Franken Foods: BITTER HARVEST - LISTEN ONLINE

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GMW: BITTER HARVEST - LISTEN ONLINE

" GM WATCH " <info

Sun, 24 Apr 2005 13:23:10 +0100

 

 

 

 

 

GM WATCH daily

http://www.gmwatch.org

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You can listen online to the BBC's 'Bitter Harvest' series recently

broadcast as part of the BBC Asian Network's Vaisakhi season (marking an

important Sikh festival which coincides with the harvesting season for

farmers in the Punjab).

 

The 'Bitter Harvest' series looks at the plight of farmers in India

through a series of 5 separate programmes of about 10 minutes each,

covering issues such as seed-saving, patents, farmer suicides,

depopulation

of rural areas, subsidies, free trade and the debt trap.

 

The British Secretary of State for International Development, Hilary

Benn, refused to take part in these programmes but there are interesting

contributions from Vandana Shiva and Devinder Sharma, amongst others.

 

The corporate take-over of farming, the green revolution and

biotechnology are an almost constant point of reference. There's also

lots of

interesting detail on how, for example, the entire public system in the

Punjab is used to promote Monsanto's seeds, and how Monsanto makes use of

religion in its advertising to farmers in order to project its seeds as

miraculous - using the Ramayana in its advertisements for Hindu farmers

in South India, while using Guru Nanak in its sales pitch to Sikh

farmers in the Punjab.

 

You can listen to the series here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/asiannetwork/features/vaisakhi.shtml

Click on the daily 'Bitter Harvest' links in the top right 'Listen

Again' panel. You will sometimes get a short burst of the 'Drive'

programme

before 'Bitter Harvest' begins.

 

 

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