[permaculture] help with data needed

Thomas Allen thallen at nwlink.com
Fri Apr 10 14:48:53 EDT 2009


Below is an excerpt of Vandana Shiva speaking at the closing plenary  
session of the UK Soils Association in late 2007. This doesn't  
directly answer the question of data but perhaps Shiva could supply  
the source of her comments. I don't know haw to contact her but  
perhaps someone on the list does.

The transcript and podcast can be found at:


http://www.soilassociation.org/web/sa/saweb.nsf/(UNID)/ 
6BB05A7D57DAF6A28025727200416A64?OpenDocument

"One of the things that's taken us totally by surprise is a new  
epidemic of farmers' suicides. Indian peasants have been so  
resilient. You know, I've been in villages after disasters of floods  
and droughts and hurricanes. You know, you have one season of a loss  
of agriculture, you have one season of having to struggle, and you  
are right back again - you rebuild your hut and you're back on the  
field and you borrowed some seeds from somewhere and you're farming  
again.

But the new industrialised globalised agriculture is doing something  
different, because it's not like a natural disaster which you know  
will not be there in a permanent way. The first step in the  
globalised agriculture is dependency on what I call non-renewable  
seed. We've even made seed the very embodiment of life and its  
renewability behave like non-renewable fossil fuel - once and no more.

When non-renewable seeds have to be bought each year, that's a higher  
cost. Then they are sold as a monopoly with intellectual property  
royalties linked to it. The genetically engineered Bt cotton, for  
example, costs about 2-300 rupees for a kilogram to produce. But when  
Monsanto sells it for 4,000 rupees a kilogram the rest is all royalty  
payment.

The seeds aren't tested, they aren't adapted, the same seeds are sold  
across different climate zones, they obviously don't perform well.  
Instead of 1,500 kilograms per acre, farmers get 200, 300, sometimes  
total failure and add to this the fact that even if they have 300  
kilograms of a bad cotton variety because its fibre is of a very  
inferior quality.

And new studies that we have done are showing that there's huge  
allergies linked to it because what is Bt cotton, but toxic? 1,800  
sheep died last year feeding on the plants. Anyone working in a [...]  
mill where this Bt cotton is being used is getting allergies. Farmers  
who are collecting the cotton ball are getting allergies.

But, linked to the fact that this is inferior cotton, the fact that  
in the United States there are $4 billion of subsidies linked to  
cotton and now with these so called open markets the price has  
started to come down. In India, they've dropped to half. So your  
costs of production have gone up two, three, four times, sometimes 10  
times, sometimes 100 times depending on what you were farming and  
meantime what you are earning at the end of it has fallen to a third.

It's a negative economy. Farmers get into debt, it's unpayable debt.  
The people giving them the credit are the same as the salesmen and  
the agents at the local level. I don't know how many of you read the  
Economist – it has a special article on the farmers' suicides in  
India. We have been doing reports since the first farm suicide  
happened in '97. The first report was a 10 pager because only one  
farmer has killed himself, now there's 150,000 farmers.

So the fossil fuel economy, the globalised economy, is not just  
ruining our atmosphere, before it ruins the atmosphere, it's killing  
millions. And for us the alternative is necessary just so farmers can  
have a safe, secure livelihood. In addition to that we have just had  
new surveys again from the government - the health standards of the  
Indian people are falling as the economy gets globalised and food is  
no more food, agriculture is about exports."


On Apr 9, 2009, at 5:33 PM, Lawrence F. London, Jr. wrote:

> Danijela Babic wrote:
>> dear all,
>> can you help me with links to (independent) studies related to the  
>> crop
>> yield comparisons for gmo and no-gmo food, pricing etc.?
>> does anybody have any data contrasting the ifpr study that says that
>> suicides of farmers in andhra pradesh in india are not connected  
>> to the
>> failure of bt crops...
>> many thanks
>> danijela babic
>> zamirnet
>
> I forwarded your message into the sanet-mg list and got this reply:
>
> [Fwd: Re: [SANET-MG] [permaculture] help with data needed]
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Re: [SANET-MG] [permaculture] help with data needed
> Date: Wed, 8 Apr 2009 02:46:54 -0500
> From: Frank A. Schultz, III <wb5ayy at aircanopy.net>
> Reply-To: Frank A. Schultz, III <wb5ayy at aircanopy.net>
> Organization: Industrial System
>
> Lawrence -
>
> Posted some links on India farmer suicides some time ago - can't  
> remember
> who published the reports - most likely the Daily Mail, the  
> Telegraph, the
> Times, or the Times of India - http:// 
> timesofindia.indiatimes.com/ .  As I
> recall, massive crop failures due to drought coupled with the  
> purchase of GM
> seeds at about 10 times the price of local native seeds  
> precipitated mass
> suicides, which by some estimates numbered into the 100's of  
> thousands.
> They likely could have survived the drought with native seeds and  
> they could
> have survived 10 X normal cost GM seeds with good rain - but they  
> couldn't
> survive high-priced seeds and no rain.  They indebted themselves to  
> buy the
> GM seeds way beyond any sense, at all.
>
> They tried to buy into American economics using Indian economics -  
> might
> marginally work under ideal conditions.   Don't know if the GM seed  
> was
> touted to have higher yields - which has never been demonstrated in  
> any
> significant measure, by the way.  Further, as I recall, GM shows lower
> nutrient levels than native.  The only way GM makes sense is the  
> reduction
> of labor thru the use of your favorite juice, glyphosate.  But the  
> labor
> angle is irrelevant in India, so it has never been clear to me why the
> Indians would go for GM...  I certainly wouldn't eat the GM stuff I  
> grow...
> Forward this on, if you want.
>
> F-
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