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Free People from ‘Dictatorship’ of the 0.01%

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“The only way to counter globalisation—just a plot of land in some central place, keep it covered in grass, let there be a single tree, even a wild tree.”

This is how dear friend and eminent writer Mahasweta Devi, who passed away on July 28, at the age of 90, quietly laid out her imagination for freedom in our times of corporate globalisation in one of her last talks.

Our freedoms, she reminds us, are with grass and trees, with wildness and self-organisation (swaraj), when the dominant economic systems would tear down every tree and round up the last blade of grass.

From the days we jointly wrote about the madness of covering our beautiful biodiverse Hindustan with monocultures of eucalyptus plantations, which were creating green deserts, to the work we did together on the impact of globalisation on women, Mahaswetadi remained the voice of the earth, of the marginalised and criminalised communities.

She could see with her poetic imagination how globalisation, based on free trade agreements (FTAs), written by and for corporations, was taking away the freedoms of people and all beings. “Free trade” is not just about how we trade. It is about how we live and whether we live. It is about how we think and whether we think. In the last two decades, our economies, our production and consumption patterns, our chances of survival and the emergence of a very small group of parasitic billionaires, have all been shaped by the rules of deregulation in the WTO agreements.

“Free trade” is not just about how we trade. It is about how we live and whether we live. It is about how we think and whether we think.

In 1994, in Marrakesh, Morocco, we signed the GATT agreements which led to the creation of WTO in 1995. The WTO agreements are written by corporations for corporations, to expand their control on resources, production, markets and trade, establish monopolies and destroy both economic and political democracy.

Monsanto wrote the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement of WTO — which is an attempt to claim seeds as Monsanto’s invention, and own seeds as “intellectual property” through patents. It has only one aim — to own and control seed and make super-profits through the collection of royalties. We have seen the consequences of this illegitimate corporate-defined “property” right in India; with extortion of “royalties” for genetically modified (GMO) seeds leading to high seed prices.

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The enormous threat to America’s last grasslands

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Author: Ryan Schuessler

STUTSMAN COUNTY, N.D. — Over the past few years, Neil Shook has watched his world burn acre by acre.

“I could tell something was happening,” Shook recalled, when he first noticed the plumes of smoke in 2011. By 2013, fires were raging every day, sending smoke billowing into the air — imagery that reminded Shook of Kuwait’s burning oil wells during the Persian Gulf War.

Hundreds of acres of rolling green grasslands in North Dakota were being intentionally burned, plowed and planted in a matter of days. Shook, who manages the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Chase Lake National Wildlife Refuge and surrounding conservation area, watched as landowners backed out of federally funded conservation programs, opting instead to cash in on the state’s economic boom.

“This was all grass,” Shook shouted as he wildly gestured toward a vast expanse of plowed, brown farmland near the wildlife refuge in June. “Now, what do you see?”

In the mid-2000s, a perfect storm of conditions led to a decade of grassland destruction in North Dakota’s share of the prairie pothole region, a vast expanse of grassland and wetlands that stretches from eastern Alberta to northern Iowa. Corn and soybean prices were high, climate change had extended the growing season and genetically modified crops could now survive in the northern plains. And then the oil boom hit.

Between 2005 and 2015, more than 160,000 acres of Stutsman County mixed grass prairie — an ecosystem that can support more than 100 plant species per square mile — was converted into single-crop farmland. In just six years, North Dakota lost half of its acreage that was protected under the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) as biodiverse grasslands fell to the plow.

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Small Farmers Are Foundation to Food Security, Not Corporations Like Monsanto

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May 22 has been declared International Biodiversity Day by the United Nations. It gives us an opportunity to become aware of the rich biodiversity that has been evolved by our farmers as co-creators with nature. It also provides an opportunity to acknowledge the threats to our biodiversity and our rights from IPR monopolies and monocultures.

Just as our Vedas and Upanishads have no individual authors, our rich biodiversity, including seeds, have been evolved cumulatively. They are a common heritage of present and future farm communities who have evolved them collectively. I recently joined tribals in Central India who have evolved thousands of rice varieties for their festival of “Akti.” Akti is a celebration of the relationship of the seed and the soil and the sharing of the seed as a sacred duty to the Earth and the community.

In addition to learning about seeds from women and peasants, I had the honor to participate and contribute to international and national laws on biodiversity. I worked closely with our government in the run-up to the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, when the UN Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) was adopted by the international community. Three key commitments in the CBD are protection of the sovereign rights of countries to their biodiversity, the traditional knowledge of communities and biosafety in the context of genetically-modified foods.

The UN appointed me on the expert panel for the framework for the biosafety protocol, now adopted as the Cartagena protocol on biosafety. I was appointed a member of the expert group to draft the National Biodiversity Act, as well as the Plant Variety and Farmers Rights Act. We ensured that farmers rights are recognized in our laws. “A farmer shall be deemed to be entitled to save, use, sow, resow, exchange, share or sell his farm produce, including seed of a variety protected under this act, in the same manner as he was entitled before the coming into force of this act”, it says.

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A pilgrimage towards a nonviolent relationship with soil

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I have just returned from a soil pilgrimage undertaken to celebrate the International Year of Soil and renew our commitment to a non-violent relationship with the earth, the soil and our society. On October 2, we started the pilgrimage from Bapu Kutir at Sevagram Ashram, Maharashtra. My fellow pilgrims were those who have contributed over half-a-century of their lives to build the organic movement — Andre Leu, president of International Federation of Organic Agricultural Movements (IFOAM), Ronnie Cummins, director of the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) of the United States, and Will Allen, a professor and long-time organic farmer.

At Mahatma Gandhi’s hut, we took a pledge to stop the violence to the soil through chemical fertilisers and poisons and promote organic farming as ahimsa kheti. We dedicated ourselves to a transition from a violent, chemical, industrial agriculture that is destroying soil fertility and trapping farmers in debt through high-cost seeds and chemicals.

Vidarbha, for example, has emerged as the epicentre of debt-induced farmers’ suicides. It is also the region with the highest acreage of genetically modified organism (GMO) Bt cotton. Fields of non-Bt, native cotton — which is totally pest and weed-free — gives more yields than Bt cotton.

The Bt fields are being doused in pesticides because of pest outbreaks, since Bt is failing as a tool to control pests. Bt cotton fields are also being sprayed with Monsanto’s Roundup, a known carcinogen to control weeds.

There is no regulation of the poisons being used. Most of the GMO cotton seed is being blended and labelled for sale as vegetable oil. We are being fed GMO cotton seed oil, even though GMOs are not allowed in food in India. And while toxic oils spread without regulation, the new food safety rules have shut down the ghani (virgin oil press) that sold healthy and safe oils like flax, groundnut, sesame and mustard.

The oilcake is being fed to our cows. Those who kill others in the name of cow protection are silent on the fight against the toxic giants who are poisoning our “gau mata”.

The pilgrimage concluded at the Agriculture College, Indore, which started as Albert Howard’s institute on organic farming that contributed to the famous Indore process of composting.

Mahatma Gandhi came to know of the Indore process when he visited London to attend the Round Table Conference. Gandhi and Howard have shown that we can have a peaceful and respectful relationship with the soil and with each other.

Howard was sent to India in 1905 by the British Empire to introduce chemical farming. When he arrived, he found the soils were fertile and there were no pests in the fields. He decided to make the Indian peasant his professor and wrote the book An Agricultural Testament, known as the bible of organic farming.

Organic farming is the original example of “Make in India”. Howard’s book helped spread the organic movement to the US through the Rodale Institute and to the UK through the Soil Association, finding its way to far corners of the world.

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The soil pilgrimage was our expression of gratitude to sources of organic farming in India — our fertile and generous land and Mother Earth that have sustained us for millennia.

Ecological and regenerative agriculture is based on recycling organic matter, and hence recycling nutrients. It is based on the Law of Return — giving nutrients back to the soil. As Howard wrote in The Soil and Health: “Taking without giving is a robbery of the soil and a banditry; a particularly mean form of banditry, because it involves the robbing of future generations which are not here to defend themselves.”

In taking care of the soil, we also produce more food on less land. Fertile soils are the sustainable answer to food and nutrition security. Organic agriculture is the only real answer to climate change.

The air pollution that has built up in the atmosphere is roughly 400 parts per million (ppm) carbon dioxide today. This is the reason for the greenhouse effect and climate chaos, including temperature rise. To cap the rise of temperature at two degrees centigrade, we need to reduce the carbon build up in the air to 350 ppm.

There is a need to reduce emissions and phase out fossil fuels, but it also requires reducing the stocks of excess carbon from the atmosphere and putting it back into the soil where it belongs. Here, organic, regenerative agriculture offers us the way out.

In the process, it also addresses food insecurity and hunger, reverses desertification, creates livelihood security by creating ecological security, and, therefore, creates the path to peace.

Above all, it allows a transition from the violent paradigm, structures and systems of capitalist patriarchy to the non-violent paradigm, structures and systems based on ahimsa, which include the well being of all.

Organic farming is the answer to drought and climate change. It is also a peace solution. If we do not respect the soil and our cultural diversity and if we do not collectively recommit ourselves to ahimsa, we can rapidly disintegrate as a civilisation.

For me, organic agriculture is the dharma that sows the seeds of peace and prosperity for all. It helps us break out of the vicious cycle of violence and degeneration, and create virtuous cycles based on non-violence and regeneration.

Just as humus in soil binds soil particles and prevents soil erosion, it also binds the society and prevents violence and social disintegration. Since humus provides food, livelihood, water and climate security, it also contributes to peace. Just as wet straw cannot be put on fire by a matchstick, communities that are secure cannot be put on fire by violent elements feeding on insecurity created by an economic model that is killing swadeshi and is only designed for global economic powers to extract what they want.

In taking care of the soil, we reclaim our humanity. Our future is inseparable from the future of the earth. It is no accident that the word human has its roots in humus — soil in Latin. And Adam, the first human in Abrahamanic traditions, is derived from Adamus, soil in Hebrew.

Mahatma Gandhi wrote: “To forget how to dig the earth and tend the soil is to forget ourselves.” We must never forget that ahimsa must be the basis of our relationship with the earth and each other.

The writer is the executive director of the Navdanya Trust.

GMO decision honors Boulder County values

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Author: Mark Guttridge

Last month’s decision by the Boulder County Commission to phase out GMOs on publicly-owned open space was a monumental decision. In an age where special interests seem to dominate political policy, it was a surprise to see that the will of the citizens still holds weight. Yet the reaction from Paul Danish, who angrily entered the commissioners’ race for this November, calling the decision “an attack on scientific agriculture,” and the editorial by the Camera’s Dave Krieger claiming the commissioners “bowed to popular fears” paint a very different picture. I’m sorry Paul and Dave, but I have to disagree.

With so many of our citizens, non-profits, and county employees working tirelessly to increase access of healthy local food into our school cafeterias, low-income communities, and daily shopping habits, is it not appropriate that the use of our public lands also follows this aim? If the county health department is actively encouraging phasing out processed sugars from our diets, is it not appropriate that their production also be phased out from our public lands? The decision was not an attack on science, it was an investment in the values of Boulder County.

The decision was also an investment in an alternative form of science called regenerative agriculture, one that many climate experts have agreed is our greatest chance to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and return it to our soils. My own research into carbon sequestration has led me to conclude that it occurs most efficiently in healthy ecosystems, with plants and soil biology working together. Like the commissioners, I am less concerned about the gene manipulation technology than I am with the chemicals associated with current GE crops. Spraying glyphosate, coating seeds with neonicotinoids, and relying on petroleum-based nitrogen fertilizers are all crutches designed to make farming in unhealthy ecosystems viable. What the commissioners proposed is a transition period where we research ways to increase the health of our public lands to a point where these crutches are no longer necessary.

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Court Ruling a Victory for Mexico Farmers and Anti-GMO Activists

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Authors: Mercedes López Martínez and Ercilia Sahores

On March 8, 2016, Mexican farmers, consumers and activists scored a major victory when a federal appeals court ruled that genetically engineered corn can’t be grown in Mexico until a class action lawsuit, filed by scientists, consumers, farmers and activists has been resolved.

The March 8 ruling allows the biotech industry to continue experimental trials of GM corn, but with a new twist—the Secretariat of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Fisheries and Food (SAGARPA) will now require regular assessments of the impact of the of the test crops on neighboring non-GM fields and human health.

This recent victory follows a seven-year battle that has drawn together a broad coalition of coalition of individuals and civil society organizations, including scientists, farming groups, beekeepers, indigenous groups, environmental groups, human rights groups and artists bound together by a single mission: to protect the integrity of Mexico’s most popular agricultural crop. The coalition, called Sin Maíz, No hay País (Without Corn, There is No Country), has for years been collecting scientific data about GMOs introduced in Mexico.

The Organic Consumers Association’s Mexico-based team, working through our sister organizations, Vía Orgánica and Asociación de Consumidores Orgánicos, is proud to have played a role in achieving this victory. We also know that this is just the first of many legal hurdles we will have to overcome in our continued battle to defend the integrity and diversity of Mexico’s corn and its connection with an entire culture.

The history behind Monsanto’s Assault on Mexico’s Corn

In 2009, changes in Mexican law allowed biotech giants like Monsanto to conduct trials of GMO corn in approved regions of the country.

Two years later, in 2011, Monsanto and Syngenta asked for a permit to plant GM corn in several states in Northern Mexico. Not surprisingly, they found legal loopholes and sympathetic government officials. The imminent infiltration of GM corn in Mexico threatened Mexico’s ancient tradition of seed exchanges and seed banks. It also threatened to cross contaminate native corn crops, pollute the environment, destroy biodiversity, poison the people and bring poverty to small producers by privatizing corn production through the sale of proprietary patented seeds—just as industrial GMO crops have done in other parts of the world.

This new and imminent threat led to the creation of the 73-member Sin Maíz, No hay País Coalition which has since worked tirelessly to protect and defend Mexico’s traditional corn economy and culture. In July 2013, the coalition filed a lawsuit challenging the government’s process for permitting the planting of GM corn, on the basis that GM corn would threaten biodiversity for current and future generations.

Monsanto and Syngenta responded by hiring the best international and national law firms to fight off the coalition’s team of legal experts, some of whom worked pro bono. The coalition sought national and international funding. OCA has so far contributed $30,000 to support the struggle.

In 2014 and 2015, multinational agribusiness companies, led by Monsanto and Syngenta, filed a number of lawsuits in an attempt to defeat the coalition. They were unsuccessful and instead only strengthened the grassroots group, which gained increasing national and international attention.

As the coalitions’ class action suit gained momentum, it was challenged by more than 70 entities, including Syngenta, Pioneer, DuPont and Monsanto, governmental agencies such as the Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT) and SAGARPA.

The formal trial, which ultimately led to the March 8 ruling, began in January 2016.

A heritage worth protecting

Mexico is home to 59 native varieties of corn. The Mexican people have crafted over 600 unique corn-based dishes, creating a rainbow of colors and flavors that come from each unique variety. The story of Mexico’s most commonly produced grain dates back thousands of years, when corn was first domesticated in Mesoamerica. That’s when the relationship between human beings and plants first developed, giving birth to the center of genetic heritage and diversity of corn and a culturally and protein rich civilization.

So central to Mexico’s culture is corn, that it has been the subject of entire books. One of those books, “Men of Maize,” written by Miguel Ángel Asturias and based on the sacred book of the Mayan Popol Vuh, explores the deep connection between the Mexican people and teocintle, as the grandfather of corn

It’s a heritage Sin Maíz, No hay País is determined to vigilantly protect, despite this recent first-round victory. The coalitions demands will not ease until the federal courts:

  • Admit that, voluntarily or involuntarily, significant contamination of non-GM fields has already taken place.
  • Acknowledge that GMO crops affect the human right to conservation, sustainable use and fair and equal participation of biological diversity in native corn because they violate the Law on Biosafety of Genetically Modified Organisms.
  • Acknowledge that agricultural biodiversity will be highly affected by the release of GMO corn.
  • Declare the suspension of the introduction of transgenic maize in all its various forms, including experimental and pilot commercial plantings, in Mexico, birthplace of corn in the world.

For more information:

https://demandacolectivamaiz.mx/wp/
https://viaorganica.org/
https://www.sinmaiznohaypais.org/

Donate to keep Monsanto’s GMO corn out of Mexico.

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Mercedes López Martínez is the networking coordinator for Vía Orgánica.

Ercilia Sahores is Latin America Political Director for Regeneration International.

Will Allen & Michael Colby: Vermont’s GMO addiction – with or without a label

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Authors: Will Allen and Michael Colby

Vermont has proven itself to be a leader when it comes to showing its concern over the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in agriculture and food production. It was the first state in the nation to pass GMO-labeling legislation, forcing food corporations nationwide to scramble and prepare to meet the law’s requirements when it takes effect in July 2016. But, in many ways, the passage of this historic law has left a false impression that it “solved” the GMO problem in the state. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Vermont agriculture is dominated by GMOs, especially within the commodity dairy sector, which represents more than 70 percent of the state agricultural economy. Currently, there are more than 92,000 acres of GMO feed corn that are grown in Vermont, making it – by far – the state’s number one crop. More than 96 percent of all feed corn grown in Vermont is a GMO variety, and almost all of this GMO corn is used to feed dairy cows.

Ironically, Vermont’s GMO addiction is exempt from its own GMO labeling law, as the law specifically exempts dairy and meat products. So while the law will force mainstream food corporations to label GMOs in products like Cheetos and SpaghettiOs before coming into the state, it turns a blind eye to the GMO-derived dairy that is the primary ingredient in, for example, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and Cabot’s cheddar cheese.

This is about more than the consumer’s right to know. It’s also about the impact GMO-centered agriculture is having on Vermont’s environment and wildlife, its role in the continued monopolization of the food supply, and the roadblocks it creates in the path toward a truly regenerative, eco-sensitive, and socially just form of agriculture in the state. The current domination of GMOs and industrial agriculture in Vermont dairy is, quite frankly, the elephant on the farm that few want to acknowledge.

The history of Vermont’s heavy adoption of industrial – or degenerative – forms of agriculture is also the history of its failure and decline. At every stage, beginning with chemical agriculture in the post-WWII era, the new techniques being promoted by the increasingly corporate and industrial agriculture came with mighty promises: Labor would be saved, yields would be increase, bugs and insects would be eliminated, and profits would soar. Just get in line, and follow the edicts coming out of the USDA and the agricultural extension centers.

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Anna Swaraj

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Mahatma Gandhi’s spinning wheel and Gandhi’s ghani (the indigenous cold press oil mill) are both symbols of swadeshi as economic freedom and economic democracy.

Gandhi inspired everyone in India to start spinning their own cloth in order to break free from the imperial control over the textile industry, which enslaved our farmers to grow cotton and indigo for the mills of Lancashire and Manchester, and dumped industrial clothing on India, destroying the livelihoods of our spinners and weavers. The spinning wheel and khadi became our symbols of freedom.

Gandhi promoted the ghani to create employment for the farmer and processor and to produce healthy, safe and nutritious edible oils for society. What the spinning wheel is to “kapda”, the economy of clothing and textiles, the “ghani” is to “roti”, the economy of food.

Fresh, local and artisanally processed food without chemical additives and industrial processing is recognised as the healthiest alternative. That is why until the 1990s, food processing was reserved for the small-scale and cottage industry sector. The World Trade Organisation rules changed our food and agriculture systems dramatically.

Today we are living in food imperialism. We have become a sick nation due to the rapid spread of industrially processed food and junk food, which are destroying our healthy food traditions.

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