Vandana Shiva on Seeds of Humanity

[DARC MIND]

ms shiva is a warrior-poet in the truest sense.
i think it's important to point out that there is no "war against the earth" though.
the issue is the war humanity wages against itself.
the earth is going to be just fine no matter what we do.

i agree humanoid is nothing on the geological scale,let alone intellegence..but just because our mother the earth will carry on and life will continue to exist doesnt debunk the claim that ther is a war on earth/nature & many of us have been unknowingly swindled to support it..
ther is chemical war derived pesticides like round up & huge rise in big industries giving this kind of mentality a safe heaven in academia..swindling the masses to buy into ecological collapse threw exploiting ther natural resources for all the wrong reasons..

Bill Mollison coined,those who force nature force them selves & Fukuoka said the same thing about those trying to improve on nature..We are currently clinging on to sustainability,to keep afloat;prevent from failing..
financially many are understanding we have to if not already, compromise & in manys opinionS to be economical, agriculture must be ecological!

 

[Granger2]

If you haven't read "The Botany of Desire," or watched the PBS adaptation, go here and enjoy. A must see...
http://video.pbs.org/video/1283872815/

If you want, you can skip to the 4th section [Cannabis], but be sure to watch till the end. A sobering look at what Monsanto and others are up to. Truly diabolical. They're not just patending their GMO abominations, they're patending everything there is. This will allow them to control what is available. Full control of the global seed supply with no competition. Farmers won't be able to keep seed and plant them without paying Monsanto. In the History of Humans, this is monumental. Please watch so you can see Corporate Greed and Power at its worst, and to know what we are up against.

The "Future of Food" illustrates Monsanto's strategem, and how they have sued thousands of US and Canadian farmers who have grown crops in which Monsanto's genes were found. Most got them by having their own crops pollenated by upwind fields of Monsanto GMO crops. Not only do the farmers have to pay Monmotherfuckingsanto, but the settlements require the farmers not to discuss details of the settlements.

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-future-of-food/ 10 min preview
http://www.hulu.com/watch/67878 full length, free, but with a few commercials

Astonishingly disturbing. -granger

 

[Granger2]

Gascanistan,
Great idea. Ms Shiva deserves such an honor. Sure wish I could get me some of them there Vandana Shiva seed when ready. Keep us informed on your progress. Thanks. -granger

 

[Gascanastan]

Gascanistan,
Great idea. Ms Shiva deserves such an honor. Sure wish I could get me some of them there Vandana Shiva seed when ready. Keep us informed on your progress. Thanks. -granger

Tharz a few around these parts who have been gifted the beans and will definitely help make this task happen at a faster rate..

There really was only one name worthy of the crossingz for this day and age IMO.

I feel if this type is successful as a plant first of all,then it will be successful at getting her name out there for the general public to ask,"who is Vandana Shiva"....creating that awareness to the person.

 

[DARC MIND]

seeds of injustice

seeds of injustice

Seeds of injustice

There is an intense scramble for the earth’s resources and ownership of nature. Big oil, big pharma, big food, big seed companies are joining hands to appropriate biodiversity and biomass — the living carbon, thereby extending the age of fossil fuels and dead carbon. Corporations view the 75 per cent biomass used by nature and local communities as “wasted”. They would like to appropriate the living wealth of the planet for making biofuels, chemicals and plastics.

This will dispossess the poor of the very sources of their lives and livelihoods. The instruments for this new dispossession are technological tools of genetic engineering, synthetic biology and intellectual property rights (IPRs).

A patent is supposed to be granted to an invention. But patents and IPRs are being used to own seeds, life forms and traditional knowledge. Piracy of traditional knowledge is not an invention; it is theft — we call it biopiracy.

Patents are at the heart of Monsanto’s seed monopoly. After the WTO’s Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights agreement was signed in 1994, a representative of the world’s biggest seed corporation said that Monsanto had been the “patient, diagnostician and physician” in drafting the agreement which forced countries to introduce patents on life and seeds.

Monsanto, which began with genetically modified organisms (GMOs), is now patenting non-GM crops. On May 21, 2003, Monsanto was assigned a patent on the Indian variety of wheat, Nap Hal, by the European Patent Office (EPO), Munich, under the simple title “plants”. On January 27, 2004, Research Foundation for Science Technology and Ecology, along with Greenpeace and Bharat Krishak Samaj, filed a petition at EPO, challenging the patent rights given to Monsanto. The patent was revoked in October 2004. This was the third consecutive victory on the IPR front after neem and basmati, and it once again established that patents on biodiversity, indigenous knowledge and resources are based on biopiracy.

Monsanto has used nine local brinjal (eggplant) varieties to develop its Bt. brinjal. Since the Biological Diversity Act of India, 2002, requires approval for accessing indigenous biodiversity, the Karnataka Biodiversity Board complained to the National Biodiversity Authority (NBA). According to the minutes of the NBA’s meeting on June 20, 2011, “NBA may proceed legally against Mahyco/Monsanto, and all others concerned to take the issue to its logical conclusion.”

Monsanto is also accessing native onion varieties to develop its proprietary hybrids. The company is going to pay `10 lakh to the Indian Institute of Horticulture Research for 25 gms each of Male Sterile (A line) and Maintener (B line) of MS 48 and MS 65 as a one-time licence fee. Is this a just price?

In May 2011, Monsanto got a patent on conventionally-bred melons from the EPO. Monsanto has used the natural resistance in Indian melons to certain plant viruses such as the “yellow stunting disorder virus”. Using conventional breeding, this resistance was introduced into other melons. While this is biopiracy of a trait evolved by Indian farmers, Monsanto has patented the plant, all parts of the plant (including the seed) and the melon fruit as its “invention”.

There is an urgent need to ban all patents on life and living organisms, including biodiversity, genes and cell lines. The coalition “No Patents on Seeds” has started a campaign to exclude breeding material, plants and animals, and foods derived thereof from patentability.

Industrial globalised agriculture is heavily implicated in climate change. It contributes to the three major greenhouse gases — carbon dioxide from the use of fossil fuels, nitrogen oxide from the use of chemical fertilisers and methane from factory farming. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the global atmospheric concentration of N2O, largely as a result of the use of chemical fertilisers in agriculture, increased from about 270 parts per billion to 319 parts per billion in 2005. Industrial agriculture is also more vulnerable to climate change, which is intensifying droughts and floods. Monocultures lead to more frequent crop failure when rainfall does not come in time, or is too much or too little. Chemically fertilised soils have no capacity to withstand a drought. Genetic engineering is embedded in the industrial model of agriculture based on fossil fuels. It is falsely being offered as a magic bullet for dealing with climate change.

Monsanto claims that GMOs are a cure for both, food insecurity and climate change, and has been putting out the following advertisement across the world:
“9 billion people to feed.
A changing climate
Now what?
Producing more
Conserving more
Improving farmers lives
That’s sustainable
agriculture
And that’s what
Monsanto is all about.”

All the claims this advertisement makes are false. Monsanto claims its GMO Bt. cotton gives 1,500 kg/acre, while the average is 300-400 kg/acre. The claim to increased yield is false because yield, like climate resilience, is a multi-genetic trait. Introducing toxins into a plant through herbicide resistance or Bt. toxin increases the “yield” of toxins, not of food or nutrition.

Climate resilient traits are not “inventions” of corporations. They have been evolved by nature and farmers. Farmers in India have been breeding crops for millennia to come up with crops that are resistant to climate extremes. Using farmers’ varieties as “genetic material”, the biotechnology industry is playing genetic roulette — gambling on which gene complexes are responsible for which trait. Breeding is being replaced by gambling, innovation is giving way to biopiracy, and science is being substituted by propaganda and resource-grab.

Over the past 20 years, we at Navdanya, India’s biodiversity and organic farming movement, have realised that biodiverse, local, organic systems produce more food and higher farm incomes while reducing water use and risks of crop failure due to climate change.

Turning the living wealth of the planet into the property of corporations through patents is a recipe for deepening the poverty and ecological crisis. Biodiversity is the basis of life; it is our living commons. We are a part of nature, not her masters and owners. IPRs on life forms, living resources and living processes are an ethical, ecological and economic perversion. We need to recognise the sovereignty of diverse knowledge systems, including traditional knowledge. And we need to reclaim our biological and intellectual commons for ecological sustainability and economic justice.

Dr Vandana Shiva is the executive director of the Navdanya Trust

 

[Granger2]

In the 90's, Monsatanto started buying up virtually all the seed companies, and continue to do so, though there are few left.. Their behavior seriously brings Capitalism itself into question. -granger

 

[ClackamasCootz]

"mahamudra"

 

[Gremista]

interesting

 

[Guest 324358]

.

 

[ClackamasCootz]

I watched Dirt! The Movie this evening again and it opens with Dr. Vandana Shiva and she appears throughout the film. It's currently available from Netflix if you use their streaming or DVD services.

Here's the info on her from their web site:

Vandana Shiva is a world-renowned environmental leader and thinker. Director of the Research Foundation on Science, Technology, and Ecology, she is the author of many books, including “Water Wars: Pollution, Profits, and Privatization,” “Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge,” and “Staying Alive.”

Dr. Shiva – along with Ralph Nader and Jeremy Rifkin – is a leader in the International Forum on Globalization. In 1993, Dr. Shiva won the Alternative Nobel Peace Prize, “The Right Livelihood Award.” The founder of Navdanya (“nine seeds”), a movement promoting diversity and use of native seeds, Dr. Shiva, in 1997, also set up the Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology. Its studies have validated the ecological value of traditional farming and been instrumental in fighting destructive development projects in India. Before becoming an eco- activist, Dr. Shiva was one of India’s leading physicists. She holds a master’s degree in the philosophy of science and a Ph.D. in particle physics.

 

[DARC MIND]

big corporations the envirnment, people and dispare

big corporations the envirnment, people and dispare

another great moyers & company video i wanted to share

full video here
http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-s...ones%e2%80%99/
Capitalism’s ‘Sacrifice Zones’

July 20, 2012
There are forgotten corners of this country where Americans are trapped in endless cycles of poverty, powerlessness, and despair as a direct result of capitalistic greed. Journalist Chris Hedges calls these places “sacrifice zones,” and joins Bill this week on Moyers & Company to explore how areas like Camden, New Jersey; Immokalee, Florida; and parts of West Virginia suffer while the corporations that plundered them thrive.

“These are areas that have been destroyed for quarterly profit. We’re talking about environmentally destroyed, communities destroyed, human beings destroyed, families destroyed,” Hedges tells Bill.

“It’s the willingness on the part of people who seek personal enrichment to destroy other human beings… And because the mechanisms of governance can no longer control them, there is nothing now within the formal mechanisms of power to stop them from creating essentially a corporate oligarchic state.”

The broadcast includes a visit with comics artist and journalist Joe Sacco, who collaborated with Hedges on Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, an illustrated account of their travels through America’s sacrifice zones. Kirkus Reviews calls it an “unabashedly polemic, angry manifesto that is certain to open eyes, intensify outrage and incite argument about corporate greed.”

A columnist for Truthdig, Hedges also describes the difference between truth and news. “The really great reporters — and I’ve seen them in all sorts of news organizations — are management headaches because they care about truth at the expense of their own career,” Hedges says.

full video here
http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-capitalism’s-‘sacrifice-zones’/