The world is in an agricultural crisis, says Vandana Shiva.

There are two distinct futures for our food and farming.

One leads to a dead end. A dead planet. Poisons and chemical monocultures spreading. Farmers committing suicide because of debt for seeds and chemicals. Children dying for lack of food. People dying from chronic diseases spreading due to nutritionally empty, toxic commodities sold as food. And climate havoc wiping out conditions for human life on Earth.

The second future leads to the rejuvenation of the planet through rejuvenation of biodiversity, soils and water, rejuvenation of small farms, and diverse, healthy, fresh, ecological food for all.

The first path is industrial, and was paved by the poison cartel, which was born during the second world war to create chemicals that can kill people. After the war, the war chemicals were redeployed as agrichemicals – pesticides and fertilisers. We were told, in effect, that we could not have food without poisons.

The process to make explosives by burning fossil fuels at high temperature to fix atmospheric nitrogen was later used to make chemical fertilisers. The slogan was that there would never again be scarcity of food, because we can now make “bread from air”.

There was the exaggerated claim that artificial fertilisers would increase food production and remove all the ecological limits that land puts on agriculture. Today the evidence is growing that, instead, artificial fertilisers have reduced soil fertility, reduced food production and contributed to desertification, water scarcity and climate change.

In the 1990s we were told we would starve without GMOs – genetically modified crops and other organisms – brought to us by the same poison cartel. There was an exaggerated claim that GMOs would remove all the limits imposed by the environment, and grow food in deserts and toxic dumps. Yet today we have only two GMO applications in widespread use – herbicide resistance and Bt toxins in crops. The first was claimed to control weeds. Instead, it has created superweeds. Bt crops were supposed to control pests. Instead, they have created new pests and superpests, while in India and elsewhere the introduction of Bt cotton has pushed thousands of farmers to suicide.

Now we are being told by agri-industry that in the not-too-distant future “big data” will feed us. Monsanto calls it “digital agriculture”, based on big data and artificial intelligence. It has started to talk about “farming without farmers”. This is why the farmers’ crisis and the suicide epidemic of Indian farmers have drawn no response from government, which is blindly paving the next phase on the dead-end highway.

When I was at the G20 meetings in Hamburg recently, it became extremely evident that pushing digitalisation in every sector of our modern life was going to be defined as the next step of progress. At a time when the world is waking up to the living intelligence of the planet and to the tiniest of life forms, there is an attempt to extend a failed mechanistic paradigm in the name of artificial intelligence and big data.

Monsanto’s partnership with Atomwise allows making a guess which molecules will give Monsanto the next possible pesticide. This is not the intelligence for sustainable management of pests, but rather a narrow bet on the next poison. It is turning life into a digital casino.

This is like playing poker on the deck of the Titanic while the ship is sinking.

In 2013 Monsanto acquired the world’s largest climate data corporation, The Climate Corporation, for US$1 billion. In 2014 it acquired the world’s largest soil data corporation, Solum.

The Climate Corporation does not bring farmers the knowledge that the solution to climate change lies below our feet, in the soil. Rather, it sells data. Solum does not work with farmers to understand the rich soil food web – the bacteria, the fungi, the earthworms. Instead, it too sells data.

But data is not knowledge. It is just another commodity to make the farmer more dependent. Effectively, farmers are being told they must outsource their minds to Monsanto.

This is the next step in a dead-end future that ignores the intelligence of seeds, plants, soil organisms, our gut bacteria, our farmers, our grandmothers.

Yet, as I indicated at the beginning of this article, rather than following this blind alley, we can sow the seeds of another future.

All over the world, small farmers and gardeners are already implementing this agriculture, preserving and developing their soils and their seeds, practising agroecology. They are feeding their communities with healthy and nutritious food while rejuvenating the planet. They are thus sowing the seeds of food democracy – a food system in the hands of farmers and consumers, devoid of corporate control, poisons, food miles and plastics. A food system that nourishes the planet and all humans.

Contrary to the assertion that small farmers should be wiped out because they are unproductive, and that we should leave our food future in the hands of the poison cartel, surveillance drones and spyware, small farmers are providing 70% of global food using 30% of the resources that go into agriculture. Industrial agriculture is using 70% of the resources to create 40% of the greenhouse gas emissions while providing only 30% of our food. This commodity-based agriculture has caused 75% of the destruction of soils, 75% of the destruction of water resources, and pollution of our lakes, rivers and oceans, and has pushed 93% of crop diversity to extinction. It is also creating a health crisis by producing nutritionally empty toxic commodities. A billion people are permanently hungry in this system, while more than 2 billion suffer from food-related diseases. Organic farming takes excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, where it doesn’t belong, and through photosynthesis puts it back into the soil, where it does belong. It also increases the water-holding capacity of the soil, contributing to resilience in times of drought, flood and other climate extremes.

We cannot address climate change and its very real consequences without recognising the central role of the industrial and globalised food system, which contributes more than 40% of greenhouse gas emissions through deforestation, animals in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), plastics and aluminium packaging, long-distance transport, and food waste. We cannot solve climate change without small-scale, ecological agriculture, based on biodiversity, living seeds and living soils, and local food systems, with minimal food miles and no plastic packaging.

What we eat, how we grow the food we eat, and how we distribute it will determine whether humanity survives or pushes itself and other species to extinction.

Vandana Shiva is Director of Navdanya. www.navdanya.org

Web Exclusives, Nov/Dec issue Resurgence magazine

 

 

 

 

photo S. Mulyadi Kalimantan Indonesia

The “Dharma” of Food

The title of this reflection might puzzle you as much as it puzzled me. I found this thought-provoking article in Resurgence &Ecologist magazine( www.resurgence.org)  Issue 294. (2016, Jan./Febr.) Vandana Shiva reflects about the deep meaning of food, as she has done so long already in her work as activist for preserving seeds in India.

Guided by her inspiring thoughts and fierce words, I will reflect with you on the sacredness of food.

First of all let us try to understand the meanning of the word “dharma”. That is not so easy, because the concept dharma is an unique Indian concept. The author considers this concept a gift of Indian Civilisation to humanity of today. Dharma is like a compass, a lamp on the path of humanity searching for right action and right livelihood.

In reading more of Vandana Shiva over the years, she has thought me so much about the sacredness of food and the mirror food is of the whole web of life.  There is no word with the same meaning as dharma in Western languages. Dharma is also not limited to religion but is part of the different aspects that make a culture. It is clear that all religions from India know the concept of dharma.  Mainly it means “the right path”. Looking at the etymological root of dharma it refers to    ” that which sustains”: the universe and all creation, from macro-cosmos to micro- cosmos, from the finest microbe to the largest mammals. Dharma refers to the interconnectedness of all life. The opposite of dharma is adharma, that action, that way of life that violates the ecological laws and balance of the planet and our care for each being, irrespective of gender, race, caste, age or class.

So dharma helps us to choose between right or wrong, gives use right values and insights to take action for a harmonious and sustainable world.

A choice is a dharmic choice if it contributes to holding together and is adharmic if it leads to ecological destruction. Or to say it in the line of writings of Thomas Berry: a choice for action is good if it fits in the circle of life.

Vandana Shiva mentions very old resources in Indian literature on the sacred meaning of food and realizes that the depth of insights is very congruent with modern findings from the science of agro-ecology and the best thinking on the principles of food justice and food ethics.

Food itself is Brahma, the Creator.

Do not look down upon food.

Do not neglect food.

Ensure an abundance of food all around.

In dharma food is creation, the cycle of life is a food cycle, good food is medicine, and the growing and sharing of good food, in abundance, is the highest duty.

Those words can lead us into deep reflections and through that to great insights. What is good and right in fulfilling our duty in providing and sharing good food in abundance. Every piece of food we eat comes after a choice we made consciously or not for this food to eat. E.g. do we allow toxic food to enter our sacred bodies?

From what circle of production does this food come? Is it grown with much love and care by generally speaking poor farmers in East or West, or does is come from great agroindustrial farms? Have you ever tasted the difference? Have you ever thought about the effect and consequences of your choice for the poor farmers? How this pushes them into debts, stess and even suicide? Acoording to Vandana Shiva 300.000 farmers in India have committed suicide in the past years. So the food on our tables, the crops on our lands are the domain of ethical, political choices!

But do we have a say in what we choose to eat? Do we know what choices there are if we walk in the (super) market and fill our shopping carts?  How have we really been able to make a choice between healthy or unhealthy foods or have others done that for us, long time ago, far away of close by?

Vandana Shiva is very strong and clear when she says: ” The human capacity to choose between healthy food and unhealthy food is being taken away. Instead of ensuring that food is the source of health and wellbeing, all consideration of growing healthy, safe, nourishing and healing food is being banished by a technological fundamentalism that promotes GMOs. Instead of seeing food as the creator, corporations and scientists developing GMOs are taking over the role of creator through patents on life itself. Instead of assessing how the use of toxic chemicals and GMOs is affecting the web of life – the bees and the butterflies, the earthworms and soil organisms, the biodiversity of our plants- assesments built into biosafety laws are being blocked through deregulation under the influence of industry in country after country”.

The principle of abundance is violated. Now abundance becomes scarcity.The old ways of seeds saving and sharing seeds will disappear and have disappeared already where seeds are made non- renewable. Where all kinds of rules and genetic manipulating make seeds scarce. Farmers are no longer free to produce the seeds they want and seeds are intentionally destroyed so that farmers depent on the market and have to buy need new seeds every year. That causes great debts for the farmers. There is also scarcity in the field when diversity-rich farming systems are now replaced by monocultures. There is scarcity because good foods turn into poison by toxic chemicals.

It is clear that choices for good food production and handling have to be made. It is the choice between happy farming and growing healthy foods and the greed of earning as much money as possible, control of harvests and the market.

How will we understand in a new way that it is our duty to help Mother Earth to be truly nourishing as she has been for billions of years? How can we grow in our respect for food and understand the sacredness of food?

May we understand the changes and conversion needed in our personal consumptions and in ways to act on behalve of farmers, soil, and the food for future generations.

And to conclude this powerful sentence of Vandana Shiva: dharma protects those who protect dharma.

See also www.navdanya.org

Vandana Shiva is an Indian scientist, philospher, feminist, author, environmentalist and activist Vandana Shiva is a one-woman movement for peace, sustainability,and social justice. in 1991 she founded Navdanya, a national movement to protect diversity and integrity of living resources, especially native seeds.

 

A meditation by Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese monk and peace activist. You can find it in  his book :” Touching the Earth” .

“Lord Buddha, each time I sit at the table, I promise to be grateful. I know that the time to eat is also a time to meditate. When I eat I not only my body is nourished, but also my mind. When I fold my hands before the meal, I follow my breath to bring my body and mind to oneness. And in this state of pure awareness I will look at the food on my plate and I will meditate on the next five points:

1. This food is a gift of the whole Universe – the soil, the air, and hard work.
2. May we take our food in consciousness so that we are worthy to receive this food.
3. May we transform our imperfect state of awareness and learn to eat with moderation.
4. May we only take that food that really nourishes us and prevents illness.
5. We accept this food to realize the path of insight and love.

…I see that this food is a gift of the soil and the air. I see the rice field, the vegetable garden, the sunshine, the rain, the manure and the hard work of the farmer. I see the beautiful fields of golden wheat, those harvesting , those threshing the wheat, the ones baking the bread. I see the beans sown in the soil growing up. I see the apple orchard, the plum orchard, the tomato garden and the workers taking care of those plants. I see the bees and butterflies flying from flower to flower and gathering pollen and preparing sweet honey. I see that every element of the cosmos has participated in this….My heart is full of gratitude and happiness. When I chew my food, I nourish my consciousness and my happiness and I take care that my mind is not occupied by the past or by the future or by senseless thoughts of the present. Every bite nourishes me and my ancestors and my descendants, who live in me. Food for my senses can give me compassion and joy while eating. When I eat with full awareness, I bring forth compassion, freedom and joy. In this way I feed my family and my sangha (  community).

I will take care that I will not eat more than I need, because it is harmful for myself and for my discipline.

Lord Buddha, three times I touch the Earth on behalf of you, who are worthy of all respect and sacrifice. In this way I express my gratitude for the soil, the air and all kind of living beings and feed my happiness.

I nourish myself with true food and the food that feeds my senses. True food gives nourishment for my body.