"Bitter Seeds" - Monsanto & GMOs in India

Micha Peled’s documentary "Bitter Seeds”


"Bitter Seeds exposes the havoc Monsanto has wreaked on rural farming communities in India, and serves as a fierce rebuttal to the claim that genetically modified seeds can save the developing world.

The film follows a plucky 18-year-old girl named Manjusha, whose father was one of the quarter-million farmers who have committed suicide in India in the last 16 years. As Grist and others have reported, the motivations for these suicides follow a familiar pattern: Farmers become trapped in a cycle of debt trying to make a living growing Monsanto’s genetically engineered Bt cotton. They always live close to the edge, but one season’s ruined crop can dash hopes of ever paying back their loans, much less enabling their families to get ahead. Manjusha’s father, like many other suicide victims, killed himself by drinking the pesticide he spreads on his crops."

There is a classic Premchand novel of rural India along these lines called Gaodan. You may be able to get it in an English translation. Its set in the early part of the 20th century..

"Godaan". Thanks for bringing to the fore something that a generation has largely forgotten.

Adiyogi

People of the world must unite against Monsanto and others. This fight is not easy, and is be waged on every continent.

Monsanto is effectively patenting the natural world. They do this thru the disguise of genetic alteration. Capitalism has allowed companies to enforce patents, when granted. Monsanto will change a very small part of a plant, and then claim the new plant all their own. This is a big problem in the middle of the United States.

In the US, Monsanto is systematically eliminating small farmers by suing them in court. The cases claim that the small farmer has "stolen" the gene altering qualities of Monstanto pattened seeds. The problem is: seeds fertilize themselves. Thus, a small farmer grows corn. Twenty miles away, Monstanto genetically modified corn grows as well. The wind brings pollen to the small farmer's crops. The next year, the small farmer's seeds contain some of Monstanto's traits. Monstanto sues and wins. Small farmers can't even afford the lawyers nesessary to fight back.

President Obama has done nothing about this issue. It seems as if the fight is over here (USA). But many of us carry on. We are trying to spread the word about Monstanto and others like them before they control all seeds, ruin all heirloom plants, and greatly increase the risk of famine by homogenizing the plants left.

All in all, they really are one of those evil corporations that seem to be run by non-humans.

Two more threads on the parasite

Monsanto marches on India; India lies down.
Indian govt. sues Monsanto

And Premchand's kafan (shroud), although a short story, is even better than godaan, IMHO.

Translation here, doesn't do justice to the original
http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/p...an.html?nagari

"Godaan" was made into a film in 1963 with music by Pandit Ravi Shankar. Another well-known film on the subject of rural indebtedness is Bimal Roy's "Do Bigha Zameen" (1953).

P Sainath in the Hindu today.

If it were anybody else, I would have said this is just a typical Hindu vs TOI salvo.

Reaping gold through cotton, and newsprint

I quite agree. Its certainly haunting..

Balraj Sahni played Shambu Mahateoin Do Bigha Zameen.

Nice article, journalism but not research. Where are the controls in this and percentages? Suicides are normal if you can call them that. One summer in the village I lived in there were 2 in a relatively prosperous non- sugar cane groarea. One happened after a father refused to arrange a son's marriage. Life is hard & sometimes hard up. The other was an old man who reportedly said he had experienced enough summer heat. I could distinctly sympathize with him also as the power went off precisely at the hottest part of the day. Now self-reporting by concerned farmers... I have some shares in a great company I could sell you, at the pre-bankruptcy price of course. This image of of the farmer as simple is the bias & myth of naive (kindest term I could come up with) urbanites. I never found any fools to speak of. They wouldn't have lasted long. Do farmers organize & engage in some pretty sophisticated politics, hell yes they do to great effect, at least in Maharashtra..

Maharastra also has a very strong rich farmer/landlord lobby and the politicians that harnessed the money and clout that it brought, ruled the State for decades.

i was trying to find an article i read a long time ago - i think it was by the sociologist/anthropologist Shiv Vishwanathan, but perhaps it was someone else - where he said that its not the poorest of the poor farmers who got caught in the debt and suicide trap - they were too poor to afford fancy seeds - but its the middle rung relatively well off ones, especially in places like maharashtra where sugar cane is already a popular cash crop, who drove themselves into the ground by investing in BT.

but in another article he says that in official reports on the situation, "suicide is described as a self inflicted injury, like alcoholism. there is no examination of the larger grammar of forces within which suicide became the answer"

and it is this larger grammar that i think a book like sainath's 'everybody loves a good drought' explores. i doubt if much has changed in the ten years or more since its publication

Sama,
This film sounds fascinating. Thanks for mentioning it. I'd love to see it.
The issue of food sovereignty is a huge one for India, but also for all humanity!

Quite surreal how the fundamental issues highlighted in this heartfelt depiction from almost 60 years ago have remained largely unchanged in vast swathes of the country.

It has gotten worse, actually. Not just because of Mahyco/Monsanto, but the exploitation of the poor- including the poor farmer- is much more structured and institutionalised today. And it will get worse; it has to, the equation being (crony capitalism)+ (opening to BT)+ (high inflation)+ (loot of mineral- and so land-resources)+ (overwhelming corruption even after the loot)+ (uncaring middle class)= (quarter of a million farmer suicides in fifteen years 1995-2010)+ (royally snafued future for the vast majority of Indians)


Edit: unsurprisingly, another Sainath article last year
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/colu...cle2577635.ece