Stolen Harvest; the Hijacking of the Global Food Supply
by Vandana Shiva
Looking for a fast-paced introduction to globalized agriculture and why intellectual property rights are just as bad for farmers as they can be for music lovers (think DRM, DRM, DRM…)? Here it is. Written eloquently by Vandana Shiva, this concise book covers a lot of ground in very few pages. In college we used to have a “Community Book Project” – this could be ours, readers, so head to your local library or independent bookstore… A rather important book given that current media coverage of the ‘global food crisis’ tends to blame ‘fat people,’ meat-coveting Chinese and Indian middle class people, and pretty much everyone except those who really control what we eat and how it is grown/produced/processed (companies and governments). Essentially, people are being given a raw deal and companies are benefitting from it and then people are taking the blame. Read this and think about how you can think past the easy-out and really get at the social and economic forces behind the ‘global food crisis’ and why maybe, just maybe, biotech isn’t the solution (and, if applied as a corporate-owned solution without incorporating the many other ideas about sustainability and autonomous small-farming, a serious culprit as well).
