Navdanya

From Jaipur (in the State of Rajastan), I travelled by train, then bus, then vikram and another local bus, and finally by foot to Vandana Shiva's organic farm, Navdanya (in the far northern State of Uttarkhand). She runs a school there, Bija Vidyapeeth, and I came to take the Food Safety and Food Security Course. Really, it was about Global Nutrition, exploring the questions: What is eaten by people around the world, and why? How healthy and stable are our systems of growing and distributing food for people and the planet?

Lecture titles included: The Politics of Food; Health and Nutrition; Genetically Modified Organisms and Food Security; India's Indigenous Food Heritage; Nutritional and Medicinal Plant Gardens; Navdanya: a Response to Threats to Food Systems from Globalisation. We also went on farm walks, visited the seed bank (what a feeling of reverence!) and a local Tibetan Buddhist Stupa, and had cooking sessions where I learned to use the grinding stone, and continued to roll out very imperfect chapatis.

The farm is such a lovely spot. It draws a wonderful international group of students, including Zenobia, my roommate and guru from Oakland, and the rest of the lovely folks in the foto I'm going to try to put up. A couple have standout blogs: From Karen Rideout, a PhD student in Food Systems

and Nathan Leamy, funny guy and Watson fellow spending the year following bread around the world


Nights there were already cold, so Thank You, lovely and talented Paige, I've been wearing my wrist warmers and I love them! Each night, we'd hear dueling muezzim from 3 different mosques nearby. The calls reached a fever pitch and lasted almost all night as Ramzhan came to a close. In the morning Anna would play her harp as we made our way to the palapa in the middle of the dewy fields to practice yoga. Followed by a fantastic breakfast of puffed amaranth cereal. Yes, the place is a little slice of heaven. And I haven't even mentioned the mango orchard.

Our course was lucky to coincide with a special event: Vasundra. 200 organic farmers came from states North and South to celebrate their cause. It was great to interact with them and hear their stories. I'll try to post a picture or two.

When I was back in Andhra Pradesh, working with BREDS, I saw on the local level, the impact that national policies have in the lives of the villagers. Here at Navdanya, I've been learning a bit more about the other end of the equation: the bigger forces behind the Green Revolution, the companies that exploited these technologies, and the alphabet soup of international organizations that propagate them (WTO, IMF, USAID, etc).

The development of hybrid seeds that promised to end hunger with increased yields coincided with the advent of chemical fertilizers. Lucky thing, because they actually don't have increased yield unless they're getting increased amounts of inputs: water, fertilizer and pesticides. Interestingly, the fertilizers came from arms manufacturers looking for something else to do with their product after WW1. They converted their nitrogen-fixing explosives technology to nitrogen-fixing fertilizers. Bombs can still be made from fertilizer (remember Oklahoma City). These companies were very powerful, and continued to be through these new (forced) markets.

Why do I say forced? Well, the Green Revolution technologies were prostelytized round the world. IMF and World Bank were so impressed, in fact, that they made essential aid contingent on adoption of Green Revolution technologies. And the results have been devastation of perfectly adapted indigenous systems of agriculture that usually involved mixed cropping. And many other effects that I've described in previous posts(the environmental effects, the social devastation epitomized by farmer suicides, increased mechanization with reliance on petroleum products and contributions to global warming, as well as displacement of marginal farmers dependent on seasonal agricultural work, etc, etc, etc).

If we compare yields from farmers that practice traditional mixed cropping with those that have adapted highly mechanized, input intensive hybrid crops, we see that overall, mixed cropping actually gets more out of the land per unit of input. The traditional way is better adapted, sustainable, incredibly efficient and just superior. Frequently folks that advocate for these traditional methods get accused of being "against progress, for poverty", but this ignores the profoundly detrimental effects of "progress" in this instance. Vandan Shiva shows clearly in her books how it's the huge MNCs that are actually benefitting (Cargill, Monsanto, etc), while farmers and consumers suffer decreased quality and security of our food and environment.

So, the bottom line is: eat fresh, locally grown food from farmers that farm in an organic/sustainable way. It's good for you, it's good for the farmer, it's good for the planet.

Next stop, Mussoorie. Hopefully I'll learn chotti Hindi.