Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 28
Co-existence in the
Conventional Food Crops
Janice E. Thies
Freedom is not merely the opportunity to do as one pleases; neither is it
merely the opportunity to choose between set alternatives. Freedom is,
first of all, the chance to formulate the available choices, to argue over
them—and then, the opportunity to choose.
C. Wright Mills
The Global Rift over Transgenic Crops
It was Halloween 2008. The community screening of
Bullshit
(the movie) (Holmquist
and Khardalian 2005) at the Cornell University Cinema had just ended. My col-
league leading the discussion, Ron Herring, welcomed questions from the audience,
sparse though they were.
Bullshit
, a Swedish film directed by PeÅ Holmquist and
Suzanne Khardalian (2005), chronicles the accomplishments of Vandana Shiva, an
Indian activist, on a range of issues, including her fight against a patent on neem, her
battle with Coca Cola, Inc. over water use and water rights for Indian villagers, her
attempt to block food distribution in Mexico because some of the products contained
GM (genetically modified) maize, and her equanimity with regard to receiving the
“Bullshit Award for Sustaining World Poverty.”1 The award was bestowed on behalf of
Indian farmers by Barun Shankar Mitra of the Liberty Institute, New Delhi, for Shiva's
work in fighting the approval and commercial use of GM seeds, particularly Bt2 cot-
ton and Bt eggplant in India. Shiva's response was to treat the award as an honor. In
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