- ARIPO Protocol is a tool for foreign takeover of Ghana's agriculture
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2015
Ghanaian citizens have so far prevented the passage of the Plant Breeders Bill, a UPOV-91-compliant law that would strip Ghanaian farmers of their rights to their own seeds. But there is worse coming from the African Regional Intellectual Property Association (ARIPO). To Ghana’s great credit, and despite determination and pressure from the G7, USAID and its contractors, despite the willing and enthusiastic cooperation of Ghana’s ministers, Attorney General, and both major political parties, Ghana has refused to pass a farmer destroying, sovereignty busting, UPOV law.
- Canadian Food Inspection Agency
Media Profile in Sources
Resource Type: Organization
- The Centrality of Seed: Building Agricultural Resilience Through Plant Breeding
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2016
Five of the global issues most frequently debated today are the decline of biodiversity in general and of agrobiodiversity in particular, climate change, hunger and malnutrition, poverty and water. Seed is central to all five issues. The way in which seed is produced has been arguably their major cause. But it can also be the solution to all these issues.
- Collectors on the edge
The influence of Kew Gardens reaches far. In the heart of Botswana, meet the leaders of the Millenium Seed Bank Project
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2009
The Millenium Seed Bank Project is an international botanical project to collect and study 10% of the world's plant species.
- Connexions Library: Africa Focus
Resource Type: Website
Published: 2009
Selected articles, books, websites and other resources on Africa.
- Connexions Library: Agriculture and Farming Focus
Resource Type: Website
Published: 2009
Selected articles, books, websites and other resources on farming and agriculture.
- Farmer Cooperatives, Not Monsanto, Supply El Salvador With Seeds
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2015
In the face of overwhelming competition skewed by the rules of free trade, farmers in El Salvador have managed to beat the agricultural giants like Monsanto and Dupont to supply local corn seed to thousands of family farmers. Local seed has consistently outperformed the transnational product, and farmers helped develop El Salvador’s own domestic seed supply–all while outsmarting the heavy hand of free trade.
- Farmers join to save the seeds that feed us
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2015
Farmers and growers in south-west England have united to reclaim the lost skill of seed saving. They are determined to grow, develop, share and disseminate open-pollinated seeds, and oppose EU laws granting commercial plant breeders a legal monopoly on the seeds that sustain our lives.
- Fowler, Cary
Connexipedia: Right Livelihood Awad Winner
Resource Type: Article
Winner of the Right Livelihood Award for his work to save the world's genetic plant heritage. (Born 1949).
- French farmers will have to pay to use their own seeds
'Compulsory voluntary contribution' to seed companies extended to 20 more types of crops, and use of saved seeds for other crops banned
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2012
French government to begin cracking down on enforcing plant breeders' rights -- farmers will have to pay to use farm-saved seed.
- GE-contaminated flax seed raises concerns for Canadian organic sector
Sources News Release
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2009
GE-contaminated flax seed raises concerns for Canadian organic sector. The Organic Trade Association (OTA) in Canada has called the recent discovery of contaminated flax seed in Europe â#ounacceptable,â## and said biotechnology companies must take
- Ghana's farmers battle "Monsanto law' to retain seed freedom
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2014
Ghana's government is desperate to pass a Plant Breeders Bill that would remove farmers' ancient 'seed freedom' to grow, retain, breed and develop crop varieties - while giving corporate breeders a blanket exemption from seed regulations. But the farmers are fighting back.
- Ghana's women farmers resist the G7 plan to grab Africa's seeds
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2015
Sharing and saving seed is a crucial part of traditional farming all over Africa. Governments, backed by multinational seed companies, are imposing oppressive seed laws that attack the continent's main food producers and open the way to industrial agribusiness.
- The Great Seed Piracy
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2016
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". When the Green Revolution was pushed in India and Mexico, farmers' seeds were "rounded-up" and locked in international institutions, which used these seeds to breed green revolution varieties which responded to chemical inputs.
- The Harrowsmith Reader
An Anthology from Canada's National Award Winning Magazine of Country Life and Alternatives to Bigness
Resource Type: Book
Published: 1978
Articles on land, country careers, shelter, gardening, husbandry, food, trees, and rural life.
- An Illustrated Guide to Growing Food on Your Balcony
Resource Type: Book
Published: 2015
A booklet for people in the city who grow or want to grow plants in container. The information is meant to be basic enough for beginners and informattive enough to be a handy reference for even an experienced gardener.
- Land and seed laws under attack as Africa is groomed for corporate recolonization
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2015
Across Africa, laws are being rewritten to open farming up to an agribusiness invasion - displacing millions of small cultivators and replacing them with a new model of profit-oriented agriculture using patented seeds and varieties.
- Living with the Land
Communities Restoring the Earth
Resource Type: Book
Published: 1992
A collection of stories from grassroots communities about the benefits of ecological living.
- Monsanto is buying up non-gmo seed companies
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2013
A positive trend in recent years is the growing number of gardening enthusiasts choosing to plant gardens using organic and/or heirloom seeds.
- Mooney, Pat
Connexipedia: Right Livelihood Award Winner
Resource Type: Article
Winner of the Right Livelihood Award for his work to save the world's genetic plant heritage. (Born 1947).
- Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - October 30, 2014
Refugees
Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
Published: 2014
Topic of the week is Refugees. Featured articles look at migration, counter-surveillance resources, farmers in Ghana fighting to retain the freedom to save their own seeds, and rebuilding communities faced with mining companies in Ecuador. The website of the week is Mediamatters. From the archives we've got Socialist Feminism: A Strategy for the Women's Movement.
- Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - March 12, 2015
Organizing
Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
Published: 2015
The focus of this issue is organizing. How can we challenge and overcome entrenched structures of economic and political power? Our own source of power is our latent ability to join together and work toward common goals, collectively. That requires organizing. Power gives way only when it is challenged by powerful movements for change, and movements grow out of organizing. In this newsletter, we feature a number of articles, books, and other organizing resources.
- Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - March 26, 2015
Sustainability, ecology, and agriculture
Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
Published: 2015
This issue features a number of items related to sustainability, ecology, and agriculture, including Vandana Shiva's article "Small is the New Big," the Council of Canadians' new report on water issues, "Blue Betrayal," the film "The Future of Food," the Independent Science News website, which focuses on the science of food and agriculture, and the memoir "Journey of an Unrepentant Socialist" by Brewster Kneen, a former farmer and long-time critic of corporate agriculture.
- Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - December 19, 2015
Utopia
Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
Published: 2015
Utopian visions, be they practical or not, free our imaginations, if only for a little while, from the daily grind of struggle and worry, and allow us to dream about the kind of world we would hope to live in. Such dreams can inspire us and guide us, even if they are not always quite practical. This issue of Other Voices peers into the world of utopian visions, practical or otherwise.
- Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - January 21, 2018
What are we eating?
Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
Published: 2018
What are we eating? A simple question which opens up a labyrinth of devilishly complex issues about production and distribution, access to land, control of water, prices, health and safety, migrant labour, and much else.
For millions of people, the answer is brutally simple: not enough to survive. UNICEF estimates that 300 million children go to bed hungry each night, and that more than 8,000 children under the age of five die of malnutrition every day. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that 12% of the world's population is chronically malnourished.
How is this possible in a world where there is an enormous surplus of food, where farmers are paid not to grow food?
A short answer is that food production and distribution are driven by the need to make profits, rather than by human needs.
- Rising suicide rate for Indian farmers blamed on GMO seeds
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2014
Monsanto, which has just paid out $2.4 million to US farmers, settling one of many lawsuits it's been involved in worldwide, is also facing accusations that its seeds are to blame for a spike in suicides by India farmers.
- Roots of Empathy
Changing the World Child by Child
Resource Type: Book
Published: 2007
Roots of Empathy looks at eliminating crime and changing the world by starting with a compassionate environment for children.
- Seed freedom!
A last chance to thwart the great African seed grab
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2015
Nineteen African nations meet this week (July 2015) in Arusha, Tanzania, to finalise a 'plant protection' protocol that would open up the continent's seeds to corporate interests, taking away farmers' rights to grow, improve, sell and exchange their traditional seeds, while allowing commercial breeders to make free use of the biodiversity in traditional seeds to sell them back to farmers in 'improved' form.
- Seeds
Resource Type: Article
- Stolen Seeds
The privatisation of Canada's agricultural biodiversity
Resource Type: Book
Through patents and other intellectual property regimes, corporate tactics, and government manoeuvering, public goods are being destroyed to make way for private profit. Seed saving and plant breeding practices are being criminalised. This paper provides an overview of the various ways in which this process is happening and discusses some of the consequences.
- The Tyranny of Rights
Resource Type: Book
Kneen asks why the demand for 'rights' has become such a dominant strategy of movements for social and economic justice. As he discusses this question, he uncovers ways in which concept and language of rights imposes the individualistic and legalistic approach on other civilizations and ways of thinking.
- Vandana Shiva On Resisting GMOs: "Saving Seeds Is a Political Act"
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2013
Sarah van Gelder interviewed Vandana Shiva, renowned for her activism against GMOs, globalization, and patents on seeds and traditional foods.
- What are we eating?
Introduction to Other Voices, January 21, 2018
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2018
What are we eating? A simple question which opens up a labyrinth of devilishly complex issues about production and distribution, access to land, control of water, prices, health and safety, migrant labour, and much else. For millions of people, the answer is brutally simple: not enough to survive. UNICEF estimates that 300 million children go to bed hungry each night, and that more than 8,000 children under the age of five die of malnutrition every day. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that 12% of the world's population is chronically malnourished. How is this possible in a world where there is an enormous surplus of food, where farmers are paid not to grow food?
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