{"id":241862,"date":"2016-05-05T23:56:43","date_gmt":"2016-05-05T23:56:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=241862"},"modified":"2016-10-18T13:44:49","modified_gmt":"2016-10-18T13:44:49","slug":"future-options-militarism-monsanto-gandhi-bhaskar-save","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/future-options-militarism-monsanto-gandhi-bhaskar-save\/","title":{"rendered":"Future Options: From Militarism and Monsanto to Gandhi and Bhaskar Save\u00a0\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

US Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders recently tweeted<\/a>: \u201cIt is no mystery why Monsanto fights against our right to know about GMOs in food \u2013 business is booming for this huge chemical company.\u201d<\/p>\n

Supporters of GMO are fond of telling everyone that this technology will \u2018feed the world\u2019 and those who oppose it are below the standards of common decency. But Sanders hits the nail on the head by implying commercial interests and huge profits take precedence over concern for the public good. Labelling would lead to consumers rejecting food containing GMOs.<\/p>\n

Monsanto makes huge annual profits, and, as its front men, CEO Hugh Grant and VP Robb Fraley are amply rewarded.\u00a0Grant brought in just under\u00a0$12m<\/a>\u00a0in 2015. Fraley raked in just under\u00a0$3.4m<\/a>. In January 2015, Monsanto\u00a0reported a profit of\u00a0$243m<\/a>\u00a0(down from $368m the previous year).<\/p>\n

In the meantime,\u00a0millions of India farmers live on a knife-edge thanks to them having been encouraged to experiment with the Monsanto’s GM cotton. Read about the case of Bharat Dogra\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0whose shift to GM cotton as a result of heavy pressure from company sales agents proved disastrous. His case is not a one-off. A strong link has\u00a0been discovered<\/a>\u00a0between economic distress among Indian farmers and the planting of Monsanto\u2019s GM cotton.<\/p>\n

With a legal obligation to maximise profits for shareholders, Monsanto seems less concerned with the impacts of its products on public health (whether in\u00a0Argentina<\/a>\u00a0or the\u00a0US<\/a>) or the conditions of Indian farmers and more concerned with roll-outs of its\u00a0highly profitable\u00a0disease-associated<\/a>\u00a0weed-killer (Roundup) and its GM seeds.<\/p>\n

The negative impacts on health or the debt that Indian farmers find themselves getting into appears to be of concern to rich transnational companies only when it becomes a public relations nightmare. If the issue can be successfully managed through\u00a0slick PR<\/a>\u00a0and an\u00a0assortment of media and scientist mouthpieces<\/a>\u00a0to confuse the issue or attack and smear critics, it\u2019s business as usual.<\/p>\n

And to ensure it remains \u2018business as usual\u2019, part of the message is that there is no alternative to the chemical-intensive, GMO model of farming. Despite talk by company bosses of GMO being just being one option from a mix of possible options that include for example organic and agroecology, the companies they head or their associates have done everything possible (including\u00a0bribery<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0fakery<\/a>) to ensure their model dominates by smearing certain scientists, capturing trade bodies and negotiations, incorporating themselves within government policy and regulatory agencies, using the concept of \u2018commercial confidentiality\u2019 to justify a lack of transparency and by funding universities, media outlets and research with the ultimate aim of privileging their model of agriculture ahead of others, which they or their supporters seek to attack, discredit and marginalise (see\u00a0this<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The industry and its supporters attempt to wrap themselves in \u2018free market\u2019 ideology, while failing to acknowledge that any concept of \u2018freedom\u2019 that they attempt to associate with \u2018the market\u2019 has long been discredited. In terms of farmers \u2018choosing\u2019 to adopt GMO for instance and letting \u2018the market decide\u2019, this is little more than rhetoric. A combination of monopoly, financial incentives and coercion put paid to that notion (see\u00a0this<\/a>,\u00a0this<\/a>,\u00a0this<\/a>,\u00a0this<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0this<\/a>). Moreover, we don\u2019t have markets that are \u2018free\u2019 but an economic system protected by legislation that enshrines private property as being sacrosanct and allows by various means for the flow of wealth to move from consumers and workers to owners of capital who run cartels and conspire to destroy competition and rig the system to their advantage (see\u00a0this<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, for the environment and our health, we have ended up with a model of industrialised food and agriculture dominated by green revolution ideology and technologies (and\u00a0wedded to and fuelled and driven by powerful commercial and geopolitical interests<\/a>), which include hybrid corporate seeds to be doused with chemicals and an over-reliance on other external inputs from large, rich corporations, ranging from machinery and antibiotics to growth hormones and GMOs.<\/p>\n

Rather than present a range of studies and practical examples that indicate alternative approaches are both viable and should play a leading role when it comes to feeding the world sustainably, which have been outlined many times before (for example, see\u00a0this<\/a>), it would be interesting to look at the experience of one farmer from India as recently reported in\u00a0The Hindu<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Prem Singh runs a farm in the drought-hit Bundelkhand area of Uttar Pradesh, where many farmers have committed suicide in the past few decades. While water shortages are one of the problems faced by the people in the region, this is not the case on Singh\u2019s farm, where farming revolves around crop rotation, agricultural biodiversity and organic agriculture. The farm also conducts research for improving soil fertility (see this<\/a> on improving soil health in the US and the subsequent eradication of synthetic fertilisers, while maintaining\/increasing productivity) and seed development.<\/p>\n

Singh believes that if his formula of sustainable farming were to be implemented across India, national food security, ecological balance and the prosperity of a farmers’ families could be ensured.<\/p>\n

The green revolution and the powers behind it played a big role in dismantling the traditional structure of farming and pushed the farmer to the mercy of unsustainable methods, which also harmed environment. In the area where Singh farms, there has been three recent consecutive droughts, with bouts of unseasonal rains and hailstorm.<\/p>\n

The outside know-how of \u2018experts\u2019 was forced on farmers who were then forced to abort traditional and more sustainable methods, eventually leading them into debt-traps.<\/p>\n

Singh says: \u201cEvery time a farmer commits suicide, the government says he was burdened by debt. What is the key reason for the debt? The farmers are dying because they follow the schemes of the government. This is the real injustice.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Bundelkhand, there were 17 major droughts during the last century, 10 of them caused by deficient rainfall. But the traditional water-recharging methods, numerous ponds and natural harvesting techniques of people then mitigated the scarcity.<\/p>\n

With 60 years’ hands-on farming experience, Bhaskar Save was able to describe<\/a>\u00a0how the green revolution in India destroyed traditional farming, which, among other things, was much more drought resistant,\u00a0and how water-guzzling cash crops led to water shortages and groundwater depletion. Vandana Shiva has also outlined<\/a> the devastating impact of the green revolution on both food security and water resources along with the degradation of soil, including its diminished capacity for storing water.<\/p>\n

As with Save, Singh says the steps taken by the government over a period of decades have nullified the work of his ancestors because the crops previously grown did not require much water. With the green revolution, though, underground water began to be extracted heavily to sustain the thirst of the seeds, whereas local seeds were tested and adapted to fight drought.<\/p>\n

At the centre of it all, says Singh, was “the ruling class\u2019s apathy towards farmers manifested in their lack of representation in policy formation.”<\/p>\n

Singh\u2019s philosophy and practices reflect those of the late Bhaskar Save, whose farm in Gujarat was both an inspiration and a model for sustainable, productive farming. Save argued that restoring the natural health of Indian agriculture is the path to solve the inter-related problems of poverty, unemployment and rising population. He went on to state that farming should require a minimum of financial capital and purchased inputs and minimum external technology. Agricultural production would increase, without costs increasing, poverty would decline and the rise in population would be spontaneously checked (based on the belief poverty itself leads to high birth rates).<\/p>\n

Whereas Prem Singh and Bhaskar Save provide a glimpse into what things could be like, not only in India but elsewhere too, the transnational agribusiness companies have an investment in maintaining the status quo.<\/p>\n

This is because their business models and practices grow out of and drive<\/a> a political and economic system run by oligarchical interests. These companies are instrumental in pushing for corrupt, anti-democratic trade deals like TTIP and fuel and profit from a model of globalisation that encourages unnecessary massive\u00a0environmental destruction<\/a>, the production of bad food<\/a>, unsustainable farming practices and the use of health-damaging inputs. The system moreover thrives on an urban-centric model of development centred on resource-depletion, over-consumption and an economic neoliberalism underpinned by imperialist wars.<\/p>\n

It all begs the question: what future humanity?<\/p>\n

A future based on\u00a0uncontrolled urban sprawl, worklessness, massive inequalities (and subsequent political repression) and conflict over finite resources, which continues to push the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation, as well as the appropriation of all facets of life from water and land to forests, seeds and food by powerful corporations.<\/p>\n

Or a future that adheres to a model based on certain\u00a0Gandhian principles<\/a>, such as indigenous capability and local self-reliance, wherein people limit their needs, live within the limits imposed by the environment and work with the natural ecology rather than by forcing it to bend to the will of profiteering industries.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201c\u2026 Gandhiji called the so-called modern society a nine-day wonder. Poverty has been aggravated due to cumulative environmental degradation on account of resource depletion, increasing disparities, rural migration to urban areas resulting in deforestation, soil erosion, loss of soil fertility, desertification, biological impoverishment, pollution of air, water and land on account of lack of sanitation, chemical fertilizers, pesticides and their biomagnification, and a whole range of other problems.\u201d T N Khoshoo:\u00a0\u2018Mahatma Gandhi: An Apostle of Applied Human Ecology<\/a>\u2018<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Colin Todhunter is an independent writer: his website is here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

US Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders recently tweeted: \u201cIt is no mystery why Monsanto fights against our right to know about GMOs in food \u2013 business is booming for this huge chemical company.\u201d Supporters of GMO are fond of telling everyone that this technology will \u2018feed the world\u2019 and those who oppose it are below the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1214,"featured_media":241864,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,461],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-241862","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-editorials"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1214"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241862\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}