Resisting the Corporate Theft of Seeds
.
Posted 15 September 2011, by Vandana Shiva, The Nation, thenation.com
Editor’s Note: This piece is one in a series of replies to Frances Moore Lappé’s essay on the food movement today.
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.
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.
Read the other responses in the forum:
Raj Patel, “Why Hunger Is Still With Us”
Eric Schlosser, “It’s Not Just About Food”
Michael Pollan, “How Change Is Going to Come in the Food System”
Also by The Author
The article presents information about the congress to be held on globalizing gender justice. The right-wing cabal in Congress is attempting to prevent the U.S. delegation from taking part in the United Nation’s Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China, in professed horror at human rights violations in China. But what they’re really scared about is the empowerment of women–that’s the overall goal of the Platform for Action, with its subtheme of Action for Equality, Peace and Development, to be adopted by some 185 nations this September.
.
http://www.thenation.com/article/163401/resisting-corporate-theft-seeds
Posted by Tincup on September 16, 2011 at 2:02 pm
Thank you for the informative post. Have you written in prior posts any content on the human population explosion? I think that this is obviously the core issue. I also think those lovely folks on Wallstreet…traders and investment “bankstas” are driving up food prices through speculation. Hard to believe traders and investment bankers sit in ivory towers pushing buttons that drive up the food prices and make enormous amounts of money while the majority of people lose money through higher food prices.
Posted by Ed Mortimer on September 16, 2011 at 7:11 pm
I agree that profiting by speculation on food markets is unethical, immoral and unjust. The blood of the millions who have starved to death because of their economic machinations marks them as terrorists.
I do not write the articles here, I am only a librarian-of-sorts, gathering, storing and making freely available reference material centering on environmental sustainability and human ecology. Check the tag for population — there’s not enough articles for the tag to appear in the tag cloud . . . but you can use this link:
http://edmortimer.wordpress.com/tag/population/
Posted by Tincup on September 17, 2011 at 12:04 am
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2011/jan/23/food-speculation-banks-hunger-poverty
Regarding speculation on food….I am restraining myself from using profane language, but these are the same type of mother _ _ _ _ _ _ s that existed at Enron and more recently behind the asset back securities and complicated derivatives. I am really getting tired of these people making millions and billions at the expense of the majority of people. It is approaching the time to start stringing them up at a public square. Sorry, I am reaching the boiling point.