Stolen Harvest:
Corporate Watch Interview with Vandana
Shiva
March 17, 2000
Internationally renowned
environmentalist and feminist Vandana
Shiva is Director of the Research
Foundation for Science, Technology and
Natural Resource Policy in Delhi. She
is a board member of the International
Forum on Globalization and the Third
World Network. Before becoming an
activist, Shiva was one of India's
leading physicists. She is author of 13
books. Her most recent is Stolen
Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global
Food Supply (South End Press) Corporate
Watch began by asking Shiva what she
means by "Stolen Harvest:"
VS: Stolen Harvest is the story of how those who labor,
those who grow foods, nature and her amazing creatures,
are all literally being stolen by tremendously clever
mechanisms being put in place by global corporations
trying to find new markets. Mechanisms like genetic
engineering which are converting the growing of food from
being a peasant, farmer, and women driven activity, to a
lab driven, corporate driven activity.
Patents on seed have never existed before. Farmers will
be treated as criminals for saving seed. That is a
brilliant, new theft of biodiversity that nature has
given and farmers have evolved. Global corporations are
able to steal the harvest from the producers as well as
from consumers and push larger numbers into hunger and
poverty.
CW: What has been the role of the WTO, along with
corporations like Monsanto, Cargill and others, in
stealing this harvest from both producers and consumers?
VS: The Intellectual Property
Rights clauses of the GATT -- now
enshrined in the WTO --are
precisely the place where the
diversity of nature and the
collective innovation of millions
of farmers around the world are
being defined as the intellectual
property of corporations like
Monsanto. As they have said
repeatedly, 'If we control seed,
we control the food chain'.
Monsanto's spokesman went on
record to say they drafted the
TRIPS --the Trade Related
Intellectual Property Rights
Agreement- -and the clauses related to living resources.
In drafting TRIPS they achieved something unprecedented
in the history of international law.
Similarly the agreement on agriculture-- which forces
countries to start importing food and destroying local
markets, to shift agriculture away from staple food crops
to growing luxury crops at low prices for consumption in
rich countries--was clearly inspired, crafted by Cargill
and the US delegation. They wrote a very, very perverse
agricultural agreement which was sold to the world as if
it would remove subsidies. But the subsidies for
corporations like Cargill have doubled in the US since
the closure of the Uruguay round in the last 5 years.
Rich countries are subsidizing agribusiness by up to $343
billion a year. While in a country like India,
agriculture is negatively subsidized up to minus 23
million dollars a year. This is not about competition.
This is about monopolies.
CW: Can you talk about some of the movements,
particularly in India, moving from the fringe to the
center of the debate, maybe starting with your own group,
Navdanya.
VS: Navdanya, which means "Nine
Seeds," was a movement that
started in 1987 partly to
anticipate genetic engineering and
patent monopolies in agriculture.
I felt that if we waited until all
of this was in place, people would
not be able to respond. So we
acted ahead of time. We started
setting up seed banks, we started
shifting to organic agriculture
and right now we have thousands of
villages in which farmers have basically created what we
call "Freedom Zones," those are agricultures that are
free of chemicals, free of corporate inputs, free of
hybrid seeds, free in the future of patents and
genetically engineered crops.
CW: How have you kept biotech agriculture out?
VS: So far, Monsanto has not been successful in
introducing genetically engineered seeds into the Indian
market because we blocked them at a trial stage. We did
massive public education with farmers organizations.
Farmers uprooted the crops they had planted. And we have
a Supreme Court case to block the trials and to insist
that at least five or six years of ecological assessments
are done before these seeds and crops are allowed to
enter the market. We do not think genetically engineered
seeds of Monsanto or genetically engineered foods can
survive the scrutiny of ecological and safety tests.
CW: Let's talk a little bit more about the level of
grassroots resistance by farmers in India. Certainly
there has been some attention drawn by the farmers in
Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka who have actually burned
some of the Monsanto trial crops.
VS: The resistance is huge. Like Gandhi told the British,
you cannot have salt monopolies, you cannot force us to
stop producing our own salt. Nature gave it for free, we
have always made it, and we need it for survival, and
your laws cannot come in the way of our fundamental
rights. We will continue to make salt and violate your
laws. And that's how Gandhi literally triggered the
downfall of the British Empire.
Using that as the inspiring model
of politics more than 3000
villages have declared that they
will never obey laws that create
monopolies on seed. They will
never adopt genetically engineered
seed. In most villages, I can tell
you, no matter what Monsanto does,
and no matter how much they
corrupt the government of India or
elements of the government of
India to push these laws through,
they will not be able to push them
on the people of India.
CW: What are the possibilities of some international
alliances between small farmers in India, and both
farmers and consumers in Europe, the United States and
elsewhere?
VS: Well actually, what we've seen happen around the
world, whether it's India, Europe or Japan, or now a
little late in North America, is a product of
international alliances. We would not have been able to
do any of this in anyplace if we had not worked
strategically with partners.
I started this work in 1987 as a
result of a representative of
Sandoz stating very clearly that
by the turn of the century, there
would only be 5 corporations
controlling food and health and we
will control it through patents
and genetic engineering. To me, a
statement like that was a
dangerous call and I had to do
something about it. In the 1980's
we were a handful of people. Today
there are thousands. But those
thousands have been able to get
mobilized because of existing
alliances through which we can
inform our Northern partners about how agriculture
actually functions in India; how biodiversity is critical
to the sustainability of our food system. Similarly,
groups like RAFI (Rural Advancement Foundation
International) can keep us informed about the latest
information on "Terminator" technology and "Verminator"
technologies. Those alliances exist and they are being
strengthened every day.
CW: You talk about "Food Democracy vs. Food
Totalitarianism." Can you explain what you mean?
VS: "Food totalitarianism" for me, is the very simple
phenomena that a handful of corporations start
controlling the food system from seed, beginning with
seed as property. Totalitarianism also in the fact that
genetic engineering unleashes hazards. So I might want to
be an organic farmer, but next to me is a genetically
engineered field which contaminates my crop and denies me
the right to produce safe, pure organic food for
consumers. It's an authoritarian system that takes away
my freedom to grow quality food.
In the US about two years ago, the organic standards were
attempted to be corrupted and genetically engineered
crops and food were going to be identified as organic.
That was "food totalitarianism." And fortunately people
rebelled, more than 275,000 Americans citizens said, "We
will not allow our organic standards to be contaminated
by genetic engineering. And today organic is safe.
It is also totalitarian in the way
these trade treaties were put into
place. They were forced on the
world. In India we are being
forced to import meat and waste
from slaughter houses. We are
being forced to import wheat,
sorghum and milk, which we produce
in abundant quantities. And those
imports are destroying our markets, pushing our farmers
into suicide. It is a system that is worse than any
dictatorship that we are familiar with.
Democracy to me is reclaiming the spaces for farmers to
grow food and consumers to have safe food at reasonable
prices.
CW: Of course companies like Monsanto, Cargill, DuPont,
Novartis tell us that genetic engineering is going to
help feed the world, that it's going to eradicate hunger
in countries like India. Is that true?
VS: GE foods were never meant to eliminate hunger. The
advertisements were about hunger. But, GE has been and
will be always, a technology to generate profits for the
handful of corporations that call themselves
"life-sciences" corporations, which is an insult to life.
I would rather call them "death-sciences" corporations.
The most popular application, which accounts for about
80% of all genetically engineered crops planted in the
world, are herbicide resistant crops. Now, herbicide
resistant crops are ecocidal technologies that get rid of
the 200-250 crops that are grown in small farms of India.
A system which would wipe out the sources of vitamin A in
our green vegetables. And then say "It's okay, we provide
vitamin A through genetically engineering rice."
Herbicide resistant crops reduce
food production because they
destroy the biodiversity that
accounts for most of the food
consumed in the Third World. Bt
crops, where pesticide production
is built into the plant, is a sure
way to have total crop failure.
It's not a way to feed the world,
because it kills non-target
species. We've seen that with
bees, we've seen that with the
monarch butterfly. No matter how
much Monsanto lies, it is the case
that Bt in natural form is very
different from the Bt in the
plants. And the Bt in the plants
starts to affect species that were
not affected by the organic spray
that farmers across the world have
used.
And I know that at least for India in the Bt trials, we
went down to the fields ourselves and talked to the
farmers and in certain cases, the Bt crop, the
genetically engineered crop had 75% less production than
the conventional cotton that they were growing.
CW: Why do you think it has taken as long as it has,
given that some of these corporations like Monsanto,
Archer Daniels Midland are based in the United States,
for people in this country to become aware of the issues
around genetically engineered food?
VS: I think there are three reasons why it took so long
to build movements in North America on genetic
engineering. The first reason is that North American
agriculture been monopolized by agribusiness for so long.
Farmers here have been devastated so totally, you only
have 2% left on the land. In a way, American citizens
have gotten used to having their food hijacked. They have
gotten used to having agribusiness control their food
system. And therefore, the next step of control was not
that dramatic in their lives as it was in the lives of
Europeans or in the lives of Indians.
The second issue is the fact that
because agribusiness has been
contaminating the food system of
the US for so long,
industrializing food, in a way
citizens have lost both the
physiology and the culture of
food. I know that because when I
come to North America, I must tell
you I can't eat food here. We come
from a poor country but we have fresh food. The food has
a taste. And even my little chapatti, my little dhal, I
can eat on a daily basis. I just can't eat the foods at
the restaurants in this place, because it is so
contaminated, you have no idea what goes into what to
make what anymore.
And finally, the most important issue is related to the
fact that the regulatory agencies that should have been
controlling Monsanto, that should have been holding
Cargill to account, were actually held captive by these
corporations. And on behalf of these corporations, the
regulatory agencies in the United States have lied to the
American public. They have told falsehoods like
substantial equivalents: 'don't worry genetically
engineered food is exactly like non-genetically
engineered food.' Falsehoods like 'we've tested it all
out and it's all safe.' And I really think, if the
citizens of this country have to prove that the US is a
democracy, they have to hold their government to account,
for having misled them on something as vital as food.
CW: Where do you see the movement
headed internationally?
VS: At one level, I think citizens
have won the GE issue
intellectually and morally. The
place where they will undermine
the gains made by all of Europe
revolting and saying we won't
consume these crops; by Japan is
saying we won't; by the US having
a downturn in planting and
American citizens now waking up
and saying we don't want to
consume this junk, will be to make
it look like it is essential to
the Third World.
Aid will be the Trojan Horse through which they will try
to extend a lease on life for GMO's when people are
saying we don't need this to feed the world. And that is
where the future alliances will need to work together to
ensure that genetically engineered soya is not dumped on
India, as it is being dumped now through free-trade
regimes. And not dumped on the victims of Orissa cyclone,
where genetically engineered corn and genetically
engineered soya has been sold through aid agencies for
$4.5 million under the US AID relief. The Third World is
where the citizens of the North will have to become
active to hold their governments and their corporations
accountable.
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