Cutting Edge > Groundbreakers > Vandana Shiva

Vandana Shiva

Vandana Shiva, is an Indian physicist, environmental activist and feminist. She won the prestigious Right Livelihood Award, known as "the alternative Nobel Prize," in 1993. Shiva holds a master's degree in particle physics and a Ph.D. in the philosophy of science, and is the author of eleven books. She is shown here with Seeds of Change grower and former Research Director, Alan Kapuler, Ph.D., Seeds of Change Vice President of Agriculture, Howard-Yana Shapiro, Ph.D., and their wives.

In her native India, Shiva gave up an academic career to start the Research Foundation for Science Technology and Natural Resource Policy. She also directs a seed conservation project, and is part of the Indian National Environmental Council. Shiva works with communities to stop threats to forests and agricultural land, and is involved with large-scale issues, such as the international Convention on Biological Diversity. "When we plant a seed there's a very simple prayer that every peasant in India says: "Let the seed be exhaustless, let it never get exhausted, let it bring forth seed next year." Farmers have such pride in saying "this is the tenth generation seeds that I'm planting," "this is the fifth generation seed that I'm planting." Just the other day I had a seed exchange fair in my valley and a farmer brought Basmati aromatic rice seed and he said "this is five generations we've been planting this in our family". So far human beings have treated it as their duty to save seed and ensure its continuity. But that prayer to let the seed be exhaustless seems to be changing into the prayer, "let this seed get terminated so that I can make profits every year" which is the prayer that Monsanto is speaking through the terminator technology -- a technology whose aim is merely to prevent seed from germinating so that they don't have to spend on policing.

It's not that they don't yet have means. Hybrid seeds are also not good for saving. It was the first time they found a tool to force farmers to come back to them. A market every year. But the difference is that hybrid seeds don't give good seed. It's not that they fail to germinate. They will still segregate into their parent lines. They'll still give you some kind of crop. You will not have absolute devastation.

Patents are also a away to prevent farmers from saving seed. But with patents you still have to do policing, you still have to mobilize your detectives to ensure that farmers aren't saving seeds. The terminator is an extremely secure technology for corporations like Monsanto because neither do they have to do the policing, nor do they have to worry whether some segregation works, now you just basically terminate. But this is not just a violence against farmers whose basic right, in my view, is seed saving. A farmer's duty, is protecting the earth, maintaining it's fertility, and maintaining the fertility of seed. That is part of being a farmer. A farmer is not a low-paid tractor driver, that's a modern definition of what a farmer is. The real definition of a farmer is a person who relates to the land and relates to the seed and keeps it for future generations, keeps renewing it, fertility.

The search for this technology comes out of a violence to that basic ethic that farmers must have if they are to be good farmers. But it is also even deeper because now it is becoming a violence against nature because in a way Monsanto is saying we will stop evolution because evolution creates freedom".

To read a review of Vandana Shiva's most recent book featured in eNewsletter 35, Water Wars, click here. The featured books on this page, Monocultures of the Mind and Biopiracy are linked to http://www.amazon.com where you can purchase Shiva's books if they are not available through your local independent bookseller.