This short video by WeAreChange interviews physicist, author and activist Dr Vandava Shiva about the plight of India´s farmers. Since 1995 over 291,000 of them have committed suicide as a direct result of Monsanto´s unjust and corrupt practices.
Shiva explains how World Trade Organization rules give GMO producers the power to bully small-scale producers into buying their fake seeds, getting them into debt and eventually ruining their lives to such an extent that they kill themselves.
This tragic system has affected India´s cotton industry the most, with thousands of farmers forced to plant seeds which “are not bred for agriculture”, according to Shiva. She explains how these GM crops attract new pests, which require more chemical treatment (great for Monsanto, not so great for Indian farmers).
Rather than admitting failure when new GM seeds prove to be worse than useless, Monsanto simply increase the price of these new strains: GM cotton seeds sell for 1000% the price of an organic seed. Shiva says of the paradox, “For them, the failure turns into a success in marketing.”
She also points out that Monsanto earn an incredible $10bn a year in the USA alone from these ´seed royalties´, a crazy sum of money for sowing the seeds of death and destruction.
To find out more about Dr Vandava Shiva´s campaigning, click here.
Image Credit: Flickr / Ananth BS
