GM Seeds and the Militarization of Food (And Everything Else)
GM Seeds and the Militarization of Food (And Everything Else)
By Jon Letman, March 6, 2013
Foot soldiers in the battle against corporate globalization and the privatization of commons like land and water have long been aware of Indian physicist and philosopher Dr. Vandana Shiva. An ecofeminist pioneer, today she is best known as an outspoken opponent of the GMOs (genetically modified organisms) being developed by transnational biotechnology and chemical corporations like Monsanto and Dow.
Shiva disputes the notion that patenting genes and controlling the world's seeds, and thus much of its food supply, will better serve humanity. Biotech companies claim their genetically engineered (GE) crops are able to withstand threats from insects, disease, and man-made pesticides and herbicides while making a serious contribution to feeding an increasingly hungry world.
Such claims are straight-up fabrications—lies—according to Shiva. GMOs, she says, destroy the natural web of life, threaten biodiversity and the environment, and are a scourge for human health and society.
Raised by conservation-minded parents (her father was a forest conservator, her mother a farmer) in the foothills of the Himalayas, Shiva was at the heart of the original "tree hugger" Chipko movement.
After earning a Ph.D. in "hidden variables and non-locality in quantum theory," Shiva branched out from science and academia to environmental activism and helping small farmers in India and around the world save seeds—a practice that puts her in direct conflict with biotech giants who insist their GE seeds are protected by patents.
More:
http://www.fpif.org/articles/gm_seeds_and_the_militarization_of_food_-_and_everything_else?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FPIF+%28Foreign+Policy+In+Focus+%28All+News%29%29
= new reply since forum marked as read
and great post.
Vandana Shiva really hits it out of the ball park: "I think these militarized borders and militarized takeovers, those who have practiced it for the last century think it's going to be the way of the next century. It's not going to be the way of the next century. The way of the next century has to be making peace with the earth." 
The harm of pesticides doesn't stay on farms alone. The highest ocean pollution is coming from fertilizer runoff creating dead zones. All of those pesticides being sprayed on the seed farms of Monsanto and Syngenta and BASF are running down and killing the fish life because nature is integrated at every level—plant, insect, soils, marine."
VS: I don’t think it's people who are the source of these cycles of violence. They're caught in them. It isn't that violence hasn't existed before our times—it has. But it was always localized. I think the violence in our times is global in scope—because the military and the economy are now globally organized, and they feed on each other, and the military has become the last economy."
These are just selections from the interview. Please, please read this, and make it go viral! Share on Facebook, etc.
I've known about these things for some time, but this is very well written. Get it out there!
