In this her latest work, Vandana Shiva an environmentalist and internationally know activist from India, maps out the severe impacts of industrial agriculture on the small farmer, the environment, and the quality of the foods we eat. This book lays out a number of important issues in the debate over genetically modified organisms and commercial agriculture. There are so many points and arguments to be made in this debate and in her book so I will limit my discussion of them to just a few. To begin with the coastline of India has been attacked by a “slash and burn type” method for the shrimp industry, which has left the coastline in deplorable condition. Shiva goes on to further denounce the theft of centuries worth of work by the world’s farmers, as corporations claim this collective innovation as intellectual property. At the center of a number of her arguments is the corporate giant Monsanto, who is right in the middle of the biotech fight. The commercial aquaculture industry in India, which includes shrimp trawling and ponds, is taking its toll on the environment. Destroying habitat, killing other wildlife especially the sacred sea turtle, and contaminating local drinking water supplies are a few of the charges against the raping of our oceans and water ways. The previous and sustainable method of alternating between rice paddies and shrimp farms is being supplanted with the extremely destructive trawling operations. The operations have turned the Orissa Coast – once the world’s largest rookery of the endangered Olive Ridley turtles – is now it’s largest grave with 4,682 having washed ashore as of January 1999. With the entire prawn catch being exported to the US and Japan we are the cause of the destruction of their precious turtle. When the culture of the north is not busy raping the South of their rich oceans we are charging them with crimes for actions as old as faming itself. To save...
