Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply
reviewed by Eileen E. Schell
Eileen is an Associate Professor of Writing, Rhetoric, and Womens Studies
at Syracuse University. She is currently writing a book called The Rhetoric
of the Farm Crisis; Globalization and the Future of the Family Farm.
Food is our most basic need, the very stuff of life. Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shivas Stolen Harvest (South End Press, 2000) addresses the consequences
of industrial, corporatized agriculture and its creation of food totalitarianism,
a system in which a handful of corporations control the entire food chain
and destroy alternatives so that people do not have access to diverse, safe,
foods produced ecologically. Shiva, an internationally renowned environmental
activist from India who has a Ph.D. in physics, uses the word theft
to describe how agricultural corporations have systematically plundered and
destroyed local, sustainable forms of agriculture in the name of growth and
profit. Hiding beneath maxims about efficiency and productivity and slick advertising
campaigns about feeding the worlds growing population, global corporations
like Cargill and Monsanto have used trade agreements, property laws, and new
technologies to gain dominion over local agriculture. Older, more sustainable
and diverse forms of agriculture have been replaced by monocultural agriculture,
a system of food production focused on producing one type of food through industrialized
agriculture. This, coupled with free trade (or forced trade)
agreements is increasingly wiping out whole systems of sustainable agriculture
and decimating small farms and agriculturally rich communities across the globe.
Shiva offers an accessible and engaging overview of the rise of corporate agriculture
around the world and offers case studies of specific sites of agricultural struggle
where the local harvest has been stolen or diverted into destructive
and hazardous systems of food production. These include the displacement of
indigenous local mustard seed oils with soy-based oils forced onto the market
by the Monsanto corporation; the rise of industrialized shrimp farming, what
the United Nations has deemed a rape and run industry due to the
environmental destruction caused by it; the mad cow crisis, which
leads Shiva to question the pressure put on Indian farmers to embrace industrialized
methods of cattle production, especially in a country where cattle are sacred
animals; seed piracy, the seizing and patenting of indigenous seed by corporations;
and the development, marketing, and dumping of genetically engineered foods
on developing countries. These examples all center around Indias system
of agriculture, a focus that seems particularly fitting as seventy-five percent
of its population earns a living from agriculture. In fact, Indian farmers comprise
one out of every four farmers across the globe.
Throughout these examples, Shiva shows the threat that global trade policy poses
to small farmers and those concerned with food democracy and safety. For instance,
the World Trade Organizations Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights
makes it illegal for farmers across the globe to share and save their seeds,
a time-honored practice of conservation that ensures biodiversity and food safety.
The Trade Agreement on Agriculture has made it legal to dump genetically engineered
food on countries like India with extensive environmental and human health related
consequences.
All of Shivas examples point to the importance of citizens fighting back
to protect local, sustainable agricultural practices and food systems that are
culturally appropriate. Shiva documents the emerging environmental-citizen-based
movements for food democracy, addressing how concerned citizensfarmers,
environmental activists, consumer activists, public-interest scientists, and
othersare working to create such a system. Food democracy, Shiva argues,
is a social justice movement that favors the majority of the worlds population
instead of favoring the industrialized North and the corporations that originate
there. As she points out, the vast majority of the worlds people70
percent, earn their livelihoods by producing food. The majority of these farmers
are women. Food democracy is, therefore, an issue inextricably tied to
human rights, to womens rights.
Stolen Harvest is an essential book for progressive thinkers, environmental
activists, and citizen-action coalitions who want a guide to the consequences
of global food and who are searching for ways to transform the food system in
favor of local, sustainable agriculture. Study groups and coalitions concerned
with sustainability/environmental issues and social justice issues should pair
this book with books like Eric Schlossers Fast Food Nation or Osha Gray
Davidsons Broken Heartland, which focus on food and farm politics in the
US.
Stolen Harvest is only one of Shivas numerous publications. She the author
of over 300 papers and a dozen additional books, including Water Wars (South
End Press, 2001), Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge (South End
Press, 1997), and The Violence of the Green Revolution (Zed Books, 1993). To
learn more about Shivas work, visit her website at <www.vshiva.net>