This past weekend I went to the National Heirloom Expo in Santa Rosa. I was honored to hear Vandana Shiva speak. I read a few of Vananda Shiva's books while studying international food systems and gender in university. I'd love to share with you some of the thoughts that Dr. Shiva shared with us at the expo. This is a bio of Dr. Shiva:
Dr. Shiva combines sharp intellectual enquiry with courageous activism, and her work spans teaching at universities worldwide to working with peasants in rural India. Time Magazine identified Dr. Shiva as an environmental ‘hero’ in 2003, and Asia Week has called her one of the five most powerful communicators in Asia. In November 2010, Forbes Magazine identified Dr. Shiva as one of the Seven Most Powerful Women on the Globe.
Dr. Shiva has contributed in fundamental ways to changing the practice and paradigms of agriculture and food. Her books The Violence of the Green Revolution and Monocultures of the Mind pose essential challenges to the dominant paradigm of non-sustainable, industrial agriculture. Through her books Biopiracy, Stolen Harvest and Water Wars, Dr. Shiva has made visible the social, economic and ecological costs of corporate-led globalisation. Dr. Shiva chairs the Commission on the Future of Food set up by the Region of Tuscany in Italy, she is a Board member of the International Forum on Globalisation (IGF), and a member of the Steering Committee of the Indian People’s Campaign Against the WTO. Source
Mexico's ban on GMO corn is a direct result of people coming out and saying "We are the corn. You cannot separate us from the corn"
As citizens seeking freedom, many of us have resign ourselves to monoculture activism (ex "I'll just be an activist for the rainforest") when infact we area all connected
All movements for freedom are dependent on each other
You are not free until everyone is free
90% of corn in the soil is being grown for biofuels - it is no longer a "food" system
What has been passed off as "development" is actually neo-colonialism guised as technology that is meant to better the lives of "underdeveloped" populations