Voracious » Activism

Cambodia: Portrait of Hunger

Tasha — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 11:45:07 +0000

We are now in the midst of the 2nd World Hunger Souljourn! This time we have a whole team of writers sharing their world hunger journey, it is so exciting to see a movement being built from the ground up. I hope you’ve been following along over at Conducive Chronicle.

Here is my second article – enjoy!

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Today is my second day exploring world hunger as part of Conducive Chronicle’s 21 Days for Hunger. Last May, when I did my first world hunger series, I mimicked the diet of the world’s hungriest people for the entire seven days of my journey. I tried, in my own small way, to get a glimpse into chronic hunger. While I found that 1,000 calories a day left me weak and exhausted and overwhelmingly hungry, it soon became abundantly clear that my experiment would never give me the insight that I was hoping for. With the unavoidable knowledge that I could quit, walk into my overstuffed kitchen, and eat at anytime, I could never even come close to understanding the true horrors of chronic hunger. For most of us, chronic hunger is a distant thing that happens to distant people. I know in my life it isn’t something I’m confronted with on a daily basis, except through books, articles, and news reports. And yet, nearly 1 billion people live with hunger every single day. 1 out of 6 human beings on our planet does not have enough to eat, even while there is more than enough food for everyone. Nearly 1 billion people…So many people who know hunger, who understand its depths, its terrors, its many faces, and yet, I don’t know if I’ve ever heard anyone tell their story. I knew I could continue going over the facts and statistics and mind-numbing numbers day after day, but I felt that I would never be able to do more than gloss the surface. No report I could quote or paper I could cite would ever be able to give us more than a glimpse into real hunger. I wanted more than that; I wanted to hear directly from a person who had suffered from chronic hunger. I wanted to hear their story. Today I will share my interview with Ms. Pry Phally Phuong, the director of Building Community Voices, a capacity building and community networking NGO in Cambodia, as well as a survivor of chronic hunger under the Pol Pot Khmer Rouge Regime.

Asia and the Pacific are home to over half of the world’s population and nearly 2/3 of the world’s hungry people. There are 642 million people in Asia and the Pacific struggling with chronic hunger, and Cambodia’s malnutrition rates are among the highest in South East Asia. After the violence of the Vietnam War displaced millions of Cambodians and left the country in turmoil and conflict created famine, the brutal Khmer Rouge took power in 1975. The new regime emptied the cities and sent the people to work in the fields, determined to cast aside all modern progress and Western influence, and create an agrarian utopia emulating the 11^th century. Nearly 1 million Cambodians, 1 out of 8 people, died under the Khmer Rouge through executions, overwork, starvation, or disease.

In 1991, the United Nations was given the power to enforce a ceasefire after a comprehensive peace settlement was reached. However, the violence and tragedy of the Khmer Rouge years fractured Cambodian society, killed entire generations of people, and set the nation’s progress back decades. The International Food Policy Research Institute has named Cambodia one of the world’s 12 hunger hotspots to highlight the massive rate of food insecurity the country faces. The average life expectancy in Cambodia is only 56 years, with people dying from easily preventable and treatable diseases that have been virtually wiped out in much of the rest of the world. The Cambodian government estimates that only 29 percent of their citizens have access to safe drinking water. Only 57 percent of Cambodian women can read and write, and more than half of all children are not attending school in order to work. This kind of poverty is difficult to overcome. It creates a legacy of hunger and impoverishment, passed down from generation to generation like an unwanted inheritance. To further understand chronic hunger, and the lingering, devastating aftereffects such devastation can have for a country and its people, I turned to Ms. Pry Phally Phuong.

Burge: Could you provide a biography of yourself, your background, where you are from, where you work, what your work’s focus is?

Pry Phally Phuong: I am Ms. Pry Phally Phuong. I have a big family with five brothers and four sisters, I am the forth child in the family, and I was born in Seim Reap Province, Cambodia. I holds Master’s Degree of Business Administration in the field of General Management at Institute of Business Education. Since 1979, I worked as a teacher in Primary school, but after that in 1992 I had worked as a part –time job with one Organization known as Australian People for Health Education and Development Abroad (APHEDA) on the program of Hospitality. It was the program for youth girls who could not get get a chance to learn in the University, and the other part time job was with the Government (teacher). From 1995- 2000 I started to work full time with APHEDA by teaching accountant to the youth girls and built the capacity of the teachers in NGOs or Women Association in Provinces who got funding from APHEDA. In 2000- 2005, I moved to work for Oxfam Hong Kong and after that this NGO had changed the name to be Womyn’ s Agenda for Change (WAC), and I was responsible for the speak out project with grass root people. I organized and established the Sex Workers Association which called Women’ s Network for Unity (WNU) to focus on Sex Worker Empowerment Project with success, and in 2005-2007 I was in charge of the project of Violence Against Women. And in 2008 up to now I moved to work with a new NGO called Building Community Voices (BCV) as the Director of BCV. BCV is a local NGO that works for providing networking, capacity building and community media to support Cambodia communities and community mobilizing so that they can speak to each other and with outside stakeholders in order to have a vibrant and proud Cambodian civil society.

Burge: What circumstances led to you facing chronic hunger?

Pry Phally Phuong: On 17^th April, 1975, all the Cambodian were evacuated from their house to live in rural areas or outside the city by saying that they need to rearrange the city again, and we can come back after one week, but, of course, they dismissed people from cities (24 provinces and cities) to stay in the countryside. On that time they divided Cambodian into 3 categories :

1- Old people (people who used to stay in the liberated zone forever before or from 1970-1975.)

2- Middle people (people who in that zone for some time and moved to live in the city and came back to that place before 1975.)

3- New people (people who were dismissed from city to stay in that places after 1975.)

I am and other who were evicted from cities in April 1975 were considered as the New People which the Old People had blame us that we were the people who did not do nothing, just bring the empty stomach to eat and destroy their properties or they said that we were the capitalists who could not do anything besides eating.

During that time, they had separated all members of New People families to live in different places by dividing into several groups such as mobile child groups (from 6 – 15 years old), mobile youth groups (from 16 years old up), villagers ( people who married already). The two first groups lived in the camps or centers while the last groups lived in their house.

The mobile youth group had to stay far away from the villages and worked very hard with the mobile areas for building dams or plantation rice in the new farms in the forest or in the areas near the mountains.

The villagers need to work in the villages, but they could not stay with their children who were six years old or up, because this children need to stay in the shelter for the mobile children group and they had to get up from 3 or 4 am and walked to the work places (the work places and their shelter were far away).

During that time we were working hard by working from early morning (3 or 4 am) up to 11pm and had around one hour for lunch and two hours for dinner and if we talk about these meals we never had enough food and rice, we had only one small bowl of porridge and sometimes we could have some rice mixed with potatoes or corn. And the most common meals were a little rice with leaves of plant.

For me, during that time I was very skinny and never have a chance to stay with my family, and my mom told me to try to work and say nothing about my living in the city. Furthermore, I stayed at the mobile youth group, which was located in the forest near the mountain that was very far away from my family place, and I never went to visit them. My mom had a chance to come and visit me once a year with permission from her authority. Whenever she came to visit me, she brought some potatoes, coconuts, and ripe tamarinds, and sometimes my young sisters who stayed with the children’s group tried their best to steal potatoes and catch some fishes for me. I had tried to work hard but I never have enough meals to eat, I had only porridge all the time. And I needed to find something to add to my meals.

Burge: When you were going hungry, what were your best options for finding food? How did you survive? What was a typical day of food, or a meal like?

Pry Phally Phuong: In Pol Pot Regime (1975-1979), when I was hungry, I tried to make some hats from palm leaves for my supervisors (old people) or made pillow clothes from cotton thread to exchange with some people who work in kitchen for getting some salt, tamarind, and rice crusts (these things I could share with friends nearby me) or I went to catch crabs or pick up some leaves of plants to fill up my empty stomach. I tried to work hard every day, so my supervisor liked me, and I could keep some private food in my shelter. And my teammates always asked me to keep adding food in my place.

For food or soups was the same as water no tasty. Every month, there were a real rice with simple soup, a soup cooked with a fish or pork in a big pan but its meats were never seen, for the outstanding active group. I was very lucky to be in that group. I could eat the pure rice with salt. I felt I was still alive and my strength came back.

Burge: Many of our readers have never experienced chronic hunger. Can you tell us how it is to live with that every day? How does it change the way you view the world?

Pry Phally Phuong: From 1975-1979 in Pol Pot Regime, I had worked as a mobile youth group to build the Dam, plantation rice, carry human’s excrement from the toilet to make fertilizer by mixing up with green grass for the plantation rice and never had soap for cleaning my hands and body, I just cleaned my hands with the leaves of trees. During that time I were working hard by working from early morning (3 or 4 am) up to 11pm and had around one hour for lunch and two hours for dinner, I were very hungry, but I eat some leaves of plants and tamarind which I got from the kitchen. I were very tied but I could not sit down for a rest, so I went to toilet even I could not make an excrement, I just went to sit and get the bad smell from the toilet, it is better than carry the soil on my solders to build the dam and the other way I pretend to drink the hot water. These kinds of ways could make me have a little rest. During the raining season worked in the rice farm near the dam, which the mobile youth group build it. Sometimes when it was raining like cats and dogs, it made the dam broken, the water flooded over the rice field, so we could have a rest for a while, and if we talked about the meals we never had enough food and rice, we had only porridge for one small bowl with a little food and some time we could have some rice which cook rice mixed with potatoes or corn if we have the rice mixed up with potatoes or corn, it is lucky for me. So it means that I need to get up early morning to work until midnight, I slept only four or five hours per day. I was living in the hell for 3 years 8 months and 20 days. It was a nightmare.

After the liberation day from 1979 – 1985, I have changed my live,.I worked as a primary teacher at the morning and work in the rice field at afternoon. I did not get salary but I got the rice or corn one kilogram, one liter of gasoline, two bars of soaps a month. Because the rice, which we produced were in the forest or were destroyed by the war. Not only my family, all the Cambodian people were poor, the families that had male members were better, because they had the strong people to carry some rice for keeping in their house, but for me, I have only the four girls, two little boys, and my mom, we could not carry heavy things, just only me and my older sister, but unfortunately we were very skinny, so I could carry five times equal with a man or boy did once. My family was poor but it is better than in Pol Pot Regime. We could have a good rest as we wished. My mom tried to make vegetable or cucumbers pickle or bean sprouts to sell or exchange with some rice. I still was trying to make some hats from palm leaves to exchange for rice also. Furthermore, in 1982 there was a tailor near my house, her name is Ms. Sokhom. There was no sewing machine at the time. So when I was free, I always went to help her for sewing something then she explained me on how to cut and how to sew and then I started to be a tailor apart from my teaching (at that time teachers just worked half day every day). So I was the teacher at the morning, worked in the farm at the afternoon, and worked as a tailor at evening. Even if I worked hard, I could sew a skirt or blouse in exchange for just only one kilogram of rice per each item. I could not see the outside world; it seemed that the world was very small. We were afraid of return of Pol Pot Regime because the Pol Pot soldiers continued their activities to rob our rice or property. So we decided to send our two siblings (a brother and a sister) to live with the Governor of Kramoun Sar province (Khmer Kampuchea Krom) in Viet Nam. If we all would die, we have two brother and sister left.

Burge: How did you emotionally and mentally endure this time in your life? How did those experiences shape who you are today and what you are doing with your life?

Pry Phally Phuong: When I was young, I always dreamed to be a girl with good education and good job unfortunately through the three regimes went by, I felt very disappointed and despaired because my family was very poor. We could not make ends meet, and we ate from hand to mouth. However; as a daughter of government official in the previous regime (Sihanouk Regime), an idea of struggle came into my mind, I accepted the painful situation, and I had tried my best to work both as full time and part-time job. I pursued my study at night school program until I obtained secondary education certificate. At free time, I studied English with my friends. It was just a peer education. We lighted candles at night time to study and receiving oppression from the government at the time because foreign languages were not allowed to study in any forms. If we were caught while studying foreign languages except Vietnamese and Russian, we would be subject to both fine and penalty or go to prison.

At the present, everything is still fresh in my mind; these living conditions have led me to make an untiring effort to continue my study until I obtain Master’s Degree and achieve what I have today. Now I am the Director of Organization, BCV, I have my present status thanks to my enduring all hardships. As I experienced through the poverty, I am willing to assist poor people by building net workings, organizing and mobilizing through community media in order that they receive the real information and share with their groups and have an opportunity to discuss and speak to each other both inside and outside Cambodia. Therefore, they can stand up together to protect both their own interests and national forest, national resources, and their lands.

Burge: Cambodia’s malnutrition rates are among the highest in South East Asia, with 26% of the population undernourished. What do you see as the main causes of hunger in Cambodia?

Pry Phally Phuong: I personally think that main causes of hunger in Cambodia are privatization, micro finance institutions, land, forest, mining, tourism, and Hydro-dam concession.

The Cambodia government had privatized all main sectors such as health, education, electricity, banking, forest, fishery and water. As can be seen in the health care system, under the pretext of just paying to recover cost, it requires people to pay health care service fee which is inaccessible for the most people. This system can function only for rich people, but not for the poor. At the same time people living in the cities or downtown are encountered with a rise in electricity and water prices too.

In addition, at the early of 1996, many microfinance institutions always have charged at least four percent of interest rate per month, now after some microfinance institution have transferred into the bank, they charge at least three percent per month which is equal to 36 percent per year from borrowers. Many poor people who have borrowed money from these institutions such as ACLEDA bank, AMRETH become indebted. In order to pay back the interest at the end of the month, people sell cows, pigs, and then their land, bit by bit until they have nothing left.

Moreover, due to the government policy to provide economic land concessions, many land concessions are made on people lands without consultations and resulting in the eviction of people or their replacement without due process or proper compensations, and the evicted people have to live in the place where there is not basic social infrastructures such as water, electricity, market, school and hospital. Some land concessions over leaped on people land which cause social conflict, and while other concessions are on the forest which people depend on its non-timber products for their livelihood.

Burge: 35% of Cambodians live below the poverty line, with 15%-20% living in extreme poverty. Can you explain how this poverty becomes an inherited condition that is extremely hard to escape from?

Pry Phally Phuong: This poverty has become an inherited condition from one generation to another. It is extremely hard to escape because their parents are in debts, and they could not pay back. These debts are the burden for their children to settle. Many people send their children especially their daughters to work as garment workers who loose weight and live in an unhealthy conditions. This situation causes their health problems and leads to borrow money from the moneylenders with high interest rate. This fall into the cycle in debt. At the present, poor people are faced with the land issues and forest concessions. Many people lose their agriculture lands and could not do farming. Some people sell out their lands to settle debts, while other people have to migrate to find other employment. Moreover, government policy is likely to pay lip service and turn blind eyes on the poor. It focuses on the capitalism, which stays far away from the poor.

Burge: Can you please talk about sweatshops and how and why they thrive in impoverished areas? Many Westerners think sweatshops are good alternatives to other kinds of work, and that the people working in sweatshops want the job. Can you tell us about the truth behind the myth? What is it really like? How can we create better alternatives?

Pry Phally Phuong: Because of debt, the young girls migrated to find the job in the cities, some can work in garment factories, and some worked as the construction workers, and others worked as the beggars. They need to pay for getting the job in the factories, and when they got the job, they need to stay together (roommates) for 4-5 people in one room, that room is about 3 x 4m or 4 x 5m and every worker need to pay $7 a month and for meals at least is around $0.70 or 0.80 USD a day, pay for utility around $5 per month, and they need to pay for extra cost if they have problem with their health. Sometimes the employers force them to work overtime. They cannot reject overtime even they feel not good health. If they reject one time, next time they cannot have a chance to work overtime or managers will find the other way to accuse them and dismiss them from the factory. Moreover, in the factories they did not have the hospital staff, if the factories have the hospital staff, they just have only the medicine for headache and diarrhea. All the workers got problems with their health worse and worse, because of working condition and eat a little bit for earning some money to send back to their parents, sometimes they earned nothing because of their health. In Cambodia the labor law is good, but it is good in the book. The people or the employers never respect the law and human rights. They just respect the money. For some girls who could not find the job and have a low education, it easy for the bad people (Peem) persuade them to work in the brothels or karaoke which easy to be the indirect sex workers and after that they got HIV/AIDS easily.

Many people in Western always think that working in the factories is good alternative because in the Western countries, the workers get salary that they can spend enough for their live (standard salary), their working condition is good standard, and the employers respect the law and human rights.

For making this alternative better, the government should enforce the law and thinking about human being before profit. Punishing employers who forced the workers to work overtime without respect the workers’ right. The factories need to have the real hospital staff to cure the workers. The government needs to allow the union to do the events or demonstration to demand their rights and stop cheating workers. And furthermore when the government make agreement with the employers, the government need to demand the employers to respect the Cambodia law and transfer all technology to Cambodian people.

Burge: What projects have you worked on or seen that have successfully lessened poverty and the chronic hunger that plagues Cambodia? Could you describe why they worked so well?

Pry Phally Phuong: For my idea the project that can reduce poverty is the organizing and mobilizing project because this project can work with grassroot people (community people) to have ownership (community ownership) and they can analyze their issues or donors strategies by themselves through community media for discussing and sharing the real information and after that they can stand up together for demanding the government to re-form the inappropriate development project for stopping or delay the land, forest, mining, hydro-Dam, and tourist concessions and solve the problems of what I mentioned above.

Now some of communities people have strong commitment and solidarity because they are facing with the same problems on land and forest conflict and eviction without paying compensation, so they developed the strategic to demand or submit the complaint files to the government or relevant ministries for suggesting to solve their problems before continuing to provide the land, forest, mining, Hydro-dam, and tourist concession. And if the government would like to continue to provide land and forest concession , the government need to conduct the real consultation with the community people who are staying in those areas, and the companies need to research on impact first. Moreover, if the government want to solve the problems, the government have to stop providing land and forest concession, it means that they can reduce poverty.

So, I think that if the community people have the real ownership and an opportunity to share and discuss each other, support each other, so they can develop the strategic for running people movement to push or educate the government for change its policy.

Burge: What do you wish more people knew about poverty and chronic hunger?

Pry Phally Phuong: I would like to share these issues with other people inside and outside Cambodia, because here all the national TV channels never provide coverage of the negative impacts of inappropriate development projects and real situations of the community people who were evicted by force or violence without pay any compensation due to land and forest concession on lands and forests of indigenous people and non indigenous people, they are always selective or pro-government, if they are brave and dare to show the real information, they will loss the benefits or cannot run the TV channels. So, if I have the network outside the country I can send the community media (media that produce by community people themselves) or arrange the exposure trip to outside world by sending a few community to share these experiences with people around the world to learn more about situation in Cambodia.

I would also like to more people to know about poverty in Cambodia due to government policy and about the reasons of chronic hunger to make Cambodians poorer and poorer. Many people cannot make a living by seeking local job and migrate illegally to neighboring countries and were shot to death. Some people live from hand to mouth. Other people cannot have enough rice to eat. They just can find manioc to eat for survive. While another people fall in debt cycle from their parents to children and have nothing left to live as a decent life. They have no land to do farming. Their children can go to school while a number of children who have an opportunity to study, they must drop school in order to help their family. Their life are miserable. In this country there are a big gap between the rich and the poor. The rich become richer and richer while the poor become poorer and poorer. The rich people have everything they need. They have many big houses, cars, air conditioners and luxury items. They go to good restaurants and have healthy, delicious and expensive food while the poor people live in small house or shelters and sometimes in the tents. They cannot afford to have enough rice to eat for survive. They eat rice with salt, or they share an egg with a whole family.

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Thank you very much to Ms. Pry Phally Phuong for sharing her story with us.

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Sustainable giving programs dedicated to providing solutions that help eliminate poverty and world hunger.

To Follow Natasha’s Previous World Hunger Journey

7 Days for World Hunger: Day 1

7 Days for World Hunger: Day 2

7 Days for World Hunger: Day 3

7 Days for World Hunger: Day 4

7 Days for World Hunger: Day 5

7 Days for World Hunger: Day 6

World Hunger Reflections, Sparking the Change

Reflections on My Week of Hunger; Fanning the Flames

World Hunger – Be the Solution

Focus on Hunger: Interview with Dr. Vandana Shiva

Tasha — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 11:16:28 +0000

Here is my first article – enjoy!

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Today marks the beginning of my second exploration of world hunger, as part of Conducive Chronicle’s 21 days for Hunger. For these two days I will be focusing on women in hunger, a topic I covered last May in my first souljourn for world hunger. As Kenda mentioned in the Intro to the series yesterday, I work as a women’s rights activist and educator, and the fact that 70% of the world’s hungriest people are women and girls sits uneasily in my heart. It is this fact, and the constellation of injustices that lead to it, that I will be exploring today in my article and in my interview with world renowned food justice activist, global south advocate, and eco-feminist Vandana Shiva.

Everything about world hunger is unfair. The fact that there are nearly 1 billion people starving in the world right now speaks to the vast amounts of injustice that our global system is built on. That 1 out of 6 human beings goes to bed hungry every night while there is more than enough food to feed everyone generously, seems to me the very definition of unfair. When I began my first exploration of world hunger last May, the endless stream of inequality and injustice was enough to make me want to scream. But out of all of the rage inducing facts and statistics, the one that haunts me the most, that makes me lose sleep at night, that I still find hard to believe, is that the people who grow the world’s food, our farmers, are some of the most likely to experience hunger.

In our world, farmer means woman. 80% of the developing world’s food supply, and 60% of the world’s food in total, is grown by women’s hands. Women plant, nurture, and harvest the food we all need to survive, yet they own less than 1% of all farmland, and are generally the last to eat. 70% of those suffering from chronic poverty and hunger are women and girls. They feed us, and while we eat they starve. The industrialization of our food system has led us to a place where we are now so removed from the food we eat that most of us barely know what’s in it, let alone where it came from or who grew it. What kind of life did she live? Was she well fed, able to enjoy the literal fruits of her labor? Or was she drowning in debt, a slave to the chemical and agricultural companies that have quickly devoured our world? Was she able to protect her land and grow her food in the way her mother and grandmothers did for centuries before her? Or has she been forced to pollute her land and her body with the genetically engineered seeds that promise so much, while yielding so very, very little? How much do we know about our food and the people who grow it? Why are they always the last to eat?

In India, 75% of people make their living by farming, and 60% of those farmers are women. These women plow the fields and raise our food, and yet their harvest is being stolen. In 1994, the completion of the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and the establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO) legitimized corporate growth based on harvests stolen from nature and people. The WTO’s agricultural agreements and ‘free’ trade policies allow transnational corporations that do not grow the food or work the land to make super profits off of the small farmers and their back breaking labor. The WTO’s Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement made seed-saving and seed-sharing a criminal act, disrupting millennia old traditions practiced in agricultural communities throughout the world. Corporations are now allowed to monopolize the right to a seed, the basic building block of our food security, by claiming it as their exclusive private property. The Agreement on Agriculture legalized the dumping of genetically engineered foods on countries, and criminalized actions taken to protect the biological and cultural diversity on which indigenous food systems are based.

Under World Bank and International Monetary Fund structural adjustment mandated reforms, India was forced to radically alter the way food had been grown in the country for centuries. Flashy advertising campaigns assaulted the country and images of gods, goddesses, and saints were used to sell new, hybrid seeds directly to small farmers, even as their land was being devalued, redrawn, and sold out from under them. Once the farmers began to purchase these new corporately ‘owned’ seeds they discovered they were highly vulnerable to pests, fungi, and weeds. Encouraged by their government and the corporations, the farmers bought the necessary corporate owned pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides on credit, comforted with the knowledge that these new seeds would produce yields so large they could repay their debts and have money to spare. Unfortunately, the new seeds were a dismal, drastic failure and crops failed throughout the country. Farmers were left with barren fields, polluted waterways, sky high debts, and empty bellies. Since 1997 200,000 Indian farmers have killed themselves, many by drinking the toxic pesticides that were supposed to save their crops. This cycle of debt and loss and more debt and more loss has been termed the ‘suicide economy’ and has created millions of chronically hungry and debt enslaved people throughout India.

Not only does this suicide economy lead to debt and impoverishment created hunger, it also destroys a region’s ancient biodiversity by creating huge swathes of lifeless monocrops in its place. The promises of ‘life science’ corporations like Monsanto are that they will feed the world through their genetically engineered seeds and the resulting higher crop yields. However, the opposite has been true. They have, in fact, created hunger on an unimaginable scale. Whatever higher yields they have been able to display are offset by the fact that they require massively higher inputs. Traditional farming practices have always been highly productive as they utilize a close looped cycle of animal integrated perennial and annual polycultures. When resource use is taken into account, the ‘advancements’ of the Green Revolution is obviously counterproductive and grossly inefficient. More and more land is needed to create adequate harvests under the new methods, along with more water, more money, more time, more effort, all of it for slightly more food, and far more hunger.

“However, this phenomenon of the stolen harvest is not unique to India. It is being experienced in every society, as small farms and small farmers are pushed to extinction, as monocultures replace biodiverse crops, as farming is transformed from the production of nourishing and diverse foods into the creation of markets for genetically engineered seeds, herbicides, and pesticides. As farmers are transformed from producers into consumers of corporate-patented agricultural products, as markets are destroyed locally and nationally but expanded globally, the myth of ‘free-trade’ and the global economy becomes a means for the rich to rob the poor of their right to food and even their right to life.” Vandana Shiva, Stolen Harvest

It was in this environment, to fight these wrongs, that world renowned global south activist, physicist, and eco-feminist Vandana Shiva created Navdanya. Founded in 1984, Navdanya is providing an alternative to the modern global food system by promoting biodiversity conservation, farmer’s rights, and organic farming methods, with an emphasis on seed saving. Navdanya means nine crops, in reference to the nine crops that represent India’s collective source of food security, and it is this self-sufficient food security that it hopes to preserve. Over the past 26 years, Navdanya has created an ever expanding alternative to the culture of death and debt pushed by the transnational corporations. Dedicated to the preservation of nature and the people’s right to knowledge, water, and food, Navdanya promotes global peace and justice through the conservation, renewal, and rejuvenation of the gifts of biodiversity. Navdanya has helped to create 54 community seed banks throughout India with the intent to rescue and conserve crops that are being pushed to extinction by monoculture farming practices. 3,000 varieties of native rice, 12 genera of cereals and millets, 16 genera of legumes, and 50 genera of vegetables have so far been saved due to their efforts. More than 500,000 farmers have been trained in organic and sustainable farming methods and more than 50 international courses have been offered on biodiversity, food, biopiracy, water, globalization, business ethics and more. Navdanya focuses on empowering local farmers to resist patents on seeds, and struggles to keep India free from GMO crops by recognizing humanity’s inherent right to food, water, and seed sovereignty.

One of Navdanya’s specific goals is to empower women and to keep food security in their hands through a network of women’s producer groups (Mahila Anna Swaraj). Navdanya views women as the caretakers of biodiversity, the providers of food security, and the conservationists of the cultural diversity of food traditions. By keeping women’s food knowledge and expertise alive they hope to guarantee food security for generations to come. Navdanya’s gender program, Diverse Women for Diversity, works on a local, national, and international level as a global campaign for women to resist monoculture monopolies and celebrate food security and biodiversity. Leaders in the food justice movement around the world recognize that it is women who hold the key to fighting the global hunger crisis, and it is this topic that I wanted to focus on in my interview with Dr. Vandana Shiva.

Burge: In 1998, India was forced to open up its seed and farming sector to global corporations like Cargill, Monsanto, and Syngenta by the World Bank’s structural adjustment policies. Can you explain how it is not natural disasters like drought and famine that cause the majority of hunger, but man-made economic policies like these? Why must a resistance to globalization form such a necessary part of food security and bio-diversity?

Shiva: The main causes for hunger are industrial agriculture and globalised trade in food. Industrial agriculture creates hunger both by destroying the natural capital for producing food and locking farmers into debt because of its high cost of production. Globalised trade creates hunger by diverting fertile land for exports, promoting dumping and unleashing speculative forces. In industrial agriculture and globalisation also contribute 40% to green house gas emissions that are leading to climate change which in turn is destroying agriculture and food security. The rules of globalisation both in the structural adjustment programmes of the world bank and the free trade rules of WTO promote industrialisation and trade liberalisation. Resisting such corporate globalisation is necessary for food security and biodiversity.

Burge: Since 1997, 200,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide after being forced into inescapable debt by pesticide and seed companies, in what has been termed a ‘suicide economy’. Do you think this kind of unending debt is a political tool consciously designed to keep the people powerless and desperate, or is it simply an unintended tragic consequence of misguided economic policies?

Shiva: The corporations and governments that are designing high costs agriculture systems to maximise corporate profits are simultaneously designing the debt trap for small farmers. This debt trap is what is leading to farmers suicides. Pushing small farmers to extinction is very much part of the corporate design of industrial farmer. It is not merely an unintended consequence. As a US agriculture policy person said: “farmers must be squeezed of the land like the last bit of toothpaste is squeezed out of the toothpaste tube”.

Burge: What do you say to critics who claim that with the global population nearing 7 billion people we need industrial agriculture and genetically modified foods to feed everyone?

Shiva: Industrial agriculture actually reduces nutrition per acre since it destroys the biodiversity which maximises nutrition per acre. Industrial agriculture is artificially projected as being productive through the monoculture of the mind and a focus on the monoculture yield of handful of globally traded commodities. That is why hunger and malnutrition has grown in direct proportion to the spread of industrial agriculture. As far as genetic engineering is concerned, it is a not a yield increasing technology. It has only put Bt. toxin genes into plant or genes for resisting toxic herbicide. This has increased the yield of toxins not of food. The Union of Concerned Scientist report “Failure to Yield” and Navdanya’s reports “Seeds of Suicide” and “Biodiversity Based Productivity : A New Paradigm for Food Security” have the data that shows that genetic engineering has not contributed to increase in production.

Burge: Women grow the majority of the world’s food and 60% of India’s farmers are women. Women also make up 70% of the world’s chronically hungry people. Why is it that women, the people who grow the majority of the world’s food, are the last to eat?

Shiva: Just as farmers who grow the food are the largest number of hungry people in the world, women who produce and process food constitute the majority of malnourished people. The denial of food to the producers of food is a result of the injustice built into industrial food systems and social discrimination.

Burge: Navdanya calls itself a ‘women centered movement’, holds female heritage learning and preservation classes known as Grandmothers’ University, and has a gender program, Diverse Women for Diversity, that is a global campaign of women advocating for bio-diversity and food security. Could you tell us why it was so important for Navdanya to focus on the empowerment of women? Why do you consider the partnership of ecology and feminism to be a partnership of liberation?

Shiva: The dominant model of agriculture has come out of capitalist patriarchy and is based on war. These wars begin as wars in the mind, become wars against the earth, and result in wars against our body. Women need to lead the movement for a non-violent food system because they have not been part of the war economy. Grandmothers hold the heritage of non-violent knowledge which protects the earth and our health.

Burge: In your book Stolen Harvest you describe a ‘hijacking of the global food supply’, as corporations that do not grow the food or work the land reap the obscene profits of the farmers’ labor. When people are kept so poor they can barely feed themselves, and the multinational corporations are unimaginably powerful and wealthy, how can the common people find the resources to stand up to this injustice?

Shiva: Since each of us eats everyday food can become the site of a revolution for justice. If we say no to GM foods, if we commit ourselves to eating organic, we build another food system which is controlled by people and not by giant corporations.

Burge: In describing the implementation of ‘free-trade’ policies upon an unwilling population, you have said that the moment the will of the people is ignored it becomes a dictatorship. In light of the unfathomable levels of violence being perpetrated against an almost powerless population (and at a time when an agricultural company like Monsanto hires the services of the private army Blackwater), why do you and Navdanya remain committed to a non-violent resistance strategy?

Shiva: We in Navdanya stay committed to non-violent resistance strategy because it has more power and more resilience.

Burge: The women you work with through Navdanya’s various programs and Diverse Women for Diversity often have their lives profoundly changed when they are given the tools and resources for self-empowerment. Can you tell us of an instance when you saw a woman, a family, or a community transformed?

Shiva: Twenty years ago, a women called Bija came to me to find work as domestic help. Bija means the seed and I asked her if she would help me in Seed Saving and she immediately agreed. For two decades Bija has worked as Navdanya seed keeper. She holds classes for scientists on the conservation of biodiversity, she received the Slow Food Biodiversity Award on behalf of Navdanya in Porto Portugal in 2001. The potential Bija achieved is the potential in every peasant woman and it is this potential Navdanya seeks to unleash.

Burge: What kind of future is envisioned by the women of Diverse Women for Diversity? How will a world premised on food security, bio-diversity, and sustainability look?

Shiva: The future envisioned by Diverse Women for Diversity is a future in which every species and every person has space to evolve to their highest potential, live in mutuality with each other and create a world of peace, justice, and sustainability.

Burge: How can we in developed Western nations stand in solidarity with the women in India and throughout the world who are facing chronic hunger and poverty, and assist them in their struggle?

Shiva: There are three ways in which you can support our work. You can support our programs by making donations to Navdanya. You can attend our courses at Bija Vidyapeeth – The School of the Seed and visit our programs on seed saving and organic farming as solutions to hunger. You can spread the principles on which our work is based.

“Women were, really, in my view, the ones who domesticated plants, created agriculture. And as long as women were controlling agriculture, agriculture produced real food. Agriculture was based on [women's learned and passed on] knowledge. A Women’s centered agriculture never created scarcity. As long as women controlled the food system you did not have a billion people going without food and you didn’t have 2 billion going obese and w/diabetes. This is the magic of patriarchy having taken over the food system. Earlier, patriarchy left food to women, modern patriarchy wants to control food . . . women’s knowledge has been removed from agriculture . . .we can only have a secure food culture if women come back into agriculture.” Vandana Shiva

Sustainable giving programs dedicated to providing solutions that help eliminate poverty and world hunger.