. Besides the fact that seedless fruit seldom taste as good as natural unadulterated fruit- their seeds are the extra Blessing that ensures we are able to continue eat the fruits of Mother-Nature, on & on & on... Yet we are ceding this right over to Agra-Biz Corps because we so sophisticated we don't like having to spit seeds out as we eat fruit! How Foolish Can You Be!
Monsanto and the USA government have been doing this for decades. This is one of the reasons the USA invaded and still occupies Iraq. Read about Iraqi Order 81. Control of the planet's food systems and all of agriculture has been a goal of the US for years. Someday, very soon, all humans will be held hostage by the US Capitalists.
I have stopped asking how we got here. I now ask, how we could not have gotten here after what we did to the Native Americans.
To rosemarie
So TRUE they enter, kill, rape, steal, rename, pattern & copyright all, from seeds to vast regions and resources, humans included.
From Israel cannibalizing Palestine inch by inch ethnic cleansing while we're distracted with the war of terror, US imperialism annexations of nations by terror, to corporations, mansento saving people only to expropriate their very soul.
Its all connected we cannot solve just one area imperialism & capitalism are the greatest source of terror & suffering. not only we must put an end to the privatization of public assets, but UNDO the damage done while we were too busy looking at the shoe hissing bomber.
As we speak we are witnessing corporations & fundamentalists religious forces putting somebody even worst than bush, a man who looks @ the sun & says it maybe there but I have my own doubts, as for spirituality it ain't there, these forces will steal a seed & a life without blinking.
One of the many tasks we must l00K@ is the name of the most common contributor CORPORATIONS in the crimes of corrupting a government.
PEOPLE must KNOW, when it started, how big the contribution, in what form & if here was a reward by the government of the day. we must know legal & illegal third party involved in these fraud, the last fifty years but especially the last ten 13 years. In many countries there is a word for "CONTRIBUTION" its CORRUPTION.
PEOPLE in their everyday LIFE. have yet
to fully understand the role played by arm dealers, MIC, BANKS, OIL CORPORATIONS & others.
If U dear to breath you're treasspassing. We have a lot to undo & equally important, DO.
We must not, in all conscious vote for a government only to see it sell schools & education to corporations.
Corporations have contaminated & stolen more than just seeds, they have taken away our liberties, dignity,vision, sense of belonging in some many cases our very consciousness.
Here's a quotation from Shiva:
“Reductionist science is a source of violence against nature and women because it subjugates and dispossesses them of their full productivity, power, and potential.”
http://tinyurl.com/5u6o3tq
Anyone who says something so false, so bigoted doesn't deserve the time of day.
And it's "reductionist" to the point of absurdity to blame the farmer suicides in India on "the introduction of Bt engineered cotton" into India.
http://www.ifpri.org/publication/bt-cotton-and-farmer-suicides-india
The corruption of science & technology toward corporate & certain political agendas has been detrimental to both the eco-sphere & man [IE: GMO Crops, excessive use of Petro-chem fertilizers, herbicides & pesticides, Agent Orange, BP's Gulf Oil Spill, Bophal, Chernobyl, Fukushima, Hiroshima & Nagasaki, etc, etc, etc].
I don't know all the details of India GMO crop failures as it relates to increased suicides [I've never been to India but at this point I'm willing to take Ms Shiva at her word], but in various parts of Africa farmers also apparently experienced massive failures w GMO crops [Note: Is it your point that there were no GMO Crop failures in India or that those failure are not related to increased suicides of Indian farmers?]!
I did not think I would have to defend someone like Ms. Shiva, but here goes...
Reductionist science means looking at specific phenomena without looking at interactions and interrelatedness. That often leads to bad science, half-blind science, destructive science, especially when dealing with complicated living, dynamic systems. An example from agriculture would be to use a pesticide or herbicide that upsets balances and has unintended negative consequences.
The removal of ethics and empathy, the removal of respect for nature, disregard for science's impacts on people and the way they live, is yet another level of reductionism. Science that is used for violence and to gain control of our earth's gifts, used without kindness, used with reckless disregard, is not worthy of our support. The use of science against the good of the public and for the short term profits of corporations is probably the worst perversion of the practice of science today.
Vandana Shiva is a wonderful woman who puts the morality back into science. She understands and acts by saving seeds. A perfect combination of intelligence, practicality and idealism.
As she says, her strength is not equal to her task. She deserves our support in whatever ways we can.
Thanks jclientelle-I have followed Ms. Shiva for years and find her to be one of the very top forces of good on this planet...She is literally amazing...
I'm sure Shiva is a perfectly admirable person, but that is completely beside the point. She is just wrong.
The "reductionist science" that she (and you) excoriate is a straw man. You want to expose and criticize corporate malfeasance? Fine! But don't latch onto Luddite anti-science movements in the process.
I continue to side with science and even admire the advances in genetic engineering. The papaya farmers of Hawai'i were saved with GE papaya. Diabetics take insulin manufactured from GE bacteria. Vaccines are created with GE materials.
Evolution will continue to move forward.
Science has produced many wonderful and life saving things. Please do not imply that there are only two possible attitudes toward science: complete acceptance of everything science does vs. Luddite. .
These days, much of science is not done by independent, disinterested scientists. It is largely conducted in companies and universities, funded and directed by corporations whose motivation is to make a profit in the future. That pressure determines the topics and scope of research and development, how research findings are presented, and what products are released into the market. The pressure to ignore and / or suppress troubling aspects of products constitutes a form of reductionism.
When an invention is imposed on a group of people, regardless of their wishes, and without concern about its larger implications, then it becomes oppressive. I would be tempted to say that in India a racist and colonialist mentality plays a part. But I have to reconsider, since Monsanto has done or tried to do similar things to white farmers in the US. To corporations, now everywhere is their Third World, to the extent that it is unregulated, unprotected, and ripe for market domination
"These days, much of science is not done by independent, disinterested scientists. It is largely conducted in companies and universities..."
Besides being a over-generalized and undocumented claim...if "science" is being "done," then it doesn't matter who's doing it. It has to follow the protocols of science, period, whether it's a university of a corporate-hired firm. That's what peer review is all about.
Ms. Shiva is correct in using the term reductionism. When you ignore systemic and emergent effects in science, that is reductionism.
Your statement ("...it doesn't matter who's doing it. It has to follow the protocols of science, period...") is an idealized Panglossian view of what is a more complicated reality.
I for one would like to know where these protocols of science are articulated. (One imagines a tablet, like the one that contained Hammurabi's Laws.) For all the ink that has been spilled over it, the scientific method is at best an outline, one that is not necessarily a prescription for success. And if peer review solved all our dilemmas and forestalled all unfortunate results of technology, wouldn't that be a wonderful world? Just think-- History would have no record of thalidomide babies. No Love Canal. No Tuskegee experiment. No leaded gasoline. No Agent Orange. No Fukushima.
The hallowed halls of science have led humans astray many times. A good deal of hubris is usually involved. People who voice objections are "against progress". And the profit motive is a prime motivator. We may wish to place faith in the scientific system, and it has delivered unquestionably positive results many times. Our extended lifespans (for some of us) are a sort of proof. But it can go horribly awry, as our many technological disasters attest.
To suggest otherwise is a cruel deception or woeful ignorance...
I got my first literary taste of the hubris of science reading Goethe's Faust. Hubris is the right word.
Fact- "These days, much of science is not done by independent, disinterested scientists. It is largely conducted in companies and universities..."
Fact- Scientific research often costs $multi-millions & even $billions. Yet most scientists are not [initially at-least] multi-millionaires or billionaires.
Fact- Neither the Wealthy, Corps, Gov'ts nor Institutions generally pay-out $multi-millions & even $billions unless they have an agenda [IE: they expect to get their money's worth].
Fact- This is basically true whether it is for politics or for {alleged} 'science'. Your faith is in corporate funded [& controlled] 'science' [you obviously think GMOs are a good thing - yet most GMO research is Corp funded & controlled - & they anticipate profiting $multi-billions for their investments]- Well mine is in Truth, whatever form that Truth may reveal itself.
The final paragraph of your post needs examining.
Certainly there are many factors that contribute to any suicide. Several economic factors contributed to the straightjacket that poor farmers found themselves in, including a lack of government support for small Indian farmers in general. But the role of Bt cotton cannot be discounted.
Briefly: farmers were given an extremely hard sell on the benefits of Bt cotton, often through sales propaganda that was, to say the least, overstated. The government caved or was driven by neoliberal interests, and ** withdrew support for the normal seed banks that had previously nurtured Indian cotton agriculture **. Cotton had been a high income crop, but in a single year, farmers could be wiped out financially if they did not achieve high yields, or if the market conditions did not sufficiently compensate them for their crop. They had no traditional seeds to go back to after the government seed banks were abandoned. And the amount that they owed the seed and fertilizer companies was higher than any debt they had incurred using traditional farming methods.
The government has not supported small farmers in general-- they are almost universally poor and therefore lack political clout. Nevertheless, many millions in India rely for sustenance on small plots of land. To take them off the land at this point would be catastrophic. India's land area is roughly 50% cultivable-- this is absurdly high among nations. While India has industrialized somewhat, the country has a population of over 1.1 billion, and there are simply not enough industrial jobs to go around.
Farmers in India operate on a thin margin; many do not have a great amount of life savings. The amount of debt conferred upon them when they dipped into the Bt cotton seed regime was something that they could not escape from, though it would seem trivial by the standards of many CD readers-- one farmer left debts of $900 US. Loansharking was also a problem, as it is throughout the developing world, and even in the developed world.
Lastly, farmers faced the loss of their land-- a psychologically near-unbearable sentence, since the land has been occupied by them and their ancestors since time immemorial.
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/farmersSuicidesBtCottonIndia.php
http://verenahanschke.com/vidarbha_cotton_widows_photo.html.php5
"The hijacking of our food systems is the hijacking of our democracy."
The hijacking of our food systems is part of the war against those lives and traditions which are perceived as being finally, worthless. This means most of us. We are at war for our local systems and for the continuation of human existence and this is all that needs to be understood.
I absolutely Love this Woman, Dr. Vandana Shiva...
She has done more for India by battling and stopping Monsanto's efforts at "Patenting" their rice varieties...She is A force to be reckoned with and is known throughout the world for standing up to big moneyed interests for the common man. I would say she is right up there with Ghandi as A force for good...The world is fortunate to have you Vandana!!!
As the example of "Mother" Theresa has shown, beware of sainthood. The same goes for Shiva. There are other voices out there that deserve your attention:
"Every time I read something Vandana Shiva has written, I become more convinced that she is either 1) willfully ignorant on the subject of farming or 2) willfully ignoring a whole swath of problems in order to focus on a pet peeve. She is another sad example of a self-styled celebrity who plays games with people’s lives because she is unwilling to move from her ideology."
http://www.biofortified.org/2009/06/shameful-shiva/
too strident an article, the first paragraph attacks too many subjects ... keep it simple and to the point