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food sovereignty
The Farm Bill Is a Health Bill
It cannot be cut into pieces without harming land and people.
Aug 09, 2026
Wanìshi means thank you in the Lenape language. This is the lyrical word we recently had the privilege of learning from a principal emissary from the Piscataway Indian Nation, and experiencing together. Wanìshi for the quiet moments between hard conversations and watching sunsets, where we shared in the spirit of collaboration, together with 18 other thinkers and doers who are deeply troubled by the trajectory of public agriculture policy, and its historically principal vehicle, the Farm Bill.
We embraced and shared in this collaborative mindset over the three days we spent with the America the Beautiful for All Coalition’s Legacy Lands workgroup in Maryland. The Farm Bill was one of the issues we discussed. A bill currently being treated by politicians as technical, as boring, as someone else's problem. When in our realities, it is none of those things. The Farm Bill decides who eats and who doesn't. It decides who is healthy and whose health is negotiable.
Between us, we have spent a combined five decades serving the communities this bill affects: rural families losing food, farmworkers losing protections, Black farmers losing land, tribal nations losing voice. So at that convening, and with this piece, we are expressing plainly a reality every farmer, rancher, and all of us who steward land intimately know. That land is a body and must be nourished. That we cannot cut it into fundable pieces and expect the pieces to bleed separately. The Farm Bill is a health bill. It cannot be cut into pieces without harming land and people. We do not view the content of the draft as a public health crisis because we have been trained to view it as agricultural policy. But it is, in fact, a public health crisis, and that crisis has a physical address: every community where conservation funding has been cut and every family living downstream of the farms and lands that lost it.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed on the Fourth of July last year, cut $187 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). More than 4.5 million people have lost their food assistance since then. In rural counties where the nearest grocery store is a 40-minute drive and the nearest doctor is farther, losing SNAP is not a policy change. It is a sentence. It means a child eating less, and then eating worse, and then showing up in an emergency room that is itself understaffed and underfunded. The Senate Farm Bill draft does not restore a single dollar.
That land is a body and must be nourished. That we cannot cut it into fundable pieces and expect the pieces to bleed separately. The Farm Bill is a health bill. It cannot be cut into pieces without harming land and people.
Both versions of the new bill cut funding for the conservation programs that keep farmland productive and water clean. The Senate draft alone slashes nearly $2 billion from EQIP, the program that helps small farmers put cover crops in, manage nutrients, and protect water. When those programs shrink, the runoff increases. Babies, adults, pets, and wildlife in the communities downstream all drink that water.
The agency responsible for delivering conservation to farmers is disappearing. The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) lost nearly a quarter of its staff in one year. One hundred and forty-one counties went from having NRCS employees to having none. These were the people who helped farmers manage nutrients, reduce fertilizer runoff, and protect water. In their absence, nitrate from agricultural runoff enters rural drinking water unchecked. Research links nitrate contamination to colorectal cancer, thyroid disease, and birth defects in newborns, at levels below what the Environmental Protection Agency considers safe. The communities drinking that water are the same small rural towns that just lost their NRCS offices. A beginning farmer in southern Georgia or a small rancher in northern New Mexico picks up the phone and no one answers. Their neighbors downstream drink what runs off the fields no one is helping them manage.
For Latino communities across the rural West, acequias, the community irrigation systems that have sustained families for centuries, depend on the conservation programs this bill is cutting. A farmer in the San Luis Valley who has irrigated land the way her family has for six generations does not experience a conservation cut as a line item. She experiences it as a ditch that doesn't flow, a garden that doesn't grow, a family that buys what it used to harvest.
Black families once farmed 16 million acres in this country. Today they hold barely over 1%. Heirs' property, land passed down without clear title, is one of the mechanisms through which that loss continues: A single partition sale can erase a century of family ownership in an afternoon. The families who lose their land don't just lose wealth. They lose the foundation for food sovereignty, the one asset that could have fed a family, a neighborhood, a generation. A deed problem becomes a health problem, passed down the same way the land was supposed to be.
As we watch this Farm Bill, we carry with us the word our Piscataway colleague shared. Wanìshi. Thank you. We offer it now in the spirit of collaboration.
We will offer it again, in the spirit of gratitude, when Congress writes this bill for all of us.
We are waiting.
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In 'Assault' on Mexican Food Sovereignty, US Ramps Up Fight Over GM Corn
"U.S. agribusiness exporters, the biotech industry, and their allies in Congress are pushing this case, intent on compelling Mexico to accept U.S. exports without debate," said one expert.
Aug 17, 2023
After two-and-a-half months of failed negotiations, the U.S. government on Thursday intensified its effort to quash Mexico's limits on genetically modified corn imports by calling for the formation of a dispute settlement panel under a North American trade deal.
In a 2020 decree backed by agricultural, consumer, environmental, public health, and worker groups, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) announced plans to phase out genetically modified (GM) corn and the herbicide glyphosate by January 2024.
Under pressure from the U.S. government and impacted industries, he issued a new decree in February reiterating plans to block GM corn imports for human consumption by then but lifting the deadline for imports intended for livestock feed and industrial use.
"The Mexican government will show what has occurred: Its cherished tortillas are being contaminated with glyphosate and GM corn. And they intend to put a stop to that."
While AMLO's move was seen as a concession to the U.S. and lobbyists challenging his policies, the Biden administration in June still requested 75 days of formal negotiations. After talks ended Wednesday, U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Katherine Tai confirmed the decision to form a panel under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).
"Through the USMCA dispute panel, we seek to resolve our concerns and help ensure consumers can continue to access safe and affordable food and agricultural products," Tai said Thursday. "It is critical that Mexico eliminate its USMCA-inconsistent biotechnology measures so that American farmers can continue to access the Mexican market and use innovative tools to respond to climate and food security challenges. Our bilateral relationship with Mexico, one of our oldest and strongest trading partners, is rooted in trust and honesty, and there are many areas where we will continue to cooperate and work together."
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack similarly said that "Mexico's approach to biotechnology is not based on science" and "the United States is continuing to exercise its rights under the USMCA to ensure that U.S. producers and exporters have full and fair access to the Mexican market."
The Mexican Ministry of Economy responded in a statement that "Mexico does not agree with the position of the United States" and "is prepared to defend the Mexican position before this international panel and demonstrate: 1) that the national regulation is consistent with the commitments signed in the treaty; and 2) that the challenged measures do not have commercial effects."
The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) has previously supported Mexico's efforts to phase out GM corn and glyphosate and on Thursday challenged claims by U.S. officials and agribusiness about Mexican obligations under the treaty and the potential economic impact of the policies.
"U.S. agribusiness exporters, the biotech industry, and their allies in Congress are pushing this case, intent on compelling Mexico to accept U.S. exports without debate. It is an assault on Mexico's food sovereignty," said Karen Hansen-Kuhn, IATP director of trade and international strategies. "Trade rules should provide a forum to protect and advance rights, rather than block them."
Hansen-Kuhn on Thursday authored an op-ed about Mexico's rights under the USMCA while ITAP senior adviser Timothy A. Wise wrote about "exaggerated claims of economic damage" that "sprang from a convenient set of assumptions, all of which are flawed and now outdated in light of the more recent presidential decree."
"As Mexican Economy Minister Raquel Buenrostro stated in response to the USTR request for technical consultations, Mexico's decree is based on science, and she will challenge the U.S. government in the consultations to show 'quantitatively, with numbers, something that has not occurred: that the corn decree has commercially affected U.S. exporters,'" Wise also said.
"The Mexican government will show what has occurred: Its cherished tortillas are being contaminated with glyphosate and GM corn," he continued. "And they intend to put a stop to that."
As Reuters detailed Thursday:
Under USMCA's dispute settlement rules, a five-person panel, chosen from a roster of pre-approved experts, must be convened within 30 days, with a chair jointly chosen and the U.S. side choosing two Mexican panelists and Mexico choosing two American panelists. The panel will review testimony and written submissions and its initial report is due 150 days after the panel is convened.
Previous USMCA dispute panels last year ruled in the U.S.'s favor in a dispute over Canadian dairy quotas, and against the U.S. on automotive rules of origin, siding with Mexico and Canada.
There have been other disagreements between the U.S. and Mexico, most notably over energy in which the U.S. has argued that Mexico's nationalist policy prejudices foreign companies.
Arturo Sarukhán, a former Mexican ambassador to the United States, said on social media Thursday that "of the two consultation processes—energy and yellow corn—this is the one that is politically most relevant for the White House in 2024," given the significance of agricultural states such as Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin to Democratic U.S. President Joe Biden, who is seeking reelection, and the GOP nominee, which could be former President Donald Trump, who signed the USMCA.
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For a World Without Hunger, We Need Food Sovereignty
In the last two years, food corporations paid shareholders $53.5bn while millions went hungry.
Apr 30, 2023
Imagine being able to provide food, shelter, medicine and clean drinking water for the 230 million most vulnerable people on Earth, and still having a cool $2bn in spare change. That’s the equivalent of the entire economic output of Gambia rattling around in your pocket.
The reason for this unlikely thought experiment is a new analysis showing that 20 of the world’s biggest food corporations – the largest in the grain, fertiliser, meat and dairy sectors – returned a total of $53.5bn to their shareholders in the last two financial years.
To put that into perspective, the UN estimates that it needs $51.5bn to provide life-saving support to 230 million people deemed most at risk worldwide. You get the idea.
What’s more, the corporations ‘earned’ these profits during a period of unprecedented turmoil – a global pandemic and full-scale war in Ukraine – when global supply chains were disrupted and millions of people went hungry.
While readers in wealthier countries may have noticed higher prices for the weekly shop, the impact in developing countries has been devastating. Food prices rose by between 3% and 4.5% in the UK, Canada and the US in the first few months of the pandemic – but by 47% in Venezuela.
The World Food Programme estimates that the number of people facing acute food insecurity more than doubled from 135 million people before the pandemic to 345 million. Countries in the Horn of Africa as well as Afghanistan and Yemen have been particularly badly hit.
Owning the market
So how were 20 companies able to get their hands on this amount of money amid two major crises?
By literally owning the market. The new report from Greenpeace International shows how this small group of companies are able to wield wildly disproportionate control, not only over the supply chains for food itself, but over information about those supplies.
When supply chains were disrupted and food prices rose, the profits rolled in. Cash dividends and shareholder buyback programmes allowed them to transfer an astronomical amount of money to their shareholders, while further amplifying their power over the sector’s industry and governments.
A systemic failure of public policy has allowed a select group to record huge profits, enriching the individuals that own and operate them and transferring wealth to shareholders, most of whom are in the Global North.
Let’s take one example from the report: Russia’s latest invasion of Ukraine last year also resulted in steep price rises for agricultural commodities such as wheat, maize, sunflower oil and some fertilisers, of which Ukraine and Russia are major exporters.
Just four companies – Archer-Daniels Midland, Bunge, Cargill and Dreyfus – control up to 90% of the world’s grain trade. They are under no obligation to disclose what they know about global markets, including their own grain stocks. This lack of transparency means that these companies withhold information that can shape grain prices according to their needs – not even hedge funds can get information except directly from them.
Our report finds that following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, opacity around the true amounts of grain in storage was a factor in the development of a speculative bubble that led to grain prices rising around the world. In the last two financial years, these four companies paid out a total of $2.7bn in cash dividends, and at least $3.3m in share buybacks, though the true figure is likely much higher because not all of them report on their finances in detail.
If we want to see a world without hunger, the most impactful structural change we can make to the global food system is to bring about food sovereignty. This means policymakers empowering consumers and food producers through policies that benefit local food production, the environment and workers’ rights.
For years, food sovereignty movements have sought to return autonomy to food producers, shortening and strengthening supply chains to reverse the damage done by unsustainable farming. It is not just wishful thinking: from Papua New Guinea to Brazil to Mexico and many other countries, there are deep structural movements working to bring food to everyone’s plate.
But there must also be policies to loosen the grip of corporate control on the global food system – measures such as regulations to ensure greater transparency, an ambitious and sector-wide windfall tax, and significant taxation on dividend payouts as well as on income from dividends.
Achieving zero hunger is the second of the Sustainable Development Goals that UN member states committed to reach by 2030. Recent UN conferences, such as COP27 and COP15, have highlighted industrial agriculture as an important driver of greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity loss.
It is time for food to be seen as what it is: a basic human need that has to be available to us all, and not another commodity to be exploited and traded for the profit of the few.
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Food Sovereignty Honorees Show 'There is Another Way to Fight Hunger'
Both of the 2015 prizewinners are minority groups that 'have struggled for decades against oppression from their governments and large agricultural companies'
Oct 14, 2015
Underscoring how the struggles for racial, environmental, and economic justice are deeply intertwined, this year's Food Sovereignty Prize, honoring those who are taking back their food systems, will be bestowed Wednesday to the Georgia-based Federation of Southern Cooperatives and the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras.
"On the heels of a visible resurgence of the struggle for black liberation made visible by a spate of police brutality against Black Americans, the two winners this year demonstrate a commitment to solidarity with Black people's struggles globally," wrote Alison Meares Cohen of the global hunger and poverty non-profit WhyHunger.
"Everything we're about is food sovereignty, the right of every individual on earth to wholesome food, clean water, clean air, clean land, and the self-determination of a local community to grow and do what they want. We just recognize the natural flow of life. It's what we've always done."
--Ben Burkett, Federation of Southern Cooperatives
Both of the 2015 honorees "have struggled for decades against oppression from their governments and large agricultural companies," said WhyHunger co-founder Bill Ayres in an op-ed last week. "They have pioneered excellent agricultural practices, fought for their rights, and produced nutritious food for people."
He concluded that in doing so, they have shown that "[t]here is another way to fight hunger. It is not through the latest tech solution or the latest chemical toxic concoction, but it does utilize science rooted in ecological principles, community participation, and democratic management."
The Federation of Southern Cooperatives, whose members are farmers in 16 Southern states—approximately 90 percent African-American, Native American, Latino, and White—grew out of the civil rights movement in the late 1960s. But its work "is today more important than ever," the prize committee writes, given that the number of African-American-owned farms in the U.S. has fallen from 14 percent to 1 percent in less than 100 years.
To counter that trend and keep farms Black and family-owned instead of corporate-owned, the Federation promotes land-based cooperatives and community development credit unions, provides training in sustainable agriculture and forestry, management, and marketing, and advocates in the courts and state and national legislatures.
"Our view is local production for local consumption," said Ben Burkett, co-founder of the Federation and a fourth-generation Mississippi farmer. "It's just supporting mankind as family farmers. Everything we're about is food sovereignty, the right of every individual on earth to wholesome food, clean water, clean air, clean land, and the self-determination of a local community to grow and do what they want. We just recognize the natural flow of life. It's what we've always done."
As Andrianna Natsoulas and Beverly Bell wrote in an op-ed this week, "The Federation's work to keep land in the hands of the small farmers is one of the foundations of food sovereignty, a framework of policies, principles, and practices through which food systems are controlled by, and serve the best interest of, people instead of corporations."
Meanwhile, the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH), was created in 1979 to protect the economic, social, and cultural rights of 46 Garifuna communities along the Atlantic coast of Honduras. In the face of Big Ag land grabs, tourist-driven development, and climate change, OFRANEH helps this historically oppressed minority, descending from Indigenous Caribbean and African groups, fight back through direct-action community organizing, legal action, leadership training, and movement-building. At the center of the organization's work is a focus on strengthening land security and sustainable, small-scale farming and fishing.
"Our liberation starts because we can plant what we eat," stated Miriam Miranda, coordinator of OFRANEH. "This is food sovereignty."
She continued: "We need to produce to bring autonomy and the sovereignty of our peoples. If we continue to consume [only], it doesn't matter how much we shout and protest. We need to become producers. It's about touching the pocketbook, the surest way to overcome our enemies. It's also about recovering and reaffirming our connections to the soil, to our communities, to our land."\
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Challenging Racism in the Food System
The Federation of Southern Cooperatives fights for Black lands, agriculture, and equal justice
Oct 14, 2015
The 2015 US Food Sovereignty Prize will be awarded on October 14 in Des Moines, Iowa. This year, one of the two winners is the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, a network of cooperatives comprising mostly Black family farmers across the deep South. The Federation upholds a vision of local production for local consumption and defense of their family land needed for that local production. The second winner, the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras, has a similar mission and values.
Some Federation of Southern Cooperatives farmers continued working land that the US government had deeded to their ancestors after they were freed from slavery. Ben Burkett, president of the federation and a member of the Mississippi Association of Cooperatives, farms the 164 acres that his great-grandfather was given by the government in 1889. Burkett still has the land title signed by President Grover Cleveland.
Composed of 35 agricultural co-ops, representing 12,000 farm families in 13 states from Texas to North Carolina—primarily African-American but also some Latino, Native American, and white—the Federation employs organizing, political advocacy, and legal strategies to defend land. It also helps develop economically self-sufficient communities, assisting member co-ops in purchasing supplies and finding marketing outlets. Moreover, it offers financial and technical assistance.
The Federation's work to keep land in the hands of the small farmers is one of the foundations of food sovereignty, a framework of policies, principles and practices through which food systems are controlled by, and serve the best interest of, people instead of corporations.
Taking on the "Last Plantation"
In 1920, one in every seven farmers in the US was African-American. Together, they owned nearly 15 million acres. By 1982, however, African-American farmers numbered one in 67, owning only 3.1 million acres. 1 Racism, violence, and massive migration from the rural South to the industrialized North caused a steady decline in the number of Black farmers.
Even for those who have long held onto their family's land, maintaining it today is a constant struggle. Historical patterns of racism and economic pressures in an agribusiness-driven food system have pushed many Black farmers off their land.
Institutional racism in the agricultural policies of the United States Department of Agriculture - nicknamed "the last plantation" - is also to blame for the loss of Black land. Over the years, studies by the US Civil Rights Commission (CRC), as well as by the USDA itself, showed that the USDA actively discriminated against Black farmers. A 1964 CRC study showed that the agency unjustly denied African-American farmers loans, disaster aid, and representation on agricultural committees. 2
In response, in 1997-98, African-American farmers - organized through the Federation of Southern Cooperatives and other Black organizations - filed class-action lawsuits against the USDA for unjustly denying them loans. The lawsuits were consolidated into one case, Pigford v. Glickman, settled in 1999.
However, due to delays in filing claims, nearly 60,000 farmers and their heirs were left out of this settlement. In November 2010, the U.S. Congress passed the Claims Settlement Act, or Pigford II, to compensate Black farmers left out of the first settlement. President Obama signed the Claims Settlement Act a month later, making $1.25 billion available for claimants through cash payments and loan forgiveness. The final settlement allocated about $50,000 each to roughly 16,000 farmers nationwide.
"I never would have thought the government would pay anybody any money," Burkett said of the settlement. "Initially, I would say, 'You never get a dime.' But I was wrong."
"Not As Good As We Want It to Be"
Over the years, each generation of the Burkett family bought more land, so the original 164 acres has expanded to 296 acres. On them, under the name of B&B Farms, Burkett - with the help of his family - grows 15 different varieties of vegetables and timber. Burkett says he believes the co-op structure is the only way to survive as a farmer in the rural South.
Speaking of Pigford and Pigford II, Burkett says he would have preferred that the money had been pooled and put into a trust to borrow against or to help new farmers. He added that that would have provided future generations with some seed funding and current farmers a layer of security.
In an interview, Burkett explains the rationale of the Federation taking a lead in the Pigford v. Glickman lawsuit.
"The lawsuit was about discrimination in the county office of the USDA. I got a loan to buy my equipment, seeds, and fertilizers. I could not write any checks directly. I had to write a check, and somebody in the [USDA] office had to sign it. They were only treating black farmers like that, not white farmers. For example, if I wanted to buy $5,000 worth of soybean seed, I had to find the seed from the Forest County co-op and get an invoice. I then returned to the [USDA] office and got the check. They sign the check, and I sign it, and then I have to take it back to the store. I'm just one of them; they treated me like that.
"A lot of farmers go in and get their loan approved. This happened to me, too. My loan was approved in February or March, but I didn't get the money until July 15th. That's cutting time. Planting is over. It was several things like that that brought the suit about. A lot of black farmers went into the USDA offices and were denied. They wouldn't even give them the application for a loan. The USDA officers told them, 'You can't make any money farming, so. . .' In the lawsuit, [denial of your loan] had to happen to you between '81 and '96. It was happening before then, and it is happening now, after the lawsuit. That's just the price of doing business, I suppose.
"They can pass a rule in Washington, D.C., [in the] USDA or Congress. Then, it comes to the state of Mississippi. If the state says they don't want to, they don't have to. We have a [USDA] county committee comprising five farmers who do the hiring, the firing, and everything else. Those fellows in Washington, D.C., can talk but can't fire anybody. They cannot fire a soul in the state of Mississippi.
"As long as it's set up that way, it won't change. I believe that in my heart. There are all kinds of laws about discrimination [that say] 'regardless of race, religion, creed or color.' Discrimination, morals, people's ideologies... you can't make policy or legislate that away.
"But, it is much better. I remember the '60s, I remember segregation, and it is better now. Not as good as we want it to be, but not as bad as it was."
Because racism persists in the agricultural system, hurting the efforts of Burkett and other Black farmers, the Federation of Southern Cooperatives keeps fighting for equal justice through grassroots mobilizations, in the courts, and through state and national legislation.
Burkett said, "Racism is still here in the marketplace and credit, but we have learned to deal with it and not give up on changing the system. We struggle every day to bring about a change."
Footnotes
- Public Broadcasting System, "Challenging the USDA (1980s and 1990s)," Black Farming and Land Loss: A History.
- Public Broadcasting System, "The Civil Rights Years (1954-1968)," Black Farming and Land Loss: A History.
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Get the GMO Out of My Mustard
Sarson Satyagraha to stop terminator technology
Aug 12, 2015
India is the home of oilseed diversity--coconut, groundnut, linseed, niger, mustard and rapeseed, safflor, and sesame. Our food cultures have evolved with our biodiversity of oilseeds. Sarson is called "Sarsapa" and "Rajika" in Sanskrit. Diverse Varieties of Sarson are grown and used in India, including Krsna Sarsapa (Banarsi Rai), Sita Sarsapa (Pila Sarson), Rakta Sarsapa (Brown Sarson), Toria, and Taramira.
On August 27th, 1998, the government announced a policy of free import of soyabean, while simultaneously banning sale of mustard oil using the tragedy of adulteration of mustard oil in Delhi with argemone, diesel, waste oil. While it was referred to as the dropsy epidemic, our visits to hospitals showed multiple symptoms because of the multiple sources of adulteration. The interesting thing about the mustard tragedy was that ALL brands were affected, and only in Delhi. . A typical adulteration is in one brand across the supply chain.
Women from the slums of Delhi called us at Navdanya and said, "Our children are going to bed hungry because they cannot eat food cooked in soya oil." They also said, "Bring our mustard back."
Women prefer natural oils such as mustard to hydrogenated fats such as Dalda for health reasons and taste. Hydrogenated fats contain trans fats, which contribute to heart problems and strokes. Soya oil, too, is an industrial oil that uses benzene, a known carcinogen. Food should give us health, not disease; the poorest women know this fundamental fact.
Navdanya, with the National Women's Alliance for Food Sovereignty (Mahila Anna Swaraj), started the Sarson Satyagraha to bring back pure mustard oil. In 1998, the sound of "Sarson Bacao, Soyabean Bhagao" rang on the streets of Delhi. The first bottle of the Satyagraha Mustard Oil was gifted to the then Chief Minister of Delhi, Sahib Singh Varma. Today, we can enjoy our mustard oil because of the Sarson Satyagraha 1998.
Our mustard is again under threat from Dr. Deepak Pental of Delhi University, who has genetically engineered it for sterility and herbicide tolerance.
Not only do we not need genetically engineered mustard, but the traits being introduced in it are known to be hazardous and illegal under international and national law. Dr Pental has spent time in Tihar jail for stealing a colleague's Mustard work, but blatantly violating national and international laws that have been put in place to protect our biodiversity and farmers' rights is a far more serious crime.
The GMO mustard is based on what has been called "Terminator Technology," which sterilizes the harvested seed. The UN Convention on Biodiversity has banned the use of Terminator Technology, and it is also illegal under India's Plant Variety Protection and Farmers Rights Act. The US Department of Agriculture and Delta and Pine Land (now owned by Monsanto) hold the patent for this technology.
Dr. Pental used Terminator Technology based on the barnase gene, which is lethal to cells.
In addition to the terminator trait, GMO mustard has been engineered to be resistant to the herbicide Glufosinate. This herbicide halts photosynthesis, resulting in plant death. When Glufosinate is sprayed on fields, all other plants die except the herbicide-resistant GMO.
These are technologies for killing life, not technologies for growing food. They must be banned.
In India, we grow mustard with wheat on our small farms. Such mixtures increase productivity and farmers' incomes. However, herbicide-resistant GMO mustard kills wheat, lowers farm productivity, and undermines food security. Herbicide-resistant crops also put evolutionary pressure on weeds, contributing to the emergence of superweeds. Due to increased herbicide use, 50% of farmlands in the US are overrun by superweeds.
Additionally, GM mustard contaminates non-GMO mustard through pollination. Percy Scmeiser, a seed breeder in Canada, lost his canola line (canola is derived from mustard and gets its name from the breeding done in Canada) to contamination by Monsanto's RoundUp Ready Canola. Steve Marsh, an Australian Organic farmer, lost his Organic Certification because of Monsanto's GM canola.
The demand for pure organic mustard oil is growing in India since most edible oils are "blended" with GMO soya oil or GMO BT cotton seed oil. The introduction of GMO mustard with Terminator traits will deny Indian citizens the right to safe and pure mustard oil because of the risk of contamination.
The GM DNA can enter cells of unrelated species and be incorporated into the cell's genome through horizontal gene transfer. The genes involved are fatal.
Barnase is known to be harmful, if not lethal, to all cells, animals and humans included. When perfused into rat kidneys, barnase causes kidney damage. When the recombinases used for gene splicing are expressed at high levels in the sperm cells of transgenic mice, the males became 100% sterile. Sterility is caused directly by the recombinase enzyme scrambling the genome, essentially by breaking and rejoining DNA at inappropriate sites on the same or different chromosomes.
Because we need an independent assessment of these far-reaching Biosafety impacts, the Technical Expert Committee (TEC) of the Supreme Court has recommended a ten-year moratorium on GMO trials to create a robust system for Biosafety Regulation. Such regulation cannot be left to those involved in risky experiments who are also trying to push hazardous GMOs onto our farms and into our food.
In addition, the TEC has recommended that no herbicide-resistant crops be introduced in India because our farmers are small, and herbicides will destroy our biodiverse food crops, which are the basis of India's food and nutritional security. The TEC also recommended that we do not genetically engineer crops for which we are a 'center of diversity.' India is the home of the genetic diversity of mustard.
Thus, every law and scientific principle of Biosafety is being undermined to push Terminator Mustard on India's farmers and thalis. GMO mustard is justified because we are importing edible oils, which will reduce imports by increasing production. The claim that this Terminator Mustard will increase yields by 30% is scientifically false and a blatant lie.
The GMO hybrid cannot have higher yields than the non-GMO hybrid.
India imports edible oils because we were forced to. When Soya oil started flooding India's market in 1998, the International price was $150/ton, while the US government's subsidy to its soya producers was $190/ton. In effect, this was dumping.
The Indian government further subsidized soya oil for the PDS by Rs 15,000/ton, making imported soya oil artificially cheaper than domestically produced mustard oil.
We need to get rid of these distorting subsidies and unjust trade rules to defend our food sovereignty and ensure Indian's can have healthy and safe food Made in India by Indian farmers.
We need to stop the insanity of transforming mustard - the symbol of spring and abundance in our culture - into a toxic crop with terminator genes, sprayed with lethal herbicides that kill everything green, including the rich diversity of our crops and directly damage our health.
On July 31, 2015 we renewed the Sarson Satyagraha by taking a pledge at Gandhi Ji's memorial at Rajghat to protect the diversity, purity and safety of our mustard.
Join the Sarson Satyagraha. Commit to boycotting chemical and GM foods and eating organic and local foods. Food Freedom (Anna Swaraj) is our birthright.
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People Should Control the Food System, Not Corporations
Why you should ditch the official EXPO and go to the People's EXPO instead
Jun 01, 2015
For those among us interested in how we can feed the world, we would recommend a visit to the alternative People's EXPO instead of the official Milan (Italy) EXPO 2015, a massive exhibition supposedly aimed at bringing the global community together to 'make progress on issues of international importance.'
Twenty million visitors are expected at the EXPO 2015 in Milan, a EUR1.3 billion exhibition themed around "feeding the planet, energy for life."
Giant food corporations like Nestle, McDonald's and Coca-Cola are using this space to hobnob with governments and portray themselves as companies feeding the planet sustainably.
But the picture painted at the EXPO is an unconvincing one.
The globalization of food production in recent decades - supported by unfair trade agreements - has led to corporate food monopolies. A small number of companies now dominate the supply of seeds, agricultural chemicals , processing, logistics and food production. For example, in 2011 four retailers controlled 85% of the German national food market, and three retailers controlled 90% of the food market in Portugal. In 2009, just five retailers controlled 70% of the market in Spain.
Why is it a problem that a handful of multinational corporations control our food supply?
Because the social and environmental impacts of this concentration of power are devastating.
"We produce enough food to feed the world's population today and in the future. What we need urgently is fairer distribution of resources and access to food dictated by need and not just by wealth and profit."
The corporate food system, heavily dependent on chemicals and fossil fuels, alongside cheap raw materials, makes a massive contribution to climate change - it is responsible for up to half of global greenhouse gas emissions. This cannot continue if we are to reduce greenhouse gases to safe levels for future generations.
Small-scale farmers and small food companies worldwide are driven out of business, while multinational companies drive a race to the bottom: their unsustainable production practices lead to the overexploitation and collapse of biodiversity and ecosystems. These market-dominating corporations routinely pay farmers below their costs of production; bully them into unfair contracts and can reject whole fields of produce at a whim whenever the price is not right for them.
Some of the companies represented at the EXPO are key players in the push for even more corporate control and for trade agreements which would undermine food safety and standards. Leaked and published negotiating texts of the current EU-US trade negotiations, known as TTIP, provide a good example of how EU leaders are ready to trade away European food safety standards following intense lobbying from the corporate agribusiness sector.
Although no decisions will be taken at EXPO for the future of food and farming, a lot of resources have been used to give credibility to an industrial food system, based on monocultures, hybrid seeds, and chemical pesticides and fertilizers. This food system is promoted heavily by agribusinesses and some governments as the best way to feed the world, while in reality it benefits multinational corporations at the expense of people and planet.
Conversely, it is small-scale food producers that are feeding the majority of the world today, especially the most marginalized peoples. They produce over 70% of the world's food supply, and have developed the model of 'agroecology' which is emerging as the best way to feed the world. Agroecology is a set of farming practices and a political movement that makes food production work in harmony with the natural world, and creates new models of food societies and economies for example by bringing farmers and consumers closer together. In February 2015 in Mali, representatives of millions of small-scale food producers from every sector came together to define agroecology and committed to map out the next steps to scale up agroecology in order to feed the world.
At the People's EXPO running this week, small scale food producers, farmers' movements, activists and researchers will discuss the real challenges of the current food system and the solutions: agroecology and food sovereignty - the right of people to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound methods.
These are the people who know how to feed the planet now and in the future. In Latin America, 60 percent of farming, including meat, comes from small-scale farms. In Asia, the global rice powerhouse, almost all rice is grown on farms of less than 2 hectares.
The real challenge to feed the world is finding more ways to support sustainable, regenerative decentralized farming systems (pdf). We need more short supply chains, more local markets, and more systems that improve the well-being of small-scale farmers. We need more biodiversity of seeds, crops and animals, to make food production resilient to a changing and unpredictable climate - all themes being discussed at the People's EXPO.
Friends of the Earth believes that we need to put agroecology and food sovereignty at the center of our food supply, with small-scale producers feeding local communities. Re-localizing the way we produce, process, and distribute food can help shift our economy so that it addresses the problems of climate change and biodiversity collapse, as well as the rising levels of social and economic inequality.
This means transferring power from companies and financial institutions to devolved democratic bodies like local food councils that give local people and communities a say. People should be in control of the food system, not corporations. There are many grassroots practical examples showing that this is possible.
We produce enough food to feed the world's population today and in the future. What we need urgently is fairer distribution of resources and access to food dictated by need and not just by wealth and profit. EXPO 2015 will be a very expensive diversion to prop up the corporations and a failing food system that so desperately needs re-building.
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We Must Degrow the 'Corporate Food Regime': Food Sovereignty Advocate
The industrial system in place has 'fetishized growth' but has not addressed hunger, according to Food First's Eric Holt-Giménez
Sep 09, 2014
It's necessary to "degrow" the "corporate food regime" that over last five decades has impoverished the climate, water resources, local communities and crop diversity, and has not solved the problem of hunger.
This was the argument made by Eric Holt-Gimenez, Executive Director of Food First, an organization whose mission is to work towards ending hunger by bringing about food justice, at a presentation Friday at the Fourth International Conference on Degrowth for Ecological Sustainability and Social Equity, which took place in Leipzig, Germany.
Holt-Gimenez made his address via video during a session entitled "The food challenge. Struggling for just and ecological food systems."
The food sector has been growth-focused, but this has not stopped the problem of hunger, Holt-Gimenez said, pointing the example of 2008, which was a year of record harvests and record profits for agricultural giants like Cargill and ADM amidst record hunger.
"Clearly, something has to change, and simply growing more food isn't going to solve the problem of hunger," he said. "This contradiction runs even deeper when we realize that most of the hungry people in the world are farmers. They're peasant farmers," most of whom are women, he added.
Yet "peasant farmers produce most of the food in the world -- and they do it on less than a quarter of the agricultural land on the planet."
"So there's a tremendous amount of inequity bound up in the food system which creates poverty and in turn creates hunger even in a world of abundance."
Yet institutions of power repeat the claim that the amount of food the wold produces must double by 2015, Holt-Gimenez said. "This is simply part of productivist ideology of an extractive and regressive food system -- regressive in that it does not redistribute the wealth within the food system, but it concentrates the wealth in fewer and fewer hands. "
Degrowth, however, has gripped the food system as well, he said, because as big farms are getting bigger, small farms are getting smaller. Despite this, small farms continue to be more productive than their bigger counterparts.
So what will it take for degrowth to occur in the right way in the food system? That will require food sovereignty, a system that is local, redistributive and adheres to agro-ecological principles, he said.
That's a food system that stands in contrast to the chemical-dependent system introduced in the so-called Green Revolution and trade policies like NAFTA, but is one that ensures access to land and an "end to corporate monopoly rule."
"Clearly, we need to degrow corporate power," he said. "Clearly, this means a complete transformation of the corporate food regime."
We need "reforms that transform" the current capitalist food system, and that will take alliance building between progressives and radicals to make a strong enough movement to bring about such reforms, he said.
To see Holt-Gimenez's full remarks as well as those by the other panelists, watch the video below uploaded by Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung:
The food challenge. Struggling for just and ecological food systemsDegrowth 2014, Day 4: «Visions and strategies for the transformation» 5.9.2014, 14:30h (recorded livestream) Speakers: Eric ...
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Today's Peasant Movement - Sophisticated, Threatened, and Our Best Hope for Survival
Jan 27, 2014
These are not your great ancestors' peasants.
"A peasant is a scientist. The amount and quality of knowledge we have been developing and practicing for centuries is highly useful and appropriate," said Maxwell Munetsi, a farmer from Zimbabwe and a member of the Via Campesina.
"Unlike agribusiness, peasants do not treat food as a commodity for speculation profiting out of hunger. They do not patent nature for profit, keeping it out of the hands of the common man and woman. They share their knowledge and seeds, so everyone can have food to eat."
The Via Campesina is perhaps the largest social movement in the world, consisting of more than 250 million farmers and small producers from over 70 nations. At the top of the Via's agenda is supporting peasant agriculture, which in today's era of globalization also means seeking agrarian reform, challenging neoliberalism and corporate-friendly trade agreements, and working to stop climate disruption.
"Peasant organizations today - from Haiti to Brazil to Mali to Indonesia - are tremendously sophisticated in their political analysis, not just their impressive knowledge of seeds, natural pesticides and fertilizers and sustainable agricultural practices," says Nikhil Aziz, Executive Director of Grassroots International.
"In fact," Aziz continues, "the methods used by peasant farmers out-produce the far more destructive and costly practices of industrial agriculture. They can grow more food, at less cost, and actually help cool the planet. Meanwhile the massive plantations planted with seeds from Monsanto and other agrochemical giants and flooded with toxics produce less food, create more greenhouse gases and literally are making the farmers, consumers and planet sick."
A global assessment spearheaded by the United Nations and including the World Bank and the United Nations Environment Program agree. Their 2008 report (the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development, or IAASTD for short) concludes that small-scale agriculture produces more food at less cost to the farmer and the environment than does industrial agriculture.
The conclusion of the IAASTD Report comes as no surprise to Carlos Hernriquez. When a member of UNOSJO (the Union of Organizations of the Sierra Juarez of Oaxaca, a Grassroots International partner) first reached out to Carlos, he was unconvinced.
"UNOSJO told us we did not have to rely on chemical fertilizers and pesticides. I was hesitant, thinking that buying fertilizers was a faster way to get results," Carlos said. "I was hesitant for two years, until 2004 when I was motivated to make the organic fertilizer. In 2005, for the first time, I used the organiic fertilizer [in a small plot of land]."
Seeing is believing - and soon Carlos switched completely to agroecological methods that included heirloom seeds, natural fertilizers and pesticides, and intercropping. All of those techniques rely on the farmers' knowledge. To succeed, farmers need to learn new and sustainable methods, share their knowledge, adapt to changing climate conditions, and maneuver politically at a time when global policies favor massive corporate agriculture and chemical giants.
The change in Carlos' life is profound. Now he and his family have healthy food to eat and to sell at local farmers' markets, they can afford to send all their children to school, and he is eager to share his expertise with others.
Carlos and other peasant farmers are part of a movement for food sovereignty - the right of peoples and communities to control the seeds they plant and the food they grow and consume in an ecologically sustainable and culturally appropriate way. This is the central concept of peasant agriculture, and it offers the potential to boost our global food system and protect the planet from climate disruption.
"Not only do peasant farmers feed communities, they also cool the planet and protect Mother Nature," explains Via Campesina a statement on International Peasant Day last year saying. "Unlike agribusiness, peasants do not treat food as a commodity for speculation profiting out of hunger. They do not patent nature for profit, keeping it out of the hands of the common man and woman. They share their knowledge and seeds, so everyone can have food to eat."
Food is central to our culture and our civilization, which is precisely the analysis that the small producers - farmers, fishers and foresters - of the Via Campesina bring. As long as corporations control the food system in order to produce short-term profit, our collective lives are in danger. Systems of injustice that uphold the corporate food system include trade agreements, water privatization schemes, land grabs and gender inequality. These are the connections that peasants like Carlos see every day.
For instance, more than 60 percent of the world's farmers are women, yet women cannot own land in many nations. To confront this institutional violence against women, as well as domestic violence, the Via launched the Global Campaign to End Violence Against Women in 2008. The movement conducted trainings at the grassroots and also required co-gender leadership at all levels, including the highest level. Farmers are also calling for a dismantling of the World Trade Organization and its manipulation of food commodity structures.
The success of peasants means success for all of us, because they are leading the way in feeding the world, counteracting greenhouse gas emissions and other environmentally toxic poisons, conserving water and biodiversity and expanding social and economic justice. The peasant movement chant of "Globalize the struggle, globalize the hope" is a roadmap toward a sustainable, dignified future.
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March Against Monsanto Kicks Off Second Round Worldwide
Mass demonstrations against the biotech industry kicked off worldwide Saturday in the second "March Against Monsanto" in 6 months.
Oct 12, 2013
Mass demonstrations against the biotech industry kicked off worldwide Saturday in the second "March Against Monsanto" in 6 months.
Marches are scheduled in 52 countries and over 500 cities to call for a boycott of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), harmful agro-chemicals, and a return to food sovereignty for small scale and independent food producers and consumers.
Photos, live-streams and tweets are pouring in across the social media sphere from rallies across the world.
The first "March Against Monsanto" took place last May and drew up to two million people.
See below for live twitter updates as they happen throughout the day.
Tweets about "#MAM OR #MarchOct12"
Food justice expert and activist Vandana Shiva, who is marching with protesters today in London in correlation with her "Food Freedom Fornight" series of food justice actions, published a video message for March Against Monsanto marchers:
Vandana Shiva: March Against Monsanto for FreedomSpanish subtitles available - see viewing instructions below Subtítulos en español disponibles - ver instrucciones de visualización ...
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