They say
read between the lines while reading a newspaper, but the mainstream media is so
tight lipped and it is hard to comprehend the truth in it.
There is an
old Tamil saying “Kovil illada ooril kudi
iruka vendam”; means “Don’t live in the area which doesn’t have a temple.
The reason is in those days the temple gopurams
(tower) were tallest in any given place and so whenever lighting strikes in the
vicinity the tower will take it. There is another reason, the kalasams (finials) on the gopuram were filled with seeds ( Vedai Nellu ). These seeds can be used
to restart the agriculture after a flood or if people had lost all their belongings
stored in the house granary (Always on top portion of the house, called paran).
Such is the importance given to
the seed in olden days. What happened in 1990’s, the seed generation went to
the corporates!
Back in
1990’s a handful of European and US chemical companies like Cargill (Monsanto),
Dupont, Bayer invested heavily on genetically modified (GM) seeds. In 1970’s
Green Revolution was started in India, this in short is usage of more
fertilizers\pesticides and crossbreeding hybrid crops.
As more new chemicals
were released in the market, the same time in 90’s the GM companies introduced genetically
modified (GM) seeds its genes were modified (usually with animal hormones), embedded
with pesticides and chemicals.
The “corporate
seed” and “artificial cross breeding” dismantled the traditional methods; the
policy makers went hand-in-hand. The usual two yields\year (Bogam) became 4 to 5 per year. More
production, more yields, more fertilizers\pesticides, more diseases and more
pharma medicines in the market.
Nature Vs
BioTech companies
An interesting
battle between the nature and biotech companies. Crops were genetically
modified to increase the yield and nutritive values by more
pesticides\fertilizer. Of course initially the pests\insects were eradicated,
but as seasons passed some pests developed “pesticide resistance”, means they
made adjustments to their DNA to resist the pesticides ( Is this evolution ! ).
Now the farmers who bought the 1.1 version of the pesticide have to buy 1.2
version to kill the pests and where do they go to GM companies. (This is like a
software upgrade).
 |
| Protest in west against GM corps and food |
GM Vs
Hybrid
GM crops in
India are only in cotton (Need more info on this), but we might be having GM
foods in the market. From the “green revolution” we got hybrid corps. To note-
there is a difference between GM and hybrid crops, but both use extensive
chemicals and are against natural farming. Example, we get “seedless fruits”,
this is unnatural. It is like humans are born without the capability of
reproduction and if they want to reproduce they have to approach a gene
company!.
 |
| Protest in India aganist Bt Brinjal |
The GM
crops need more chemicals (sometimes these chemicals were induced in the gene itself!)
and more water. These crops are dwarf and the cattle (backbone for our agriculture)
didn’t like to graze on it. (Thousands of
sheep’s died in AP after grazing in the Bt cotton field).
This is like a
chain reaction new farming methods more water, pumps and tractors were used and
the farmer became more depended on the electricity.
Cattle
& Milk
Few years
before doctors used to say milk is good, but now they don’t vouch for it. For
my neighbor’ 1.5 year old kid, their doctor suggested to discontinue milk from
the kid’ food!. In a TV program Neeya Nana Gopinath asked the doctors “why you
guys are not suggesting milk now-a-days?”.
There is a
major difference between the cows, one which got humps and another without
hump. The milk from humped cow is A2 milk and from humpless is A1 milk.
 |
| Humpless Jersey breed |
Humpless
cows are mostly genetically modified or cross breed. They are big in size,
lazy, can’t be used in farming work, falls sick easily, depended on medicines,
short life span, produces greenhouse gas ( one
which causes hole in ozone layer ), nutrient value is less, but gives more
milk.
Humped
cows, native Indian breed, small size, usually dwarf, active, can be used in
farming work, adoptive to tropical climate, zero-maintenance, milk quantity is
less, but its nutritive and good quality.
 |
| Humped Indian cow |
The “White
revolution” caused India to become the highest producer of milk in the world,
surpassing America in 1998. This happened because of the invasion of the new methods
on cross breed cows which are feed with urea, fish-meal, hormones and steroids.
Vargeese Kurien the father of “White
revolution” and MS Swaminathan father of “Green revolution” are the recipient of
Magasaysay Award and also all Padma awards.
Humped cows
are getting extinct in India. But considerable efforts are made by few to keep
it alive. Remember cow-slaughter and beef eating is not encouraged by Hindus.
Iraq, Afghanistan
and Seed
Coming back
to the seed, there seems to be an interesting “connect the point”. Bush said
there are WMD in Iraq, this proven untrue, as it was for oil. War against terrorism
in Afghanistan, instead it was for opium.
Some people even claim it was not only for oil or opium, it was also
seed.
Abu Garib,
this is the Iraqi town where the infamous torture took place by US soldiers. In
the same town there was world’s biggest seed center (Mesapatomia has 8000 years of rich agri-history), which was either
taken down by the allied forces or someone looted it? Afghanistan had a similar
center (Agriculture Research on Dry Areas),
before the invasion to safe guard the seeds, it was taken to “Syria” (Check out
today’ newspaper for the latest happenings in Syria).
In Tamil
there is a saying “Nerupu ellamal
pogaiyadu” means “no smoke without fire”. These international GM companies
and wars might be a smoke.
The game
changer
It is
unimaginable of how much politics is involved in one plate of food and a glass
of milk.
The new
buzzword and the game changer now is “Organic”, which according to the experts
is grown without using chemicals. In Chennai there are few exclusive shops
which sell “organic” products. Is there a way we can check to see all their
products are chemical free or it is just like “mineral” water?
References
and Further reading
www.wikipedia.com
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