Tribal Women BURN Genetically Engineered Seeds in India

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Tribal Women Burn Genetically Engineered Seeds in India

 

GM WATCH daily http://www.gmwatch.org March 24, 2005

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EXCERPTS: Demanding Orissa be declared an Organic State, more than 3000 tribal

women today made a bonfire of hybrid and genetically modified seeds of cotton

and other crops -- calling it the launch of a seed satyagrah...

 

The New Seed Bill in the offing, they said, runs counter to the Plant Varieties

Protection and Farmers' Right Act (PVPFA), 2001... [Farmers'] rights are now

being taken away through the Seed Bill. This clearly demonstrates that the

government is being run by the multinational seed companies. Orissa Nari Samaj

(ONS), the tribal women's organisation with a membership of close to 200,000

demanded the scrapping of the proposed Seed Bill, and wanted to government to

recognise the rights of the people in respect of indigenous seeds.

------

Bhubaneshwar (Orissa), Mar 23:

 

Demanding Orissa be declared an Organic State, more than 3000 tribal women today

made a bonfire of hybrid and genetically modified seeds of cotton and other

crops -- calling it the launch of a seed satyagrah --- here today. Walking

through the streets of the city, the tribal women shouted slogans damning the GM

seeds and the high-yielding crops that had pushed them into a cycle of poverty,

indebtedness and hunger.

 

The tribals announced that they have already declared 200 villages in the tribal

belt of the State as " organic vilages " and are presently cultivating indigenous

seeds in more than 17,000 acreas in Orissa.

 

A delegation of the tribal women and some representatives of NGOs later met the

Chief Minister, Mr Naveen Patnaik, who assured them that their demands would be

looked into sympathetically. He also promised to convey the anger and feelings

of the tribals to New Delhi.

 

The charter of demands that the tribal presented emphasised that " due to the

rampant use of chemical inputs in agriculture and mechanization of agriculture,

the unemployment problem has become acute, which in turn may precipitate

extremism and violence in our beautiful peace-loving state of Orissa " . The

demand for organic foods, forest produces and herbal products is increasing at

the rate of at least 20 per cent annually in the world market. So, there is a

great scope for earning foreign exchange by promoting organic farming in the

state and exporting the produces, even if one thinks materialistically; though

food should not be produced primarily for commercial purposes as per the cannons

of the Vedic culture of India, the charter said.

 

Organic farming is labour intensive; therefore, to a great extent, it can solve

the problem of unemployment, which is one of the most serious problems of

today's society. Or else Orissa will go the Andhra Pradesh way, where due to

unemployment, arising out of 'modernisation' and mechanization of agriculture as

well as destruction of local natural resources; the angry and rudderless youths

and farmers voted the Chandrababu Naidu government out of power. They warned the

chief minister that a similar process has already been initiated in the State as

a result of which the political impact will be severe.

 

On the other hand, the biodiversity and forest rich state of Orissa can earn

lots of revenue by value addition and re-estimation of the cost of forest

produces and herbal medicines.

 

The New Seed Bill in the offing, they said, runs counter to the Plant Varieties

Protection and Farmers' Right Act (PVPFA), 2001. The Government had given the

right to farmers to sell and exchange their seeds through the PVPFA. But those

rights are now being taken away through the Seed Bill. This clearly demonstrates

that the government is being run by the multinational seed companies. Orissa

Nari Samaj (ONS), the tribal women organisation with a membership of close to

200,000 demanded the scrapping of the proposed Seed Bill, and wanted to

government to recognise the rights of the people in respect of indigenous seeds.

 

As the hybrid seeds lose their vigour after one crop, the farmers have to buy

the seeds every year from the seed companies. Further, neither the farmers can

keep the hybrid seeds or produce it, nor the farmers can exert any control over

the prices of hybrid seeds and hence they have to completely depend on the

companies for these seeds. The Genetically Modified (GM) seeds are more

dangerous, since there is every chance of cross-pollination of GM seeds induced

crops with similar indigenous seeds based locally grown crops. As a result the

local varieties may in the process get genetically modified and become like

terminator plants. There is therefore every possibility that the GM seeds will

completely render infertile the local crops/seeds and therefore the food

security of the state will be put into danger.

 

Highlighting the fact that an individual has to consume 9 kg of GM rice to get

the required amount of Vitamin A (as required by Golden Rice) for the body where

as it is possible to get the same amount of the Vitamin from one carrot only,

grown organically, they demanded to ban these pro-commercial and harmful hybrid

and GM seeds in Orissa.

 

They also demanded establishment of an Organic Bank, which will promote and give

financial and technical incentives to the organic farmers and support the

farmers during the transition period of converting their lands from chemical

stage to organic stage. The government should provide the necessary support for

marketing of the organic produces which includes the opening up of shopping

complexes and retail outlets for exclusively for sale of organic produces in all

the district headquarters and cities and further to provide rent free shops for

the tribal farmers, through any of the supporting organizations.

 

Earlier, the tribal women exhibited over 1000 indigenous seeds and over 550

varieties of paddy at an exhibition held at Siddharth Vilage, some 20 kms from

here. The conference was jointly organised by the Orissa Nari Samaj, Team for

Human Resource Education and Action for Development (THREAD) and the Women¹s

Institute for Development Education Network -- Orissa. #

 

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This GMO news service is underwritten by a generous grant from the Newman's Own

Foundation, edited by Thomas Wittman and is a production of the Ecological

Farming Association www.eco-farm.org

_________________

JoAnn Guest

mrsjoguest

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" Wisdom of the Past, Food of the Future "

 

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