GMO farming causes one billion people to go hungry

Environmental expert: GMO farming causes one billion people to go hungry


(NaturalNews) The future of food is not one in which the global seed
supply is owned and licensed out by an oligopoly of multinational
biotechnology and industrial agriculture corporations, but rather one in
which the peoples of the world are free to save, reuse and replenish
their own heirloom seed stocks without the shackles of outrageous patent
limitations, dangerous pesticides and perpetual dependency on
non-renewable inputs. This is the vision of Dr. Vandana Shiva, a
prominent environmental advocate and agricultural expert who recently
told BBC News' Sarah Montague that genetically-modified (GM)
seeds are basically destroying Indian agriculture and causing billions
of people around the world to go hungry.

Once again countering
the mindless corporate rhetoric that claims GMOs are the answer to the
world's food problems, Dr. Shiva offers a thorough analysis during a
recent interview on HardTalk of the current state of affairs in
India, where hundreds of thousands of farmers have committed suicide in
recent years as a result of being duped by Monsanto into converting to a
GM variety of cotton known as Bt cotton. Dr. Shiva also highlights the
fact that many of the people groups commonly thought to be in desperate
need of rescue from poverty were actually plunged into it by
unscrupulous corporations that not only stole their livelihoods, but
also robbed them of their sovereignty and food freedom.

"Since the big companies came in and took over the seed supply, especially in cotton, we have had 270,000 farmer
suicides, most of them driven by debt, and the debt caused by
high-cost, non-renewable seeds," explains Dr. Shiva, before being cut
off by Montague. "Why are farmers being trapped in debt when they
weren't in debt earlier? Because they're getting into debt for seed, and
they're getting into debt for chemicals, because the seeds which were
supposed to control pests aren't really controlling pests, they're
creating new pests."

Monsanto, corporate seed industry raping and pillaging India of its agricultural heritage

In
essence, Indian farmers who for generations have been saving and
reusing a variety of heirloom seeds and cultivating them bio-dynamically
are now being tricked into converting to non-renewable GM seeds that
must be repurchased year after year, and that are grown mono-culturally
as global commodities. Many of these same farmers are also having to
shell out as much as 8,000 times more money to purchase these seeds each
year compared to when they first contracted with Monsanto, according to
Dr. Shiva, which is causing many of them to lose their land and
livelihoods, thus the sharp increase in farmer suicides that began to
spike around 1997 when Bt cotton was first introduced.

"Seed has
always been a renewable resource in farmers' hands," adds Dr. Shiva,
noting that with Bt cotton, which currently represents some 95 percent
of plantings in India, farmers are being lied to about both yields and
profitability. "Every second Indian child is today so severely
malnourished, and every fourth Indian is today hungry, something we've
not had after independence -- this is all a result of today of food
having been reduced to a commodity, and being destroyed as a source of
livelihood on the one hand for the farmer, and a human right for those
who must eat."

Be sure to watch the full interview with Dr. Shiva here:

http://tv.greenmedinfo.com

You
can also learn more about Dr. Shiva's work with Navdanya, a seed saving
and sharing initiative currently spreading throughout India, by
visiting:
http://www.navdanya.org/

Source:-
http://www.naturalnews.com/040053_world_hunger_GMOs_farmer_suicide.html