We Are All One

Once again I need to thank Kate of Hills and Plains Seedsavers for bringing this video to my attention. It is self explanatory..... Take just ten minutes out of your day, grab a coffee, and settle down and watch the video I'm sure you will be moved.

.

We all need to help our friends across the world

India

Monsanto is trying to introduce genetically modified eggplant seed into India. Here is a letter I received recently. Please read it and do what you can. This is NOT someone else's problem, it is the responsibility of every human on this planet, including you and me.

Dear friends and colleagues,

This letter is to request you to sign a petition to the Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh, seeking to ban the entry of GM foods and seeds into the country.

The Anti-GM Food campaign (www.indiagminfo.org) has been active  for a couple of years, and has thousands of farmers and urban consumers backing it in India. The protest recently got a reprieve when the newly appointed Union Minister for Environment and Forests, Mr. Jairam Ramesh, made a statement saying he would not allow the entry of GM foods into India. We now need international support to make sure that there is enough pressure on the goverment to take sane decisions regarding the future of our nation.

Many of you may be aware that Monsanto is ready for the release and commercial sale of  Bt Brinjal (eggplant) seeds in India. Eggplant is an an ironic choice of vegetable, since it is a well known fact that India has hundreds of local, native eggplant varieties, that continue to be cultivated even today, in fields and home gardens.

Earlier, the Indian government allowed  large scale field trials of Bt Brinjal without biosafety protocol being cleared. Some of you may also have seen Monsanto's  advertisements in leading newspapers and magazines in the US, about biotechnology saving the world, using Climate Change as a platform for their argument.

All you need to do is go to  www.iamnolabrat.com  and sign the petition. It will go directly to the Prime Minister's office (PMO). Every voice counts. This is a global concern we are talking about here, not just India.

I would like to mention here that India and the US  Bush administration had signed an agreement - the Indo-US Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture (KIA)  with a great emphasis on and large plans for transgenics,  using state of the art infrastructure in India as tools for  multi-national seed companies. It is interesting to note that Monsanto is one of the members of the KIA board, along with WalMart!

The Indian government  had also come up with a Biotechnology  Development Strategy (a policy framework) for the country with huge financial outlays for modern biotechnology, despite great opposition from hundreds of civil society groups at each stage  - right from the draft to the regional consultations.

I am sending this mail out to all of you whom I have met, or been in touch with on email or phone during my time in the US over the last four months. I have mentioned the Bt Brinjal campaign to many of you, and I feel confident that you will respond to this alert. Please also take a few minutes to send it out to your network so this gets wider publicity.

The campaign may also request you for future help, in case things reach a stage where phone-ins on designated dates are needed. We would deeply appreciate it if those of you who can do so, respond to this request as well. What seemed like a lost case then, has reached this stage with public pressure and participation, and with our collective effort, we may be able to get the government to take an appropriate decision. 

Many, many thanks in advance and all good luck with your own work.

Warm regards,

Sunita Rao

--
Sunita Rao
Adjunct  Fellow, Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), Bangalore, India (www.atree.org)
Member, Kalpavriksh, Pune, India (www.kalpavriksh.org)
Founder Trustee, VANASTREE, Sirsi, India (www.vanastree.org)

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Sunito Rao is a board member of Kitchen Gardeners International.   I thank Kate at Hills and Plains Seedsavers for bringing this to my attention.

Feeding the world

The world is getting smaller, I know it is. Certainly the amount of it available for me to enjoy is getting smaller.

We are frequently told that the current population of the world is 6.7 billion and will raise to 9 million by 2050. In fact I think this is an underestimation! In 1991 the population was given as 5.5 billion and estimates at that time, were it would rise by 1.7% per annum, If you adjust that figure down to an increase of 1.25% per annum you arrive, in 2007 with a predicted figure of 6.7 billion, which is about right. If we extrapolate that growth to the year 2050, we get a figure of 11.5 billion rather than 9 billion.

But enough of all this mathematics, after all, as Mark Twain, or was it Benjamin Disraeli, said "There are lies, damn lies and statistics".

But what actually does it all mean. I can’t even imagine what 6.7 billion or 9 billion or 11.5 billion people means. I have no concept of that sort of magnitude of figure. How about you?? Thought not.

So how can we express this in terms that we will all understand and that might get to actually mean something.

How about if we go back to the statistics for a minute and see if there is anything else we might be able to comprehend?

My figures show the increase in the population for 2008 at 83.8 million people. Scary huh, I mean that IS an understandable figure. If you live in the UK that would be about 1.25 times the population of the whole country . Or maybe in the USA you could imagine the world population increasing by 10 times the population of New York City or simply 4 times the population of Australia.

So now we do have some imaginable figures. Put simply, not withstanding any change in the eating habits of the world population we just need to produce enough extra food THIS YEAR to feed another 10 New York Cities.

And when we’ve done that, hey come on , it’s April already, then next year the figure is 84.9 million and the year's after 85.9 million. By 2050, my figures show an annual increase of 143 million. So that’s an extra 10 New York Cities this year and another ten (that makes 20) New York Cities next year and so on, year on year.

In the world today we have ten million hunger related deaths every year with almost 5 million of those being children. Developing countries are having to grapple with both the unprecedented consequences of climate change and the huge complexities of biotechnology.

At a time when we are failing to feed the world, we seem to have descended into self interest, seeking to modify grain to ensure the reliance of the poorest amongst us on our grand corporations for decades to come.

At a time when we are failing to feed the world, we have decided to divert food production in order to feed our insatiable thirst for energy, whilst still ensuring that the energy we use is not renewable and can only be provided by the continued intervention of big business.

At a time when we are failing to feed the world, we seem happy to allow market forces to further increase world food prices making it even harder for those developing nations to survive.

But don’t worry, this isn’t a new problem, we’ve known about it for years:

from BioScience , November, 1992
"Though it is certainly possible that intensifying human impact on the planet will precipitate a sudden disaster, it seems more likely that humanity will just gradually erode Earth's life-support capabilities over the next few decades."

And that is what we are doing, gradually eroding the planet’s life supporting resources.

Today, growing your own food is not only a fabulous pastime it is also a big help with the environment, creating vast savings in packaging and transport. As a friend’s blog pointed out recently "No government recognises this vital work", although many have seized upon the opportunity to tax "greenhouse emissions".

Perhaps now is the time to get a tax break for those of us who are helping to reduce pollution and control greenhouse gases; those of us who are providing a degree of self-sufficiency and contributing vastly to food security; those of us who are Kitchen Gardeners.