Seventeen or more secret applications have been made to India's GMO regulators for trials and release of GM crops including rice, wheat, chickpeas, brinjal and mustard, write Colin Todhunter & Oliver Tickell. In a violation of the law regulators have released no information about the applications, raising fears that India's first GMOs will be released with no health, safety or environmental testing.
… Rice, wheat, mustard ... India drives forward … for trials and release of GM crops including rice, wheat, chickpeas, brinjal and mustard, … other major crops including staple foods like rice, wheat and chickpeas. According to …
Perhaps all the 'do gooders' busy forcing industrial models of agriculture onto poor but independent African farmers really do think they are helping them, writes Colin Todhunter. But if so they are deeply deluded. All they will achieve is the takeover of export-oriented agribusiness and GMOs, the destruction of agroecological farming systems, and a future of debt and landlessness.
… Farming Africa GMOs Nutrition Health Finance rice-farmer-burundi-cut.jpg Perhaps all the … sweet potato, pigeon pea, cowpea, banana and rice, which corporations are attempting to … As is the case with the controversial Golden Rice research and development project, the …
Bhaskar Save, the 'Gandhi of natural farming', died last year after a lifetime of organic growing and determined campaigning against the destruction of India's traditional, sustainable agriculture, writes Colin Todhunter. His 2006 open letter, published here, sets out a devastating critique of industrial agriculture and its impacts, and an eloquent and timely agroecological manifesto.
… scientists' like you. When a grain of rice can reproduce a thousand-fold within … erosion under heavy monsoon rains. How dwarf rice triggered a cycle of ruin and destruction … jowar or bajra (native millets). While rice is suitable for rain-fed farming, its …
The mainstream British media have long acted as cheerleaders for GMOs, but none quite so much as The Times and its disgraced correspondent Matt Ridley, writes Colin Todhunter. His most recent article on the topic is a strange concoction of misrepresentations, falsehoods and blunders dressed up as science, and reflects both his ignorance of the real facts and his deep ideological commitment to corporate profit and power.
… Greenpeace still campaigns against Golden Rice , a vitamin-enhanced variety that backers … opinion and addresses the issue of Golden Rice that Ridley also misrepresents in his …
The more the GM industry claims to enjoy the support of 'science', the more it resorts to emotive attack and insult against its opponents, while doing its best to suppress the many scientific truths that are not to its liking, writes Colin Todhunter. In truth it is driven by profit, politics and ideology, and is based on fraud and the capture and corruption of governments and regulators.
… over the delay in the production of Golden Rice. Mirroring the propaganda of the GM sector, Roberts says though Golden Rice became a reality in February 1999 and … things wrong .) Structural inequality, oil prices, debt repayment, trade policy, commodity …
Agroecology is key to retaking control over food, farming and land from the 'monstrous machine' of agribusiness, biotech, big finance and 'free trade', writes Colin Todhunter, as it represents a truly viable alternative to agriculture for corporate profit. But such are the powers ranged against the world's small farmers that it must be supported by a broad-based, global people's movement.
… monocultures of a few cash-crops like wheat, rice, or sugar, rather than their traditional …
India's Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee stands accused of Contempt of Court for evading Supreme Court orders to carry out full biosafety tests on GM crops and publish its data, writes Colin Todhunter. The immediate issue is a herbicide tolerant GM mustard now approved for large scale trials, while earlier findings remain under an impenetrable veil of official secrecy.
… his work here . Also on The Ecologist : ' Rice, wheat, mustard ... India drives forward …
Global oilseed, agribusiness and biotech corporations are engaged in a long term attack on India's local cooking oil producers, writes Colin Todhunter. In just 20 years they have reduced India from self-sufficiency in cooking oil to importing half its needs. Now the government's unlawful attempts to impose GM mustard seed threaten to wipe out a crop at the root of Indian food and farming traditions.
… soybean meal is being contemplated at cheap prices from South America, China and USA, which … permitted, with a low customs duty. Soybean prices in the exporting countries are between … provides assured procurement and assured prices to farmers. The fact that GM is not …
Organic farming produces more nutritious food than chemical agriculture, writes Colin Todhunter, while sustaining soils and building organic matter. And we know this from real, peer-reviewed scientific studies - unlike the pseudo-science touted at us by the self-interested advocates of industrial agribusiness.
… monocultures of a few cash-crops like wheat, rice, or sugar, rather than their traditional …
The world is in the grip of a structural war against people, land, economies and ecosystems, writes Colin Todhunter. It is being waged by a quartet of organised criminal interests bent on monopolizing energy, money, food and violence across the globe. But a deep-rooted resistance against their 'neoliberal' doctrine of death and destruction is fighting back.
… are agro-ecological approaches like system of rice intensification, non-pesticidal …
India's food system, essentially clean just a generation ago, has been comprehensively contaminated with sugar, bad fats, synthetic additives, GMOs and pesticides under the country's neoliberal 'great leap forwards', writes Colin Todhunter. The result? a surge in obesity, diabetes and cancer incidence, but no let-up in the under-nutrition of those too poor to join in the over-consumption.
… These products are then sold at lower prices than domestic meat. There is therefore … you serve up a good old 'wholesome' meal of rice and various vegetables, you could take in …