Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

livingontheland - [Livingontheland] Water Loss, seed destruction - Saving the World’s Seeds - Dr. Vandana Shiva

livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@gilanet.com>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Water Loss, seed destruction - Saving the World’s Seeds - Dr. Vandana Shiva
  • Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 20:10:21 -0600


Sunday 17th April 2005 (03h42) :
Water Loss, seed destruction - Saving the World’s Seeds - Dr. Vandana
Shiva
http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=5799

Thank you for joining us on Catalyst Radio.


Would you start by talking about some general issues surrounding
globalization.

Dr. Vandana Shiva: Well those of use who are concerned about the
globalization that has been contrived and yet made to look as if it is a
natural evolutionary step, we are concerned about the injustice and
undemocratic system on which it is based.

And everything we said, fifteen years ago, when these rules were being put
in place, very artificially, under GAT and then became the WTO rules, or on
the financial side as the instrumentalities and conditionalities of the
World Bank and IMF, what we said fifteen years ago turns out not to have
been an exaggeration but an underestimation of the devastation of both
nature, society and economies.

I had talked about the WTO agreement on agriculture as the death knell for
Indian farmers. Every year 16,000 farmers are being killed. They are taking
their lives, but I don’t think they are taking their lives. It is that
they are being pushed to the edge of survival - through the indebtedness
that is an inevitable result of turning them into a market for Monsanto
seed, and, on the other hand disposable items, when Cargill and ConAgra
have to dump subsidized grain through a liberalized agreement.

When I started to fight intellectual property rights in the WTO, I was
concerned about patents on life. And seed patents now we can see what they
are doing.

American farmers are being harassed, fined for three million dollars, and
the crime is seed saving?

What could be a worse situation for humanity? To turn something as valuable
as saving seeds for the future into a criminal activity.

Similar laws have just been passed in India, two weeks ago.

I think anyone who doesn’t resist this kind of globalization is not being
fully human, is not exercising their duties.

Catalyst Radio: You spoke about how this is being played out around water,
around water globally. I wonder if you could say more about that with water
as an example. Specifically the impact in your country, in India.

Dr. Vandana Shiva: Well, three major issues around water co-modification
that are creating new movements in India - a new generation of ecology
movements, a new generation of social justice movements, a new generation
of human rights movements - the first is the mining of very, very scarce
and precious ground water.

In remaining pockets - that wasn’t destroyed by ’Green Revolution,’
which is the name given to industrial agriculture - this mining is now
being done by Coke and Pepsi. This culture in which they are bringing more
soft drinks for sale, more bottled water for sale as Kinley’s and
Aquafina, they are mining for every plant that they have set up in the five
years since they came back to India.

One point five to two million liters per day leaving a water famine.

People are resisting because woman are having to walk ten, twenty, thirty
miles to find water. The Coke, Pepsi campaign I believe is going to
intensify in the future. Woman in Carela organized to shut a plant down.
Coke has just manipulated the courts to undo an earlier court judgment. We
are going to have to continue to resist.

The second, very, very major issue is World Bank driven privatization of
water in urban areas. Deli being a prime case where the urban supply is
being handed over to Sways. On the one hand this means privatization the
sacred Ganges. On the other hand it means an increase in tariffs, ten times
to fifteen times, excluding the poor, drawing the public access that was
guaranteed to everyone.

The third very, very huge movement that’s emerging is around two hundred
billion dollar river linking project. It is basically a river linking
diversion project. It is a privatization project. Because you can’t
privatize rives as free flowing systems. You can only privatize them after
you have locked them in dams and captured them in canals. These three major
privatization movements are also being countered by people’s movements to
keep water in the commons, keep it as a public good, defend it as a human
right.

Catalyst Radio: I just came back from Guatemala where we have been
interviewing people about the so called trade agreement, the CAFTA trade
agreement, which is almost an unknown factor here. How much of a role does
commercial media, does corporate media play in keeping people in the dark
about these very important trade agreements, these economic policies that
impact all of our lives.

Dr. Vandana Shiva: I think it is the key, to push anti-people policies
through.

It is the key to making slavery appear like freedom.

It is the key to not allowing the stories of resistance to reach others.
Because for that people draw solidarity, people draw energy, people draw
strength.

That’s why it becomes absolutely necessary to create alternate means of
communication between people because the dominant corporate media has
become one big lie.

Catalyst Radio: You mention the danger of people getting information about
what is happening because it builds solidarity. The World Social Forum
happened again recently, what are some of the things you have seen happen
as you have traveled around the world with regard to these issues, in terms
of people networking, coalition building and the types of resistance that
are taking place all around the globe?

Dr. Vandana Shiva: Well I will give you just three very simple examples of
movements that have spread very rapidly.

A few years as Monsanto started to push genetically modified crops and food
around the world using all the instruments of corruption of governments, of
WTO rules, we started to talk about declaring regions GM free. Freedom
zones just as we used to have nuclear free zones.

There are more than five thousand freedom zones in Europe now. And even in
the United States counties are starting to organize and have referendums.

It is a movement that is just multiplying. People are learning from each
other and saying we can do that too. We don’t have to wait until a WTO
gives us freedom. Freedom is ours to exercise and live.

The Coke, Pepsi campaigns as they have built up. The issues of communities
in the south loosing their water have got deeply connected to concerns of
northern campuses.

With the entire mafia rule around Coca-Cola plants and the killing of trade
unionists who are trying to organize, two ends of the Coke campaign are
starting to join together to find new ways to reclaim freedom for
communities.

And the third, very, very, big issue that has multiplied as people have
talked to each other, I believe is the seed issue.

You know I started to work on seed patenting, seed conservation in 1987
onwards when I first came to the GAT agreement. There used to be four or
five people one could pick up the phone and talk to.

Today there is not a country where there isn’t a movement for farmers
rights, where there isn’t a movement to save native seeds, and where
there isn’t a movement to challenge patents on life and patents on seed.

So I think this communication outside the dominant media - and these are
issues absolutely shut out and censored in the dominant media - but outside
the dominant media people are communicating with each other and the
realities are getting connected to deal with the handful of greedy giants.

When we start to exchange notes, it’s five corporate seed companies, five
water giants, five agribusiness giants, that’s what we are up against
across the worlds. In the United States as much as India and Guatemala and
Germany.

Catalyst Radio: You talked about seed patenting and the dilemmas with that.
Could you say a little more about what the dangers of that are. About the
biological dangers of having homogenous seed production. And what that
means to people, particularly people in indigenous populations around the
world, which are the ones that hold this rich treasure of centuries of
knowledge.

Dr. Vandana Shiva: The first problem that starts with the patenting of seed
is that corporations do not sell seed according to what is adapted to local
climate, or what farmers need. They sell seed according to where they have
been able to do the quickest manipulation.

So that using that manipulation they can claim novelty.

Claiming novelty they can claim patents.

I’ve been of the view that genetic engineering was an excuse to enforce
patents on seed.

It was an unnecessary step in improving breeding. We don’t have a single
improved crop through genetic engineering.

We got herbicide resistant crops and we have BT toxin crops. Neither of
which are improvements from nature’s perspective, from farmer’s
perspective.

Now if you just look at the world. Where is the highest rate of expansion
of crop varieties? It’s in genetically engineered Soya, genetically
engineered corn, genetically engineered canola, and genetically engineered
cotton.

So you are getting the food base of the world, which should be something
like ten thousand crops, being reduced to four genetically engineered
crops.

None adapted to any ecosystem.

All of them in the hands of one company, Monsanto, controlling something
like ninety-three, ninety-four percent of all GM seeds sold anywhere in the
world.

So you have the problem of mono-cultures, of homogeneity, but you also have
the problem of total control of the seed supply.

And that total control of the seed supply has many social and economic
implications.

First implication is that farmers who used to save seed, and who used to be
able to exchange seed, are now treated as thieves of intellectual property.

It also means that the cost of seed start to skyrocket because farmers must
pay royalties, must pay technology fees, must buy seeds annually, and a
zero cost input in farming has ended up being the highest cost input in
farming.

In addition, corporations like Monsanto ensure that farmers alternative
supplies are destroyed by other legal trips - seed laws, compulsory
legislation like the Iraqi ’81 order, like the Indian Seed Act, and
through that they ensure that farmer’s alternatives, genetic diversity,
biodiversity, specially in the countries that are home to genetic diversity
are wiped out.

Which is a threat not just to those communities.

It is a threat to humanity.

It is a threat to our food supply.

It is a threat to our security.

Catalyst Radio: Quite often people who dismiss the concerns of people like
yourself are sharing, they keep saying that all we have is a criticism.
That what we are is always against, not what we are for. Can you say
something about what this global movement is really asking for. Asking for
what we want to happen.

Dr. Vandana Shiva: You know, before I started to fight against patents in
seed, I started to first save seed.

Because you cannot afford to critic a system to which you cannot offer an
alternative.

First of all, those who are destroying alternatives, will then treat the
absence of alternatives as the reason for their existence.

Secondly, you really do not have the moral authority to demand a shift if
you have not been able to show that there are other ways, and better ways
to do things.

On seed saving, we firmly believe seed is a common resource.

Seed is a common heritage.

And so we actually do what we believe in.

We create community seed banks from which farmers can take the seeds they
need according to their agriculture, according to their cropping systems.

Seeds in a free exchange of a common property.

In agriculture, when we critic globalization of trade, and we critic the
control of agriculture in the hands of a few giants, and the technologies
of non-sustainability, we do the farming and the trade that allows farmers
to have alternatives.

Navdanya organization that I founded has trained more that two hundred
thousand farmers in India to go corporate free and chemical free. And
corporate seed free.

Our farmers have increased their income three-fold. They have reduced their
expenditure by ninety percent.

The only place in India where farmers are not getting into debt is areas
where they are practicing sustainable organic farming.

And are engaging in fair trade where they set the terms of the market,
rather than the genocidal terms created by the ConAgra’s and the
Cargill’s.

And in case of water, we conserve water.

We conserve every drop.

We make our contribution to building up and rebuilding our common legacy
and then we have the moral right and the authority to say you will not mess
around with out water.

Because it is water that we share.

It is water that we conserve collectively.

And it is water to which access for all must be guaranteed.

Catalyst Radio
http://www.grcmc.org/catalystradio/

RFSTE was founded in Dehra Dun, Uttar Pradesh (INDIA) in 1982 by Dr.
Vandana Shiva.
http://www.vshiva.net/





  • [Livingontheland] Water Loss, seed destruction - Saving the World’s Seeds - Dr. Vandana Shiva, Tradingpost, 04/17/2005

Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page