Vandana Shiva: The Seed Emergency: The Threat to Food and Democracy

[marmar]

Published on Monday, February 6, 2012 by Al Jazeera English

The Seed Emergency: The Threat to Food and Democracy
Patenting seeds has led to a farming and food crisis - and huge profits for US biotechnology corporations.

by Vandana Shiva


New Delhi, India - The seed is the first link in the food chain - and seed sovereignty is the foundation of food sovereignty. If farmers do not have their own seeds or access to open pollinated varieties that they can save, improve and exchange, they have no seed sovereignty - and consequently no food sovereignty.

The deepening agrarian and food crisis has its roots in changes in the seed supply system, and the erosion of seed diversity and seed sovereignty.

Seed sovereignty includes the farmer's rights to save, breed and exchange seeds, to have access to diverse open source seeds which can be saved - and which are not patented, genetically modified, owned or controlled by emerging seed giants. It is based on reclaiming seeds and biodiversity as commons and public good.

The past twenty years have seen a very rapid erosion of seed diversity and seed sovereignty, and the concentration of the control over seeds by a very small number of giant corporations. In 1995, when the UN organised the Plant Genetic Resources Conference in Leipzig, it was reported that 75 per cent of all agricultural biodiversity had disappeared because of the introduction of "modern" varieties, which are always cultivated as monocultures. Since then, the erosion has accelerated. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/02/06-0

[phantom power]

1. seed empire

A hydraulic empire (also known as a hydraulic despotism, or water monopoly empire) is a social or government structure which maintains power and control through exclusive control over access to water. It arises through the need for flood control and irrigation, which requires central coordination and a specialized bureaucracy.[1]

Often associated with these terms and concepts is the notion of a water dynasty. This body is a political structure which is commonly characterized by a system of hierarchy and control often based around class or caste. Power, both over resources (food, water, energy) and a means of enforcement such as the military are vital for the maintenance of control.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_empire

[WingDinger]

2. Dumbass Bill Gates, understands the danger he is promoting.

He intends to address world hunger, by modifying food genetics. And so, he also is funding the Iceland seed vault. This will function as a reboot, should we all starve from our folly.

Worse would be, if global CC rids Iceland of it's yearround cold. Thus spoiling our reboot.

[nineteen50]

3. Sue Monsanto

For contaminating the seed base

[alittlelark]

6. Interesting idea.

I hadn't thought about that.

[proverbialwisdom]

11. Label GMOS.

EMAIL:

May 2, 2012

Dear Friend,

Today is the day Monsanto and corporate agribusiness have been dreading, and the day that millions of us have been waiting for.

Today a grassroots corps of volunteer petition gatherers arrived at County Clerks' offices in all 58 counties in California. They delivered almost a million petitions signed by registered voters along with this message:

Millions against Monsanto are taking back our democracy and restoring our fundamental right to know what's in our food.

This is the first step in putting the California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act on the ballot in November. Now it's time for the next step: ramping up the campaign so that millions of fired-up voters in California will turn out in record numbers on November 6 to pass this initiative.

To make this happen, a broad coalition of food, farm, health, public interest, and environmental groups all over the country, joined by leading organic food companies, are delivering this same message today: Let's drop the money bomb on Monsanto.

Please help these groups raise $1 million dollars by May 26th for the California Right to Know GMO Labeling Campaign. You can donate online, by phone, or by mail.

After decades of allowing corporations like Monsanto to buy off our politicians and regulatory agencies, to intimidate everyone from small farmers and state legislators to the Governor of Vermont - to poison our food and our planet - it's time to say "No more."

It's time to tell Monsanto and the rest of the Biotech Bullies that we demand the right to know whether our food has been genetically engineered. It's time for the 99% of us to tell our elected officials that if they won't protect us from CEOs and corporations - the 1% that are destroying our health, our food, and our planet - we will bypass them. We will organize ballot initiatives and write our own laws. And then vote them into law.

It's time to drop the money bomb on Monsanto.

Monsanto, Big biotech and Food Inc., are desperate to defeat the California Right to Know Ballot Initiative. They will spend millions on a campaign based on lies and intimidation. They'll try to convince voters that GMOs aren't dangerous, and that labeling them will make food more expensive. They're counting on us to cower in the face of their massive spending and TV ads, and their threat to sue any state that dares to stand up to them.

What they aren't counting on is you - and millions like you across the country - who know what's at stake in California. Millions who know that if this law passes in the state with the eighth largest economy in the world, it's only a matter of time before we win the battle everywhere.

Monsanto isn't counting on millions of people like you who know that GMOs in our food have been linked to a host of health issues, including kidney and liver damage, infertility, auto-immune disorders, allergies, accelerated aging and birth defects.

It doesn't matter what political party you belong to, or which candidates you support. The right to know issue belongs to all of us. It's about our food, our health, and our environment. We are all in this together. That's why together, we are going to raise $1 million in the next few weeks to help pass this law, and shift the balance of power back to the grassroots, the 99%.

Please donate today - online, by phone, or drop a check in the mail. Every dollar that you contribute will go directly into the California Right to Know ballot initiative and other state GMO labeling campaigns, including a legal defense fund to defend states that pass GMO labeling laws from Monsanto lawsuits.

We can do this. It's time. Let's drop the money bomb on Monsanto and take back our food supply. Thank you!

For an Organic Future,


Ronnie Cummins
Director, Organic Consumers Association and Organic Consumers Fund

P.S. All money raised for this campaign will go through the Organic Consumers Fund, a 501(c)4 allied organization of the Organic ConsumersAssociation, focused on grassroots lobbying and legislative action. Donations are not tax-deductible.

Please forward this publication to family and friends, place it on web sites, print it, duplicate it and post it freely. Knowledge is power!

[chervilant]

4. hmm...

Funny, how we humans can contemplate the consequences of our hubris, even as we teeter on the hairy verge of our extinction abyss...

[wiggs]

5. Tragedy. Her Earth Democracy is also a good read...how other aspects of the commons

have been destroyed.

[proverbialwisdom]

7. Dr. Vandana Shiva was a keynote speaker at the 'GMO Right2Know March' last October.

More here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1949482

EXCELLENT videos (Oz, O'Brien, Bogusky) and links to articles. MUST SHARE!

[proverbialwisdom]

8. 'A Ripple of Hope: When Courage and Conscience Collide' by Robyn O'Brien

Brilliant original version. Can it be reposted in full since it's been pulled?

http://allergykids.wordpress.com/2008/06/10/a-ripple-of...

A Ripple of Hope: When Courage and Conscience Collide

June 10, 2008
by Robyn O'Brien

I was raised on capitalism and the Wall Street Journal. As a child, my family celebrated the birth of Reaganomics the way one would have celebrated the birth of a child. There was prosperity to be had by all – if only we believed. My father, like so many of his era, fully supported deregulation and the notion of trickle down economics. If we loosen the regulatory purse strings that government tightly controls, we will all prosper. The system works.

In our house, the Reagans had an almost royal status – to watch them dance, with Nancy in her red dress, gave me the feeling, as a child, that I was watching some magnificent combination of Frank Sinatra and a foreign prince with his graceful companion on his arm.

I trusted my political values would serve me well – I was loyal, patriotic and supported the system.

And then one of my children got sick. With a blood condition that no one could pronounce and a pediatric mandate requiring immediate enrollment at a Children's Hospital. And I awoke.

Suddenly, everywhere I turned, there were sick children. Children with diabetes, children with cancer, children with obesity, children with asthma and children with allergies. What had happened?

As headlines in the paper warned me of environmental dangers, I began to pay attention. What was in the food? Wasn't organics a left-leaning thing? And what about the plastics and the baby bottles and the vaccines? Should I worry? Doesn't our system protect us from these dangers?

And without realizing it, an internal battle had silently begun.

I lay awake at night as I tried to reconcile the loyalty I had to my father with the loyalty I had to my children. Had a generation of grandfathers failed to recognize the health risks associated with capitalism's profits, unintentionally jeopardizing the well being of their grandchildren?

I had been raised to support the system, to believe in it, to never question it, and certainly to never speak out. Activism was something that "radicals" did, certainly not conservative soccer moms.

But I couldn't shake the internal dialogue. And armed with an MBA in finance and my four children, I began to investigate the expanding role that corporations had taken in the system in which I was raised to believe. And I was stunned.

There were insecticidal toxins engineered into crops to increase profitability for the world's largest agrichemical corporation – a company whose former employees included Donald Rumsfeld and Clarence Thomas. There were petroleum based chemicals in my children's toys and shampoos that were a product of an oil corporation that had recruited me in business school. How had this happened? Had we forsaken our physical health for financial wealth?

As I struggled with the responsibility that I felt for betraying my own children, I realized that it was now my responsibility to act. But the internal battle raged on – as the call from my conscience collided with the familiar comfort of conformity – and I was paralyzed.

But with sick children, paralysis was not an option.

I realized that I had to find the courage, on behalf of my children and others, to speak out against the very system in which I was raised.

And I reluctantly stepped forward.

With the words of another crusader in hand, I found my voice:

"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls." (Robert F. Kennedy).

It is with that hope, and holding the hands of my four children, that I took a stand.

Our world is changing. Our children's voices are not being heard; there is no "show of hands" to gauge their reactions to the impact that our environment is having on them.

It is our turn to engage, to help our fathers recreate the world that their grandchildren deserve. We must not be daunted by the enormity of the task at hand, nor fear political "activism". For the sake of our children, it is our political responsibility.

If you take just one step forward, it might send forth that tiny ripple of hope that will touch your daughter's life years later or your son's health in ways you might never foresee.

If we dare to dream that it is possible to affect this change for our children, we will be inspired by hope and find the courage and capacity to act. Together.

[proverbialwisdom]

9. Related thread here.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002281722

[JCMach1]

10. I can't recommend more highly how important this issue is to the planet...

I have been following Shiva's work for years on the subject...