BOOK REPORT: STOLEN HARVEST by VANDANA SHIVA

 

 

THE SUBTITLE OF VANDANA SHIVA'S BOOK IS: “The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply”, and in a wide-ranging examination she takes to task the corporate capture and industrialization of the world’s food system, one that is rife with practices that damage the ecology, degrade agricultural, animal husbandry and fish stock resources we rely on, and ultimately threaten our very existence as a species. She details how “Big Agriculture”, “Big Pharma”, etc. use trade agreements*, legal manoeuvres, patent law, and straight-up corruption and coercion to gain advantage over agricultural markets and food production centres, until whole swaths of the planet function as mere cogs in a vast commercial enterprise aimed solely at maximizing profits at the expense indigenous farming and fishing practices that have sustained humankind for millennia. One telling trend she cites to remind us how rapacious our current system has become is in the use of “shadow acres” by intensive livestock economies, primarily in the industrialized global north. When Europe tallies the total acreage for pasturage and arable croplands it has in use, it does not take into consideration the additional land needed—from other countries in many cases—to produce high-protein, fossil-fuel dependent crops like soy and corn that are used in feedlots. These “shadow acres” are lands diverted from what would otherwise go directly for human food production. Vandana points out that intensive livestock practices that cram animals “into the smallest space possible for the least cost and greatest profit”, (62) while using less pasturage, still need additional arable land acreage to produce high-protein feed stocks. (Obviously, the vacated pasture lands are not suitable for growing grains, etc.) This land often comes from developing countries. Such countries (she cites India as a prime example) are coerced  by local elites and lobbyists, World Bank and World Trade Organization regulations, and of course multinational corporations to increase their production of corn and soybeans exported as feed for developed countries. There is further pressure on Indian farmers and herders to use the same industrialized practices to increase their own meat and grain/feed production—again, at the expense of indigenous systems.

 

WHILE OUR CURRENT SYSTEM of animal husbandry seems more efficient at producing animal protein for human consumption, ultimately such practices come at the cost of sustainability, ecological degradation, and animal and human health. By contrast, Vandana describes the “complementary” (62) system of agriculture used in traditional Indian farming that takes a holistic approach to the raising of animals (and growing of crops). For example, the Indian farmer relies on their cattle to plow their fields, turn grindstones and for other mechanical purposes, in addition to their gift of manure and as a source of dairy products. Cows are raised in pasturage, with arable lands dedicated to growing a variety of legumes and other crops suitable for the predominantly vegetarian diet most Indians follow. Waste products from harvested fields are added to the animals’ forage in a very nearly closed-loop ecological cycle (limited additional inputs). But industrial farming methods are at odds with this age-old, sustainable system. For example, modern wheat strains are bred for larger grains and faster growth, using massive inputs of fossil-fuel derived fertilizers and pesticides. Such production methods come at the expense of the rest of the plant which results in taller, less stocky wheat varieties that leave less waste material after harvesting. But it is with such stocky wastes that traditional Indian farmers feed their livestock. Less plant waste for forage means there is a greater need for additional inputs of animal feed like those our industrialized system provides.

Where industrialized farming and grazing initiatives have been introduced in India, including the use artificial fertilizers, patented varieties of seed, monoculture practices, export-oriented cropping and so on, local farming cultures have been all but destroyed**.  And while it is true that, overall, more grain is produced worldwide, such production comes at the expense of other crops that could be used to feed people directly. And sustainably.

 

In developed countries, domestic cattle are concentrated into giant feedlots and fed unhealthy diets of high protein, grain-sourced supplements to enable them to grow quickly and profitably. In India, cows are a sacred symbol of life and are treated accordingly. In the West, such an outlook is considered absurd, where cattle are mere units on a spread sheet. Perhaps the best way to describe the ethos of the indigenous Indian agriculturalist is in a lesson taken from the ancient Hindu text, the Taittreya Upanishad, that Vandana informs us “calls on humans to feed all beings [emphasis mine] in their zone of influence.” (12) Such localized, organic systems of food production protect the biodiversity of farm and field while maintaining sustainable communities of farmers and herders, and the towns and villages dependant on them. As Vandana says:

 

“Industrial agriculture has not produced more food. It has destroyed diverse sources of food, and it has stolen food from other species to bring large quantities of specific commodities to the market, using huge quantities of fossil fuels and water and toxic chemicals in the process.

It is often said that the so-called miracle varieties of the Green Revolution in modern industrial agriculture prevented famine because they had higher yields.  

      However, these higher yields disappear in the context of total [emphasis mine] yields of crops on farms.” (12)

 

Other topics in her short and highly readable examination of the global food system include the over-production of soy, the foundational importance of seeds and the (then) newly emerging science of genetic engineering, and food security. Vandana stresses the dangers inherent in the growing homogenization of plant seeds, for example, as giant corporations such as Cargill and Monsanto buy up the “rights” to various seed families, and through the political and financial levers mentioned above, create a much smaller suite of commercial crops for today's industrialized farming. The traditional method of developing new strains of food crops, the farmer-to-farmer exchange of seed types, has in many cases been made illegal. Farmers are increasingly forced to use expensive hybrid seeds or GMOs that come with mandatory herbicide and insecticide treatment regimes. Perhaps the most famous case of what Vandana calls the “criminalization of farmers” (92) was when Saskatchewan farmer Percy Schmeiser was charged with “theft” by the Monsanto Corporation when pollen from plants grown with the company’s “Roundup Ready” canola was blown into Schmeiser’s nearby field. The court battle went on for years but fortunately the resulting judgment was in the farmer’s favour. Schmeiser was being punished by Monsanto basically because he did not use their seeds.

A final point she brings up underscores how dangerous genetic manipulation of plants can be is with Monsanto’s marketing of seeds that come with what's called “Bt expression”, that is, plants designed to produce their own Bt toxin to kill insect pests. Bt (Bacillus thuringiniesis) occurs naturally in the soil and scientists at Monsanto were able to isolate the genetics of the bacterium and place it in their commercial plant seeds. Bt can kill a wide range of insects and that was thought at the time to be a good thing. But there are a couple of problems with this apparently efficient (and profitable) bio-engineered plant/insecticide system.

 

    "It's...ALIVE!!" Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein

In nature, genetic changes occur during the myriad of interactions between gene cells and their environment. The recent Covid-19 “Delta Variant” is an example of one such genetic change—the corona virus mutated a different version of itself, one that poses additional threats to human health.  What happens, then, if vast swaths of farmland growing Bt-enabled crops encounter insect populations, not forgetting that another disturbing effect of this genetic modification is that the whole plant—all its cells—express the insecticide all the time.

 

THE POINT IS that the insects may more readily develop Bt resistance in such an mono-cultured environment. While most insects (supposedly) would be killed by Bt toxins, some will survive and potentially develop resistance to Bt. A diversified cropping scheme would have different plants, growing at different rates repelling, confusing and acting as barriers to different insects at different times, complicating insects lives, and hence providing less opportunities for unfavourable mutations to occur. A second problem with such genetic manipulation is, as mentioned, the entire plant, from root to leaf, is a Bt bacteria-emitting machine. In nature, plants and insects evolve complex relationships, for example with some insects attracted to the flower, say, while others munch on the leaves, others slurp the stalk and so on. An all-purpose insecticide like Bt kills all insects, even ones that are beneficial and act as pollinators. So maybe a rethink on the whole gene-manipulation thingy is in order.

    Nebraska "Dust Bowl" 1931

Corporate capture of virtually every sector of food production and land stewardship (including terrestrial and oceanic waters) invalidates thousands of years of learned experience traditional farmers and herders and fishers have acquired. Modern, industrialized agriculture is neither sustainable nor is it healthy—for the soil, for plants and animals or for humans. Will the rise of the local food movement and food security initiatives, and growing anti-monopoly sentiment curb the rapacious and repugnant practices of “Big Agriculture”? Time, as always, will tell.

 

Cheers, Jake.

 

_______________________________________________________

 

    Vandana Shiva

*Her book was written in 2000, less than a decade following the Uruguay Round conference that brought into existence the G.A.T.T. (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) and the WTO (World Trade Organization), along with new global trade arrangements that heavily favoured so-called “developed countries” to the detriment of what was then referred to as the “Third World”. 

 

**It is important to recall in the 1990s (and continuing today), where complex, localized systems of Indian agriculture were disrupted by the arrival of multinational corporations and their demands for uniformity and conformity to “modern” farming methods, there was a spate of hundreds, if not thousands, of farmer suicides, often done by drinking the very pesticides they were required to buy and use on their fields. When the predictable glut of corn and wheat hit the world market, small farmers, indebted to seed and fertilizer companies, faced ruin. Again, modern industrial farming techniques—patented seed varieties, mechanization, export-orientated mono-cropping, inputs of artificial fertilizers and pesticides—disrupt and destabilize traditional agricultural practices and are unsustainable in the long run.

 

 

[One troubling practice (among so many) of the modern livestock industry to “circumvent [cows’] need for roughage is by feeding them plastic pot-scrubbing pads [Emphasis mine]. The scrubbing pads remain in the rumen for life.” (63) Nice.

 

Shiva, Vandana. Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply. South End Press. Cambridge, MA. 2000.