Articles by Dr. Shiva

FROM EATING OIL TO EATING FOOD
Climate Change, Biodiversity and Food Security

Closing Address by Dr. Vandana Shiva
For the Soil Association Conference
on 27th January 2007, Cardill, UK

Climate change is happening. However, the dominant system and the dominant players in the global economic system continue to force communities to shift from sustainable biodiversity based economies to non-sustainable fossil fuel economies. The poor and marginal communities, who live in biodiversity economies and have made an insignificant contribution to CO₂ emissions, are however paying the highest price for climate chaos, erratic rainfall, more intense droughts, floods and hurricanes and extreme heat waves and cold waves.  

Biodiversity and ecological agriculture is necessary to both reduce CO₂ emissions as well as provide resilience to climate chaos. Industrial agriculture, with its chemical intensive and fossil fuel intensive inputs is responsible for large contributions of greenhouse gases. It is responsible for 25 percent of the world's carbon dioxide emissions, 60 percent of methane gas emissions and 80 percent of nitrous oxide, all powerful greenhouse gases.  

Nitrous oxide is 200 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas and is produced by the use of nitrogenous fertilizers. Around 70 million tones of nitrogen fertilizers are used in agriculture contributing to 22 million tones of annual nitrous oxide emissions.  

Emissions of carbon from the burning of fossil fuels for agricultural purposes in England and Germany were as much as 0.046 and 0.053 tonnes per ha, while they are only 0.007 i.e roughly seven times lower in non-industrial agriculture. (Ref : Edward Goldsmith – How to feed people under a regime of climate change, Ecologist)  

In addition to higher emissions of CO₂ in industrial food production, long-distance globalised food systems are also contributing in a major way to green house gas emissions. A Danish Ministry of Environment Study had shown that 1 kg of food moving around the world, generated 10 kg of CO₂. At a time when we should be reducing “food miles” by eating biodiverse, local and fresh foods, globalisation is increasing carbon pollution through spreading of corporate industrial farming, non-local foods supplies, and processed and packaged food. Climate change creates the imperative to reduce CO2 emissions i.e. to move towards economic localization, producing our needs with the lowest carbon footprint. Economic globalisation, on the other hand is creating an imperative to increase CO2 emissions. This total disconnects between ecology and economics is threatening to bring down our “oikos”, our home on this planet.  

The biodiverse, water prudent and drought resilient agriculture of the south is being destroyed precisely when diverse and decentralized systems need to be conserved to reduce impact and increase resilience to climate change. On the one hand, drought is increasing as a result of climate change. On the other hand it is increasing due to globalisation of the food supply and the diversion of land and water of food communities of the south to produce cheap food for the rich in the North. Peasants and pastoralists are pushed off the land and denied access to water as corporate farming for exports takes over.  

A recent article by Jeremy Lawrence in the Independent (29^th April, 2006) showed that a 50 gram bag of salad costs 99 p. but wastes almost 50 litres of water. A mixed salad takes 300 litres. As Bruce Laneford of University of East Anglia has stated “we are exporting drought”. Global retail chains like Tesco, Sainsbury, Walmart are increasingly sourcing fruits and vegetables from Africa and India. This is leading to large scale uprooting and destitution of farmers, and is contributing to drought and desertification, while increasing “food miles” and undermining food security and food sovereignty. While India is being made to grow vegetables for Europe, we are also being forced to import pesticide-laden wheat in spite of domestic production of 73-mt wheat, which is further threatening farmers livelihoods. In Punjab one farmer was killed when peasant lands were being forcefully appropriated for corporate farming for exports. According to the Emergency Disasters Database run by the Center of Research on the Epidemology of Disasters, Brussels, Belgium. India suffered 21 droughts between 1900 and 2005. In all, 1,391,841,000 people came under the sweep of drought of them 4,250,430 died. Such disasters are likely to increase with climate change. 20 people have already died in 2006 heat wave, and summer has barely begun.  

The poor are thus paying three times over – through increased vulnerability to climate change, through increased water scarcity as scarce water is exported in export crops, and through uprooting of communities from their land, village and homes to make way for wasteful globalised trade. Cyclones and sea level rise are other aspects of climate disasters. A one metre rise in sea level is projected to displace 7.1 million people and submerge about 5,764 Sq km of land area will be lost along with 4,200 km of roads in India. The economic loss for Mumbai alone would be Rs. 23 – 30 billion. A glimpse of climate disaster was experienced in June 2005 in Mumbai when 900 mm rain came down in one day, flooding the city and bringing life to a total halt. And in the monsoon of 2006 when the desert of Rajasthan, which normally gets 100 mm of rain per year, received 600 mm in three days.  

Over the past 20 years, I have built Navdanya, India's biodiversity and organic farming movement. We are increasingly realizing there is a convergence between objectives of conservation of biodiversity, reduction of climate change impact and alleviation of poverty. Biodiverse, local, organic systems produce more food and higher farm incomes while they also reduce water use and risks of crop failure due to climate change.  Increasing the biodiversity of farming systems can reduce contribution to drought. Millets, which are far more nutritious than rice and wheat, use only 200-300 mm water, compared to 2500 mm needed for Green Revolution rice farming. India could grow four times more food using millets. However, global trade is pushing agriculture to GMO monocultures of corn, soya, canola and cotton, worsening climate vulnerability.  

Biodiversity offers resilience to recover from climate disasters. After the Orissa Super Cyclone of 1998, and the Tsunami of 2004, Navdanya distributed seeds of saline resistant rice varieties as “Seeds of Hope” to rejuvenate agriculture in lands reentered saline by the sea. We are now creating seed banks of drought resistant, flood resistant and saline resistant seed varieties to respond to climate extremities. Climate chaos creates uncertainty. Diversity offers a cushion against both climate extremes and climate uncertainty. We need to move from the myopic obsession with monocultures and centralization, to diversity and decentralization.  

Diversity and decentralization are the dual principles to build economies beyond oil and to deal with the climate vulnerability that is the residue of the age of oil.  

Industrialized, Globalized Agriculture: A Recipe for Farmers' Suicides

The industrialized globalised agriculture, which is leading to climate change, is also decimating and killing small farmers in countries like India.  

Lee Kyung Hae martyred himself while wearing a sign reading “WTO kills farmers” at the Cancun WTO Ministerial to attract attention to one of the worst genocides of our times – the genocide of small farmers through the rules of globalisation. His suicide is merely the most public of the tens of thousands of farmers who have been driven to kill themselves. According to India's National Crime Bureau, 16,000 farmers in India committed suicide during 2004. During one-sixth month span in 2004, there were 1860 suicides by farmers in the state of Andhra Pradesh alone.  

By 2006, 150,000 farmers had taken their lives. The use of the word suicide, however, obscures the fact that the death of farmers is a result of economic policies that promote industrial agriculture. Farmers' suicides should be viewed as genocide. The Indian peasantry, the largest body of surviving small farmers in the world, today faces a crisis of extinction. Two third of India makes its living from the land. In this country of more than a billion, that has farmed this land for more than 5000 years, the earth is the most generous employer. However, as farming is delinked from the earth, the soil, the climate, the biodiversity, and is instead linked to global corporations and global markets, and as the generosity of the earth is replaced by the greed of corporations, the viability of small farmers and small farms is destroyed. Farmer suicides are the most tragic and dramatic symptom of the crisis if survival faced by Indian peasants.  

Our research and the Bija Yatra we undertook in May 2006 confirm that the agrarian crisis leading to farmers' suicides is a result of debt, and debt is a result of the convergence of rising costs of non sustainable and inappropriate production systems and falling prices of agricultural products due to unjust and unfair trade patterns. 

Financial, ecological non-sustainability of production is based on

·         Costly seeds that are non renewable, cannot be saved and regrown by farmers and hence add an entirely new financial burden on the peasantry. These seeds are also untested and unreliable, and have been brought to the market through self-certification.

·         Costly chemicals, which drain the peasant's scarce capital and leave agro ecosystems more fragile and impoverished, hence increasing the vulnerability of farming.

·         Monocultures of cash crops, which further aggravate the risks of crop failure due to pests and diseases and climate change.  

Unfortunately, the Prime Ministers Vidharbha Package has aggravated suicides in Vidharbha. The Rs. 180 crore Quality seeds Replacement Program will further spread costly, non-renewable, hybrid and genetically engineered seeds, turning the Rs. 3,750 crore package into a bonanza for Monsanto-Mahyco, but bringing no relief to the distressed farmers. “Seed Replacement” is the language introduced by seed corporations to stop farmers having and saving open pollinated seed varieties, and making them dependent on buying costly seeds from the market each year. As our Report on “Seeds of Suicides” shows, farmers dependency on high cost, unreliable, non-renewable seed is the most significant reason for farmers distress in the cotton belt. What needs to be replaced is Bt cotton, not the jowar, bajra, tuar, that are adapted to Vidharbha and necessary for food security.  

Seeds of Freedom, Seeds of Life    

Twenty-one years ago, in 1987, I started to save seeds to create a future different from one envisioned by the biotechnology industry – of all seeds being genetically engineered and patented.  

The vision for Seed Freedom evolved as Navdanya. Navdanya means nine seeds and it also means the new gift.  

Through Navdanya, we have brought the new gift of ancient seeds to our farmers. Navdanya builds community seed banks based on rescuing, conserving, reproducing multiplying, distributing native varieties or farmers varieties  - varieties evolved and bred over millennia.  

On the one hand, our seed saving defends seeds as a commons – resisting through our daily actions the degraded, immoral, uncivilized idea that seed is the “intellectual property” of corporations, and hence seed saving is a crime.  

On the other hand, Navdanya's seed banks are the basis of another food economy, a food economy based on biodiversity and cultural diversity, on sustainability, and on future.  

The dominant food economy is based on monopolies and monocultures, on industrialization of production and globalisation of distribution of a handful of crops – corn or soya, rice and wheat. This economy has pushed one billion people into hunger, another two billion to obesity. It is killing species and farmers. 40,000 small farmers of India have committed suicide because hybrid and genetically engineered seeds forced them to buy costly, unreliable seed every year from corporations like Monsanto, which collect exorbitant royalties, while farmers are pushed into debt and suicide.  

Navdanya's seed saving spreads seeds of life, in place of seeds of death. We spread seeds of hope instead of seeds of hopelessness and despair. We spread seeds of freedom instead of seeds of slavery and seeds of suicide.  

After the tsunami, our salt resistant rice varieties rebuilt the devastated agriculture of Tamil Nadu. Our seeds of Dehradun Basmati gave us the strength to fight RiceTec of Texas, which had patented Basmati rice. Our seeds of native wheat varieties inspired us to fight Monsanto when it patented low gluten wheat from India.  

Our seeds teach us lessons in diversity and democracy. From our seeds we learn how to defend freedom of biodiversity and freedom of farmers in an age of corporate monopolies, terminator technologies and globalised monocultures.  

Farmers' suicides are not inevitable. On 8^th January 2007, I was in Koljhari village in Maharashtra where Goswami Pawar and Shivlal Rathod had committed suicide. The village has declared it will become free of Bt. cotton to become free of suicides. We are creating suicide free, GMO free, chemical free villages by spreading seeds of hope, organic farming and fair trade. And what works for farmers also works for the climate.   

There is an alternative: Biodiverse Organic Farming

Farmers' suicides can be stopped. Navdanya's work over the past twenty years has shown that we can grow more food and provide higher incomes to farmers without destroying the environment and killing our peasants.  

Our study on “Biodiversity based organic farming: A new paradigm for Food Security and Food Safety” has established that small biodiverse organic farms produce more food and provide higher incomes to farmers. There is an alternative. The alternative is lowering costs of production while increasing output. We have done this successfully on thousands of farmers and have created a face, just and sustainable economy. The epidemic of farmers suicides in India is concentrated in regions where chemical intensification has increased costs of production farmers have become dependent on non-renewable seeds and cash crop monocultures are facing a decline in prices and incomes due to globalisation. This is leading to debt and suicides. High costs of production are the most significant reason for rural indebtedness. High Cost Seeds + Chemicals = debt = suicides  

Biodiverse organic farming addresses all these problems of :

·         Falling incomes for farmers

·         Rising costs or consumers

·         Increasing pollution of our food.  

Biodiverse organic farming creates a debt free, suicide free, productive alternative to industrialized corporate agriculture. It -

·         Leads to increase in farm productivity and farm incomes, while lowering costs of production

·         Fair trade and just trade lowers costs to consumers

·         Pesticides and chemical free production and processing brings safe and healthy food to consumers  

We must protect the environment, farmers' livelihoods and public heath and people's right to food.  

We do not need to go the Monsanto way. We can go the Navdanya way. We do not need to end up in food dictatorship and food slavery. We can create our food freedom.