Who will feed the world?

From field to kitchen, from seed to food, Indian women’s strength is diversity which is why genetically engineered crops only serve to disempower them, writes Vandana Shiva.

As yet another example of the desperate ‘science’ of Monsanto, it is now being argued that genetically engineered Bt cotton introduced in India in 1997 - has liberated Indian women. In a paper authored by Arjunan Subramanian, Kerry Kirwan, David Pink and Matin Qaim, the argument is that the crop produces massive gains for women’s employment in India.

But this argument is false on many grounds.

Firstly, women have traditionally been seed keepers and seed breeders, which means that the knowledge and skills related to seed conservation and seed breeding have been women’s expertise. The seed economy was a women’s economy. As long as seed was in women’s hands, there was no debt and there were no suicides. Women have acted as custodians of the common genetic heritage through the shortage and preservation of grain.

In a study of rural women of Nepal, it was found that seed selection is primarily a female responsibility. In some 60 percent of cases, women alone decided what type of seed to use.

As to who actually performs the task of seed selection, in cases where the family decides to use their own seeds, this work is done by women alone in more than 80 percent of the households, by both sexes in 8 percent and by men alone in only 10 percent.

Throughout India, even in years of scarcity, grain for seed was conserved in every household, so that the cycle of food production was not interrupted. The peasant women of India have carefully maintained the genetic base of food production over thousands of years. This common wealth, which has evolved over millennia, has been defined as ‘primitive cultivars’ by the masculinist view of seeds, which sees its own new products as ‘advanced’ varieties.

The replacement of traditional varieties of seeds with genetically engineered Bt cotton is an appropriation of women’s skills, knowledge and decision-making. This is disempowerment of women, not empowerment. Moreover, women have always played a significant role in agriculture: most farmers in India are women.

The replacement of biodiverse cropping systems evolved by women with monocultures of Bt cotton leads to a decline in food production.

This undermines women’s food sovereignty and erodes food security, which in women’s hands is women’s empowerment. Further, it destroys women’s work relating to agricultural production and post-harvest food processing. Interestingly women’s work in relation to food sovereignty has been defined as ‘femimanual’ work.

The growing of food is the most important source of livelihood for the majority of the world’s people, especially women. It is also the most fundamental economic right. Women were the world’s original food producers, and they continue to be central to food-production systems in the Third World in terms of the work they do in the food chain.

The worldwide destruction of feminine knowledge of agriculture, evolved over four to five thousand years, by a handful of white male scientists in less than two decades has not merely violated women as experts, but gone hand in hand with the ecological destruction of Nature’s processes and the economic destruction of poorer people in rural areas.

Agriculture has been evolved by women. Most of the world’s farmers are women, and most girls are future farmers.

Girls learn the skills and knowledge of farming in the fields and farms. What is grown on farms determines whose livelihoods are secured, what is eaten, how much is eaten, and by whom it is eaten.

- TWN Features