Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

Resisting the Corporate Theft of Seeds, Vandana Shiva
http://www.thenation.com/article/163401/resisting-corporate-theft-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.

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.