Features
Indian odyssey
In 2004, I spent six months working on an organic farm in the lovely valley of Dehradun in northern India. The organic farm is called Navdanya and means "nine seeds" in Hindi. The farm was started by Vandana Shiva who is a renowned environmentalist and eco-feminist. She is a physicist by profession and she became interested in the environmental movement in the 1980's when she became aware of the disappearance of traditional varieties of seeds as farmers turned increasingly to hybrid seeds. There was a lot of talk at that time among the global scientific community about the emerging new technology of genetic engineering. This prompted Vandana to try and counteract this movement and begin to preserve the wealth of indigenous agricultural knowledge and to practically start to save heritage seed varieties.
Battling the giants
Navdanya is set in the picturesque Doon area which is famous for Basmati rice production. The farm is somewhere between 8 - 14 acres depending on who you ask! Set in the foothills of the majestic Himalayas one has the sense of being surrounded by a towering goliath. Vandana assumes the role of David as she has single-handedly battled with the multi-national corporations who have tried to steal the agricultural wealth of native farmers. She has succeeded in revoking several patents which have been taken out on Indian crops such as Basmati rice and the famous Neem tree which is widely used as a natural insecticide in India, both in agriculture and in the home. Most people add neem leaves to their stores of wheat and rice to ward off insects. Turmeric, the Indian spice which is essential in cooking and for its medicinal properties was also claimed as a new invention by a multinational corporation and this too was revoked. The list continues and indeed is growing at a rapid pace. Vandana has coined the phrase bio-piracy to describe this phenomenon, and she has pledged to continue to fight it in order to uphold community democracy throughout India.
Welcome improvements
When I revisited the farm earlier this year it looked lush and green and familiar faces with warm welcome smiles were keen to show me the changes and new additions. There was a huge new seed drying platform, a welcome addition in a country which dries all of its seed in the sun. Because it was monsoon season there were no seeds to be seen. The valuable oxen had multiplied and still looked to be the healthiest oxen in India. They are essential for ploughing the land at the farm. New crops include an aloe vera plantation which is widely used in ayurvedic (traditional) medicine in India and hemp which is also generally used. Indeed wild varieties of hemp are very common throughout the foothills of the Himalayas. The seed bank at the farm has expanded and currently houses about 350 varieties of rice and many Indian varieties of wheat, dal seeds, seasame seeds, groundnut and numerous vegetable seeds. The natural plaster of cow dung, soil, straw and water still looked perfect and the art work depicted on them was also in great shape.
While I was there a gathering of regional co-ordinators of the Navdanya organisation took place. They work in various areas throughout India promoting organic farming and the use of traditional seeds. Farmers are encouraged to convert to organic production and are given seeds to use and are then requested to return some of the seeds to the organisation or better still to pass them on to another farmer in the area. In this way heritage seeds are preserved in the field as well as in the seed bank. Regional directors extend well up into the Himalayas as far as the Tehri Dam area and then as far south as Orissa and even into Tamil Nadu.
Bad memories
There is no premium price for organic food in India as most organic produce is sold in the market as conventional produce. This is changing slightly in the bigger urban areas such as Delhi where Navdanya operate a box-scheme from their office. Despite this farmers in India are keen to preserve traditional seeds and return to organic farming practices. In a country where the last census showed that 750,000million ? people are farmers there is a huge potential return for companies selling hybrid or genetically modified seeds and the chemicals that accompany them. The memory and the ongoing fallout from the explosion at the chemical company run by Union Carbide (now Dow chemicals) remains vivid in the minds of many Indian people who are still waiting for compensation and for the company to clean up the site of the factory. Many are mindful of the dangers associated with chemicals and their production and use. For more information check out www.bhopal.org.
Women are particularly keen to grow their food organically and have been instrumental in the establishment of the organisation to promote organic farming in India.
Privatisation of water
When I spoke to Vandana I asked her about her current campaigns and how the organisation was developing. When I was there previously we had gone to the nearby holy city of Haridwar to highlight the issue of water privatisation. The sacred river Ganges runs through the city and is one of the places where the Kumbh mela is held every 12 years in India. It is one of the cities where devout Hindus travel to cleanse their sins in the river Ganges. At that time the Indian government was in talks with a French Canadian company about privatising the river Ganges. The plan was to divert the river as it came out of the mountain and to bypass Rishikesh and Haridwar and to channel the river to Delhi and then sell the water to householders in Delhi by getting them to install a meter in their houses. Crazy as the idea seems it was a runner with the Indian government. We went to Haridwar to raise awareness among the Hindu priests who work there and inform the people about the issue. The essence of this was that when millions of people came to cleanse their sins in the river that it would not be the actual Ganges and instead the sacred river would be coming out of the taps of the people in Delhi. The plan was stopped and the government withdrew from talks. However the campaigns involving water privatisation are ongoing as this precious resource becomes a valuable global commodity and corporations and governments are mobilising to benefit from this trade.
Multinational power
Vandana spoke of the attempts by the American company Wal-Mart to break into the Indian market with a view to exporting organic produce from there. One can only assume that the corporation, which buys most if its non food items from China, is looking at India to supply organic food due to much lower wage costs than equivalent organic food produced locally in the US. (Wal-Mart at one point had the 12th highest GDP in the world).
It is not only foreign multi-nationals that are operating in India. The Indian company Reliance is owned by two brothers involved in everything from petrochemicals to power plants to Bollywood films. They have opened up a new chain called Reliance Fresh which sells fresh produce. This has put a lot of pressure on the small vegetable wallas or street vendors all over India who make a living buying vegetables wholesale and selling them from a cart on the street. The vegetable wallas looks set to become an endangered species as India moves to adopt more western models of development and homogenisation.
It appears that everything is up for grabs in India providing you have the courage to try and sell or patent it. This is evident even in the ancient Indian tradition of yoga. An Indian, Bikram Choudry, now living in the US has tried to patent yoga postures which were categorised in 2000B.C by a sage called Patanjali. This is viewed as both ludicrous and sacrilegious by the yoga community. However it is increasingly obvious that this is how modern India is evolving and indigenous knowledge and resources are there for the taking. That is unless these actions are challenged, and it is campaigners such as Vandana Shiva who tirelessly devote their energy to fighting this system of bio-piracy, abuse and exploitation. It is people such as these who are the real democracy heroes.
Following an online vote, the new EU organic logo has been selected. The winner of the competition is the leaf shape...
