After seeing a one-hour documentary on
Cargill on Russian Television, I am at a loss of words to express how I feel
about the pernicious presence of big business in agriculture in the world. It seems
the question of GMOs and corporate level farming will be a major challenge not
only in India but in the whole world. I have written about Monsanto and its activities
with BT Cotton in Vidharbha and other areas in India. What Cargill, a
privately-owned corporation is doing around the world is equally pernicious, to
say the least.
While at it, the multinational corporations
are taking over farming in the world. Will this see the death of the small
farmer, which is the backbone of Indian agriculture, nobody can tell for sure. The
corporations may comply with laws in their home country but abroad they use all
means to subvert and sabotage the local population. Cargill was under a cloud
when they constructed a port in Brazil without Environmental Assessment (EA).
It is also accused of using child labour and intimidation tactics to make small
farmers surrender their land for their huge farms.
See the documentary if you can. Unfortunately
it is not posted on youtube.com. but there’s a link to Indian farmer suicide here.
No comments:
Post a Comment