Who will feed the world?
Vandana Shiva
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.
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% 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 eight 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.
Food security
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.
Women make the most significant contribution to food security. They
produce more than half the world’s food. They provide more than 80% of
the food needs of food-insecure households and regions. Food security is
therefore directly linked to women’s food-producing capacity. From field
to kitchen, from seed to food, women’s strength is diversity, and their
capacities are eroded when this diversity is eroded.
Home gardens
In India, cotton was not traditionally grown as a monoculture: it was
grown with sorghum and pigeon peas and chillies. The knowledge of these
biodiverse systems was women’s knowledge a knowledge that has declined
as a result of the introduction of Bt cotton. But it is a decline that
is perversely hidden. The monoculture of the mind, focusing only on Bt
cotton, falsely projects women’s dependence on cotton-picking as an
increase in employment and empowerment.
The FAO reports that women use more plant diversity, both cultivated
and uncultivated, than agricultural scientists know about. In Nigerian
home gardens, women plant up to 57 different plant species. In
sub-Saharan Africa, women cultivate as many as 120 different plants. In
Guatemala, home gardens of less than 0.1ha have more than ten tree and
crop species.
In a single African home garden, more than 60 species of
food-producing trees have been counted. In Thailand, researchers found
230 plant species in home gardens. In Indian agriculture, women use 150
different species of plants for vegetables, fodder and health care. In
West Bengal, 124 “weed” species collected from rice fields have economic
importance for farmers. In Mexico, peasants utilise more than 430 wild
plant and animal species, of which 229 are eaten.
Women are the biodiversity experts of the world.
Women’s work in cotton-picking (which Monsanto projects as an
increase in absolute terms) has increased because monocultures have
replaced mixed cultivation of cotton with food crops. The increase in
cotton is because of the replacement of biodiverse farming with cotton
monocultures, and the expansion of acreage under cotton. It is not
because of higher yields of Bt cotton.
The introduction of the Bt gene into crops is not a yield-increasing
technology. It is a toxin-producing technology. In addition, even though
Bt cotton is supposed to control pests, the bollworm has become
resistant and new pests have emerged. Now cotton farmers are using 13
times more pesticides than they did for conventional cotton. High costs
of seeds and pesticides lead to debt and debt leads to suicides creating
Bt cotton widows, not liberated ‘housewives’.
Third World Network Features.
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