Ecofeminism and the Sanctity of Seed
Vandana Shiva is a globe-trotting philosopher, environmental activist, and ecofeminist who has authored over 20 books. Born in 1952 in the Himalayas to a family of activists (her grandfather fasted to his death advocating for women’s rights), she earned advanced degrees in quantum
physics and philosophy.
Vandana began her career as a nuclear physicist, but shifted her focus to environmental and cultural activism. An outspoken critic of agricultural monocultures and agribusiness based on genetically modified organisms (GMOs), in 1991 she founded Navdanya, a movement to protect the diversity and integrity of living resources, particularly seeds. In her native India, she has long witnessed the upsurge in farmer suicides (over 270,000 reported cases to date) that spiked with the introduction of GMO cottonseed.
An ecofeminist to the core, Vandana has been at the forefront of promoting organic farming and biodiversity and has established over 34 seed banks in India alone.
Common Ground:
This is our Women issue. Why is the earth given female attributes? For example, we say “Mother Nature.”
Vandana Shiva:
Well, because the earth provides nurturance, sustenance. She is fertile, she renews. Even though mother is hugely degraded, we all are borne of mothers. We’re all borne of Mother Earth. We might not all be mothers, nor want to be reduced to a reproductive machine, but that doesn’t mean we can deny the sources of life.
Can you define ecofeminism for our readers?
When you recognize that the earth is alive, you recognize that nature is intelligent. The precept of ecofeminism is that it helps undo all the constriction of passivity that capitalist patriarchy has given the second sex. Capitalist patriarchy associates creativity with capital, which is a construct. It associates wealth creation with corporations, which is a construct. And sadly, you see in the United States that this construct has been taken over by a handful of men. The reality is that nature creates and people create, but that natural creation has been rendered invisible. We won’t reach equality until we recognize women’s productive creative potential. We won’t have protection of the earth until we realize the creative potential of the earth.
What does it feel like for you personally, viscerally, to be an ecofeminist? Do you believe every woman is innately an ecofeminist?
I believe every human being is innately an ecofeminist. This is not about sex. This is about the cultivation of human values. Now, a lot of people have read essentialism into ecofeminism, and it’s anything but. It’s a political project, a cultural project, a social project. This doesn’t come from biology, this comes from the understanding that the capitalist patriarchy, with its credo of violence and greed and accumulation, has gone so far. Now we need another worldview that happens to be more alive in the sustaining and caring culture of womenkind. For me, ecofeminism is about the value of compassion and caring and solidarity. I believe every human being should share these values and that these become the source of learning for all of humanity.
You hail from a traditional Indian culture, where women are supposed to blend into the wallpaper, to be neither seen nor heard. How has that affected your journey?
For everything you find in India, you find an opposite. While on the one hand, women are supposed to dissolve into the wallpaper, look at our goddesses: Saraswati is the goddess of learning, and Lakshmi is the goddess of abundance and wealth. Durga is the one who cannot be controlled. To me, that is feminism and the essence of Indian culture. How did I come through? I am trained as a physicist. It was easier for me to become a physicist in India than it would have been in the United States. While the traditional structures of oppression are well defined in India, the modern exclusions are still being worked out. For those of us who want to live our lives in freedom, we can do it. That doesn’t mean I haven’t experienced patriarchal oppression in my life; I have. But I have also had three generations of feminist training. My grandfather gave his life for women’s education in India. He went on a fast to start a college for women. He was inspired by Gandhi, and he died in the process of fasting for women’s education. My mother was a feminist long before the word was invented. Nobody could control her. She was her own person. That was my training, so while growing up, I didn’t even imagine that women were different from men.
Have you ever wondered whether your activism might have enjoyed swifter results had you incarnated as a man?
Well, no, I don’t think so. Is this “a man’s world”? It is a man’s world when it comes to destruction and domination. But I work for equality and justice and sustainability, and I think better results come with long-term persistence. Women have longer persistence.
Let’s talk about seeds. Seeds are God’s miracle at the root of everything. You and I, the flora and faun —all life evolves from seeds. Yet it appears that there is a corporate landgrab for ownership of seed.
Can you explain what is going on?
In the last century, a bunch of corporations became rich selling chemicals to kill people during wars. After the wars, they turned to agrichemicals. In the ’70s, when scientists learned to splice genes into recombinant DNA, those same scientists applied a moratorium on their own research, but the companies said, “Wow, we could make so much money if we use this knowhow to control the seeds.” They jumped into genetic engineering to create the tools for owning life. I was at the meeting in 1987 where they said this clearly. I followed Monsanto as they realized they could make lots of money selling chemicals, but could make even more by forcing all farmers into the market every year by making it illegal for them to save and own seed.
That’s the approach they’ve implemented for the last 20 years. And that is why 25 years ago I started Navdanya, to defend seed freedom, to defend diversity of life into the future, and for every farmer to be free to save and exchange seeds. We refuse to obey patent and seed laws that make such seed saving and sharing a crime. It’s an act of noncooperation Gandhistyle, and that’s why this year we’re globalizing this campaign. This is very important.
There is an epidemic of farmers committing suicide in India, often bringing their whole families with them.
Is there a connection to GMO crops?
Monsanto came into India, trying to bring its genetically modified cotton, but because they
came in illegally, they couldn’t introduce the crop in 1998. But they started buying up Indian companies and pushed hybrids whose seeds couldn’t be saved; cottonseed had to be bought every year. The suicides started when Monsanto began to monopolize the cottonseed supply.
Suicides accelerated in 2002 when Monsanto was approved to sell genetically modified cotton. Today 95 percent of all cottonseed sold in India is owned and controlled by Monsanto, with the price of seeds having jumped 8,000 percent. This is the reason farmers are in debt, and indebted farmers are committing suicide.
The figure is up to 270,000 in the last 15 years,
concentrated in India’s cotton belt.
So these companies effectively have
blood on their hands?
I think they have engaged in a genocide, and
they’re definitely engaging in ecocide, if you
think of all the species they’re killing—besides
the crops themselves. Round-Up Ready soya is
both ecocide and genocide. We just had longterm trial research from France showing cancer in rats. So they’re putting farmers into debt,
but they’re also killing us through unknown
hazards. Their other crime is in preventing societies from sharing the knowledge and the research on GMOs. That is why the GMO labeling issue of California is vital, because it shows
the power of these corporations, in terms of
destroying our democratic freedoms and our
basic fundamental rights.
What about the argument that GMOs
feed the world?
Unfortunately, the evidence is not there. If you
look at the crops that are produced: Round-Up
Ready soya, Bt cotton, GE corn, GE canola, in
comparison to the equivalent traditional varieties, genetic engineering doesn’t increase the
yield. We have a report written last year called
The GMO Emperor Has No Clothes, which is
a country-by-country report written by scientists and people working on these issues. Nowhere has yield increased. Worse, the only two
applications they have managed to give us in
two years are two toxic applications: a Bt toxin,
which means you put a toxic gene in a plant to
produce its own pesticide. The second is herbicide resistance, which means you put a toxic
gene into the plant to resist herbicide. One was
supposed to control pests, the other was supposed to control weeds. One has given us super pests; the other has given us super weeds.
Now Monsanto is asking American farmers
who use Round-Up to use Agent Orange because Round-Up is failing. It’s a totally crazed
technology if you look on the ground and not
at the company’s public relations spin.
Hasn’t Bill Gates and his foundation
weighed in, in favor of GMOs?
He has. But there are questions. One is “how
nonprofit is this nonprofit?” After all, his foundation has invested in Monsanto, so there’s a
deep conflict of interest. In reality, there is a
convergence of information technology and
biotechnology. The new patents are not being
taken by pushing genes from unrelated organisms into plants. The new patents, including
those for climate-resilient crops—more than
1,500 of them—are taken by what is called genomic mapping. This is done through computers. They take the farmers’ original seeds—for
example, the ones that have already been identified to be drought tolerant—and then capture
their genetic information. They take say 1,000
drought-tolerant seeds and read their genome.
They guess which part of that genome is responsible for drought tolerance, and then they
patent it without having done anything.
So this is a gamble. I call it a genetic casino, where Bill Gates has bet heavily. That
is why he is so committed to pushing the
Green Revolution of Africa against the will
of Africans, against the will of the farmers,
and of course they have bought off a few
governments and a few scientists who are in
their field. But I really do believe Bill Gates
needs to be a little bit more humble. He
needs to listen more closely to farmers, and
he needs to learn a little more about real
agriculture that is solving the problems of
the world, including agri-ecological farming, which has tripled production in Africa
according to the United Nations. Our work
at Navdanya shows a doubling and tripling
of production by using biodiversity. Bill
Gates needs to be a little less arrogant and a
little more humble.
You’re a thorn in the side of opposing
corporate interests; has push ever come
to shove?
A lot of push but I don’t let it become shove. I
have been threatened; I don’t get threatened.
In bygone years an outspoken woman
like you would be labeled a witch and
burned at the stake.
Yeah. But even today, there’s a different kind of
witch-hunting going on, which is labeling every
activist a terrorist. If you look at every country,
there is an amazing movement of women activism. In South India, fisherwomen are fighting nuclear power plants. They’re being called
terrorists; they have sedition cases against
them. It’s a modern kind of witch hunt.
Do you think you’re fighting evil in some
regard? And if so, doesn’t that frighten
you?
I am fighting violence, and I am fighting group
destruction and the privatization of the earth
and for her biodiversity. I recognize it clearly.
I am fighting lies and dishonesty, which I can
see in figures, and I can see in my life’s experience. I can see them with my eyes when I visit
the Bt cotton fields or when I visit a farmer’s
home where he committed suicide. I think this
complex of tricks is evil, but it’s not a simplistic
notion of evil. It’s a concrete notion—concrete
and multifaceted. The mere idea of wanting to
own and control life on earth—what could be
more devilish than that?
Next month, Californians will vote on
the labeling of GMOs. Are you surprised
that the whole Prop. 37 initiative was
sparked by one independent woman,
Pamm Larry, sometimes known as “the
grandma from Chico?”
I’m not surprised, because every big movement has started with one courageous person.
After all, the civil rights movement was helped
to start by Rosa Parks. In my region of the Himalayas, where the Chipko movement [that
practiced the Gandhian methods of satyagraha and nonviolent resistance through the
act of hugging trees to protect them from being felled] began, one woman got up and said,
“You can’t cut our trees.” So it takes one person
of courage to start. When people are feeling
oppressed, it takes one action to start catalyzing and awakening freedom from fear.
Do you call this oppression a patriarchy?
I’ve called it a capitalist patriarchy, which is
different from traditional patriarchy because
traditional patriarchy ruled through religion
and culture. It was at the superstructure level.
Capitalist patriarchy is a marriage of capitalism and patriarchy; it rules through control
of the earth, through resources, production
systems, and our lives. It is a brutally material
domain, which was not so much the case prior.
In the traditional patriarchy, women were free
to save their seeds; women were the original
farmers. Even today, in traditional agricultures,
most farmers are women. But under capitalist
patriarchy, women disappear as farmers and
then they disappear as a gender. Thirty million
girls haven’t been allowed to be born—there’s
a convergence of capitalist patriarchy.
I see the analogy of crop monocultures being a male premise, linear, like
a blade, whereas biodiversity is circular,
female—the chalice.
For me, there is a deep, deep violent patriarchal
structure in chemical monocultures because
the chemicals come from a warlike mind. A
monocultural mindset is militarized and can’t
cooperate with species; it can’t cooperate with
the earth. Diversity cultivates the freedom of
life, which is what ecofeminism is about. So it’s
about the feminine coming alive in all species.
Your country is affectionately known as
Mother India. Why that name?
Most countries are actually mothers. Only a few
became fatherland. Germany is a fatherland.
I know a saintly humanitarian—a woman from India whose life is dedicated
to bringing more female nurturing values into society. She believes that principles of motherhood, notably compassion, need to be rebalanced to offset the
male-dominated ethos.
We don’t have to be biological mothers. All of
us can be caring and bring these motherly values into life. A father can be motherly. A father
can also be negligent. It’s an error to mix up
the biology of motherhood with the culture of
caring. This blocks humanity from leaping into
the next transformation.
How were you affected by the women’s
liberation movement of the ’70s?
Like I said, I was born into a feminist home,
so nothing I learned in the ’70s was anything
I hadn’t already learned from my mother and
grandfather. But some writings, of course,
were highly influential for every woman of my
generation, and I would point out particularly
Simone de Beauvoir.
How do you assess the general status
of women in India today? Has India enjoyed the equivalent of a women’s liberation movement?
The new change of globalization, these new
trends of commoditization of life, have actually polarized Indian society. Some women are
doing extremely well. Our banks are often run
by women in India. It’s fascinating to see them.
None of them wear suits; they all wear beautiful saris, and they’re very, very lovely and
graceful.
But on the other hand, I mentioned to you
the 30 million girls who weren’t allowed to be
born because of female feticide. We’ve had biases before, but girls were needed in society,
and girls were part of society. You bring in herbicides, and you don’t need women in the field
for weeding. You start changing agricultural
operations, and women get displaced. But
worse, you introduce a culture of commodification where everything has a price and nothing
has a value. Women get devalued more than
they were earlier. We are seeing more violence
against women. The entire consumer culture,
where “everything is for sale” has unleashed an
epidemic of rich. The worst female feticide is
in the capital of Delhi and in the richer areas,
not in the poorer and more traditional parts of
India. Some women have gained hugely; other
women have lost hugely, including the 30 million who weren’t allowed to be born.
How did the trajectory take you from
being a quantum physicist to becoming
an ecofeminist seed crusader?
I was working on a career in the nuclear establishment in India. I was working on experimental fast breeder reactors as a trainee in the
early ’70s. I shifted to quantum theory and
found it so stimulating that I imagined living
my entire life doing that work.
However, as a student I got involved in the
ecofeminist Chipko movement. I used to volunteer at every invitation because I had grown up in the forest of the Himalayas. It was my
home, and I was hurt by seeing trees disappear.
So I used to spend my life as a physicist and as
an ecological activist.
And then I started doing studies: one to stop
mining in Doon Valley and another about eucalyptus monoculture. It was in 1984 that a
major shift brought me to the seed issue. That
was the year we had the world’s worst industrial disaster, in Bhopal. This is the city where
the Union Carbide plant leaked poisonous
fumes. Two thousand people died that night
and 30,000 since. We are releasing a book this
month called Poisons in Our Food linking pesticides to what’s happening to society, including the Bhopal disaster.
But that same year, the state of Punjab was
in a state of war. Punjab is where chemicals
were first introduced in the name of the Green
Revolution, which is what Bill Gates is trying to do for Africa under the Alliance for the
Green Revolution in Africa. The Green Revolution has been given the Nobel Peace Prize,
but Punjab was a land at war. Twenty thousand
people were killed in Punjab.
So I basically started asking some very simple questions. If the Green Revolution was
given a peace prize, why is there violence? So I
studied what the Green Revolution was. That’s
how I figured out the background of these corporations in war and how the Green Revolution was forced on India. I wrote a book called
The Violence of the Green Revolution and
started getting invited to all kinds of meetings,
including an early meeting in ’87 on biotechnology. The industry was there. They hadn’t
commercialized any GMO crop then, but they
were starting to buy up venture capital firms
and researchers and scientists.
And that’s where they laid out their game
plan. They said “we will have an international
law on patenting rights. We can only do that
if we genetically modify seeds so that we can
pretend we’ve done something new.” And they
proceeded to buy out all the companies in order to be able to operate on the needed scale.
Well, I heard them, and I said, “My God, they
now want to establish—physically now—an
empire over all life on earth.”
What can you do with this level of power
working? I thought of Gandhi, and I thought of
the spinning wheel that Gandhi started to spin
to bring down the British Empire, and I said,
“The seed will be the spinning wheel of our
times; I will start saving seed.” I knew nothing
about seeds, nor what to do. I learned what
others taught, about biodiversity and building seed banks. We set up Navdanya and more
than 100 seed banks. This campaign of seed
freedom, I believe, is going to empower so
many more people around the world to know
this is something they can do.
Gandhi said, “As long as unjust laws exist
and brute laws exist, slavery will exist.” So we
have a duty to not cooperate—which is why
Martin Luther King led the civil rights movement. In every period of closure of freedom, of
dictatorship, we have to say no to unjust law.
What motivates and inspires you? What
brings you delight?
What brings me delight is life. Look how generous life is—a little seed of rice that can be
planted gives you thousands of seeds. We have
650 rices growing on the Navdanya farm this
season. The maize, the millets—this ability of
life to renew and multiply gives me deep delight. Diversity gives me delight because to me
it’s freedom. People being free gives me deep
delight. But also people having the courage to
say no to injustice gives delight. That’s why I
was thrilled when the “Occupy” movement
started in the United States.
I particularly liked your “Occupy the Food
Supply” slogan. So what discourages you?
I never get discouraged by anything because I
just sort of reenergize myself. What discourages me is petty mindedness when people
could be doing much more together. Blocking
the possibility for solidarity and cooperation
because of the small mind.
Is there any special message you’d like
to share with Common Ground readers
by the bay?
Common ground is what the future’s about. We
must enlarge and defend our common ground
by reclaiming our commons. That is the future
for both life and freedom. At a time when British colonialism was rising, it was land that was
being enclosed. Today the seed is being enclosed
and science is being enclosed. Democracies are
being enclosed. Our thoughts and knowledge
are being enclosed. Denial of labeling is an enclosure in terms of the right to know. So defend
the earth, your common ground.