Cybele Seeds

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  Cybele commented on the article | almost 3 years ago

  Sustainability and Hunger

  Loved the discussion, and look forward to more. 

  
  

  Thanks to all who participated.

  
  

  Remember: es wird nicht so heiss gegessen, wie es gekocht wird.  (German proverb)

  
  

  Translation: You don't eat the food at the same temperature as that at which you cook it.  Meaning: heated debate is essential before you can arrive at ideas worth digesting.

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  Cybele commented on the article | almost 3 years ago

  Sustainability and Hunger

  Empower women (through education, through micro-loans --> political economic empowerment) in Africa, India and Asia, and you kill the population monster. 

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  Cybele commented on the article | almost 3 years ago

  Sustainability and Hunger

  The water is largely gone and health has been diminished by the western technological solutions that you propose.

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  Cybele commented on the article | almost 3 years ago

  Sustainability and Hunger

   

  
  

  So Bt seed varieties are the miraculous creation of Western science, and are able to save lots of poor Indians from going shirtless...what about the nasty mix of pesticides that are dumped indiscriminately on cotton crops?  I wrote about this last Fall (for a course "Global Perspectives on Gender), and examined the Green Revolution more closely.  An unsustainable business model is being followed that disreguards the needs of local populations.

  
  

  Drought resistant crop varieties were developed by Indian farmers (rice in particular) and were abandoned for monocultures that are heavily reliant on irrigation, fossil fuel fertilizers, and pesticides.  The burden for this business model falls most heavily on rural women in India whose jobs as farm laborers in a strict patriarchal society were eliminated, leading to the widespread practice of female feticide, and for those who kept their jobs, large doses of organochlorine pesticides that collect their fatty tissues, i.e., breasts, leading to higher incidence of cancers and leukemia.  Farmers in Punjab who threw themselves wholeheartedly into industrialized monocultural agriculture in the 70's are now reaping the results: heavy pollution; the need to drill wells down to 200' below the surface, dried up / polluted wells that used to supply villages, higher losses due to pests who devour easy monoculture targets...etc.  This reminds me of the title of Edward Morrow's 1960 film: Harvest of Shame.

  
  

  And yet, the solution is a new round of technology?  GE is NOT the whole solution, and we must face up to the problems already wrought by an overly simplistic reliance on technology.  Farmers of so-called "developing" countries have developed seed varieties well-adapted to their micro-climates, but they have been driven to suicide or into poverty in urban areas.

  
  

  Read both sides of the "data".

  
  

  See Vandana Shiva: Monoculture of the Mind; Earth Democracy

  
  

  Val Plumwood.  Feminism and the Mastery of Nature.

  
  

  Neil Postman.  Technopoly