Tag Archives: Vandana Shiva

Monsanto shouldn’t get away with it anymore –Vandana Shiva

Quantum physicist and environmental activist Vandana Shiva foresees The Future of Food, in three parts.
  • Part 1:
    There are only two applications that have been commercialized in these twenty years of genetic engineering. One is to make seeds more resilient to herbicides, which means you get to spread more Roundup, you get to spread more Glysophate, and you get to spread more poison. Not a very desirable trait in farming systems. Especially since what Monsanto will call weeds are ultimately sources of food.
    It gets even better from there.
    These are illusions that are being marketed in order for people to hand over the power to decide what we eat to a handful of corporations.
    Vandana Shiva is the keynote speaker at the Georgia Organics conference in Savannah, 11-12 March 2011. There’s still time to sign up!

    Here’s Part 1: Continue reading →

Suicide in India and How to Stop It

Vandana Shiva writes in Huffington Post about India:
200,000 farmers have ended their lives since 1997.
In just one Indian state:
1593 farmers committed suicide in Chattisgarh in 2007. Before 2000 no farmers suicides are reported in the state.
Why?
In 1998, the World Bank’s structural adjustment policies forced India to open up its seed sector to global corporations like Cargill, Monsanto and Syngenta. The global corporations changed the input economy overnight. Farm saved seeds were replaced by corporate seeds, which need fertilizers and pesticides and cannot be saved.

Corporations prevent seed savings through patents and by engineering seeds with non-renewable traits. As a result, poor peasants have to buy new seeds for every planting season and what was traditionally a free resource, available by putting aside a small portion of the crop, becomes a commodity. This new expense increases poverty and leads to indebtness.

And that’s not all: Continue reading →