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Subject: Shiva / On Pests, Weeds
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Today's commentary:
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2002-11/30shiva.cfm
==================================
ZNet Commentary
On Pests, Weeds And Terrorists:
Weaving Harmony Through Diversity December 01, 2002
By Vandana Shiva
Lack of harmony characterizes our
times -- There is disharmony between humans and nature, between religions,
between cultures, between genders.
Non-sustainability, injustice, war are different expressions of
disharmony which has its roots in a world view that blocks out relationships
and essentialises characteristics and properties that are relational
properties.
Insects become pests in
agriculture when monocultures encourage an increase in their populations, and
chemical farming and industrial breeding produce plants vulnerable to
pests. Pests are a product of a
disharmony within plants and in ecosystems. Weaving harmony in agriculture
implies bringing back the diversity which creates pest - predator balance and
organic methods of breeding and production which produce resilient plants.
However, in the dominant paradigm
of agriculture, pests are not seen a product of disharmony but as reductionist,
essentialised, absolutised undesirable entities which must be exterminated with
the most potent and toxic methods. This
non-relational absolutised approach aggravates the problem instead of solving
it because it deepens the disharmony which creates pests instead of recovering
harmony, the only lasting solution for preventing insects from becoming
`pests'.
The violence of the inappropriate
methods is justified by essentialsing "pestiness", creating images of
fear of attack. Fear of attack calls
for a counterattack, even if the pesticides kill people instead of bringing
down pest problems.
While pests are not a problem in
ecologically balanced agriculture, in an unstable agricultural system, they
pose a serious challenge to agronomy.
The metaphor for pesticide use in agriculture then becomes war, as an
introduction to a textbook on pest-management illustrates:
The war against pests is a
continuing one that man must fight to ensure his survival. Pests (in particular insects) are our major
competitors on each and for the hundreds of thousands of years of our existence
they have kept our numbers low and, on occasions, have threatened extinction.
Throughout the ages man has lived
at a bare subsistence level because of the onslaught of pests and the diseases
they carry. It is only in comparatively recent times that this picture has
begun to alter as, in certain parts of the world, we have gradually gained the
upper hand over pests.
The war story described some of
the battles that have been fought and the continuing guerilla warfare, the type
of enemies we are facing and some of their manoeuvres for survival; the weapons
we have at our command ranging from the rather crude ones of the "bow and
arrow" age of pest control to the sophisticated weapons of the present
day, including a look into the future of some "secret weapons" that
are in the trial stages, the gains that have been made; and some of the
devastation which is a concomitant of war.1
But the `war' with pests is
unnecessary. The most effective pest
control mechanism is built into the ecology of crops, partly by ensuring
balanced pest-predator relationships, through crop diversity and partly by building
up resistance in plants. Organic
manuring is now being shown to be critical to such a building up of resistance.
The Green Revolution strategy
fails to see the ecology of pests as well as that of pesticides because it is
based on subtle balances within the plant and invisible relationships of the
plant to its environment. It therefore
simplistically reduces the management of pests to the violent use of
poisons. It also fails to recognize
that pests have natural enemies with the unique property of regulating pest
populations.
In de Bach's view,
The philosophy of pest control by
chemicals has been to achieve the highest kill possible, and per cent mortality
has been the main yardstick in the early screening of new chemicals in the
lab. Such an objective, the highest
kill possible, combined with ignorance of or disregard for, nontarget insects
and mites is guaranteed to be the quickest road to upset resurgences and the
development of resistance to pesticides.2
De Bach's research on DDT-induced
pest increase showed that these increases could be anywhere from thirty-six
fold to over twelve hundred-fold. The
aggravation of the problem is directly related to the violence unleashed on the
natural enemies of pests. Reductionist
science which fails to perceive the natural balance, also fails to anticipate
and predict what will happen when that balance is disturbed.
While pesticides are creating
more pests by increasing disharmony, they are killing people who were to be
protected by pesticides. Three thousand
people died in one night in Bhopal, thirty thousand people have died since then
because of a leak of a toxic gas from the plant of Union Carbide now owned by
Dow.3
Thirty thousand people were
killed in Punjab due to terrorism resulting from the non-sustainability of
chemical agriculture, named the Green Revolution.4, twenty thousand farmers
have committed suicide by drinking the pesticides that got them into debt 5
As our generation of pesticides
based on a war mentality fail, a new generation is being offered in the same
reductionist approach, with the new techniques of genetic engineering. Putting Bt. toxins into plants to control
the Bollworm is one of the two dominant products of genetic engineering in
agriculture.
However, Bt. crops create pests,
they do not control them. The
experience of Bt. cotton in the first year of its commercial planting in India
confirms that an approach that deepens disharmony instead of recovering harmony
will deepen the pest problems arising from disharmony.
In three major states Bt. cotton
has been wiped out completely leaving farmers in great economic and livelihood
crises. Not only have new pests and diseases emerged, the Bt. cotton has failed
to even prevent bollworm attack for which it has been designed. While Bt.
cotton is sold as pest resistant seed in India, it has proved to be more
vulnerable to pest and diseases than the traditional and conventional
varieties.
Madhya Pradesh, the heart of the
cotton-growing belt in India, witnessed total failure of genetically engineered
Bt. cotton. The farmers of Khargoan district where Bt. is a 100% failure are up
in arms against Monsanto-Mahyco that supplied these GM seeds and are demanding
compensation from the company for the failure of their crop. The failure of the
Bt. cotton has devastated the farmers since they have spent five to six times
to buy seeds of Bt. than the normal seed. The economics that was worked out by
the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), Genetic Engineering
Approval Committee and Monsanto-Mahyco to promote this unsustainable technology
has turned out to be untrue.
Bt. cotton has been afflicted
with the 'leaf curl virus' in the whole of northern states of India. Dr
Venugopal, ex-project coordinator of the Central Institute for Cotton Research
(CICR), Coimbatore told Business Line that while some of the private hybrids
and varieties released earlier were resistant to LCV, Bt cotton was found
susceptible to LCV.
In Maharashtra, the adjoining
state of Madhya Pradesh, the same story has been repeated. In Vidarbha,
primarily cotton growing area in Maharashtra, Bt. cotton crop has failed
miserably. The first GE crop has been failed in 30,000 hectares in this
district alone, completely devastating the already poor farming community. The
farmers of the area are demanding a compensation of Rs. 5000 million (500
crores rupees) to meet their economic loss lest they would take a legal action
against the Government of Maharashtra and Monsanto-Mahyco for allowing sale of
inadequately tested GM seeds.
The Bt. cotton crop in Vidarbha
has been badly affected by the root-rot disease, a disease of roots. It is
believed that this disease is caused due to wrong selection of Bt genes
developed in America and brought to India. Many farmers have recorded only upto
50% germination of seeds and many others had poor germination, which is
suspected to be caused by both, drought and poor seed quality. While other
cotton varieties have also been adversely affected by the drought, they report
a failure rate of only around 20%.
President of the Vidarbha Jan
Andolan Samiti, Mr. Kishore Tiwari, gave a legal notice to Ministry of
Agriculture demanding the recovery of loss of Rs. 500 (5000 million rupees)
crore incurred by the farmers due to sowing of Bt. cotton seeds.
The main idea behind approving
genetically engineered Bt. cotton as a commercial crop was that this would
increase farmers' income by reducing expenditure on chemical pesticides, which
accounts for 70-80% of the total expenditure on hybrid cotton due to the heavy
infestation of pest, mainly American Bollworm in last 3-4 years and the
increased evolution of resistance to the chemical pesticides.
However, in Gujarat there is a
heavy infestation of bollworm on the Bt. cotton in the districts of Bhavanagar,
Surendranagar and Rajkot. Initially Bt. Cotton was found resistant to Bollworms
in the early phase of plant growth, but as soon as the formation of boll has
started, the worms started attacking them. The Department of Agriculture,
Government of Gujarat has written to the Gujarat Agricultural University to
submit a status report providing detailed information about the kind and
intensity of the damage.
Instead of yields going up they
hae come down. Instead of farmers
incomes increasing by Rs. 10,000/per acre, farmers are running losses of Rs.
6000-7000/per acre.
GMOs are creating superpests
instead of controlling pests.
Just as pests are products of
disharmony, plants become weeds which threaten crops in a context of imbalance.
Planting mixtures, rotating crops in effect, preserving biodiversity is the
most effective approach in preventing plants from becoming
"weeds". Instead, the
reductionist, essentialised approach declares useful plants as essentially
weeds and creates a toxic arsenal for the extermination of biodiversity. Instead of approaching weed control in the
context of creating harmony, a war is declared against "weeds" --
often plants which are used by Third World women for food, medicine, fodder.
The most widespread application
of genetic engineering in agriculture is herbicide resistance i.e. the breeding
of crops to be resistant to herbicides.
Monsanto's Round up Ready Soya and Cotton are examples of this
application. When introduced to Third World farming systems, this will lead to
increased use of agri-chemicals thus increasing environmental problems. It will also destroy the biodiversity that
is the sustenance and livelihood base of rural women. What are weeds for Monsanto are food, fodder and medicine for
Third World Women.
In Indian agriculture women use
150 different species of plants for vegetables, fodder and health care. In West Bengal 124 'weed" species
collected from rice fields have economic importance for farmers. In the Expana region of Veracruz, Mexico,
peasants utilize about 435 wild plant and animal species of which 229 are
eaten.
Monocultures and monopolies
symbolize a masculinization of agriculture.
The war mentality underlying military-industrial agriculture is evident
from the names given to herbicides which destroy the economic basis of the
survival of the poorest women in the rural areas of the Third World. Monsanto's herbicides are called "Round
up", "Machete", "Lasso" American Home Products which
has merged with Monsanto calls its herbicides `Pentagon', `Prowl', `Scepter',
`Squadron', `Cadre', `Lightening', `Assert', `Avenge'. This is the language of war, not
sustainability. Sustainability is based
on peace with the earth.
After monocultures created weeds,
and weedicides increased their resilience, genetic engineering of "herbicide
resistant crops" is being offered as the new miracle of weed control. However, GMOs are creating super weeds
instead of reducing weeds.
What is happening in nature is
happening in society. Economic globalization is creating economic inequality and
exclusion. It is increasing inequality,
disharmony and conflicts in society.
Just as insects and plants are not essentially pests and weeds (under
all conditions) but are transformed into pests and weeds because of ecological
imbalance, people are not essentially terrorists and extremists. Terrorists are
made, not born. Terrorists are the
symptoms of societies in imbalance due to injustice, exclusion and
inequality.
Creating sustainability and
justice is the only effective strategy for controlling the emergence of
terrorism. The war mentality has failed
to reduce pests and weeds in agriculture.
The war mentality will fail in preventing youth from becoming extremists
and terrorists. It will in fact create
more resilient super terrorists just as pesticides, herbicides and genetic
engineering have created super pests and super weeds.
It is time to learn from the
mistakes of monocultures of the mind and the essentialising violence of
reductionist thought. It is time to
turn to diversity for healing.
Diversity creates harmony, and
harmony creates beauty, balance, bounty and peace in nature and society, in
agriculture and culture, in science and in politics.
The violence and disharmony in
our world today that threatens both the ecological and social web of life is
arising from the destruction of diversity - and diversity is being destroyed
because the dominant worldview based on "monocultures of the mind"
sees diversity as a threat, and its eradication as the pre-condition for peace
and security. However, the destruction
of diversity creates disharmony and instead of creating peace and security, it
deepens violence, discordance and insecurity.
References:
1. W. W. Fletcher, "The Pest War", Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1974, p1
2. De Bach, "Biological Control by Natural Enemies",
London: Cambridge University Press, 1974
3. Dominique Lepierre, "5 minutes after midnight in
Bhopal"
4. Vandana Shiva, "The Violence of Green Revolution: Third
World Agriculture, Ecology and Politics", Zed Books, London and The Other
India Book Store, Goa, 1991
5. Vandana Shiva, Afsar H. Jafri, Ashok Emani, Manish Pande,
"Seeds of Suicide: The Ecological and Human Costs of Globalizatin of
Agriculture", Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, New
Delhi, 2000