Environment

On Monday, October 10, Alder of Madison, Wisconsin and Toward Freedom board member Rebecca Kemble was arrested at the Standing Rock Reservation where protests are ongoing against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Charged with four misdemeanors, Kemble spent the night in an overcrowded jail. As the situation on the reservation escalates, TF reached out to Kemble to share her experience and get her take on the significance of the Standing Rock protests.

For more than a century, a poison cartel has experimented with and developed chemicals to kill people, first in Hitler's concentration camps and the war, later by selling these chemicals as inputs for industrial agriculture. In a little over half a century, small farmers have been uprooted everywhere, by design, further expanding the toxic fields of  the industrial agriculture.

Ensuring that farmers around the world have access to seeds and seed breeding will be critical to climate change adaptation. Leaving agribusiness firms to set the rules on access to seeds and other genetic materials is a recipe for further corporate concentration and fewer good options for family farmers, local communities, and biodiversity.

In April 2016, Peruvian farmer Máxima Acuña was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize for her environmental advocacy and courageous stand against the Newmont Mining Corporation, the world’s second-largest goldmining company. This is her story.

A great seed and biodiversity piracy is underway and it must be stopped. The privateers of today include not just the corporations — which are becoming fewer and larger through mergers — but also individuals like Bill Gates, the “richest man in the world”.

Just as our Vedas and Upanishads have no individual authors, our rich biodiversity, including seeds, have been evolved cumulatively.