In the Bay Area, environmentalists and agricultural activists draw the kinds of crowds reserved for rock stars elsewhere. This public lecture 2 nights ago started half an hour late as the organizers tried to find room for the 200 people still lined up outside when the hall was packed to capacity.
I've read a couple of books by
Vandana Shiva, extraordinary scientist, thinker, ecofeminist. They're dense - dizzyingly so. To tell the truth, they left me depressed - over the sheer brutality and scale of biopiracy, the
monumental nastiness of agribusiness, and the devastation and suffering wreaked by both. In person, though, Shiva exudes cheerful optimism, without relinquishing an atom of intellectual rigour.
Some quotes from the evening:
Globalized industrialized food is not cheap: it is too costly for the Earth, for the farmers, for our health. The Earth can no longer carry the burden of groundwater mining, pesticide pollution, disappearance of species and destabilization of the climate. Farmers can no longer carry the burden of debt, which is inevitable in industrial farming with its high costs of production.
Industrial farming is incapable of producing safe, culturally appropriate, tasty, quality food. And it is incapable of producing enough food for all because it is wasteful of land, water and energy. Industrial agriculture uses ten times more energy than it produces. It is thus ten times less efficient.Every conflict of our time is about vital access to vital resources. But the conflicts are always presented as ethnic, religious, national.
Monopolies mean hunger. Monopolies mean famine.Patenting - the ultimate enclosure of life.
Capitalism died with the signing of the World Trade Agreements. It was taken over by corporate rule. Corporate rule is not about free markets - it's about coercive markets, violent markets, undemocratic markets.
I have always hated monocultures.
Violence comes from a fear of the feminine. Of the Other, being free, independent, alive. Imagine the smallness of the minds that fear fertility.
We live in an amazing universe. We have to play with it, not against it.
3 Comments:
of course vandana shiva is a great rhetoric reformist. her analysis produces no actions. she kills me with her words, they are dead wood. Only if she went silent. everybody knows the problems - conspiracy, corporate in the agribusiness - if she was a spokesperson, why was no solid solutions proposed and actions taken.
she writes well, all signs of an upper class, western educated upbringing now talking and mingling in high circles and draped in silk sarees.
and her wee little ngo is all knowledge transfer !!
i am sick of hearing such people. there is nothing new in her books. i have read her - writer yes - but nothing new - TELL US what we don't know !! it is all about networking and creating a name and fame in the west and procuring funds who want to dole out to the poor eastern countries ... shame shame..shame..
Thanks for stopping by, Liz.
In response to your critique that Shiva is all talk and no action, I encourage you, and others, to visit the website of Navdanya, the NGO founded by Vandana Shiva. It's at www.navdanya.org.
The links down the left hand site of the homepage take you to detailed accounts of Navdanya's action-based programs.
A couple encouraging land use movement is the organic food and regional food movements. As a chef I felt hope in how people are becoming progressively willing to take a little extra time and possibly spend a little more to buy locally produced and organic foods. I’m especially encouraged that people are becoming more in tuned with their health and how important their diet is to their general health. I just heard an interesting talk from the SF Commonwealth Club on the hope for regional food investment, distribution and organically produced food. It was very encouraging. Even Wallmart has brought organics to the masses.
Deamer
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