By botanist, biologist, agrarian Miss VANDANA SHIVA

Recently, I was visiting Bhatinda in Punjab because of an epidemic offarmer suicides. Punjab used to be the most prosperous agriculturalregion in India. Today every farmer is in debt and despair. Vaststretches of land have become water-logged desert. And as an old farmerpointed out, even the trees have stopped bearing fruit because heavy useof pesticides have killed the pollinators - the bees and butterflies.

And Punjab is not alone in experiencing this ecological and socialdisaster. Last year I was in Warangal, Andhra Pradesh where farmers havealso been committing suicide. Farmers who traditionally grew pulses andmillets and paddy have been lured by seed companies to buy hybrid cottonseeds referred to by the seed merchants as "white gold", which weresupposed to make them millionaires. Instead they became paupers.

Their native seeds have been DISPLACED with new hybrids which cannot besaved and need to be purchased every year at high cost. Hybrids are alsovery vulnerable to pest attacks. Spending on pesticides in Warangal hasshot up 2000 per cent from $2.5 million in the 1980s to $50 million in1997. Now farmers are consuming the same pesticides as a way of killing
themselves so that they can escape permanently from unpayable debt!

The corporations are now trying to introduce genetically engineered seedwhich will further increase costs and ecological risks. That is whyfarmers like Malla Reddy of the Andhra Pradesh Farmers' Union haduprooted Monsanto's genetically engineered Bollgard cotton in Warangal.On March 27th, 25 year old Betavati Ratan took his life because he couldnot pay pack debts for drilling a deep tube well on his two-acre farm.The wells are now dry, as are the wells in Gujarat and Rajasthan wheremore than 50 million people face a water famine.

The drought is not a "natural disaster". It is "man-made". It is theresult of mining of scarce ground water in arid regions to grow thirstycash crops for exports instead of water prudent food crops for localneeds.

It is experiences such as these which tell me that we are so wrong to besmug about the new global economy. I will argue in this lecture that itis time to stop and think about the impact of globalisation on the livesof ordinary people. This is vital to achieve sustainability.

Seattle and the World Trade Organisation protests last year have forcedeveryone to think again. Throughout this lecture series people havereferred to different aspects of sustainable development takingglobalisation for granted. For me it is now time radically tore-evaluate what we are doing. For what we are doing in the name ofglobalisation to the poor is brutal and unforgivable. This is speciallyevident in India as we witness the unfolding disasters of globalisation,especially in food and agriculture.Who feeds the world? My answer is very different to that given by mostpeople.

It is women and small farmers working with biodiversity who are theprimary food providers in the Third World, and contrary to the dominantassumption, their biodiversity based small farms are more productivethan industrial monocultures.

The rich diversity and sustainable systems of food production are beingdestroyed in the name of increasing food production. However, with thedestruction of diversity, rich sources of nutrition disappear. Whenmeasured in terms of nutrition per acre, and from the perspectivebiodiversity, the so called "high yields" of industrial agriculture orindustrial fisheries do not imply more production of food and nutrition.

Yields usually refers to production per unit area of a single crop.Output refers to the total production of diverse crops and products.Planting only one crop in the entire field as a monoculture will ofcourse increase its individual yield. Planting multiple crops in amixture will have low yields of individual crops, but will have hightotal output of food. Yields have been defined in such a way as to makethe food production on small farms by small farmers disappear. Thishides the production by millions of women farmers in the Third World -farmers like those in my native Himalaya who fought against logging in
the Chipko movement, who in their terraced fields even today growJhangora (barnyard millet), Marsha (Amaranth), Tur (Pigeon Pea), Urad(Black gram), Gahat (horse gram), Soya Bean (Glycine Max), Bhat (GlycineSoya) - endless diversity in their fields. From the biodiversityperspective, biodiversity based productivity is higher than monocultureproductivity. I call this blindness to the high productivity ofdiversity a "Monoculture of the Mind", which creates monocultures in ourfields and in our world.

The Mayan peasants in the Chiapas are characterised as unproductivebecause they produce only 2 tons of corn per acre. However, the overallfood output is 20 tons per acre when the diversity of their beans andsquashes, their vegetables their fruit trees are taken into account.

In Java, small farmers cultivate 607 species in their home gardens. Insub-Saharan Africa, women cultivate 120 different plants. A single homegarden in Thailand has 230 species, and African home gardens have morethan 60 species of trees.

Rural families in the Congo eat leaves from more than 50 species oftheir farm trees.A study in eastern Nigeria found that home gardens occupying only 2 percent of a household's farmland accounted for half of the farm's totaloutput. In Indonesia 20 per cent of household income and 40 per cent ofdomestic food supplies come from the home gardens managed by women.

Research done by FAO has shown that small biodiverse farms can producethousands of times more food than large, industrial monocultures.

And diversity in addition to giving more food is the best strategy forpreventing drought and desertification.What the world needs to feed a growing population sustainably isbiodiversity intensification, not the chemical intensification or the
intensification of genetic engineering. While women and small peasantsfeed the world through biodiversity we are repeatedly told that withoutgenetic engineering and globalisation of agriculture the world willstarve. In spite of all empirical evidence showing that geneticengineering does not produce more food and in fact often leads to ayield decline, it is constantly promoted as the only alternativeavailable for feeding the hungry.

That is why I ask, who feeds the world?

This deliberate blindness to diversity, the blindness to nature'sproduction, production by women, production by Third World farmersallows destruction and appropriation to be projected as creation.

Take the case of the much flouted "golden rice" or geneticallyengineered, Vitamin A rice as a cure for blindness. It is assumed thatwithout genetic engineering we cannot remove Vitamin A deficiency.
However, nature gives us abundant and diverse sources of vitamin A. Ifrice was not polished, rice itself would provide Vitamin A. Ifherbicides were not sprayed on our wheat fields, we would have bathua,amaranth, mustard leaves as delicious and nutritious greens that provideVitamin A.

Women in Bengal use more than 150 plants as greens - Hinche sak (Enhydrafluctuans), Palang sak (Spinacea oleracea), Tak palang (Rumexvesicarious), Lal Sak (Amaranthus gangeticus) - to name but a few.

But the myth of creation presents biotechnologists as the creators ofVitamin A, negating nature's diverse gifts and women's knowledge of howto use this diversity to feed their children and families.

The most efficient means of rendering the destruction of nature, localeconomies and small autonomous producers is by rendering their productioninvisible.

Women who produce for their families and communities are treated as`non-productive' and `economically' inactive. The devaluation of women'swork, and of work done in sustainable economies, is the natural outcomeof a system constructed by capitalist patriarchy. This is howglobalisation destroys local economies and destruction itself is countedas growth.

The globalisation of non-sustainable industrial agriculture is literallyevaporating the incomes of Third World farmers through a combination ofdevaluation of currencies, increase in costs of production and acollapse in commodity prices.

Farmers everywhere are being paid a fraction of what they received forthe same commodity a decade ago. The Canadian National Farmers Union putit like this in a report to the senate this year:"While the farmers growing cereal grains - wheat, oats, corn - earnnegative returns and are pushed close to bankruptcy, the companies thatmake breakfast cereals reap huge profits. In 1998, cereal companiesKellogg's, Quaker Oats, and General Mills enjoyed return on equity ratesof 56%, 165% and 222% respectively. While a bushel of corn sold for lessthan $4, a bushel of corn flakes sold for $133 ... Maybe farmers aremaking too little because others are taking too much."

And a World Bank report has admitted that "behind the polarisation ofdomestic consumer prices and world prices is the presence of largetrading companies in international commodity markets."

While farmers earn less, consumers pay more. In India, food prices havedoubled between 1999 and 2000. The consumption of food grains in ruralareas has dropped by 12%. Increased economic growth through globalcommerce is based on pseudo surpluses. More food is being traded whilethe poor are consuming less. When growth increases poverty, when realproduction becomes a negative economy, and speculators are defined as"wealth creators", something has gone wrong with the concepts andcategories of wealth and wealth creation. Pushing the real production bynature and people into a negative economy implies that production ofreal goods and services is declining, creating deeper poverty for themillions who are not part of the dot.com route to instant wealthcreation.

Women - as I have said - are the primary food producers and foodprocessors in the world. However, their work in production andprocessing is now becoming invisible.

Recently, the McKinsey corporation said: "American food giants recognisethat Indian agro-business has lots of room to grow, especially in foodprocessing. India processes a minuscule 1 per cent of the food it growscompared with 70 per cent for the U.S...".

It is not that we Indians eat our food raw. Global consultants fail tosee the 99 per cent food processing done by women at household level, orby the small cottage industry because it is not controlled by globalagribusiness. 99% of India's agroprocessing has been intentionally keptat the small level. Now , under the pressure of globalisation, thingsare changing. Pseudo hygiene laws are being uses to shut down localeconomies and small scale processing.

In August 1998, small scale local processing of edible oil was banned inIndia through a "packaging order" which made sale of open oil illegaland required all oil to be packaged in plastic or aluminium. This shutdown tiny "ghanis" or cold pressed mills. It destroyed the market forour diverse oilseeds - mustard, linseed, sesame, groundnut, coconut.

And the take-over of the edible oil industry has affected 10 millionlivelihoods. The take over of flour or "atta" by packaged branded flourwill cost 100 million livelihoods. And these millions are being pushedinto new poverty.

The forced use of packaging will increase the environmental burden ofmillions of tons of waste.The globalisation of the food system is destroying the diversity oflocal food cultures and local food economies. A global monoculture isbeing forced on people by defining everything that is fresh, local andhandmade as a health hazard. Human hands are being defined as the worstcontaminants, and work for human hands is being outlawed, to be replacedby machines and chemicals bought from global corporations. These are notrecipes for feeding the world, but stealing livelihoods from the poor tocreate markets for the powerful.

People are being perceived as parasites, to be exterminated for the"health" of the global economy.

In the process new health and ecological hazards are being forced onThird World people through dumping of genetically engineered foods andother hazardous products.

Recently, because of a W.T.O. ruling, India has been forced to removerestrictions on all imports.

Among the unrestricted imports are carcasses and animal waste parts thatcreate a threat to our culture and introduce public health hazards suchas the Mad Cow Disease.The US Center for Disease Prevention in Atlanta has calculated that
nearly 81 million cases of food borne illnesses occur in the US everyyear. Deaths from food poisoning have gone up more up more than fourtimes due to deregulation. Most of these infections are caused byfactory farmed meat. The US slaughters 93 million pigs, thirty sevenmillion cattle, two million calves, six million horses, goats and sheepand eight billion chickens and turkeys each year.

Now the giant meat industry of US wants to dump contaminated meatproduced through violent and cruel methods on Indian consumers.The waste of the rich is being dumped on the poor. The wealth of the pooris being violently appropriated through new and clever means like patentson biodiversity and indigenous knowledge.

As humans travel further down the road to non-sustainability, theybecome intolerant of other species and blind to their vital role in oursurvival.

In 1992, when Indian farmers destroyed Cargill's seed plant in Bellary,Karnataka, to protest against seed failure, the Cargill Chief Executivestated, "We bring Indian farmers smart technologies which prevent beesfrom usurping the pollen". When I was participating in the UnitedNations Biosafety Negotiations, Monsanto circulated literature to defendits herbicide resistant Roundup ready crops on grounds that they prevent"weeds from stealing the sunshine". But what Monsanto calls weeds are
the green fields that provide Vitamin A rice and prevent blindness inchildren and anaemia in women.

A worldview that defines pollination as "theft by bees" and claimsbiodiversity "steals" sunshine is a worldview which itself aims atstealing nature's harvest by replacing open, pollinated varieties withhybrids and sterile seeds, and destroying biodiverse flora withherbicides such as Roundup. The threat posed to the Monarch butterfly bygenetically engineered bt crops is just one example of the ecologicalpoverty created by the new biotechnologies. As butterflies and beesdisappear, production is undermined. As biodiversity disappears, with itgo sources of nutrition and food.

The world can be fed only by feeding all beings that make the world.In giving food to other beings and species we maintain conditions forour own food security. In feeding earthworms we feed ourselves. Infeeding cows, we feed the soil, and in providing food for the soil, weprovide food for humans. This worldview of abundance is based on sharingand on a deep awareness of humans as members of the earth family. Thisawareness that in impoverishing other beings, we impoverish ourselvesand in nourishing other beings, we nourish ourselves is the real basisof sustainability.

The sustainability challenge for the new millennium is whether globaleconomic man can move out of the worldview based on fear and scarcity,monocultures and monopolies, appropriation and dispossession and shiftto a view based on abundance and sharing, diversity anddecentralisation, and respect and dignity for all beings.

Sustainability demands that we move out of the economic trap that isleaving no space for other species and other people. EconomicGlobalisation has become a war against nature and the poor. But the rulesof globalisation are not god - given. They can be changed. They must bechanged. We must bring this war to an end.

As Gandhi had reminded us: "The earth has enough for everyone's needs,but not for some people's greed".

QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

**Sujata Gupta, the Tata Energy Research Institute: I'd like to hearyour views on sustainable use of scarce inputs like water foragriculture. What I gathered from your lecture was total condemnation ofthe market system. Vandana Shiva: Let me first respond by saying - Ilove markets. I love my local market where local "subgees" are sold, andone can chat with the women. The tragedy really is that the market isbeing turned into the only organising principle for life, and Wall St isbeing turned into the only source of value, and it's the disappearanceof other markets, other values that I am condemning. In terms of water,
the solution to water conservation and scarce water management is notputting it in the hands of those who can afford to buy the last drop,but to put it in the hands of the community, to use it sustainablywithin the limits of renewal. The water must be returned to thecommunities and managed as a commons - it has to be taken beyond themarketplace.

**Professor Marva, University of Delhi: Can there be sustainabledevelopment without sustainable population? Vandana Shiva: I thinknon-sustainable population growth is a symptom and product ofnon-sustainable development. It's not that population grows by itself asa separate phenomena - you look at the data - Indian population hadstability till 1800 - colonisation, dispossession of land started tomake our population grow. Highest growth rates of population in England
is after the enclosures of the commons. It's the loss of resources ofthe people that generate livelihood and the replacement of resources bylabour to be sold on markets in an uncertain daily wage market thattriggers population growth. Population growth is a result ofnon-sustainable development.

Gulgit Choudhury, Ram Organics: I have worked earlier with Monsanto. Ihave a simple question to ask you. Suppose you were given theopportunity to develop parameters of a social governance which ensuressustainability - what would you suggest for countries like India.?Vandana Shiva: We are in fact involved for the last few years -generating the kind of criteria through participatory democracy building- through ensuring that people at every level have the information,through ensuring that communities are organised, to manage collectivelythe resources that can only be sustained collectively. If I have the
money and power to drill a deep tube well I can make dry my neighbour'sshallow well and she will usually be a very poor woman. And thereforethe only way a village can conserve its ground water is to do what the"Paani Panchayath" did in Harash - ensure that water is used withinlimits. Systems of governance have to begin with where people feel theimpact, and therefore we do require the rebuilding of decentraliseddirect democracy. I do not see growers as isolated individuals becausethe consequences of their action are felt by their neighbours. If I amgrowing b.t. corn on my field I kill the monarch butterfly of myneighbour's field. Communities, collectives are cohesiveness ofsocieties are important to talk about not individual growers, and thatis the bottom rung of decision making to which both which corporationsas well as governments need to be accountable - that is the experimentthat started after Seattle and that experiment in accountablelocalisation to ensure that decisions are made at appropriate place andproduction is carried out at the appropriate level is really the new
enterprise of democracy that societies are involved in around the world,even while globalisation threatens our lives.

Finally, we had this from last year's Reith lecturer Anthony Giddens -addressing you Vandana he says - "I congratulate you on your challengingpresentation. I have to say though I don't agree with much of it. Isn'tit a contradiction in terms to use the global media to put a caseagainst globalisation?"

Vandana Shiva: I don't think BBC is a product of the economicglobalisation regime that the World Trade Organisation gave us or thenew recent trade liberalisation has given us. I think it was created inl922 and international integration, international communication is notwhat economic globalisation is about. Corporate concentration, corporatecontrol is what recent economic globalisation is about and in fact theBBC is a counter-example to that because the real example of globalised
media and communication is Time Warner, now bought up by American onLine, Disney, and the News Corporation.

**Prof. Vinod Chowdhury, reader in economics at St. Stephen's College:It strikes me as very extraordinary that Vandanaji should have such aone sided approach. And I'm saying that with due respect to the sheervivacity of her presentation. Vandanaji seems to believe that there aretwo clearly antithetical paradigms. One is a paradigm that essentiallyis based on decentralisation, democratisation - all the good things inlife - - women are cared for, poor people are cared for - this, that andthe other. And other is terribly evil. Everything's wrong with it. Nowsurely life cannot be like that Vandanaji may I plead with you to pleaseconsider third paradigm, where we take bits and pieces from here andthere and get an eclectic, practical approach, and I support BoopinderSingh Hooda - the President of the Haryama Congress who asked you - and
you didn't answer that - what is the alternative at a time when nocountry can opt out of the WTO - it's not a piece of paper madam - it isa commitment that countries have to make or they will be paraiahcountries and we cannot afford to be a paraiah country - please react?Vandana Shiva: I did react to him. And I said rewriting those rules -rewriting those rules that are one sided. In fact it's the WTO rulesthat are totally one sided because they really only protect the interestof one sector of the global community which is the global corporations,not in the local industry, not even local retail business, not smallfarmers anywhere, not in the north and not in the south. And those rulescan be rewritten. That is the point I'm trying to make. Do not treat WTOrules in the Uruguay Round Treaty as the final word on how trade shouldbe carried out. Those rules are being reviewed. What we have called forin Seattle is a more democratic input in what sustainable and just ruleswould look like for agriculture on intellectual property rights, in thearea of services, in the area of investments, the four new areas whichwere brought in. Before that - no-one had problems with the GATT. Theold GATT was about real trade in real products beyond nationalboundaries. The new GATT with the Uruguay round - is about invading inevery space of our everyday lives ... and if you are a woman you do havea somewhat different point of view. That's why we talk of gender. If youare poor, you will have a different point of view from the rich. To havedifferent points of view because of differences in location in societyis not a problem. It is opportunistic though to take a little element ofthe perspective of the rich , a little element of the perspective of thepoor and put it into a little jigsaw of opportunistic statements.Societies live by coherent principles, organisational systems, valuesand world views. And what we are calling for is to balance out that onesided idea that we live by commerce alone.

**Rovinder Raki, student: You seem to eulogise the fairness andefficiency of traditional agricultures, societies and productionpatterns. But the reality is that the farmers were exploited in thesesocieties by moneylenders and feudal lords. With the market reachingthese societies that exploitative social system certainly declines. Nowwhat I have to ask you is what restrains you from appreciating thissanitising effect of the market? Vandana Shiva: Well the sanitisingaffect of the market does end up treating people like germs. Wipe themout. And it is that view of dispensability, the disappearances of thesmall that I was trying to draw attention to in my lecture. There hasalways been exploitation, and I agree with Mr Hooda, but no exploitationbefore this period of current, economic globalisation, ever organiseditself in ways that it could totally dispense with the exploited. Eventhe slave system needed the slave. Even the worst of British rule whichcreated the Bengal famine, (note: due to the Brits exporting all therice, a food staple, in 1943, the price of rice quadrupled. No peasantin India could buy it and 3 million people died. This was the worst of adozen famines in India, brought on By Brits exporting the food staples.The same occurred in Ireland under Brit rule. For details, of the BENGALFAMINE, NOT THE IRISH ONE, view article athttp://inac.org/IrishPeople/top/11_14_98/111498famine.html)

This famous famine led to the "Faybehaga" movement which rose againstthe exploitation. Much needed to keep the peasants alive. For the firsttime we have a system where no-one needs the peasants, unless we realiseas societies we need them, that we've reached a period where people areactually talking in India, in other countries that you can get rid ofsmall producers. It's assumed that everything, real growth, realprosperity is going to come out of cyber space, but as you can see, youcan have the best of IT technologies floating above the carcasses ofpeople dying in Rajisthan and Gujerat right now -- and it will not helpthem out. We have to pay attention to the ecological base of oursurvival and the needs of all. I personally am committed to feeling andbelieving that the smallest of species and the smallest of people haveas much a right to live on this planet with dignity as the most powerfulcorporation and the most powerful individual.

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