0:00:43.212,0:00:48.445
[applause]
0:00:58.863,0:01:01.370
It's a joy to be here with all of you.
0:01:03.170,0:01:07.315
To all the organizations that have put this event together
0:01:07.315,0:01:10.040
and made it possible for me to be here,
0:01:12.052,0:01:13.478
I'd like to say thank you.
0:01:13.478,0:01:18.460
And to the wonderful world of the seed,
0:01:18.460,0:01:19.946
I'd like to say thank you,
0:01:19.946,0:01:22.129
because, you know, I started out life thinking
0:01:22.744,0:01:28.120
the quanta was going to be my companion for life,
0:01:28.120,0:01:34.296
and I had to abandon that passionate love affair
0:01:34.296,0:01:36.618
with physics and quantam physics in particular
0:01:37.126,0:01:42.423
for a love affair with the seed.
0:01:42.423,0:01:45.256
Partly because the threat to the seed
0:01:45.256,0:01:52.919
made me realize how vital it was to continuity of life.
0:01:52.919,0:02:00.906
The word for seed in Hindi and Sanskrit is बीज.
0:02:00.906,0:02:06.154
ज means life, and बीज means that in which life
0:02:06.154,0:02:13.510
resides to arise on its own again and again and again.
0:02:13.510,0:02:16.975
And when we start a season,
0:02:16.975,0:02:20.783
lots of seed festivals with every cultivation season,
0:02:20.783,0:02:25.612
and we do because of our tropical climate have many more cultivation seasons.
0:02:25.612,0:02:30.535
Some places we have four seasons of cultivation,
0:02:30.535,0:02:34.018
especially in the area of for example Bengal;
0:02:34.018,0:02:39.684
in some places we have three, but most places we have two.
0:02:39.684,0:02:46.092
And before you sow the seed, there's a prayer:
0:02:46.092,0:02:51.247
"let the seed be exhaustless".
0:02:51.247,0:02:53.244
Let life never run out.
0:02:53.244,0:02:54.916
And the stories from around the world,
0:02:54.916,0:02:56.639
stories from my region,
0:02:56.639,0:03:00.024
I come from the Himalayan belt, um,
0:03:00.024,0:03:01.882
where during a war and a famine
0:03:04.020,0:03:07.548
people died of starvation.
0:03:07.548,0:03:14.108
But the seed which used to be kept in empty squash containers, which we call _
0:03:14.108,0:03:18.972
not one seed had been eaten.
0:03:18.972,0:03:21.859
Because every culture recognized
0:03:21.859,0:03:24.737
you cannot eat seed corn.
0:03:24.737,0:03:26.438
You've got to save it for the future.
0:03:26.438,0:03:31.789
Your life doesn't matter, but life in general does matter.
0:03:31.789,0:03:44.189
And it's that wisdom of the seed to renew, to multiply, to be shared, to be spread,
0:03:44.189,0:03:48.368
that has suddenly been seen as a problem
0:03:48.368,0:03:55.845
for those who would make money out of killing the seed.
0:03:55.845,0:04:03.601
Killing the essential nature of the seed as a reproductive renewable resource.
0:04:03.601,0:04:06.526
And every attempt has been made in the last two decades
0:04:06.526,0:04:10.845
to turn seed into a non-renewable resource.
0:04:10.845,0:04:18.090
Out of it, something that in its own nature creates abundance, you know?
0:04:18.090,0:04:22.281
Every tiny seed, I get fascinated with seeds of amaranth for example,
0:04:22.281,0:04:25.985
You know how tiny that little seed of amaranth is?
0:04:25.985,0:04:29.142
And at least in our Himalaya you get, ah!
0:04:29.142,0:04:34.778
You can't even begin to count the number of seed one seed of amaranth can give rise to.
0:04:34.778,0:04:40.149
All the millets, or even the rices and the wheats and the barleys,
0:04:40.149,0:04:42.146
one gives rise to many.
0:04:42.146,0:04:44.235
That's a problem.
0:04:44.235,0:04:45.814
One should give rise to nothing,
0:04:45.814,0:04:48.554
then you make the profits.
0:04:48.554,0:04:53.338
And during the 80's I was very involved in some of these discussions.
0:04:53.815,0:04:57.069
They used to be in the FAO at that time,
0:04:57.069,0:05:03.229
the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations
0:05:03.229,0:05:07.223
a term used called "seed wars".
0:05:07.223,0:05:13.121
The chemical industry that had moved into the seed sector,
0:05:13.121,0:05:20.459
um, had started to say it's not fair that farmers save seed. It's not equitable that they save seed,
0:05:20.459,0:05:26.682
equity is monopoly, only the corporations should have the right to seed.
0:05:26.682,0:05:29.189
And they spent a lot of time, couldn't get their way
0:05:29.189,0:05:35.598
because in the United Nations you have one vote for one country,
0:05:35.598,0:05:38.756
and the majority of the countries happen to be third world countries,
0:05:38.756,0:05:43.536
they happen to be countries which have given seed and biodivensity to the world,
0:05:43.536,0:05:50.598
and they did not like the idea of seed being reduced to private property.
0:05:50.598,0:05:57.239
So the corporations then moved to a new institution that was being created
0:05:57.239,0:06:04.994
through what was then a half institution called the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs.
0:06:04.994,0:06:14.793
And it's fascinating that for 30 years the industry had drafted laws for all kinds of monopoly,
0:06:14.793,0:06:21.156
monopoly in entertainment, if a Mickey Mouse turns up anywhere, even in a child's notebook,
0:06:21.156,0:06:22.317
they should pay royalty.
0:06:22.317,0:06:24.081
Or a t-shirt.
0:06:24.081,0:06:32.812
And then, by then, a company that had only been related to warfare, to agent orange,
0:06:32.812,0:06:35.645
very rapidly moved into the biotechnology sector,
0:06:35.645,0:06:42.564
very rapidly started to buy up both venture capital firms as well as seed companies.
0:06:42.564,0:06:49.809
And Monsanto emerged as the biggest seed monopoly in the world
0:06:49.809,0:06:56.636
in the drafting of what is today called the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement
0:06:56.636,0:06:57.797
what a mouthful.
0:06:57.797,0:07:00.212
Precisely because this is not trade related
0:07:00.212,0:07:01.883
and seed is not intellectual property,
0:07:01.883,0:07:04.298
it doesn't pop out of anyone's head.
0:07:04.298,0:07:10.614
Intellectual property is defined as property in products of the mind.
0:07:10.614,0:07:15.955
Here is a very material biological system
0:07:15.955,0:07:19.305
thst is suddenly redefined as intellectual property.
0:07:19.305,0:23:18.878
And, uh, a whole agreement was shaped around it
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and TR was put there because India, my country, refused to accept patent law as a trade issue.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
They said no, this is about nations deciding how far monopolies will go.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Nations deciding the balance between the public and the private.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And we had worked out a patent law over 20 years of democratic debate in society
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to get rid of the British laws that had been exactly like what we are coming back to.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Total monopoly in a few companies' hands.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So the lawyers of course, vary clever,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
put TR before IP and said now it's Trade Related by definition,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
so now you will accept it.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
After the WTO came into force,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
a representative of Monsanto actually said this.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
he said that what we've achieved in this agreement is something unprecedented:
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
we defined a problem, and in this case the problem was farmers saving seeds.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
That was a problem.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And we defined solution: make it illegal for farmers to save seeds.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And we created the instrument, which is the TRIPS Agreement,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
which forces every country now to have laws of monopoly.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And we created the institution that would ensure that these are implemented;
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
the institution, WTO is an interesting institution
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
because it's the international court,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
it's an international non-parliament, non-democratic;
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and it is the international executive, yeah?
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
As Monsanto's representative said,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
in shaping this treaty we were the patient, the diagnostician, and the physician all in one.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
For me, that's a description of dictatorship.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
If you define the problem, you find the solution, you become the judge and the executive,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
where is democracy?
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And around seed, which is the most democratic experience on the planet
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that spreads abundance.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The seed is as much part of the relationship of the bee and the butterfly,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
as it is with the soil organisms that it ultimately sustains,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
as it is with the food, the breakfast you're eating.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
All these relationships are in the seed.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
In 1992 was I think the first time US companies started to enter India.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
'91 was when the whole new idea of globalization started to be spread
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
initially through the World Bank,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and '95 onwards for the World Trade Organization.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And I remember in '92 Cargill, which still owned its own seed supply,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
now it's owned by Monsanto,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I don't know how many of you realize
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that outside the US Cargill Seeds is now Monsanto.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
At that time Cargill was still Cargill,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and they'd brought in hybrid sunflower seeds which failed miserably.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I had been working with the farmers in India and the farmers' organizations,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and I had been telling them about these corporations.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
At that time of course Cargill was and still is the biggest grain trader.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And while doing workshops on the Uruguay round and the WTO and the GATT,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I used to tell them about the companies.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The farmers of , as a result of the failure of the sunflower
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
marched up to the Cargill...
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
uh...
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
it shouldn't be called a seed production unit,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
because seeds are produced in the field and in farms,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and the seed utilities ad facilities are really only packaging units.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
All they do is put a seal on it.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And again, you might not even remember,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
they used to, you used to have a trade representative whose name was Carla Hills.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And Carla Hills had visited India in 1988
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
saying crowbar by crowbar we are going to open your economy to our companies.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
This was around the time, you know, we'd had Bhopal in '84,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Dupont was sending an old nylon plant and we were saying sorry we don't want it,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And Carla Hill saying no you have it, your market is our market.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And she talked about this crowbar by crowbar and I talked to my farmer friends about it.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So they went, literally with crowbars
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and pulled down this whole large prison-like utility,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and razed it to the ground and said
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
crowbar by crowbar we're gonna send these companies back to you.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
[applause from the audience]
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
That's only part of the story.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The real story is at the end of it,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
the Cargill head for Asia Pacific flies into India,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
holds a press conference,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and says how stupid Indian farmers are
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
because they don't realize Cargill with its intelligence is creating seeds
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
which prevent the bees from usurping the pollen.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
This wonderful act of creating fertility through pollenation
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
is now redefined as theft in a mindset where life should be owned as a monopoly.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
No plant should grown without permission from the companies,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
no seed should renew without permission of the company,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and of course no farmer should ever regrow a crop without paying a royalty.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
In the negociations on the convention on biological diversity
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
a twin statement was made about about Roundup resistance.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
We were basically saying we don't need negative traits
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
like making crops more resistant intolerant to herbicides,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
we need to phase out herbicides rather than spray more of them.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And if pesticides were bad, we definitely don't need pesticide plants,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
plants which produce theire own pesticide
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
by introducing genes for toxins into it like the [---beety---] crops.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And in the case of Roundup,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
again I remember,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
in the negotiations on the convention on biological diversity that the Monsanto representative -
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I think it was the vice president, the chair, or --
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and he says "we are now breeding crops that prevent weeds from stealing the sunshine".
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Now, what is called weeds is really the biodiversity of diverse fields,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and the best sustainable agriculture, the best organic farming,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
has to be rotational and mixtures.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The minute you have a monoculture I disqualify it as organic.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Organic means letting nature do the essential work of renewal,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
of soil fertility [applause], moisture conservation,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and if you let nature do the work, nature needs companions,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
it needs partners,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
it needs helpers,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and only diversity offers the help,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and the substitutes for the poisons that have entered farming.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Only nature.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The nitrogen fixing that nature can do,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
if we do the right mixing.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The wonderful botanicals that are available for pest control.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I fought for 11 years a case on the piracy of
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
a wonderful tree that we have used for pest control
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
for as long as I remember.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I remember when I first saw the patent on neem,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and it was said this was an invention of the pesticide use.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And I said my mother and grandmother were using neem to store grain, to store clothes,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
farmers of India have constantly used neem,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and when the terrible disaster of Bhopal took place in '84,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I remember I went to Bhopal and the, you know, the at the station were laughing at me
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
because I was carrying these sapplings of neem.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
They said "why are you carrying this?"
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And I told them about the disaster and said we are starting a campaign
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
"No More Bhopals, Plant A Neem",
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and then 10 years later find neem has been patented.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
For that 11 years.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
But this is just one of thousands in every part of the world
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
has its own way of controlling weeds,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
of controlling pests,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
of doing everything that toxic chemicals have been introduced into farming for.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I think the big problem with how seed has moved
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
from being the ultimate source of renewal of life,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to becoming the ultimate non-renewable resource patented and owned,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
uh, by a handful of companies,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
now it's reduced to 5, very rapidly reduced to 5,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
in this decade.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So fast that you can't even count,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
you can't even keep up with the counting.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Partly because for us this has all happened in a very short period,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
you know, for you it happened over a hundred years,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and so the generations that have passed
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
who saw the first disappearance of the open seed,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
the free seed,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
we started to see the problem with the green revolution
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
introduced in 1965/68, 6 in India,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and the green revolution was basically the introduction of chemical industrial farming
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
in peasant economy,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
where the average landholdings are less than a hectare,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
80% land holding are less than a hectare,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
70% of India, over 1.2 billion population, lives on the land, yah?
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So you can imagine how tiny our farms are.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And on this land was introduced the chemicals.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Why did the green revolution have to wait til 1965/66?
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
They were trying from the end of the war.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
All those war chemicals including the nitrogen from explosives factories,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
all the pesticides,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
they needed to find a market.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
But the indigenous seeds
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
practiced non-cooperation with chemicals,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
they just _, no, don't want you.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Sot he problem was the seed had to be redesigned to adapt to chemicals.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The promotion, propaganda by the green revolution was "feeding the hungry".
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
No, it was just spreading chemicals and poisons around the world.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And the redesigning was done by the dwarfing technique, you know?
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Taking genes from the dwarf varieties,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
in the case of rice from an Indonesian variety,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
in the case of wheat from a Japanese variety collected during the war, norin.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And these dwarf varieties then, could take a lot of chemicals,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but they required a lot of water.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Interestingly, the dwarfing was making the plant produce less biological matter.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And the useful biological matter for the soil, for the animals, had just disappeared overnight.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The straw was now seen as waste,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but the straw is what feeds the cattle,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
the straw is what goes back into your compost,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
the straw is what makes organic.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So this one change to adapt the seed to chemical
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
meant the disappearance of fodder for livestock,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
therefore the disappearance of animals,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
therefore the entry of tractors into a poor country.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And I go around the country and find some of the highest debt is for the tractors
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that were bought 20 years, 30 years ago,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
today, the farmers are having to pay the bills and they can't afford to.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And the cattle have disappeared.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Because truly sustainable agriculture is agriculture not just with diversity of crops,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but with an integration with livestock,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and an integration with perennials and trees,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
then you have the perfect organic farm,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
then nature has a way to recycle the biological systems to perfection.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And as [Albert] Howard said, writing about Indian farms in 1905 when he came to India,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and in his wonderful book The Agricultural Testament Howard said
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
"The farms here are as permanent as the forest and the prairie
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
because they work on those principles of nature".
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And that's another reason why I feel there has to be a much more intimate ineraction
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
between the ecology movement and the organic movement,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
because some ecologists still think that the day farming began, nature was assaulted.[?]
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
No, you can work with nature in non-violent ways to produce for human needs
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
while keeping space, leaving adequate ecological space for other species.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And even more importantly, a lesson we have learned,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
the more space you leave for other beings,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
the more food you get for human beings.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
[applause]
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Totally counter-intuitive .
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Of course the more has to be counted in diversity.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And I have talked about the mono culture of the mind,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
which excludes diversity,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
focuses on a single commodity,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and on the yield of one part of a plant for that commodity production,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
shrinks the farms biological capacity,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and talks about increasing production.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And that's because the monoculture of the mind
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
has left the biodiversity out.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I really think we need to shift from measuring yields to measuring output,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and we need to... yields refer to an individual commodity production,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and yields refer to what leaves the farm;
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
output refers to what the farm produces
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
including what will be used as an internal input on the farm itself.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Something that's just not calculated.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
All the compost we grow,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
the seeds we grow out,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
they're never counted as part of what the farm is producing.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Well this green revolution
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
... was destroyed within 10 years of chemical agriculture.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
There seems to be a habit
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
of, you know, if things go wrong and things are non-sustainable, just do more of it faster.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And that's what biotech has become,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
it's called, in India it's called a Second Green Revolution.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And interestingly you know, when your former president Bush
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
signed an agreement with our Prime Minister in 19... in 2005 on the nuclear deal,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
there was another piece of paper right there on the desk,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
which is an agriculture agreement
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to make genetic engineering _
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
on the board of this agreement sit Monsanto, sit Walmart, and I think ConAgra.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So our relationship now is very very intimate
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
because it is the same companies
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that are preventing American farmers from having access to seed,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and are preventing Indian farmers from not just having access to seed,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but having access to life.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The first GM crop introduced into India was in '98,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and it's the Beattie cotton.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I just call it the pesticide cotton.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The Beattie cotton was brought in by Monsanto
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and Monsanto put these arrogant ads in the newspapers
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
about how Indian farmers would have bulgar [wheat].
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So I started to ring up the ministries, and said have they sought approval?
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And of course nobody had been checked,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
because Monsanto had worked at dismantling laws in this country,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
so there's no regulation on genetic engineering in the U.S. at all.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It's a de-regulated sector.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And Monsanto thought you can walk into any country and assume there is no regulation,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but we do have regulation.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And so I took them to court, I sued them, took them to the Supreme Court.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And the introduction was delayed up to 2005.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Since 2005 they've started tosell Beattie cotton,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and in certain areas there's only Beattie cotton available now.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
These are the areas where the farmers have the,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
where we have the highest rate of farmer suicides.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
In the last decade
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
during which seed monopolies were established,\
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
during which the global players started to buy up Indian companies,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
or have licensing arrangements with them,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
we have lost more than 200,000 farmers in suicides.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
We've of course lost 8 million farmers who had to leave the land.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It's a combinatioin of seed monopolies and falling prices,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
linked to the subsidies, the 4 billion dollars in the case of cotton,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and unfair trade rules.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It's a genocidal packet that must destroy farmers.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And doesn't kill farmers metaphorically.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It kills farmers biologically.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
We started 2 years ago to work in this area.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And the interesting thing is, by shifting to organic
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
the farmers are earning 10 times more than the Beattie cotton farmers,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
even though every advertisement of Monsanto
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
talks about how farmers earn more with GM crops.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And that's also very interesting, you know,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
my mind kind of... gets very troubled every time I see a huge inconsistency.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So why should you have seed monopolies for cheap food?
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Costly seed, cheap food.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Something must be going funny in the middle.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
You get farmers to pay higher royalties,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and they're supposed to have higher inomes, how?
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The aim of the seed industry is a trillion dollars of profits from royalties every year.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And the aim is no farmer should have access to their own seed.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The aim is every farmer should be forced into the market every year.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And you can only do that by using multiple instruments of control over the seed.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The first instrument as I mentioned is the intellectual property laws
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
covering both patents as well as breeders rights that have become more and more like patents.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Earlier they used to have farmers concessions,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
used to have breeders concessions,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
they've all gone in the new _
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
the of 90/91, looks just like a patent law.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And interestingly, a patent is supposed to be granted for an invention.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
A seed is not an invention.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
A seed exists before you can do anything with it.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
All you can do with the seed is manipulate it.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Manipulation has never been treated as creation.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It's often treated as cruelty.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I would call GM cruelty to seed.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Uh, and yet, there has been this claim to invention and therefore a right to ownership.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Of course it's very interesting
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
because it reflects a fundamental split, a fundamental schizophrenia
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
When it comes to owning seeds and owning plants through patents,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
the same corporations go around saying
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
"we've created something new, it's novel".
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The word used in the European laws is "novel foods".
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
GM foods is not called GM foods, it's called "novel foods".
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And when it comes to people being concerned about the environmental risks, the health risks,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
the same industry comes around and says "just like nature made it".
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
You're doing nothing new.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
This is like the bacteria in your yogurt, and...
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that's why they picked the word "biotechnology",
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and shed the word genetic engineering,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
because biotechnology was grandmother making cheese and yogurt,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And SynGen and Monsanto were doing exactly what your grandmother did, nothing new.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Except grandmother never took a patent, and you are taking a patent.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
[laughter]
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Now the legal term that has been created in the U.S. and has been spread around the world,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
a highly unscientific term that's used to make GM look natural,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
is "substantial equivalence".
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Treat the genetically engineered seed
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
as equal to the parent.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So don't look, don't see, don't find, declare safety.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And anytime a scientist comes up with looking at what has happened,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
you make sure you hound that scientist out of their lab and their work.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Especially with the new intimate relationship between universities and the companies,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
it's not that difficult.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Over the last 20 years I've seen some of the top scientists with whom I worked
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
been forced out of their university system
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
just because they did an independent piece of research.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Árpád Pusztai,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Mae-Wan Ho.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Ignacio Chapela, they tried with the Berkeley scientists,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
couldn't work it out because he just brought his chair in front of the Dean's office
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and said I won't move til you give me my tenure.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And they were forced.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Elaine Ingham from the University of Oregon
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
did this amazing work on the impact of GM wheat,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
with the, with the soil bacterium, genes from a soil bacterium added to it,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and that led in fact to the company, the German company, withdrawing that product;
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but it also led to the International Biosafety Protocol.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
She is now an independent scientist,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but does not have a lab in the university.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Um, so every time independent science is done,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
it's defined as "junk science",
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and "junk science" is institutionalized as real science, as good science.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And these days you know the "good bank" thing?
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
"Good bank", "bad bank" after they've created all this toxic assets, yah?
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Suddenly they're supposed to be a bad bank that'll take up all this corruption of the financial world.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And again, interesting concept, yah?
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Concentrate toxicity, and it'll become neutralized.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
[laughter]
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The work we've been doing on suicides of farmers
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
has started to have government response
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
In the early days the government used to say
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
"oh, they must have been alcoholics" or "they must have committed adultry",
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and I said "that's a large number of farmers suddenly becoming adulterers and alcoholics
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
[laughter]
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and eventually the Prime Minister had to go down to these areas
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and recognize that farmer suicides linked to economic distress is a real phenomenon.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So what does Monsanto do?
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Start using institutions to say there's no link between suicides and the Beattie cotton.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The interesting thing is, the papers they generate,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
as one from IFPRI, which has been used a lot against me,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington has put out a paper,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
goes round about the virtues of Beattie,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
as if everything is built into the seed;
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and then when it comes to the failure, or when it comes to the farmers going into distress,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
then it is no more about the seed itself,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
it's about the farmer who was stupid,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
it's about the soil that was wrong,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and it's about the climate that didn't fit.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And here again you have schizophrenia.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Good performance -- in the GM seed.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Bad performance -- you're to blame.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So always there's a perpetuation of a mythology of the perfect seed.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And interestingly the green revolution, when it was spread to India,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
they didn't just say "we're bringing you seeds that are more responsive to chemicals",
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
which would have been the more honest way to describe it,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
rather than "high-yielding varieties".
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
This [Norman Ernest] Borlaug, who was the scientist who did that dwarfing,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
interestingly he came out of the Dupont defence labs,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
knew about the chemicals,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
reworked the plants to be able to take mroe chemicals,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
just as genetic engineering is re-working the plants once more at a deeper genetic level,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to be even more adaptive to chemicals,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Borlaug said, of the 12 scientists he had trained, he called them his apostles.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
They were his wheat apostles distributing miracle seeds.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So you do have a whole structure of seed monopolies
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
enshrined within a new mythology,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
a new religion,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
where we are asked to be blind[sic] and not think any more.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Interestingly, in the case of Indian sales, Monsanto actually recruits our gods as salesmen.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Every poster, every video has a god.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
In northern state of Punjab, where the Sikhs are the most important religion,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and Guru Nanak was the founder of that religion,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Guru Nanak is used as a salesman.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
In south India out of the you get Hanuman who brought this herb to save the life of Hanuman's brother,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
you have Hanuman bringing you this life-saving seed,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
which is really the killing seed.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
That's another way in which seed monopolies are established.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Seed monopolies are also established by introducing seed replacement.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And whenever I debate with our government, I always tell them, I say
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
"you know, seeds are not like dirty socks. When your socks start to stink, you'd better change them.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And wash them.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
But seeds are perrennia, they don't get replaced,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
you evolve them, you breed them, you adapt them, but you don't throw them out."
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
They're not like a new model of a car either.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Seeds are life itself,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and therefore, seed replacement is wrong.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Now, you can only have a monopoly on seed through patenet
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
if you have had a closure on the alternative supply,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
because why on earth would farmers pay royalties every year
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
if they could have free seed they can save year in and year out?
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
To create that closure,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
the industry has evolved compulsory licensing and registration laws,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
compulsory registration, compulsory licensing laws,\
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
which basically mean farmers can't have their own seed,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
they must only grow seeds that are licensed,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
they must have approval from the state.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
But an indigenous seed evolved and bred by farmers,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
an open for pollenated variety seed has never done harm to anyone.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
GM seeds can cause genetic contamination,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but an open pollenated variety has no harm,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and since it has no harm,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
there is absolutely no need for state regulation.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The state regulates the harmful.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It should not invade into the harmless zones of life.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The interesting thing is, they tried to introduce this law in 2004 in India,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
it's called the New Seed Law.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It's not that we don't have a seed law, we have a seed law,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but it doesn't prevent farmers from having their own seed,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
it merely regulated the industry.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Now they want to have farmers regulated,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and the seed industry, now the biotech industry, de-regulated.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So we did what Gandhi had done in 1930.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
You might remember the British had tried to monopolize salt,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
just so they could buy bigger guns so they could control us better,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and the Salt Laws were meant to make salt-making illegal by Indians.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Only the British could make the salt.\
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And Gandhi walked to the beach and picked up the salt,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and said (not verbatim) "nature gives this for free. We need it for our survival.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
We will continue to make salt. We are forced to disobey your laws."
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And, uh, the Salt Laws never worked in India.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
People went to jail, people were killed, but the Salt Laws never worked in India.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So we took inspiration from that,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and have been doing what we call the seed सत्य के लिए लड़ाई.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The सत्य के लिए लड़ाई means "the fight for truth".
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Beginning '91 when these monopolies were created,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
we've had rally after rally,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
half a million farmers, 2 million farmers,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
basically declaring that seed is a common resource,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
we have received it from our ancestors,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
we have to protect it for future generations,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
of all species, because seed doesn't just belong to humans,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
it belongs to allt he species who are nourished by any species of plant.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
We will therefore not obey a law
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that makes it illegal for us to perform our highest ecological duty on earth,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
which is to save seeds for the future.
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[applause]
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So in 2004 we stopped this law from coming into force.
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I gave I don't know how many millions of signatures I gave to our Prime Minister,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and said you can do what the British did with teh Salt Law.
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We are not going to obey, because we have to obey a higher law.
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Monsanto law is a low law, degraded law,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and any law restricting farmers rights is in today's world a Monsanto law.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Even when governments write it,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
an invisible hand of Monsanto is behind that writing.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So how do we create seed freedom
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
in this time of seed imperialism, seed colonialism, seed closure?
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
We do it by creating community seedbanks,
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that's how I started Navdanya 21 years ago,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
just saving every seed available,and distributing it widely,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
keeping it as an open access system.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Every farmer of Navdanya, and we have about 400,000 members,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
every farmer, the only yhing they have to do is take a pledge
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that seed will never be used as an exclusive right.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Not by them, not by anyone else.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
They will continue to share seed, and they will continue to save seed.
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In the area of the suicides, we have managed to save seeds and bring farmers organic options back.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
We've also just finished some research
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to show that Beattie cotton has destroyed in 3 years of planting,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
26% of vital micro organisms in the soil.
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So organic is the only way to rebuild it. 40:35
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We have created climate resilient seed banks.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Banks where seeds for high drought tolerance, hight flood tolerance, salt tolerance are available
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And we've distributed every time there's a disaster,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
a drought in central India,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
even after the tsunami, the salt tolerant rices, we took two truckloads of these things.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Interestingly, Monsanto, which has beena leader in biopiracy and SynGen and the biotech industry,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
is now trying to patent the climate-resilient traits,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
which they can't create because genetic engineering is a very linear, single-gene expression technology.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Climate resilience is a multi-genetic trait,but all they're doing is genetic mapping.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And these days, computers do it, you don't even need a human being.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
In fact, if there's a property right, they should give it to that machine
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
[laughter]
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
because they're not doing the thinking, they're not doing the creation,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
it's an assemby line of doing the genome mapping.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The map is being used to claim ownership,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and we are going to start a big campaign
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to not just keep seeds in the open domain,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but especially seeds required for climate adaption
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
as a common resource for our common defence in these vilnerable times.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
We will of course have to make very rapid and radical shifts very fast,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
from breeding for responding to chemicals,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to breeding for resilience, adaption.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
From breeding for a single yield trait,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to breeding for nutrition and taste and quality.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
We've done a lot of research with native varieties,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
they always have higher nitritional quality.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So we should be measuring nutrition per crop,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and nutrition per acre,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
not just the mass produced.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
What's the point of empty mass?
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Empty mass doesnt nourish our bodies.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Empty mass doesn't nourish the soil.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
We need to go back, seriously,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to the issue of quality, the issue of nutrition, the issue of life itself.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Saving seed, for me, is defending life,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and saving seeds in these vulnerable times
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
is making sure we can imagine with hope
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that life will continue in all its vibrance, in all its diversity, in all its beauty.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Thank you.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
[applause]
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
[narrator] You've been listening to physicist, ecologist, and author Vandana Shiva,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
speaking at the organic ecology conference in Portland Oregon of February 28, 2009.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
In a moment we'll return to the question and answer session from the presentation.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Vandana Shiva, a physicist, feminist, philosopher of science, and science policy advocate,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
is the director of the research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Natural Resource Policy.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
She is the 1993 recipient of the Right Livelihood Award,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and serves as ecology advisor to several organizations,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
including the Third World Network, and the Asia Pacific Peoples Environment Network.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Her books include
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Her latest book is
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
To find out more about Vandana Shiva and her work, please visit the Navdanya website at
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And now we return to the question and answer session from the program.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
[question] Good morning, I just had a question that relates to the speaker that we had yesterday,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Paul Roberts,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and, um, he mentioned, someone asked a question about local food,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and the possibilities of around the world being able to raise our own food,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
enough food for ourselves where we live right now with climate change,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and our expectaitons of what we should be able to eat, um, seasonality and that kind of thing.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And in response to this, one of the things that he said was that
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
in many of the Asian countries
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that at the rate of population growth, um,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
they will not be able to sustain themselves using sustainable agriculture practices,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
um, and be able to feed themselves.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And one thing that we can do here in the United States and North America
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
is to be able to, using sustainable practices, grow enough food
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
so that we will be able to ship food to Asian countries, um, preventing starvation.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And I was just wondering if you could address this idea
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
of local food and with population raising all the time,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
being able to feed, everyone being able to feed themselves where they are, for themselves.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
[Vandana Shiva]
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The first thing about local food is that the tropics lend themselves better to producing mroe food..
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And for anyone who thinks a temperate climate and cultivation in deserts
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
based on mining aquifers,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
has to be the basis of providing food to the world,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and Asian countries, most of which are tropical countries,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
a little bit of China is outside the tropics,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but I mean you go from India into Indonesia, and Malaysia, should see the abundance.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
We have a report, you can get this from our website, Navdanya.org,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and it's on biodiversity based productivity.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
We've done survey after survey of hundreds of farms, including our organic farms.
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The food production is double, sometimes five fold more.
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The reason it's not seen is because
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
the agricultural paradigm has been reduced to a monoculture of commodities,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
then you focus on the commodities
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and say they can't produce more commodities,
9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but we can produce mroe food.