Articles by Dr. Shiva

GLOBALISATION AND THE WAR
AGAINST FARMERS AND THE LAND

by Dr. Vandana Shiva
13 Sep 02

I had trained as a quantum physicist, expecting to spend a life time solving puzzles in quantum theory.

Instead, I have spent the past two decades solving puzzles in agriculture. Why did the seeds of the Green Revolution which brought Norman Borlaug the Nobel Peace Prize became seeds of war in the Indian Punjab during the 1980s, in less than two decades of their being introduced? Why were Indian peasants being systematically pushed into debt and penury by industrial agriculture which was supposed to create prosperity for rural communities? Why did low productivity monocultures pass as high productivity systems even though they depended on high inputs and had lower outputs than biodiverse farms?

1984 was a dramatic and tragic year for India. It was the year the violence in Punjab which had led to 30,000 deaths reached its climax, with the army entering the Golden temple in June to wipe out the extremists, and Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi being assassinated in retaliation.

It was also the year of the Bhopal tragedy in which 3,000 people were killed by a leak from a Union Carbide pesticide plant, and thousands have been crippled for life.

And in the Summer of 1984, drought was experienced in Karnataka in spite of normal rainfall. The drought was created by the "miracle" seeds of the Green Revolution which reduced biomass, creating a fodder famine and depletion of organic matter for the soil. Soils, starved of organic matter that the tall indigenous sorghum varieties provided, could no longer store the rainfall as soil moisture , and drought and desertification was the result of short term, narrow minded search for "high yields of grain. It was during the drought an old farmer made the links between native seeds and ecological security. And through his wisdom sowed in me the passion to save seeds.

It was during these turbulent times I tried to understand how we had landed in such a mess with the dominant paradigm of agriculture. The official literature failed to address the puzzles. It was more like propaganda. My search led me to Wendell Berry's writing - and I could see that what was happening to India had also happened to agriculture in the U.S. The unsettling of India was repeating the pattern of the unsettling of America. Thank you, Wendell, for seeing and showing the roots of the crisis of industrial agriculture. It is a privilege to be able to join you to pay a personal tribute to you and your work.

Agriculture as War

Industrial agriculture has become a war against ecosystems. It is based on the instruments of war and the logic of war, and it has warlike consequences. The chemicals on which industrial agriculture is based were originally designed for chemical warfare. That is why they turned Bhopal into a warzone. That is why they convert our farms into warzones.

Agriculture based on diversity, decentralization and improving small farm productivity through ecological methods is a women-centred, nature friendly agriculture. In this women-centered agriculture, knowledge is shared, other species and plants are kin, not `property', and sustainability is based on renewal and regeneration of biodiversity and species richness on farms to provide internal inputs. In our paradigms, there is no place for monocultures of genetically engineered crops and IPR monopolies on seeds.

Monocultures and monopolies symbolize a masculinization of agriculture. The war mentality underlying military-industrial agriculture is evident from the names given to herbicides which destroy the economic basis of the survival o the poorest women in the rural areas of the Third World. Monsanto's herbicides are called `Round up', `Machete', `Lasso' American Home Products which has merged with Monsanto calls its herbicides `Pentagon', `Prowl', `Lightening', `Assert', `Avenge'. This is the language of war, not sustainability. Sustainability is based on peace with the earth.

And the violence in agriculture is linked to the birth of terrorism in the Indian Punjab or the mid west plains of the U.S. In the 1980s, the farm crisis fuelled violent Sikh nationalism, as unemployed and angry youth took guns exported by the same global powers that had destroyed Indian agriculture and who looked on India as a market for their overpriced, non-essential, often hazardous products and technologies.

The Oklahoma bombing was a result of the rise of Christian militias in the mid-west of the US. And terrorism within the US, like that in Punjab, was also linked to farm crisis, the growing dispossession of American family farmers which made them accept the new gospel of violence and hatred. As Joel Dyer says in "Harvest of Rage: Why Oklahoma City is only the Beginning",

America's innocence lay in the rubble of the Murrah building as surely as the crumpled bodies of the victims. The deadly Oklahoma City bomb was just the first shot in the collective suicide of the nation. Some Americans -- some of them our neighbors-- have declared war on the powers that be, and those of us who stand unknowingly in between these warring factions are paying the price. And we will continue to pay the price -- one building, one pipe bomb, one burned-down church at a time -- until we come to understand, first, that the nation is holding a loaded gun to its head and, second, why so many among us are struggling to pull the trigger.2

As we destroy the ecological and social community in our countryside, we increase the threshold of violence and decrease our capacity for compassion. It is in the daily interaction of species we learn our best lessons in diversity and democracy.

The Green Revolution package was built on the displacement of genetic diversity at two levels. Firstly, mixtures and rotation of diverse crops like wheat, maize, millets, pulses, and oil seeds were replaced by monocultures of wheat and rice. Secondly, the introduced wheat and rice varieties reproduced over large-scale as monocultures came from a very narrow genetic base, compared to the high genetic variability in the populations of traditional wheat or rice plants. When `HYV' seeds replace native copying systems diversity is lost irreversibly. The destruction of diversity and the creation of uniformity simultaneously involves the destruction of stability and the creation of vulnerability.

As in the rest of India, indigenous agriculture in Punjab was based on diversity. Among the non-food crops indigo, sugarcane, cotton, hemp, asafetida and oilseeds were grown. The horticultural crops included guavas, dates, mangoes, limes, lemons, peaches, apricots, figs, pomegranates, plums, oranges, mulberries, grapes, almonds, melons, apples, beans, cucumbers, carrots and turnips. The uncultivated areas were covered by date-palm, wild palm, willows acacias, sissoo, byr apple etc.

The millets, called `minor cereals' (because they are so diverse, not because they are insignificant crops), occupied the largest area under cultivation in Punjab. `Kutki', the little millet (Panicum miliare), `jawar' (Sorghum vulgare), `Mandal' or `Chalodra' (Eleusine Coracana) and `bajra', or bulrush millet (Pennisetum typhoidenam) were the main millets cultivated in Punjab, covering 43% of the area. Besides these, there were uncultivated or wild varieties of millet like `shama' (Panicum hydaspicum), cenchrus echinatus, pennisetum cenchroides. In addition to these, were the more well known cereals `makki' or maize and wheat. Closely related to the millets were lesser known crops like amaranth of which Punjab had a rich diversity, `Sil' or `mawal' (Celosia cristata) grew both cultivated or wild. `Gauhar', `sawal' sil, bhabri, savalana, batu, chaulei were the different names given to the common amaranth (Amarantus paniculatus). An important crop used for green leafy vegetable was bathua (Chenopodium album). The pulses of Punjab included `moth-safaid' (Cyamopsis psoralioides), `channa' or chick pea (Cicer arietinuin), `bhut' (Glycine soja), `urd' and `mash (Phascolusmungo) `lobiya' (Phaseolus lunatus" `rawan' (Vigna catinag), `Kalat' (Dolixhoa bidloeua), `Kharnab-mibti' (Ceratonia siliqua). The oilseeds including `till' or sesame (seasamum indicum), groundnuts (Arachis hypogea), `alsi' or linseed (Linm usitassimum) and `sarson' or mustard (Brassica nigra). The cereals, pulses and oilseeds were grown in various mixtures and rotations.

As diversity gave way to monocultures, cultures of peace gave way to cultures of violence. It was not peace but war that was the legacy of the Green Revolution. 

The war against farmers

Industrial agriculture is also translating into economic warfare against the poor. Hunger has grown in the Third World in direct proportion to the spread of industrial agriculture and the globalization of trade in staple foods. This is no accident. Industrial agriculture is an efficient system for robbing farmers of wealth and pushing them into debt and dispossession. The costly seeds, chemicals, machinery which replace the farms internal resources were originally supported through subsidies. Today, they are based on borrowing from the same agents who sell the pesticides and seeds. A new phenomena of corporate feudalism is emerging -- with the global seed and agrichemical corporations combining with the local feudal power of landlords and moneylenders to trap innocent peasants into unpayable debt. More than 20,000 Indian peasants have committed suicide since the seed and agriculture sector was opened up to global corporations. The worst suicides have occurred in Warangal in Andhra Pradesh.

Among all the Indian states, the maximum use of pesticides is in Andhra Pradesh. A major portion of this is used in cotton and chilli cultivation. Cotton consumption in Warangal was less than Rs. 10 crores. But as the hybrid cotton cultivation picked up its momentum in 1985-86 pesticides use also increased. In 1997 - 1998 the approximate sale of pesticides in Warangal district alone is Rs. 200 crores (Asish Chakrabarti, Feb, 1998), which is the highest in Andhra Pradesh, and near about 80% of this is used in cotton.

Of late some farmers in Rentichintala and surrounding areas like Gurazala, have sold their kidneys in order to clear their outstanding debts with the pawn brokers.

The farmers who sold their kidneys from Rentichintala Mandal are:

1. Durgyampudi Chinna Venkat Reddy

2. Dirsinals Narsi Reddy

3. Bobba Venkat Reddy

4. Siddhavarpu Poli Reddy

5. Peram lacchi Reddy

6. Kancharla Krishna

7. Narmala Krishna

8. Golle Ramaswami

9. Thai Narasaiah4

Bhatinda in Punjab has the second highest rate of farm suicides. Over the past few decades, pesticide use has increased by 6000% in Bhatinda.

The growth in seed and chemical markets for global corporations is therefore based on taking the lives of peasants of the Third World. And false claims are made by the seed corporations to entire and entrap farmers.

While the rhetoric of the "Green Revolution", and genetic engineering is the removal of hunger, high cost, high external input agriculture creates hunger by leaving nothing in rural households. Peasants must sell all they produce in order to pay back debts. That is why the producers of food are going hungry themselves. And 65 million tonnes of grain rot in storage because people have been robbed of their entitlements and purchasing power to access the food they have produced.

The systemic roots of hunger in free trade and industrial farming

In 1942, more than 3 million people died in Bengal and Orissa due to starvation. Nobel Prize Amartya Sen showed that it was not lack of food but lack of food entitlements and food rights which caused starvation deaths. And he also showed that famine did not occur in post-colonial India because people's rights were protected The Indian Constitution guarantees the right to life, and the right to food is at the heart of the right to life. The state has a related duty to ensure that no one goes hungry. Food for work programmes, the public distribution system, price regulation, anti-hoarding measures have been diverse policy components of ensuring that people's food entitlements are protected.

Ensuring food rights in a poor country like India requires the protection of livelihoods, the promotion of low cost sustainable agriculture and localization and decentralization of food distribution to reduce costs and waste.

All elements of India's food security policy are today being dismantled under pressure of World Bank and WTO. Starvation is the inevitable result of policies promoting sudden withdrawal of the role of the state and reckless dependence on markets to bring food to the poor who have no purchasing power.

For the first time since the Great Bengal Famine of 1942 created by British imperial free trade plicies, famine and starvation have returned to India.

During the monsoon season of 2001, both the Indian Parliament and the Indian Supreme Court had to intervene in the government's trade liberalization policies which are causing starvation deaths in India.

In the parliamentary debate on 29 Aug 01, Sonia Gandhi the leader of the Opposition stated,

The poorest people in several of our states have been facing the prospect of starvation and many have died even during the course of this session. It is shocking that such tragic events are occurring while our granaries are absolutely overflowing with food stock.

Mulayam Singh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party said,

There is famine in Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Bihar, Gujarat. This is a serious matter. The tragedy is that while people starve, the godowns are overflowing. Rs. 300-400 million is being spent daily to stock the food of which 35% is rotting. What was the reason that the government under pressure of rich countries, decided to let the people starve merely in order to reduce the budget.

Eight hundred tribal children have died of starvation in Maharashtra. Four starving women from Orissa tried to sell her child for Rs. 300 in Calcutta. In the famine stricken regions of Orissa, children are being sold for a few thousand rupees because of starvation. Wives are being sold into bondage.

If nothing is done, we will have to give a call to the hungry to break the locks of the godowns and get access to the grain.

We cannot let the Indian people starve to death because of international conditionalities.

The Supreme Court ordered the government to ensure food reaches the people in response to a Public Interest Litigation filed by the Peoples Union for Civil Liberties on grounds that the right to life guaranteed by Art.21 of the Constitution includes the right to food which is being violated by the deliberate dismantling of the Public Distribution System (PDS).

Famine and starvation deaths are again making a return.

While the conditionalities from global trade and financial institutions are preventing the government from supporting the poor to have access to adequate and nutritious food, they are promoting the diversion of subsidies from people to corporations. While people have been forced to buy wheat and rice at Rs. 11.30/Kg., because of the withdrawal of subsidies, export corporations such as Cargill are getting wheat and rice at highly subsidized prices. Using the artificially created surpluses as justification for exports the government will be exporting 5 million tonnes of wheat and 3 million tonnes of rice during 2001 while people pay Rs. 7000 per tonne for wheat, exporters are getting it at Rs. 4,300 per tonne, a subsidy of Rs. 13.5 billion. While people pay Rs. 11,300/Ton for rice, exporters are getting at Rs. 5,650 per tonne, a subsidy of Rs. 60 billion. Exports increase while people starve. Corporations are subsidized while people's food subsidies are withdrawn. This is how globalization is causing hunger and starvation in the Third World.

It is the trading giants like Pepsi and Cargill who have benefited from withdrawal of food subsidies to the poor and redirection of subsidies for exports. Pepsi is exporting 100,000 tonnes of rice from India during 2002 with Rs. 12.2 million profits, while people in India face starvation. Cargill has exported 1m.t. tonnes of wheat during the past year, and plans to procure 20,000 m.t. during the 2002 harvest. Trade liberalization is a recipe for starving the poor to feed the corporations.

While the World Bank and IMF remove subsidies from food reaching the poor, they encourage subsidies to grain giants like Cargill and Pepsi for exporting food grain.

Hunger is also being caused by globalization which is removing the floor from prices of agricultural commodities under the dual pressure of export subsidies and competition between producing countries. Thus the coffee trade has increased from $40b to $70b over the past few years, prices coffee growers receive have dropped from $9b to $5½ billion. Coffee growers in Latin America and Africa are starving. The case of coffee shows that growth in global trade and commerce does not translate into growth for poor producers. It can, in fact, worsen their poverty.

In December 1999, during a hijack of an Indian Airlines plane, the U.S. forced India to remove import restrictions (Quantitative Restrictions) on imports. QRs are legitimate controls that a country can choose to impose by restricting the quantity of imports and exports to protect its domestic producers. Imports have been restricted by countries on various grounds for environmental and ethical reasons and reasons of public order. India has been maintaining QRs on several items, this control is effected for instance by placing items on the Restricted List of imports, the Canalized List and listing items for which a Special Import License (SIL) was required.

The control on imports and/or exports through QRs helps to protect livelihoods especially of those in the informal sector who are a large majority of our population and those who are largely self-employed. In the light of huge inequalities that prevails both intra-country and inter-country, tariffs alone can not provide adequate safeguards from the uncontrolled entry of foreign goods.

Behind the backs of the citizens of the largest democracy at the world, using a hijack as a smokescreen. The entire economy of India was handed over to US in a secret deal to remove import restrictions on 714 items by 1st April 2000 and 715 items by 1st April 2001.

Artificially cheap subsidized products like soya oil started to flood the market. Imports of soyabean oil have increased from 2,36,000 tonnes in 1997-98 to 8,00,000 in 1998-99. In 2000 it is estimated that 55,00,000 tonnes of foreign palmoil, soyabean oil and animal fat will be imported.

The mustard produced by our farmers which was selling at Rs. 2,000/- per quintal in 1999, is today not even selling for Rs. 900 per quintal. The production of mustard seeds has fallen by 65% and over 60% small oil mills and ghanis have been closed down, rendering lakhs of people unemployed.

As a result of unfair trading practices legalized by the WTO, India's agricultural imports have gone up from Rs. 50,000 million in 1995 to over Rs. 200,000 million in 1999-2000, a 400% increase in imports.

Similarly, soya bean and palm oil have flooded the Indian market, destroying the domestic edible oil economy based on coconut, the mustard, the groundnut and the sesame. This is why coconut farmers in Kerala blockaded the Cochin harbour and groundnut farmers in Sirsi, Karnataka and Soyabean farmers in Multai, M.P. protested and were shot at.

In any case, price collapse is not a linear mechanical phenomena dependent on percentage of imports. It is more appropriately described in terms of non-linear perturbation in a complex system which can slide the system into chaos and disintegration.

Therefore, even in the case of products where the imports are low, removal, of import restrictions have sent the domestic prices into a downward spin, leaving the producers in crisis, and the agricultural economy in shambles.

Tea prices have collapsed and tea producers have been burning up 45,000 kg tea a day in what has been called the “Boston tea party”.

Milk prices went down from Rs. 13/litre to Rs. 9/litre even with small imports, forcing farmers in Punjab to sell their buffaloes. Local markets which used to have 25,000 buffaloes were receiving 100,000, creating an irreversible decay in the small holder livestock economy which is largely in women's hands.

Rich countries give $370 billion as subsidies. Corporate farmers of California receive more than $500,000 in subsidies. The new farm bill increases U.S. subsidies to agriculture by $73.5 billion to $180 billion over the next 6 years. This will artificially bring down prices worldwide, destroying millions of peasant livelihoods. It is not efficiency but subsidies which are lowering prices of farm commodities.

This is why the global movement for food rights and farmers rights demands that food and agriculture not be governed by rules of free trade that countries have a right to restrict imports for food and livelihood security that prices reflect the full cost of production, including the sustenance and fair returns to farmers for their labour.

Using Hunger to Market Biotech

The crisis of farming created by globalization is now being used by the biotech industry to market GM seeds in the Third World.

The World Food Summit: five years later in Rome in June 2000, was supposed to address the worst human rights violation of our time -- the denial of the right to food to millions. But delegates found football more important than hunger. Berlosconi wrapped up the so called Summit a good two hours before schedule so that delegates could watch the World Cup. Nero had fiddled while Rome burnt. Leaders watched football while their people starved. In any case, no serious commitments were being made nor any serious analysis being attempted to address the mounting crisis of hunger and malnutrition.

While the Summit was a total failure in addressing the hunger issue, it did become a launching pad for the biotechnology industry. The hunger for food was neglected. The hunger for profit was fully attended to. It was used to put the stamp of approval on genetically engineered seeds and crops which have been at the centre of worldwide controversy over the past decade.

As is becoming the trend, the World Food Summit was not negotiated. A text was ready before the leaders arrived. The leaders came only from the South. The rich countries' leaders were conspicuous by their absence but the U.S. government was conspicuous by its influence. USDA Secretary, Ann Vanneman who used to be with Calgene, now a company under Monsanto, held press conferences to announce how biotechnology would save people and the rainforests. (An American journalist who interviewed me informed me that the current U.S. government is in fact a "Monsanto administration". The Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, used to be president of Searle, which merged with Monsanto. And Attorney General Ashcraft has received campaign funds from Monsanto.)

While no financial commitment was made on the hunger front the head of USAID announced a $ 100m biotechnology aid to Third World countries over the next ten years for transfer of biotechnology. The offer comes tied to trade and commercial interests and it would not be a surprise if the poor countries who have been resisting genetic engineering so far now open their doors to it. Indeed the World Food Summit seemed more like a sale show for the biotech industry than a serious gathering of leaders collectively seeking ways and making commitments to address the biggest human rights disaster of our times -- of more than 1 billion people going hungry in a world abounding in food and wealth.

The Earth Summit in Johannesburg in 2002, organized 10 years after the Rio Summit, was also reduced to a marketplace for pushing biotech on Africa. Many Southern African countries are facing drought and famine under the joint impact of climate change and structural adjustment. The Zambian and Zimbabwean Governments rejected GM food aid. Hundreds of African farmers and government representatives condemned the U.S. pressure to force GM contaminated food aid. As civil society representative stated,

We, African Civil Society groups, participants to the World Summit on Sustainable Development, composed of more than 45 African countries, join hands with the Zambian and Zimbabwean governments and their people in rejecting GE contaminated food for our starving brothers and sisters:

1. We refuse to be used as the dumping ground for contaminated food, rejected by the Northern countries; and we are enraged by the emotional blackmail of vulnerable people in need, being used in this way.

2. The starvation period is anticipated to begin early in 2003, so that there is enough time to source uncontaminated food.

3. There is enough food in the rest of Africa (already offered by Tanzania and Uganda) to provide food for the drought areas.

4. Our responses is to strengthen solidarity and self-reliance with in Africa, in the face of this next wave of colonization, through GE technologies, which aim to control our agricultural systems, through the manipulation of seed by corporations.

5. We will stand together in preventing our continent from being contaminated by genetically engineered crops, as a responsibility to our future generation.

When Colin Powell, representing President Bush kept insisting on African countries importing GM food from U.S. in the closing plenary of the Earth Summit, he was heckled by both NGOs and Governments. African farmers had come to Johannesburg with alternatives -- small scale, indigenous-based on farmers rights to land, water and seed.

The globalization and corporatization of agriculture is justified on higher productivity of large industrial farms.

The myth of productivity

A usual argument used in promoting industrial agriculture like the Green Revolution earlier and genetic engineering in agriculture now is that only industrial agriculture and industrial breeding can keep up with increased food productivity for feeding a growing population. However, increased mouths to feed implies more efficient resource use so that the same resources can feed more people. Since resources, not labour, are the limiting factor in food production, it is resource productivity, not labour productivity which is the relevant measure. A sixty fold decrease of food producing capacity in the context of resource use is not an efficient strategy for using limited land, water and biodiversity to feed the world.

Further, since food security is based on food entitlements, and entitlements in peasant societies are based on livelihoods and work, increase in labour productivity based on displacement farmers cannot reduce hunger. It decreases food entitlements by destruction of livelihoods.

Contrary to the myth of linear progress comparative studies of 22 rice-growing systems have shown that indigenous systems are more efficient in terms of yields, and in terms of labour use and energy use. Both from the point of view of food productivity and food entitlements, industrial agriculture is deficient as compared to diversity based internal input sustainable farming systems.

Further, while the partial productivity of industrial agriculture based on resource and energy intensification is non-sustainable both because of environmental externalities and because of livelihood destruction, biodiversity intensification allows increase in food production by increasing resource productivity and increase in employment while improving the environment.

Not only is the measure of productivity of industrial agriculture partial because all inputs, including resource and energy inputs are not taken into account. It is also partial because not all outputs are taken into account.

Ecological agriculture is based on mixed and rotational cropping, and the production of a diversity of crops.

The polycultures of traditional agricultural systems have evolved because more yield can be harvested from a given area planted with diverse crops than from an equivalent area consisting of separate patches of monocultures. For example, in plantings of sorghum and pigeon pea mixtures, one hectare will produce the same yields as 0.94 hectares of sorghum monocultures and 0.68 hectares of pigeon pea monoculture. Thus one hectare of polyculture produces what 1.62 hectares of monoculture can produce. This is called the land equivalent ratio (LER).

Increased land-use efficiency and higher LER has been reported for polycultures of: millet/groundnut 1.26; maize/bean 1.38; millet/sorghum 1.53; maize/pigeon pea 1.85; maize/cocoyan/sweet potato 2.08; cassava/maize/groundnut> 2.51. The monocultures of the Green Revolution thus actually reduced food yields per acre previously achieved through mixtures of diverse crops. This falsifies the argument often made that chemically intensive agriculture and genetic engineering will save biodiversity by releasing land from food production. In fact, since monocultures require more land, biodiversity is destroyed twice over – once on the farm, and then on the additional acreage required to produce the outputs a monoculture has displaced.

Not only is the productivity measure distorted by ignoring resource inputs, and only focussing on labour, it is also distorted by looking only at a single and partial output than the total output.

A myth promoted by the one-dimensional monoculture paradigm is that biodiversity reduces yields and productivity, and monocultures increase yields and productivity. However, since yields and productivity are theoretically constructed terms, they change according to the context. Yields usually refers to production per unit area of a single crop. Planting only one crop in the entire field as a monoculture will of course increase its yield. Planting multiple crops in a mixture will have low yields of individual crops, but will have high total output of food.

The Mayan peasants in the Chiapas are characterized as unproductive because they produce only 2 tonnes of corn per acre. However, the overall food output is 20 tonnes per acre. In the terraced fields of the high Himalayas, women peasants grow jhangora (barnyard millet), marsha (amaranth), tur (pigeon pea), urad (black gram), gahat (horse gram), soya bean (glysine max), bhat (glysine soya), rayans (rice bean), swanta (cow pea), koda (finger millet) in mixtures and rotations. The total output, even in bad years, six times more than industrially farmed rice monocultures.

The work of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology (based in New Delhi) has shown that farm incomes can increase threefold by giving up chemicals and using internal inputs produced by on-farm biodiversity, including straw, animal manure and other by-products.

· Indigenous farmers of the Andes grow more than 3,000 varieties of potato.

· In Papua New Guinea, as many as 5,000 varieties of sweet potato are under cultivation, with more than 20 varieties grown in a single garden.

· In Java, small farmers cultivate 607 species in their home gardens, with an overall species diversity comparable to a deciduous tropical forest.

· In sub-Saharan Africa, women cultivate as many as 120 different plants in the spaces left alongside the cash crops.

· A single home garden in Thailand has more than 230 species.

· African home gardens have more than 60 species of trees.

· Rural families in the Congo eat leaves from more than 50 different species of trees.

· A study in eastern Nigeria found that home gardens occupying only 2 per cent of a household's farmland accounted for half of the farm's total output.

· Home gardens in Indonesia are estimated to provide more than 20 per cent of household income and 40 per cent of domestic food supplies.

The main argument used for the industrialization of food and corporatization of agriculture is the low productivity of the small farmer. Surely these families on their little plots of land are incapable of meeting the world's need for food! Industrial agriculture claims that it increases yields, hence creating the image that more food is produced per unit acre by industrial means than by the traditional practices of small holders. However, sustainable diversified small-farm systems are actually more productive.

Industrial agriculture productivity is high only in the restricted context of a `part of a part' whether it be the forest or of the farm. For example, `high-yield' plantations pick one tree species among thousands, for yields of one part of the tree (e.g. woodpulp), whereas traditional forestry practices use many parts of many forest species.

`High-yield' Green Revolution cropping patterns select one crop among hundreds, such as wheat, for the use of just one part, the grain. These high partial yields do not translate into high total yields, because everything else in the farm system goes to waste. Usually the yield of a single-crop like wheat or maize is singled out and compared to yields of new varieties. This calculation is biased to make the new varieties appear `high-yielding' even when, at the systems level, they may not be.

Traditional farming systems are based on mixed and rotational cropping systems of cereals, pulses, and oil seeds with different varieties of each crop, while the Green Revolution package is based on genetically uniform monocultures. No realistic assessments are ever made of the yield of the diverse crop outputs in the mixed and rotational systems.

Productivity is quite different, however, when it is measured in the context of diversity. Biodiversity-based measures of productivity show that small farmers can feed the world. Their multiple yields result in truly high productivity, composed as they are of the multiple yields of diverse species used for diverse purposes. Thus productivity is not lower on smaller units of land: on the contrary, it is higher. In Brazil, the productivity of a farm of up to 10 hectares was $85 hectare while the productivity of a 500-hectare farm was $2 per hectare. In India, a farm of up to 5 acres had a productivity of Rs. 735 per acre, while a 35-acre farm had a productivity of Rs. 346 per acre.

Diversity produces more than monocultures. But monocultures are profitable to industry both for markets and political control. The shift from high productivity diversity to low productivity monocultures is possible because the resources destroyed are taken from the poor, while the higher commodity production brings benefits to those with economic power. The polluter does not pay in industrial agriculture both of the chemical era or the biotechnology era. Ironically, while the poor go hungry, it is the hunger of the poor which is used to justify the agricultural strategies which deepen their hunger.

Diversity has been destroyed in agriculture on the assumption that it is associated with low productivity. This is however, a false assumption both at the level of individual crops as well as at the level of farming systems. Diverse native varieties are often as high yielding or more high yielding than industrially bred varieties. In addition, diversity in farming system has higher output at the total systems level than one-dimensional monocultures.

Comparative yields of native and Green Revolution varieties in farmers' fields have been assessed by Navdanya, a Seed Conservation Movement. Green Revolution varieties are not higher yielding under the conditions of low capital availability and fragile ecosystems. Farmers' varieties are not intrinsically low yielding and Green Revolution varieties or industrial varietie4s are not intrinsically high yielding.

As Yegna Narayan Aiyer reports,

The possibility of obtaining phenomenal and almost unbelievably high yields of paddy in India has been established as the result of the crop competitions organised by the Central Government and conducted in all states. Thus even the lowest yield in these competitions has been about 5,300 lbs/acre, 6,200 lbs/acre in West Bengal, 6,100 and 7,950 and 8,258 lbs/acre in Thirunelveli, 6,368 and 7,666 kg/ha in South Arcot, 11,000 lbs/acre in Coorg and 12,000 lbs/acre in Salem.

The measurement of yields and productivity in the Green Revolution as well as in the genetic engineering paradigm is divorced from seeing how the processes of increasing single species, single function, output affect the processes that sustain the condition for agricultural production, both by reducing species and functional diversity of farming systems as well as by replacing internal inputs provided by biodiversity with hazardous agrichemicals. While these reductionist categories of yield and productivity allow a higher measurement of harvestable yields of single commodities, they exclude the measurement of the ecological destruction that affects future yields and the destruction of diverse outputs from biodiversity rich systems.

Productivity in traditional farming practices has always been high if it is remembered that very little external inputs are required. While the Green Revolution has been projected as having increased productivity in the absolute sense, when resource utilization is taken into account, it has been found to be counter productive and resource inefficient.

Perhaps one of the most fallacious myths propagated by Green Revolution protagonists is the assertion that HYVs have reduced the acreage, therefore preserving millions of hectares of biodiversity. India's experience tells us that instead of more land being released for conservation, by destroying diversity and multiple uses of land, the industrial breeding system actually increases pressure on the land since each acre of a monoculture provides a single output and the displaced outputs have to be grown on additional acres.

If we focus on land use in the Green Revolution the industrial breeding strategies increase grain production by 20% under good conditions and led to a decline of 100% of straw. If traditional varieties produce 1000kg/acre grain and 1000kg/acre fodder, or 2000kg grain + 2000kg on 2 acres whereas the industrial strategy only provides 1200kg grain and 1000kg of fodder on the 2 acres, leading to a decline of 800kg grain and 1000kg fodder.

Further, the same reductionist logic of industrial breeding also increases the resource use by cattle. Industrial livestock farming consumes three times more biomass than ecological livestock maintenance. Thus industrial livestock breeding would in fact require 3 times more acres of land for feed. In fact Europe uses seven times the area of Europe in the Third World countries for cattle feed production. For fodder alone (including that used to produce food products for export) the Netherlands appropriates 100,000 to 140,000 square kilometres of arable land, much from the Third World. This is five to seven times the area of agricultural land in the entire country.

The combination of industrial plant breeding and industrial animal breeding, therefore increases the pressure on land use by a factor of 400% while separately increasing output of grain and milk by only a factor of 20%. The extra resources used by industrial systems – either by the green revolution or the new biotechnologies could have gone to feed people. Resources wasted amount to the creation of hunger. By being resource wasteful through intensive external inputs, the new biotechnologies create food insecurity and starvation.

What does all this evidence mean in terms of `feeding the world'?. It becomes clear that industrial breeding has actually reduced food security by destroying small farms and the small farmers' capacity to produce these diverse outputs of nutritious crops. Both from the point of view of food productivity and food entitlements, industrial agriculture is deficient as compared to diversity-based internal input systems. Protecting small farms which conserve biodiversity is thus a food security imperative.

The monoculture of the mind is the disease that blocks the creation of abundance on our small farms.

Navdanya: Spreading non-violence in Agriculture

In 1987, I started Navdanya to save native seeds which were threatened by erosion and by genetic engineering and patenting. For me the seed became the embodiment and symbol of freedom. As I wrote in 1988 in "The Seed and the Spinning Wheel",

During the first industrial revolution and its associated colonization, Gandhi had transformed the `primitive' spinning wheel into a living symbol of the struggle for India's freedom and self-determination. The `primitive' seeds of Third World peasants could well become the symbols of the struggle for freedom and the protection of life in the emerging context of recolonization of the Third World and its living resources.

Over the past fifteen years, more than 50 community seed banks have sprouted for saving and sharing thousands of crop varieties of rices, wheats, oilseeds, millets, pulses, vegetables across India. Thousands of farmers have given up chemicals and moved to "ahimsic kheti" -- non-violent organic agriculture. Millions have pledged to obey the higher moral law of protecting biodiversity and freely sharing in its bounties, and not cooperate with patent laws that make seed sharing and seed saving an intellectual property crime.

While corporations use falsehoods and coercive power to spread violence in agriculture, we depend on truth, elf organization to spread peace and non-violence. Agriculture has become my experiment with truth and beauty and peace. And for this I draw strength from the boundless energy of the earth and her infinite diversity.

References :

1. Bija - the Seed, Issue No. 21 & 22, Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, New Delhi.

2. Vandana Shiva, "Globalization and Talibanization" in "September 11, 2001: Feminist Perspectives" edited by Susan Hawthorne and Bronwyn Winter, Spinifex Press, 2002

3. Vandana Shiva, "The Violence of the Green Revolution", The Other India Press and Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, p81-82, 1992. 

4. Vandana Shiva, Afsar H. Jafri, Ashok Emani and Manish Pande, "Seeds of Suicide", Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, p85, 2000.

5. Bija - the Seed, Volume 27 & 28, Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, p 1-2, 2002.

6. 2 ibid.

7. Vandana Shiva, "Yoked to Death: Globalisation and Corporate Control of Agriculture", Research foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, 2001

8. 2 ibid.