Corporate ag not sustainable | Vandana Shiva says corporations drain the Earth’s resources; instead, she promotes small, diverse farms
TORONTO — An Indian activist says today’s market economy needs to be knocked from its lofty perch.
If the world is to be fed in a sustainable manner, society needs to em-brace an economic order that prioritizes nature and provides equitable access to her bounty, Vandana Shiva told the recent Festival of Dangerous Ideas.
“Sooner or later, informed opinion and democracy will win. We all need to be ready to get to the streets,” she said.
Nature is the foundation of the economic system that Shiva refers to as Earth Democracy, which is the title of a book she published in 1995.
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Ten years later, she continues to preach the concepts it contains, which speak against seed patents, reliance on pesticides and genetically modified organisms.
Shiva said these technologies have prevented most of the world’s farmers from fully participating in the food system. They are also among the mechanisms of the false economy dedicated to capital accumulation.
She said a handful of corporations have used GMOs to corner a large segment of the seed market, which requires farmers to buy their seed rather than saving it.
GM seed is also designed to be accompanied by pesticides, mainly glyphosate, which is the active ingredient in Roundup.
Shiva said seed should remain a part of the commons, free to all, as should water, access to land and other fundamental needs.
“When seed was patented, the main idea was to prevent farmers from saving their needs, and dependency on this seed and the accompanying fertilizer ruined this beautiful land of Punjab (India’s bread basket).”
She said the phenomenon is global in scale, supported by government and commonly viewed as the new “natural” order.
Shiva advocates a return to a concept known as “the commons” to provide equitable access to the resources necessary to life. She said the market economy and those whom it serves attempts to control or “enclose” what was once the domain of communities.
“For the commoners and the community, enclosures create new poverty and new insecurity. Instead of land, biodiversity and water being the source of livelihoods and economic security for the poor, their labour is the only ‘resource’ left to them.”
She said the pesticides and fertilizers pushed by corporate agriculture are the products of war. So, too, is the domination of the market economy.
Shiva said the concept of gross domestic product was originally developed as a means to pull more wealth from society to fuel the Second World War. Today, it’s used as the means to accumulate wealth and has little to do with real growth.
She said it’s like injecting a dairy cow with growth hormone. It extends milk production for additional months but also puts the entire animal at risk.
Instead of viewing agricultural output as a component of GDP, Shiva said the nutritional content of sustainable production would be a better measure.
“Agriculture as it’s practiced today is a war. That must end,” she said.
“Through the seed and through food sovereignty, we can do so much to undo the violence against nature.… By giving more to the earth, we can get more back.”
Shiva advocates a system of small, diverse farms that she said can produce more than corporate agriculture, which ultimately relies upon finite, energy-rich resources.
“The law of return is vital, not just to have a sustainable system. It’s also about having just systems.”
The Festival of Dangerous Ideas was sponsored by businesses and organizations that included the National Farmers Union, the Sierra Club, the Canadian Council of Food Sovereignty and Health, the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment and Slow Food Toronto.
Jodi Koberinski, former executive director of the Organic Council of Ontario, was instrumental in bringing Shiva to Canada and organizing the event.
Born in northern India in 1952, Shiva is the author of several books and is recognized for her support of small farmers in her home country and opposition to many of the tools of modern agriculture. She received her doctorate in the philosophy of science at the University of Western Ontario in London in 1979 and went on to pursue studies in science, technology and environmental policy in India.
