against the grain

A little off subject, there is a book out talking about WTO and how it has allowed for the patenting of GRAIN so that food supply in places like India are completely controlled by five companies. Ouch. These guys didnt come up with the idea. I'd rather see little people fight these monopolies on ideas than back down and be intimidated by giant corporations.

In Stolen Harvest, Vandana Shiva charts the implacts of globalized, corporate agriculture on small farmers, the environment, and the quality of the food we eat. With chapters on genetically engineered seeds, patents o life, mad cows and sacred cows, and the debate on shrimp farming, this is an impassioned and inspiring book that will shape the debate about genetic engineering and commercial agriculture for years to come.

Quotes from Stolen Harvest
"Over the past two decades every issue I have been engaged in as an ecological activist and organic intellectual has revealed that what the industrial economy calls "growth" is really a form of theft from nature and people.

"It is true that cutting down forests or converting natural forests into monocultures of pine and wucalyptus for industrial raw material generates revenues and growth. But this growth is based on robbing

Vandana Shiva is one of the world's most dynamic and provacative thinkers. A physicist, ecologist, and activist, she won the Right Livelihood Award in 1993. She directs the Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Natural Resource Policy in New Delhi, India, and is an Associate Editor of The Ecologist magazine. Before becoming an activist, Shiva was one of India's leading physicists

Quote from Vandana Shiva -

"The primary threat to nature and people today comes from centralising and monopolising power and control. Not until diversity is made the logic of production will there be a chance for sustainability, justice and peace. Cultivating and conserving diversity is no luxury in our times: it is a survival imperative."


Her books include:

Water Wars
Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply
Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge
Ecofeminism with Maria Mies
The Violence of the Green Revolution : Third World Agriculture, Ecology and Politics
Monocultures of the Mind : Perspectives on Biodiversity and Biotechnology
Biopolitics : A Feminist and Ecological Reader on Biotechnology, editor with Ingunn Moser
Biodiversity : Social and Ecological Consequences


Read more about her here

read her interview here - http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=573