THE FUTURE OF FOOD AND SEED

Vandana Shiva, Organicology Conference Portland, USA
2009, 59 min 54 sec

Scientist, activist and author, Vandana Shiva, talks about the importance of saving non-GMO seeds and her concept of Earth Democracy. “The desire to save seeds comes from an ethical urge to defend life’s evolution”, says Vandana Shiva. “In India 150.000 farmers have committed suicide in areas where they have to buy seeds every year from Monsanto at a very high cost.” In response to this, community seed banks were created to collect, multiply and distribute seeds according to the farmers’ needs.

She explains what Earth Democracy entails: “It’s a democracy that is related to the earth. It’s practiced best close to the earth, where you live, in your everyday life. We are first citizens of the earth.”

MONSANTO TRIBUNAL

Ruptly tv, The Hague
2017, 1 min 29 sec

Judges of the Monsanto Tribunal delivered their legal opinion regarding the activity of the agro-chemicals giant Monsanto at The Hague, Tuesday, arguing that the company has violated basic human rights to food and health.

Having examined testimonies of witnesses, the judges concluded that “there has been an infringement on the right to food,” including by “denying peasants access to the seeds they need” and that the tribunal “considers that Monsanto’s conduct has offended the right to health.”

The tribunal comes after a growing number of lawsuits have been filed against Monsanto over allegations that one of the much maligned corporation’s herbicides is a cause of malformations in babies and cancer in agricultural workers.

NATURE DOES NOT EXIST

Slavoj Zizek, VPRO – Tegenlicht, The Netherlands
2010, 3 min 58 sec

Controversial Slovenian philosopher, Slavoj Žižek, talks about the ongoing ecological crisis and concludes that Nature doesn’t exist.

Not humanity’s impotence but rather omnipotence is terrifying, since we can’t grasp the impact of the power of that omnipotence. This takes us to the treshold of a new era: the antropocene, in which humanity literally becomes a geological factor. For instance, certain human activity can cause earth quakes.Conclusion? Maybe, paradoxically, nature does not exist.The image of nature that we spontaneously accept, that it’s balanced, harmonised, and gets destroyed by excessive human angecy, that nature does not exist.

Richard Fleischer: Soylent Green

08. ON BIO-PIRACY
& GUERRILLA GARDENING

 

What are the social, political and economic implications when the very building blocks of life are being claimed as intellectual property by biotech companies? As land, forests, oceans, and the atmosphere are being colonized, eroded, and polluted, a corporatocracy is carving out new frontiers to exploit: the interior spaces and the reproduction of women, plants and animals.

Indigenous peoples tend to have very different attitudes toward property. When a transnational corporation attempts to patent traditional knowledge or genetic material, they consider such propertization both fatuous and outrageous. No individual can claim to be the sole “author” of collective resources (as copyrights and patents imply) because these resources required generations of stewardship, inherited innovation and culture to develop and refine! No one can appropriate and sell for private gain something entrusted to a commons as a sacred trust. Hence the term “biopiracy.” Indigenous communities can be as vulnerable to the seductions of money and power as anyone else. Some indigenous leaders have sold their traditional knowledge or resources for a pittance or entered into “benefit sharing” arrangements with Western pharmaceutical interests that end up betraying or greatly weakening their cultures. The San people of the Kalahari Desert in Africa agreed to 8 percent of the profits in a new diet drug made from Hoodia gordonii, a cactus the San have traditionally used as a natural appetite suppressant. Many have criticized this deal as a case of biopiracy that has injected market norms and large sums of cash into a traditional culture, with troubling effects. (David Bollier: Think like a Commoner, 2014: 152-153)

Sometimes enclosures involve things that a community only owns morally or inherits, such as the biodiversity of nature. These are common-pool resources, not actual commons (because the social systems to manage them remain aspirational, not actual). CPRs are particularly vulnerable to enclosure because there is no organized community to resist the seizure, so they are seen as “free for the taking.” Markets become the structural force for redesigning nature.(David Bollier: Think like a Commoner, 2014: 49)

Coke used as pesticide in India

FURTHER READING & RESEARCH

 

George McCay, Radical Gardening: Politics, Idealism and Rebellion in the Garden (2011)

Bruce Pascoe: Dark Emu (2014)

Ed Schehl, A Silent Forest: The Growing Threat Genetically Engineered Trees (2011)

Vandana Shiva: The Future of Food and Seed (2009)

Paul Stamets, Mycelium Running (2005)

George McCay, Radical Gardening: Politics, Idealism and Rebellion in the Garden (2011)

Vandana Shiva: Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge (1997)

Who Really Feeds the World: The Failures of Agribusiness and The Promise of Agroecology (2016)

Jeff Noon: Pollen (1995) 

Richard Reynolds, On Guerrilla Gardening: A Handbook for Gardening without Boundaries

Paul Stamets, Mycelium Running (2005)

Bill Mollison, Permaculture: A Designers’ Manual (2012) 

Peter Wohleben, The Hidden Life of Trees (2015)

Peter Tompkins & Christopher Bird, The Secret Life of Plants (1989)

Carlo Petrini, Slow Food: The Case for Taste (2001)

Michael Foley, Farming for the Long Haul: Resilience and the Lost Art of Agricultural Inventiveness (2019)

Geoff Lawton on Permaculture 

 Geoff Lawton on Food Forests
Geoff Lawton, Online Permaculture Masterclass

Video 1: Green is the New Silver (Lining): Crisis, Hope and Permaculture

Video 2: From Exploitation to Regeneration:  Rob and Michelle’s Story

Video 3 – An Urban Food Forest and Therapy Garden:  Angelo and Lana’s Journeys

Video 4 – Permaculture’s Origin Story:  Mollison’s PDM. Oh, and Nature

—Ed Schehl, A Silent Forest: The Growing Threat of Genetically Engineered Trees (2011)

Vandana Shiva, Protect or Plunder?  Understanding Intellectual Property Rights (2001)

Michael F. Brown, Who Owns Native Culture? (2004)

Crottorf Castle report of international retreat on the commons

http://www.onthecommons.org/content.php?id=2489

http://www.onthecommons.org/content.php?id=2490

http://www.onthecommons.org/content.php?id=2491

Alain Lipietz’ essay on the commons  / on political ecology

http://www.onthecommons.org/content.php?id=2590

http://www.onthecommons.org/alain-lipietzs-wisdom#sthash.aw723lsg.dpbs

http://lipietz.net/ALPC/Lectures/LEC_290.pdf

Barcelona Charter for Innovation, Creativity and Access to Knowledge

https://fcforum.net/en/charter/

http://www.fcforum.net

World Social Forum, Reclaim the Commons http://bienscommuns.org/signature/appel/?a=appel&lang=en

Commons Manifesto:  Strengthen the Commons.  Now!   

http://commonsblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/17/commons-manifesto-strenghten-the-commons-now

David Martin:  Global Innovation Trust and heritable trusts for indigenous peoples

http://www.invertedalchemy.blogspot.com/

http://www.globalinnovationcommons.org/

http://www.pitic.org.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=458&Itemid=118

Maria Mies & Veronika Benholdt-Thomsen:

Defending, Reclaiming and Reinventing the Commons
http://sduk.us/silvia_george_david/mies_benholdt_defending_reinventing.pdf

FURTHER RESOURCES

 

Bill Gates Wants to Realize Global Vision in His Lifetime

The Future of Food and Seed 

https://navdanyainternational.org

Bill Gates is continuing the work of Monsanto

Self-watering And Self-fertilizing Apple Trees Growing System Of The Tarahumara Indians

GUARDIANS OF DIVERSITY:
INTERNATIONAL CLIMATE EXCHANGE IN THE POTATO PARK, PERU

SIFOR Project, Asociacion Andes, Peru
2014, 15 min 35 sec

In April 2014, indigenous and ethnic minority farmers from Bhutan and China visited the Potato Park in Peru for a learning exchange on how to cope with climate change. They learned from the many biocultural innovations of the five Potato Park communities, which collectively conserve 1,460 varieties of potato. The film was produced as part of the SIFOR project (Smallholder Innovation for Resilience) in partnership with Asociacion ANDES (Peru), with funding from the European Union. Film-maker: Adam Kerby