Data Bases • Custom Term Papers • Free Term Papers • Free Research Papers • Free Essays • Free Book Reports • Plagiarism? Links • Top 100 Term Paper Sites • Top 25 Essay Sites • Top 50 Essay Sites • Search 97,000 Papers @ DirectEssays.com • Search 101,000 Papers @ ExampleEssays.com • Search 90,000 Papers @ MegaEssays.com Free Essays • Term Paper Sites • Chuck III's Free Essays • Free College Essays • TermPaperSites.com • My Term Papers • Get Free Essays • Essay World • Planet Papers	Search Lots of Essays Back to Subjects - Technology Stolen HarvestThe Hijacking of the Global Food Supply Stolen HarvestThe Hijacking of the Global Food Supply In this her latest work, Vandana Shiva an environmentalist and internationally know activist from India, maps out the severe impacts of industrial agriculture on the small farmer, the environment, and the quality of the foods we eat. This book lays out a number of important issues in the debate over genetically modified organisms and commercial agriculture. There are so many points and arguments to be made in this debate and in her book so I will limit my discussion of them to just a few. To begin with the coastline of India has been attacked by a “slash and burn type” method for the shrimp industry, which has left the coastline in deplorable condition. Shiva goes on to further denounce the theft of centuries worth of work by the world’s farmers, as corporations claim this collective innovation as intellectual property. At the center of a number of her arguments is the corporate giant Monsanto, who is right in the middle of the biotech fight. The commercial aquaculture industry in India, which includes shrimp trawling and ponds, is taking its toll on the environment. Destroying habitat, killing other wildlife especially the sacred sea turtle, and contaminating local drinking water supplies are a few of the charges against the raping of our oceans and water ways. The previous and sustainable method of alternating between rice paddies and shrimp farms is being supplanted with the extremely destructive trawling operations. The operations have turned the Orissa Coast – once the world’s largest rookery of the endangered Olive Ridley turtles – is now it’s largest grave with 4,682 having washed ashore as of January 1999. With the entire prawn catch being exported to the US and Japan we are the cause of the destruction of their precious turtle. When the culture of the north is not busy raping the South of their rich oceans we are charging them with crimes for actions as old as faming itself. To save seed, for many was a way to ensure your life and livelihood for the next year. It is one of their highest duties to save and exchange seeds while there are now being turned into crimes. Corporations are claiming the intellectual property rights on various seeds and plants under so-called intellectual property laws. As seeds are altered just enough genetically they are able to be patented thus disallowing farmers to replant them without repurchasing them – all going against a centuries worth of traditions. Not only do the current patent laws go against planting traditions but religious ones as well, as Indian women use multiple varieties of rice in religious ceremonies. However, as terminator technologies take hold and monocultures become the wave of the future such traditions will fade into the past. Shiva’s biggest enemy in this book are corporations such as Monsanto and others like it who are working to transform the globes agriculture into large industrial style production with large uses of biotech crops, pesticides, and monocultures. Monsanto specifically is accused of creating products that will withstand more pesticide use and therefore allow more sales of their pesticide products, as they are primarily a chemical and pesticide company. Examples of such a crop are the genetically modified Roundup Ready Soybeans, which are engineered to be resistant to Roundup weed killer, however, the round up ready crops do not actually lower the amount of pesticides used. Especially in less developed countries where little pesticides or herbicides are used, the introduction of Roundup Ready and similarly modified crops will increase the use of new chemicals dramatically. Monsanto and their partner in crime Cargill have been responsible for the introduction of patented seeds into India as well as new crops that have lower nutritional content. With the broad marketing of soybeans around the world to new cultures, former staples are being replaced by new monoculture crops with proven lower nutritional content. Even non-food crops such as tobacco and cotton are being promoted by the large corporations and grown by farmers which were formerly self sustaining and are now reliant on the prices of these export crops. The changing of a nation’s culture of growing many different varieties of rice or mustard seed to the monoculture soybean or canola, can and will have long lasting affects on the cultures and the abilities of farmers and poor families involved to remain sustainable and to survive in the twenty first century. Is Monsanto and the genetically modified organisms the right direction for our world agriculture to be heading? Shiva gives a very convincing argument that things cannot continue on the way they have been. Both our environment and our people are being robbed of their sustainability and history. She is correct in her argument that we need to fight for the common interests and rights of all people everywhere, both North and South. Our corporations and industries need to put sound ecological practices into place which benefit everyone involved and work to feed the world not just steal one harvest from the South to feed the North. Until we are certain that our new ways of production (i.e. biotech/genetically modified/roundup ready) will be sustainable for the entire world and produce a safe food supply, we should not just rush into it with our eyes closed. This will be a long fight but, this book does a great job at laying the groundwork as to what the various battles to come will be and where we have fought already. Bibliography: Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply. Shiva, Vandana. Cambridge, 2000. Word Count: 908
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