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Vol. 14 No. 5…Dedicated to the Dialogue on
Race…January 31, 2011
Bit of History
Vandana Shiva
The influences that shaped
Vandana Shiva's life began at her birth on November 5, 1952. Nurtured in the
ancient city of 
Shiva's physics background and
love of nature led her to question the impact of science and technology on the
environment. For answers she enrolled in inter-disciplinary research in
science, technology and environmental policy at the Indian Institute of Science
and the Indian Institute of Management in
During this period, Shiva became
an outspoken critic of the "Green Revolution," which sought to
alleviate hunger by improving crop performance with irrigation, fertilizers,
pesticides, and mechanization. She articulated her views on this and many other
subjects in over 500 papers in leading scientific and technical journals, as
well as 20 books. "Principally, the Green Revolution was supposed to bring
Western technology to the aid of
Shiva argued for the wisdom of
traditional farming practices through her foundation --the Research Foundation
for Science, Technology and Ecology (RFSTE). Founded in 1982, this institute is
concerned with biodiversity and led her to the creation in 1991 of Navdanya (nine
seeds) to protect the diversity of native seeds. RFSTE is in the forefront of
the battle over Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and Biodiversity; it
successfully challenged the biopiracy of neem (the tree's fruits and seeds are
pressed into vegetable oil), basmati (rice) and wheat. Besides her activism,
Shiva has also served on expert groups of government on Biodiversity and IPR
legislation.
Along with being a national movement to protect the diversity and integrity of
living resources, RFSTE and Navdanya encourage local farmers to reject
political and economic pressures that may endanger
Dr. Shiva is one of the leaders
and board members of the alter-globalization solidarity movement known as the
International Forum on Globalization, (along with Jerry Mander, Edward
Goldsmith, Ralph Nader, Jeremy Rifkin, et al.). An opponent of the so-called
Green Revolution, Shiva has mounted international campaigns against Genetically
Modified Organisms (GMOs). She has assisted grassroots organizations in Africa,
Asia, Latin America,
She denounced the new "miracle" Golden Rice, developed to prevent
blindness due to Vitamin A deficiency, because her research indicates that it
results from pesticides destroying "weeds" that have essential
vitamins. Golden Rice, Shiva adds, is "based on a false premise,"
since "it will meet less than one per cent of the required daily intake of
essential vitamins" (Shiva, 2000).
Dr. Shiva started Bija Vidyapeeth
in
Dr. Shiva has received over 15
national and international awards for ecology awareness and environmental
preservation, including the Earth Day International Award in 1993, the
International Award of Ecology in 1997, the Order of the Golden Ark, Global 500
Award of the UN, the Lennon Ono Grant for Peace and the Sydney Peace Prize
2010. She also serves on the boards of many organizations, including the World
Future Council, the International Forum on Globalization and Slow Food
International. (Sources: http://www.bio.davidson.edu,
http://en.wikipedia.org and www.bbc.co.uk)
By John Burl Smith
"Food fight" is a western
term that invokes scenes such as National Lampoon's Animal House, where John
Belushi incites students to throw food as projectiles at others in a collective
chaotic display of spontaneous behavior. Presented as comic relief, contrarily,
this scene conveys an utter disregard for the importance of 
food
in the daily life and death dramas of desperate people played out in
Emerging from WWII, Americans gave little consideration to food. Moreover, they
thought even less about what producing it did to their bodies, their society
and the planet, until food price inflation and books critical of industrial
agriculture became kitchen table discussions in the early 1970s. Most Americans
felt the tremendous postwar increases in farm productivity -- made possible by
fertilizers and pesticides (derivatives of fossil fuel) and changes in
agricultural policies that boosted yields of commodities (mainly corn and soy)
meant
However, the "oil
crisis" of 1972 taught Americans and the rest of the world that cheap food
may be good politics that comes at significant costs to the environment, public
health, the public purse, even to the culture. Today these "chickens have
come home to roost" in the "food fight" as rising prices and
sustainability problems have come back to bite humanity in its proverbial rear.
Journalists, authors and movie producers have served the public a diet that
nourished their understanding of the connections between human and
environmental cost that are associated with methods of industrial food
production, agricultural policy, food borne illness, childhood obesity and,
most notability, a greater demand on family income.
Cheap food has been an indispensable pillar of the modern economy, but now it
is the aggressor in the fight for food security. This irony is an oxymoron in
industrialized nations where dieting is necessary to combat obesity, conversely
This may seem an odd statement to
make about something people think of in benign terms and with so much of the
West's rhetoric aimed at
Other emerging market countries
are being hit even harder by raising food prices.
Kenyan farmers near
Stephen Muchiri, head of the Eastern Africa Farmers Federation, says "The
amount of money spent for the
U.N. officials predict that famine is gripping millions in
Underscoring the urgency, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon posted a letter to
Shaky is the government that
rests on an empty bread basket. The Tunisian strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali,
who stepped down after 23 years in power, knows this maxim all too well.
Thought to be as solid as a pyramid a week ago, President Hosni Mubarak's 28
year tenure now teeters, rocked by the quaking rumblings of stomach pangs in
By John Burl Smith
An intriguing 2-part article by
Ian Angus entitled Capitalism, Agribusiness and the Food Sovereignty
Alternative (6/27/10) echoes the thesis of my first novel 
writing
in 2006, I envisioned the story line as a farfetched science fiction which now
seems more like "art imitating life."
Angus begins by commending
Wagging his finger at other nations as hypocrites, Angus points out that though
aid in such situations is necessary, it is only a stopgap. "To truly
address the problem of world hunger, we must understand and then change the
system that causes it. First, we must understand that there is no shortage of
food in the world today. Study after study has shown that global food
production has consistently outstripped population growth, and that there is
more than enough food to feed everyone."
According to the United Nations
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), enough food is produced in the world
to provide over 2800 calories a day to everyone -- substantially more than the
minimum required for good health, and about 18% more calories per person than
in the 1960s, despite a significant increase in total population. The Food
First Institute points out, "abundance, not scarcity, best describes the
supply of food in the world today." Yet, most proposed solutions to world
hunger call for new technologies to increase food production.
The problem from Angus'
perspective is "Scientific research is vitally important to the
development of agriculture, but initiatives that assume in advance that new
seeds and chemicals are needed are neither credible nor truly scientific. The
fact that there is already enough food to feed the world shows that the food
crisis is not a technical problem -- it is a social and political problem.
Rather than asking how to increase production, our first question should be
why, when so much food is available, are over 850 million people hungry and
malnourished and 18,000 children die of hunger every day?"
The answer is "The global food industry is not organized to feed the
hungry; it is organized to generate profits for corporate agribusiness. This
year, agribusiness profits are soaring above last year's levels, while hungry
people from
Angus cuts to the heart of the food crisis with this observation, "These
companies, plus a few more, are the monopoly or near-monopoly buyers and
sellers of agricultural products around the world. Six companies control 85% of
the world trade in grain; three control 83% of cocoa; three control 80% of the
banana trade. ADM, Cargill and Bunge effectively control the world's corn,
which means that they alone decide how much of each year's crop goes to make
ethanol, sweeteners, animal feed or human food." The editors of Hungry for
Profit supports this thesis, "The enormous power exerted by the largest
agribusiness/food corporations allows them essentially to control the cost of
their raw materials purchased from farmers while at the same time keeping
prices of food to the general public at high enough levels to ensure large
profits."
Over the past three decades, transnational agribusiness companies have
engineered a massive restructuring of global agriculture. Directly through
their own market power and indirectly through governments and the World Bank,
IMF and World Trade Organization, they have changed the way food is grown and
distributed around the world, making food crises a part of the profit motive.
Consequently, the world is not experiencing a food crisis rather it has a farm
crisis that has been building for decades.
During this period, the rich countries of the north forced poor countries to
open their markets, and then flooded those markets with subsidized food,
devastating
Angus cites
Contrary to the claims of
agribusiness, the latest agricultural research, including more than a decade of
concrete experience in Cuba, proves that small and mid-sized farms using
sustainable agroecological methods are much more productive and vastly less
damaging to the environment than huge industrial farms. Industrial farming
continues not because it is more productive, but because it has been able,
until now, to deliver uniform products in predictable quantities, bred
specifically to resist damage during shipment to distant markets. That's where
the profit is, and profit is what counts, no matter what the effect may be on
earth, air, and water.
Fighting for food sovereignty took a giant step forward when La Via Campesina (
To read Angus' two-part article, go to http://climateandcapitalism.com/?p=2539
and to get information about
Mailbox: E-Mails, Faxes and Telephone Calls
Email
www.dailymail.co.uk...How mad cow
disease 'can be spread through air' By David Derbyshire…Mad cow disease
can be spread by airborne particles, researchers warn. And they fear that those
who work in abattoirs, slaughterhouses and laboratories could be at risk. Their
study shows prions, the infectious agents which cause BSE and its human form,
variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, can be dangerous if carried through the air.
In tests, mice who breathed them in developed the brain disease with
'frightening' speed and died. The discovery could also explain why some of the
victims in the 1990s were vegetarians. Since the link between BSE-infected meat
and vCJD was confirmed in 1996, 170 have died. Deaths peaked in 2000 when 28
died. Last year, there were three victims. Prions, a type of protein, can
spread on surgical instruments and in blood transfusions. It had been assumed
they were not transmitted by air. But Swiss researcher Dr Adriano Aguzzi at
University Hospital Zurich and colleagues exposed laboratory mice to aerosols
containing prions in a specially designed chamber. Just one minute's exposure
to the prions was enough to infect all the mice, Dr Aguzzi reports in the
journal PLoS Pathogens. The longer the exposure lasted, the sooner the mice
developed symptoms of vCJD. Prions are found in brain and spinal tissue and
doctors believe the victims of vCJD were infected from eating contaminated
beef. However, some victims were vegetarians - raising the prospect that they
were infected in another way.
Email www.dailymail.co.uk...Scientists create
GM 'superchicken' that doesn't spread bird flu...By David Derbyshire...A
genetically modified 'superchicken' that doesn't spread deadly bird flu has
been developed by scientists. The bird is intended to prevent the outbreaks of
avian influenza which lead to millions of birds being culled. It could also
stop new strains of flu mutating in domestic fowl and spreading to people,
leading to killer worldwide pandemics. The British team behind the GM chicken
says it is 'inconceivable' that its meat or eggs could be harmful. However, it
will need rigorous safety checks before it could go into the food chain, they
said. But anti GM campaigners warned that genetic engineering was not the
answer to stopping bird flu - and said the public would never accept GM eggs
and meat.
Email hesco@campaignfoundations.com...Although
you mentioned several times in this weeks piece the impact of rising fuel costs
on the grocery checkout tape, I saw no mention of peak oil production (which
many say we hit a few years ago) on this trend. Nor did I see any examination
of the impact of our long supply lines for increasing those costs. I urge that
you check out literature on local diets and the 100-mile diet for inspiration
for a path forward. Thanks for alerting me to the