EVENTS

GMO Free Summit : Farmers Suicides, Organic Farming and GMO-Free Zones

Dear Friends

Greetings for the New Year!

The introduction of hybrid and genetically engineered seeds has introduced new risks and new costs for our already impoverished peasantry. Hundreds and thousands of farmers have committed suicide as a result of being trapped in debt due to costly seeds and costly inputs and falling prices of farm products. Seed monopolies have become life threatening to our farmers. In addition genetically engineered crops bring new hazards and risks. Their commercialization is however being promoted under the influence of the biotech industry which has emerged as the controller of the seed supply.

World’s Top 10 Seed Companies + 1

                        (Source : ETC Group Global Seed Industry Concentration Report 2005)

The U.S and India Knowledge initiative in Agriculture is also leading to the dismantling of our biosafety structure and the commercialization of the genetically engineered crops. Farmers in Haryana, Chattisgarh and Tamil Nadu were forced to uproot the trials of Monsanto – Mahyco Bt. Rice. And the Supreme Court has put a freeze on GM trials due to lack of biosafety regulatory framework.

Over the last two decades, Navdanya has been promoting GM-Free organic farming, challenging seed patents and the new Seed Act through its Bija Swaraj and Bija Satyagraha Movement and creating GMO-Free Zones (Jaiv Panchayat) across India to resist seed monopolies, provide farmers with alternatives to suicides through a living and sustainable agriculture and avoid the risks of genetic contamination. At the global level too, GMO Free Zones have emerged as a mode of resistance to genetic engineering and seed monopolies.

We feel it is an opportune time to bring together movements working to promote organic agriculture, movements and activists campaigning to stop farmers suicides as well as those campaigning to stop the spread of GMO’s in our agriculture through the creation of GMO Free Zones.

We would therefore like to invite you to join us for a “GMO Free Summit : Farmers Suicides, Organic Farming and GMO-Free Zones” on 6th February, 2007 at the Lecture Hall, India International Centre (Annexe), Lodhi Road, New Delhi from 2.00 pm to 6.00 pm.

At the summit we will also have the presence of eminent scientist Dr. Alexander Baranov from Russia who will share the results of research on the hazards of genetically modified crops carried out and Percy Schmeiser who was the victim of G.M contamination from Monsanto GM Canola and a legal case which treated the contamination as “theft of intellectual property”.

We have decided to call this meeting a “Summit” because in a democracy it is the citizens who should be the highest decision making authority. Democracy, like a tree, grows from the ground up.

We look forward to your confirmation and to your joining us to strengthen the movement for GMO Free farming and GMO free food and People’s Land Rights.

Thanking you,

With warm regards,
r. Vandana Shiva