Articles by Vandana Shiva
We found 135 results.
Barriers to Sustainable Farming Put Burden on World’s Poor
Prof. Vandana Shiva, EcoWatch – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 Oct 2014
The conflict between “free trade” and food rights came to the fore again at the WTO negotiations in September [2014], when India did not back down from its stance that a permanent solution be found for food security issues before signing the Trade Facilitation Agreement.
→ read full articleSeeds of Truth: A Response to Michael Specter’s Article in The New Yorker
Prof. Vandana Shiva – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Sep 2014
Michael Specter’s piece is poor journalism. I wonder why a journalist who has been Bureau Chief in Moscow for The New York Times and Bureau Chief in New York for the Washington Post, and clearly is an experienced reporter, would submit such a misleading piece. Or why The New Yorker would allow it to be published as honest reporting, with so many fraudulent assertions and deliberate attempts to skew reality.
→ read full articleThe Galileo Syndrome?
Vandana Shiva – Asian Age,
25 Aug 2014
Prakash Javadekar said: ‘Galileo was telling the truth and he was punished.’ Monsanto and its lobbyists are today’s Church. And independent scientists speaking the truth about GMOs and their impact on society, health and environment are today’s Galileos.
→ read full articleFine Print of the Food Wars
Vandana Shiva – The Asian Age,
4 Aug 2014
Creating ‘ownership’ of seed through patents and intellectual property rights and imposing it globally through the WTO, the biotech industry has established a monopoly empire over seed and food.
→ read full articleWe Are the Soil
Vandana Shiva – The Asian Age,
2 Jun 2014
The claim that the Green Revolution or genetic engineering feeds the world is false. These technologies are monocultures based on chemical inputs, a recipe for killing the life of the soil. We are made up of the same five elements — earth, water, fire, air and space — that constitute the Universe. We are the soil. What we do to the soil, we do to ourselves. And it is no accident that the words “humus” and “humans” have the same roots.
→ read full articleMarching Against Monsanto Is Marching for Freedom and Democracy
Prof. Vandana Shiva – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 May 2014
I send greetings of solidarity for all the people gathered for the March against Monsanto [24 May 2014]. Marching against Monsanto is marching for freedom and democracy, for health and safety, for seed and biodiversity. People often ask me “Why Monsanto”?
→ read full articleSeeds of Freedom
Vandana Shiva - The Asian Age,
5 May 2014
The jurisprudence of intellectual property rights related to life forms is, in fact, a jurisprudence of ‘Bio Nullius’ — life empty of intelligence. The Earth is defined as dead matter.
→ read full articleWomen Ecowarriors
Prof. Vandana Shiva – Asian Age,
31 Mar 2014
26 Mar 2014 – When it comes to the sustenance of the economy, women act as experts and providers. Even though women’s work in providing sustenance is the most vital activity, a patriarchal economy treats it as non-work.
→ read full articleHow Economic Growth Has Become Anti-Life
Vandana Shiva – The Guardian,
4 Nov 2013
An obsession with growth has eclipsed our concern for sustainability, justice and human dignity. But people are not disposable – the value of life lies outside economic development.
→ read full articlePatenting the Food Supply and the Monopolization of the Biosphere
Dr. Vandana Shiva and James Corbett - Global Research,
28 Oct 2013
As the world begins to digest the implications of intellectual property for online censorship, another IP issue threatens an even more fundamental part of our daily lives: our food supply.
→ read full articleGod, Move Over
Vandana Shiva – The Asian Age,
3 Jun 2013
GMO today means “god move over”. But genetic engineering in not a game of Lego in which genes can be moved around without any impact on the organism or the environment. It is time to put nature and people back in the technology narrative. It is time to see technology as a tool, and not an end that defines a new fundamentalist religion through which corporations become the new gods.
→ read full articleSeeds of Suicide
Prof. Vandana Shiva – The Asian Age,
1 Apr 2013
There is a desperate attempt by Monsanto and its PR machinery to delink the epidemic of farmers’ suicides in India from the company’s growing control over cotton seed supply — 95 per cent of India’s cotton seed is now controlled by Monsanto. Control over seed is the first link in the food chain because seed is the source of life. When a corporation controls seed, it controls life, especially the life of farmers.
→ read full articleTilling the Soil with Pesticides
Vandana Shiva – The Asian Age,
18 Mar 2013
The [Indian] ministry of agriculture had organised a conference on Doubling Food Production from February 1-3 [2013]. The “eminent speakers” invited were spin masters of biotechnology industry who claimed to have founded the anti-GMO movement and openly promoted it. Ecological systems of agriculture are based on care, compassion and cooperation. They enhance ecological resilience, diversity, sustainable livelihoods and health. The new paradigm of agriculture creates living economies and living cultures that increase the well-being of all.
→ read full articleOur Violent Economy is Hurting Women
Vandana Shiva - Yes! Magazine,
18 Feb 2013
There is a connection between the growth of unjust economic policies and the intensification of crimes against women. The Delhi gang rape has triggered a revolution—one that we must sustain. Violence against Women Is As Old As Patriarchy
→ read full article(Italiano) La Sicurezza come Libertà
Vandana Shiva – Centro Studi Sereno Regis,
18 Feb 2013
Il movimento è la voce delle donne che reclamano il proprio diritto alla sicurezza e alla libertà, attraverso l’opposizione a ogni forma di potere partriarcale e la celebrazione dell’energia e del potere pacifico delle donne.
→ read full articleFood Poisoning
Prof. Vandana Shiva – The Asian Age,
7 Jan 2013
Food is supposed to provide us nourishment and health but because of the toxins it contains, what we consume has become a major threat to our health. Some toxic substances are added to our food physically, through adulteration, while some enter our food system chemically, through pesticide residues. And some toxins enter the food chain genetically, through genetic engineering of seeds and crops. Even food packaging can be a source of toxins in food.
→ read full articleEverything I Need to Know I Learned in the Forest
Prof. Vandana Shiva – YES! Magazine,
10 Dec 2012
Today, at a time of multiple crises, we need to move away from thinking of nature as dead matter to valuing her biodiversity, clean water, and seeds. For this, nature herself will be the best teacher.
→ read full articleProp 37, GMOs, Food Sovereignty, and More
Vandana Shiva and Sonali Kolhatkar, Uprising Radio – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Nov 2012
A new poll conducted by the University of Southern California and the LA Times has found that Proposition 37, the GMO labeling initiative, has slipped a whopping 17 points since the last poll in September [2012]. Now, one of the world’s most renowned scientists and environmental activists, Vandana Shiva, is speaking out. Long a thorn in the side of Monsanto, Dr. Shiva has taken on big bio-tech and agribusiness companies in her home country of India and works with farmers groups all over the world to protect their right to farm using their traditional methods and seeds.
→ read full articleGiant Walmart vs the Small Farmer
Prof. Vandana Shiva – The Asian Age,
22 Oct 2012
Any trader who mediates in the distribution of goods between producers and consumers is a middleman. Walmart is neither a producer nor a consumer. Therefore, it is also a middleman; with global muscle. That is how it has become the world’s biggest retailer, carrying out business of nearly $480 billion… The more the government pushes policies towards monopolies and monocultures, the more committed I become to defend our economic democracy and diversity as a saner, more sustainable, more just alternative to the disease of giganticism.
→ read full articleMyths about Industrial Agriculture
Prof. Vandana Shiva – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Sep 2012
Reports trying to create doubts about organic agriculture are suddenly flooding the media. The food revolution is the biggest revolution of our times, and the industry is panicking. So it spins propaganda, hoping that in the footsteps of Goebbels, a lie told a hundred times will become the truth. But food is different.
→ read full articleDesigning Food Systems to Protect Nature and Get Rid of Hunger
Vandana Shiva – Al Jazeera,
10 Sep 2012
Industrialisation of agriculture creates hunger and malnutrition, destroying the food web to which we all belong. Hunger and malnutrition is manmade. It is in the design of the industrial chemical model of agriculture. And just as hunger has been created by design, producing healthy and nutritious food for all can be designed through food democracy.
→ read full article(Italian) Rio+20: La Grande Inversione a U
Vandana Shiva – Centro Studi Sereno Regis,
9 Jul 2012
Rio de Janeiro è una città di inversioni a U. Il segnale stradale più frequente è “Retorno”, inversione. E Rio+20 ha seguito quello schema. E’ stato una grande inversione a U in termini di responsabilità umana di proteggere i processi che proteggono la vita sul pianeta.
→ read full articleEco Warriors, Arise to Rio’s Earth Summit!
Prof. Vandana Shiva – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Jun 2012
A paradigm shift is desperately needed. And it will not come from those who have created the crisis and who are looking for new ways to extend the life of the greed economy by commodifying and privatising all life on earth. They will come to Rio+20 to paint the “greed economy” green, and call it the “green economy”. And they will have powerful governments on their side.
→ read full articleThe Politics of Science and Democracy in India
Vandana Shiva – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Apr 2012
In an interview with the journal Science, Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh chose to focus on two hazardous technologies – genetically engineered seeds and crops, and nuclear power – as vital to the progress of science in India and the “salvation for finding new development pathways for developing our economy”. He also identified NGOs as blocking this “development”, and said “foreign hands” were at work. The prime minister’s interview saddened me.
→ read full articleThe Seed Emergency: The Threat to Food and Democracy
Vandana Shiva – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Feb 2012
Patenting seeds has led to a farming and food crisis – and huge profits for US biotechnology corporations. The seed is the first link in the food chain – and seed sovereignty is the foundation of food sovereignty. If farmers do not have their own seeds or access to open pollinated varieties that they can save, improve and exchange, they have no seed sovereignty – and consequently no food sovereignty. The deepening agrarian and food crisis has its roots in changes in the seed supply system, and the erosion of seed diversity and seed sovereignty.
→ read full articleNo Therapy in Retail
Prof. Vandana Shiva – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Jan 2012
Firstly, rising prices are driven by the commodification of food and speculation on food commodities. Industrialisation and globalisation of food and agriculture has transformed food from a source of life into a commodity, and as a commodity, food is divorced from its sources – the seeds, the soil, the farmer – and from its end use as nourishment for our bodies.
→ read full article(Castellano) Es Hora de Parar la Guerra Contra la Tierra
Prof. Vandana Shiva – TeleSur,
5 Dec 2011
Un puñado de empresas y de potencias busca controlar los recursos de la Tierra y transformar el planeta en un supermercado en el que todo está en venta. Quieren vender nuestra agua, genes, células, órganos, conocimientos, culturas y nuestro futuro.
→ read full articleThe Lies of Free Market Democracy
Vandana Shiva – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Nov 2011
Freedom in our times has been sold as “free market democracy”. “Free markets” mean freedom for corporations to exploit whom and what they want, where they want, how they want. It means the end of freedom for people and nature everywhere. “Free market democracy” is in fact an oxymoron which has deluded us into believing that deregulation of corporations means freedom for us.
→ read full articleResisting the Corporate Theft of Seeds
Vandana Shiva – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Sep 2011
But the biggest threat we face is the control of seed and food moving out of the hands of farmers and communities and into a few corporate hands. Monopoly control of cottonseed and the introduction of genetically engineered Bt cotton has already given rise to an epidemic of farmers’ suicides in India.
→ read full article(Italian) Il Grande Furto Dei Semi
Vandana Shiva – Come Don Chisciotte,
5 Sep 2011
Il seme, la fonte della vita, l’incarnazione della nostra diversità biologica e culturale, il collegamento tra il passato e il futuro dell’evoluzione, la proprietà comune del passato, delle generazioni passate, presenti e future delle comunità agricole che sono state le produttrici di semi, oggi è stata derubata ai contadini e ci viene rivenduta come semi “di proprietà” da multinazionali come Monsanto.
→ read full articleThe Great Land Grab: India’s War on Farmers
Vandana Shiva – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 Jun 2011
Land, for most people in the world, is Terra Madre, Mother Earth, Bhoomi, Dharti Ma. The land is people’s identity; it is the ground of culture and economy. The bond with the land is a bond with Bhoomi, our Earth; 75 per cent of the people in the Third World live on the land and are supported by the land. The Earth is the biggest employer on the planet: 75 per cent of the wealth of the people of the global south is in land.
→ read full articleClimate Change and Agriculture: Biodiverse Ecological Farming is the Answer, not Genetic Engineering
Vandana Shiva – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Feb 2011
The claim to increased yield is false because yield, like climate resilience is a multi–genetic trait. Introducing toxins into a plant through herbicide resistance or Bt. Toxin increases the “yield” of toxins, not of food or nutrition. Even the nutrition argument is manipulated. Golden rice genetically engineered to increase Vitamin A produces 70 times less Vitamin A than available alternatives such as coriander leaves and curry leaves.
→ read full articleTime to End War against the Earth
Vandana Shiva – The Age,
15 Nov 2010
When we think of wars in our times, our minds turn to Iraq and Afghanistan. But the bigger war is the war against the planet. This war has its roots in an economy that fails to respect ecological and ethical limits – limits to inequality, limits to injustice, limits to greed and economic concentration. A handful of corporations and of powerful countries seeks to control the earth’s resources and transform the planet into a supermarket in which everything is for sale. They want to sell our water, genes, cells, organs, knowledge, cultures and future.
→ read full article
Resisting Hegemony
Vandana Shiva – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 Sep 2010
Excerpt of TRANSCEND member Prof. Vandana Shiva speaking about ‘food and seed sovereignty’ at the International Meeting on Resisting Hegemony held 2-5 August 2010 in Penang, Malaysia.
→ read full articleThe Killing Fields of Multi-National Corporations
Vandana Shiva – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Jul 2010
Pesticides, Pollution and the Economies of Genocide. The Bhopal gas tragedy was the worst industrial disaster in human history. Twenty-five thousand people died, 500,000 were injured, and the injustice done to the victims of Bhopal over the past 25 years will go down as the worst case of jurisprudence ever.
→ read full article