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Stolen Harvest: The Dark Side of Industri­al Agricult­ure

1.168 Words / ~2 pages sternsternsternsternstern_0.2 Author Verena M. in Jun. 2012
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Agricultur

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Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz - KFU

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Conway 2012

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Stolen Harvest - hard facts

Industrial agriculture is not necessary to grow more food and reduce hunger, it doesn´t save any resources, that´s just a myth

The theft of nature began with the globalization and the WTO, which legalized the dumping of genetically engineered food, while criminalizing actions to protect the biological and cultural diversity

It is the goal of chemical companies to control agriculture through patents, genetic engineering and merges

Seed patent laws are one way in which resources of the third world poor are stolen to generate profits for giant corporations

India´s edible oil economy was substituted by the imposition of soybean oil and their livelihoods and traditional food culture was dangered

Even if in the Bengal famine more than 3.5 million people starved to death food grains were exported for war supplies in Britain, then many farmers moved to Calcutta, thousands of women turned into prostitutes and parents even sold their children

The impact of globalization on culture is significant in India because every fourth farmer in the world is an Indian

Indian farmers evolved thousands of varieties of rice, the seed is a storage place for culture and history, the free exchange among Indian farmers means to exchange only seeds, knowledge and culture, rice is a part of culture and religion in India and sees, crops and fields are worshipped

The trade agreement of the WTO allows corporations to claim knowledge about seeds or plants as their private property and today only few corporations own most commercial-seed markets, the market for genetically engineered seeds and the agrochemical and pesticide market

There is a monopolistic control over agricultural production, that favors policies of export, the farmers in importing countries often don´t survive the falling prices

In the 1980s cotton displaced food crops in India and aggressive corporate advertising campaigns were launched to sell new hybrid seeds to farmers, but these seeds required more pesticides and farmers had to buy seeds and pesticides on credit from the same company

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Many states in India were forced to allow private corporations to acquire land and a large percentage of these lands supply the food-processing industry, in which mainly transnational corporations are involved

The green revolution promises to increase yields, but it reduces straw, which is important for soil and animals

If the input of resources is taken into account traditional farming is more productive than the green-revolution farming, it is also false that varieties reduce the acreage, because if there is a monoculture and the single output is displaced there has to be grown new output on additional acres, studies even show that industrial monocultures need sixty times more input for the same output than traditional polycultures

Staple food is replaced by luxury as flowers and shrimp, which leads to rising prices of staple and hence to declining consumption by the poor, the founders of trade liberalization argue that food security is guaranteed because imports can be paid with the proceeds of exports

Today there is a kind of food totalitarianism, in which the few who control the entire food chain also destroy alternatives in form of access to diverse, safe foods produced ecological, there is something like force-food



In India cows have been treated as sacred and the agricultural system has built its sustainability on the integrity of the cow, the cow is a source of cow-dung energy, nutrition and leather and its contribution is linked to the work of women

In India cattle provide more food than they consume, in U.S. cattle consume six time more food than they provide

Half of the recoverable manure in India is used as a equivalent of gas, which would be paid with $1 annually, the remaining half is used as fertilizer, but the green revolution shifted agricultural fertilizer to non-renewable chemical ones, making cattle and women´s work with it non-necessary

Multinational corporations promote growth hormones commercially produced by genetic engineering to increase milk production, but the use of bovine growth hormone is leading to major consumer resistance and a demand for the labeling of milk, but the EU has voted against the labeling of genetically engineered products

Ecological agricultural cultures are based on an integration between crops and animal husbandry, the wastes of one provide nutrition for the other, industrial farming techniques would deprive the rich biodiversity in the soil

Europe´s intensive livestock economy requires seven times the area of Europe in other countries for the production of cattle feed, so called “shadow acres” and grain is diverted from human consumption to intensive feed for livestock, cows are even robbed by roughage and the substitute is plastic in their stomach which makes them feel full

The government denied that BSE could jump from animal to human and even when ten children had the epidemic and it could be linked to the consumption of BSE-infected beef the government didn´t start any countermeasures

India´s trade liberalization program tries to convert a predominantly vegetarian society into a beef-eating one, this program is based on the argument that eating more animal proteins makes healthier and more intelligent

There is no organized marketing and no grading system for beef production in India and also religious sentiments are against cattle slaughter, now the ministry of agriculture provides grants and tax incentives to encourage the setting-up of slaughterhouses and meat export rises, but the consequence is a shortage of fodder and hence a decline of animal wealth, which destroys the rural economy, it will affect the landless, the lowest castes and women

Globalization initiated the destruction of sustainable food system and the goal is to create an uniform food culture of hamburgers, in 1994 60 junk food restaurants were built in India by Pepsi food, the chicken which was offered came from an Indian firm, but many had diseases or carried salmonellosis, and the meat production was mechanized, so there were no extra jobs generated.

Junk food restaurants are also under attack because of their negative environmental impact, nearly 40 % of the world´s total grain production is used for junk-food-chicken

The mad cow is a product of “border crossing” between herbivores and carnivores and a product of the “border crossing” between ethical treatment of other beings and violent exploitation of animals.

Sacred cows are a metaphor of ecological civilization and mad cows are a metaphor of anti-ecological, industrial civilization. There has to be a subjecthood instead of an objecthood



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