The simple act of saving seeds has lately become an extremely important one.
Unprecedented changes are going on in the world of seeds. Corporate mergers of seed growers have accelerated at such a pace that there are now only a few giant rulers. Patented seeds have become common in catalogues. Millions of acres of farmland are being planted with bioengineered seeds i.e. the transgenic seeds or GM seeds in the name of eradicating poverty and ensuring food scarcity.
Certain transnational and multinational corporations have openly declared their intention of gaining total control of the world’s food supply. As things now stand they are not far from doing so. Farmers are being taken to court for saving seed. Plants that have always belonged to everyone are now “owned” by corporations through a simple term “patent”, which is still a fog for growers.
It has become almost impossible to find food products in North America and few European countries that are not derived from genetically modified seeds which in turn transported to India by the TNCs few years ago. But now we are competing with them in the name of development. The opening of various food malls in Orissa, which sell imported processed foods and foodstuff prepared by MNCs, is an open invitation to genetically modified food to our native.
The simple, saveable seeds that are part of ten thousand years of agricultural tradition are threatened with extinction. There is everything right with these seeds and they are all we need to grow healthy food. If we don’t continue to use these seeds we will lose them forever.
The pollution of seeds, our forever friends, represents to more and more people the very last straw. You can’t find pure water anymore, can’t breathe clean air, and now our daily meals are being contaminated beyond belief. The notion of tinkering with genes from totally different species and mixing them up in our food (i.e. GM food), with no testing, no consultation and no notification is alerting people to the fact that corporations are out of control as the all regulatory authorities have sold themselves.
Genetically altered foods are being foisted on us by so-called life sciences companies, organisations as well as our research institutes in the name of poverty, scarcity, health, safety and humanitarianism while in reality they are an experiment with potentially deadly consequences.
Terminator seeds are part of the arsenal of these same corporations that are promising us hope for the future. They more transparently reveal the name of the game to be profit and control. Such seeds especially threaten the livelihoods of “third world” farmers (usually women) who have traditionally saved their own seed. That minds would design seeds to terminate themselves is incomprehensible to most people. A perusal of the histories of some of these same transnational corporations is quite scary: they are manufacturers of the most virulent poisons (the deadly agro-chemicals) used in warfare.
The issue of seeds has the potential to be a very big wake-up call. The confused mindset that blasts foreign genes into seeds, that patents seeds, that kills seeds, is clearly one that would destroy the very “culture” that feeds us, the agriculture- the food and feed system.
Seeds remind us, if we but hold them in our hands, that we are a lot bigger than our current preoccupations. Rice, wheat, ragi as well as a lot of vegetable seeds got here because countless other people held them in their hands. They got here in a dance of people and earth that will only go on if both partners are honoured. They got here not by diminishing life but by letting life live.
We got here the same way. We got here because life keeps producing more diverse and divine expressions of herself, not reducing herself to sameness and certainty.
An agriculture that becomes a monoculture cannot work for very long. Now soil has eroded and becoming senseless, the “biodiversity” is gone, water is empty, the air is black, the weather is unpredictable and then life, where the sustainability is!
The transnational corporations that are cramming their gene-altered crops down our throats are doing so with the same arrogance and ignorance they’ve shown during the past fifty years of industrial agriculture. Creating transgenic crops is an extreme extension of the belief that we can totally control nature and get away with it. But the writing on the wall has become more and more underlined for anyone who looks at the current state of our environment. It has quickly become obvious that genetically manipulating crops is the same bad science as breeding crops that only grow well with the constant application of chemicals.
Already 90 per cent of biotech firms have gone bankrupt. Most major bioengineered crops have bombed too, including transgenic rice, maize, corn, sugarcane, cotton, tomato, brinjal, cauliflower, cabbage, groundnut, okra, potato, mustard, chickpea, sorghum, black gram, chilli, watermelon, coffee, banana, soybean etc. Moreover GM food products are also available abroad with brands from Crisco®, Kraft® salad dressings, Nestle® chocolate, Green Giant harvest burgers®, Parkay® margarine, Wesson® vegetable oils, and McDonald's Corporation. The makers of Isomil®, Enfamil®, and Prosobee® infant formulas have also verified that genetically engineered crop ingredients are incorporated into their products.
The largest corporations remain and have so much money they can say and do anything. Will we soon have only the corporate-created food? And if that time comes how much will that food cost us? And do we have the answer...!
Who is saying what we can do instead? We don’t have a high proportion of people who really care about their food. Most people don’t even know where their food comes from or how it is produced. We don’t even have many farmers left who know that you can’t farm from the top floor of a corporate office tower.
Can we stop buying into processes and products that are designed only to make money? Fortunately, everything is changing as fast as today’s weather. New ways of looking at things are starting to make sense. Why should food be so wrapped up by money? There is already a vast surplus of whole grains and beans being grown in our country. Why shouldn’t food be a right instead of a privilege? Couldn’t we all be well fed?
Why not awaken people what’s happening around...why not encourage people to have a gifted livelihood by farming the richness of the earth...to live on the land and derive satisfaction and fulfilment of all desires from the infinite-incredible beauty and entertainment of nature without disturbing it? ...and start to realize, as well, the vast potential for growing food within our urban environments?
What about the most radical idea of all that’s starting to germinate? The Earth is pretty messed up these days but it’s still likely the most incredible place in the Universe. Why should the minute proportion of people have all the power and resources? Why don’t we go for it and try to use all our skills for mutual benefit? Why don’t we create a place where all life is honoured and cherished?
Seeds are perhaps the most potent beginning point we’ve got right now. They have the power to provide the basics of life i.e. food, cloth and shelter. They have the power and potential to clean our air and water. The threat of their extermination must rally us to their protection, preservation, multiplication and enhancement. For seeds to remain public treasure, we must embrace them and create agendas for them that are people-oriented rather than power-oriented.
The great news is that normal seeds are easy and fun to save. Our remaining stock of open-pollinated seeds can be perpetuated without any special knowledge, equipment or resources. By becoming responsible for seed saving instead of depending on governments or seed companies and being trapped by them, we can help save ourselves. When the powers-that-be bite the dust, we will be sustaining the good earth, our mother...
Hence, friends come…join hands…
Let’s start “Act for Planet”
