Vandana dissects and exposes some of the most fundamental lies controlling our policies and our thinking today.
Hunger. “A corporate myth has been created, shared by most mainstream environmentalist and development groups, that industrial agriculture is necessary to produce more food and reduce hunger.” Vandana writes that industrial agriculture’s numbers look good only if you measure gross output NOT net output. GMOs and animal factory production require huge inputs to function. When the environmental and economic cost of these artificial subsidies is subtracted, traditional agriculture outproduces the new technologies hands down.
Environment. Genetic engineering has been sold as a green technology that will protect nature and biodiversity. GMOs are portrayed as an information technology with no material ecological impacts. This is a fundamental lie.
Vandana documents in Stolen Harvest how GMOs require more herbicide inputs, have unintended ecological consequences and destroy biodiversity in seed production. This last point is particularly important. Monoculture agriculture using patented seeds represents a fundamental change in human history, one with consequences for our economic future as well as the environment.
A small number of global agribusiness corporations not only want to destroy biodiversity in seed production, they want to patent and own the seeds that are left. What we as consumers will be left with may be inappropriate and hazardous foods produced at great environmental cost.
“What we are seeing, “ Vandana Shiva writes, “is the emergence of food
totalitarianism, in which a handful of corporations control the entire
food chain and destroy alternatives so that people do not have access to
diverse, safe foods produced ecologically.” -- CB
“STOLEN HARVEST” by Vandana Shiva
($14) Published by South End Press
#7 Brookline Street (#1), Boston, Massachusetts 02139
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