Marching in defence of seed sovereignty

New Delhi: A group of farmers from five northern states of India – Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and Rajasthan – ended their 18-day Bija Satyagrah Yatra (Seed Satyagrah March) at Rajghat, Mahatma Gandhi’s memorial in New Delhi on April 12.

The march was organised by a Delhi-based organisation Navdanya Trust, which has been supporting local farmers to promote organic farming. It also has seed banks in various parts of the country, including in Uttarakhand and Bihar.

The purpose of the march was to spread awareness on the need to protect the seed and food sovereignty of Indian farmers, which is under severe attack from multinational companies (MNCs) like Monsanto and Cargill.

These MNCs, along with others, are blamed for pushing the farmers to dependence on genetically engineered patented seeds.

“Monsanto is destroying the seeds in our farms as is evident in the Bt. Cotton belt of Vidharbha [Maharashtra], which has emerged as an epicentre of farmers’ suicide. Monsanto is putting seeds for its own security in the ‘Doomsday Vault’ in the Arctic with other gene giants,” says a statement of the Trust.

The Trust has distributed 42 quintals and 32 varieties of seeds to more than 50,000 farmers.

“The country is being pushed into food slavery with growing dependence on imports. Farmers are committing suicides in large numbers all across the country while the profits of multinational companies are growing in leaps and bounds,” said Vandana Shiva of Navdanya.

“Indian government is not ready to pay a deserving minimum support price to its own farmers but is willing to pay double the price to buy wheat and rice from international market,” said a farmer from Haryana.

The faulty policies of the government are to be blamed for current shortage of food and resultant rising prices, he added.

The yatra had started on March 26 from Mahatma Gandhi’s ashram in Champaran, Bihar. This was the place where Gandhi had launched his satyagrah in 1917 against the forced cultivation of indigo that had left the country’s peasantry in a state of penury and starvation.

Farmers participating in the march vowed that they would save and improve their own indigenous open-pollinated varieties of seeds and that they would not get trapped in MNC-promoted genetically modified seeds, which are non-renewable and expensive.

They also pledged that they would make their villages “GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) Free Zones” and increase food productivity by lowering inputs.