Food as Political
Weapon:
International Activist Battles the Tyranny of WTO
Interview of
Devinder Sharma - Acres U.S.A. 1mar04
Devinder Sharma is a journalist, writer, thinker, and policy analyst
who plays a crucial role in the global effort to turn back ill-advised
neoliberal trade policies and biotechnology. Trained as an agricultural
scientist, Sharma served as the development editor of the Indian Express,
the largest selling English language daily in India at that time. He quit
active journalism to research policy issues concerning sustainable
agriculture, biodiversity and intellectual property rights, environment and
development, food security and poverty, biotechnology and hunger. He was the
founding member of the Chakriya Vikas Foundation (Foundation for Cyclic
Development) in India, which promotes sustainable agriculture practices as a
means of lifting rural populations out of poverty, and is also is a member
of the board of directors of the Asia Rice Foundation. He serves as well on
the Central Advisory Board on Intellectual Property Rights of CGIAR — the
Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research.
Don’t be fooled by the stern or admonitory tone of Sharma’s remarks
below. He is a warm and pleasant man who happens to be engaged in a great
battle against powerful forces that are using his country as a biotech
guinea pig and ravaging its farm economy. It’s difficult to imagine him
being caught up short in a debate, and even harder to imagine him losing
one.
ACRES U.S.A. When did India join the WTO?
DEVINDER SHARMA. India was a founding member of GATT, the General Agreement
on Tariffs and Trade. So obviously when the Uruguay Round and the WTO came into
existence in 1995, India was one of the signatories. Before WTO came into
existence, India had built up its agriculture to a level of self-sufficiency.
Since at least the mid-1960s, India was a net importer of foodstuffs. When the
British left India in 1947, India’s independence came against the backdrop of
the Bengal famine. India consistently imported food from America — in 1965 we
imported 10 million tons, and 11 million tons in 1966. That was the biggest food
import ever at that time in history. When food came to India it was called a
ship-to-mouth existence. The food would come directly from the ship and go into
hungry mouths. India was trying desperately to cover the situation but didn’t
succeed until the Green Revolution came in, promoted by CGIAR. That was when
Norman Borlaug’s wheat came in for the first time and India adopted
chemical-intensive technology, in the late ’60s and early ’70s, and
initiated strategies to assure that the technology worked. The wheat harvest
went from 12 to 17 million metric tonnes in one year, a record bumper harvest
for India. Today India produces about 75 million tonnes of wheat. So look at the
growth that has taken place, from 12 million tonnes to about 75 million tonnes
of wheat.
ACRES U.S.A. That’s more than 600 percent!
SHARMA. Yes, and this happened because of the technology, of course, but
also because India put into place what is called a famine-avoidance strategy.
The farmers had no incentive to produce more since they didn’t get an assured
price, nor did they have an assured market, so India guaranteed both of those
things. The government would step in and announce the procurement price for the
crops, which would become the floor price. When the crops came to market at the
time of the harvest, the prices would slump because the government has already
announced a floor price, and whatever became surplus in the markets, the
government would mop up. These farmers got an assured market and an assured
price and incentive for growing more, and that worked remarkably well. We have
moved on from the ship-to-mouth existence — we became self-sufficient, and
then a net exporter of whole grains. One of the measures we imposed was border
duties, custom duties so that cheaper food could not come into our country.
ACRES U.S.A. While this was happening, did the character of India’s
agriculture change?
SHARMA. Not really. When we got our independence in 1947, the average
landholding at that time was about four hectares. Today the average landholding
size in India is 1.5 hectares. If you want to raise a cow in our part of the
world, you need about 10 hectares of land to grow the kind of feed the cow will
need. One family is surviving on 1.5 hectares of land in India, year after year.
Also, unlike in America, the number of farmers has increased. At the time we got
our independence, the percentage of your population in agriculture was about 10
percent, and now it’s less than one percent. In India, on the other hand, the
number of farmers multiplied. We had about 250 million farmers when we got our
independence, out of the 320 million people who existed in India at that time
— about three-quarters of the population. That ratio holds today — the
number of farmers in India is 600 million. In fact, every fourth farmer in the
world is an Indian. If you add the farming population of India and China, half
the world’s farming population exists in these two countries. There is a
contrast that you need to appreciate. The agriculture that exists in the United
States and Western Europe is completely different from the agriculture that
exists in our part of the world. Most of the other developing countries may not
have huge numbers, but they have 60 to 80 percent of the population involved
with agriculture. It has not gone to corporate agriculture and so on.
ACRES U.S.A. What happened after initial success of the Green Revolution
in India?
SHARMA. The Green Revolution was something that India required
desperately at one stage, because of the situation with food imports and famine.
For that, it did a remarkable job. But 10 years later, the yields began to
plateau, and also the negative impacts of the Green Revolution began to be seen.
The damage done by too much fertilizer, all the pesticides, the pumping-out of
water — all those began to be seen. Unfortunately, the scientific community
refused to accept these challenges and come up with corrective measures that
could restore sustainability. They went on advocating more fertilizer, more
pesticides, and more pumping-out of water. The result is that the Green
Revolution area — which is 30 percent of the country’s total agricultural
land — is a failure. These are the lands that absolutely require irrigation
— fertilizers and pesticides only work in an area that is assured of
irrigation. These are the lands now gasping for breath. These are the lands
suffering from second-
generation environmental impacts. The impacts are visible now, but the
scientists somehow fail to stand up to rectify the mistakes that produced them.
Now farmers are using twice the quantity of fertilizer they were using five
years back to produce the same size crop, because now if they don’t put on
fertilizer there’s no yield at all. The crop won’t grow. We have made
everything so bad, against all norms of sustainability. Thirty or 40 years later
we realize the Green Revolution has left a kind of frightening scenario that is
difficult to address to meet our food security needs.
ACRES U.S.A. Does the 1.5 hectares per farmer provide food security if all
is going well?
SHARMA. I would say that this 1.5 hectares is still sustainable, it still
meets the food needs of the farmers, and all they need is a policy mix from the
top that allows them to make agriculture an attractive proposition.
Unfortunately, that is not happening. They have begun to shift their focus to
corporate farming, and people have begun to believe there is no other way out
than to bring corporate agriculture to India. That’s the kind of message that
comes from international agencies and certain institutions and so on. The
policymakers tend to believe that this is the answer, but I think it is a
misplaced priority.
ACRES U.S.A. Do the small farmers have a political voice?
SHARMA. They have, but their voice is still very unorganized. If they
would organize, things would really change. But they are poor, and the poor have
no voice in India. Farmers don’t organize well anywhere — nowhere in the
world.
ACRES U.S.A. Since India operates from a position of greater strength
than much smaller countries who were not original members of the WTO, how has
the corporate, neoliberal agenda been imposed there?
SHARMA. GATT wasn’t a big problem because they were only trying to
frame the rules and regulations. It wasn’t a big issue until the WTO came into
existence. In the Uruguay Round, which led to the formation of the WTO,
agriculture was introduced for the first time. The Uruguay Round negotiations
went on for 7.5 years, and agriculture was a contentious issue. Initially, India
did put up a very spirited opposition to what was happening. That was the G-77
group, the original nonaligned group. They did try to voice their concerns over
what was happening, but somehow, after all the arm-twisting and other things
that go on in the trade arena, India became a signatory. Also, there was a kind
of dominant thinking in India at that time because nobody truly understood the
implications of the WTO agenda. There was a misinformation campaign that still
continues in this part of the world, claiming that the developing countries
would gain enormously when the subsidies were phased out in the West, and that
when the borders were open, more market access would mean more opportunities for
farmers to export, and the economic wealth would go up for the farming
community, and so on. India, being a major farming region, obviously believed it
stood to gain.
ACRES U.S.A. But of course WTO in practice bears little resemblance to
its workings in theory.
SHARMA. Yes — people like me began to analyze the drafts of the WTO and
recognize that this was all an illusion, and that we were going to be negatively
impacted — terribly negatively impacted. My first book was titled WTO: Seeds
Of Despair. What happened was, a year back the government of India permitted the
release a document that said all of the expectations from the agreement on
agriculture had been belied. All of these expectations that we had been given,
that we would be able to export and all that, all contradicted. We haven’t
gained, but we have suffered a loss. Farmers are beginning to feel the pinch,
because cheaper whole grains, cheaper commodities, and cheaper plantation crops
are all getting into India now. All this is displacing farmers. That is why
India made a very strong stand at the WTO meeting in Cancun. Along with Brazil
and China and other countries, we made the noise that this system is not fair.
This did not happen suddenly overnight — farmers in my country have felt a
cumulative impact over the past few years. That has translated into public anger
and of course public policy. So now the government of India is resisting the
complete march of agriculture in the direction that the American and European
governments would like.
ACRES U.S.A. Could you give us an idea of the extent of the change?
SHARMA. Imports of agriculture commodities have increased 400 percent in
the last eight years, since WTO came into effect. That’s quite a huge
quantity. All this is having negative consequences. Edible oil is one of the
major commodities used in India, for our cooking. We are one of the biggest
consumers of edible oils in the world — we consume about 10 million tonnes a
year. Now about 50 percent of them are being imported, which means about 5
million tonnes a year — not because we can’t produce this commodity, but
because we have reduced our border tariffs, so cheaper oil is getting in from
Indonesia, from Malaysis, from Brazil and so on.
ACRES U.S.A. What are the consequences for Indian society? What happens
when a farmer is displaced?
SHARMA. First of all, he sells off his kidney, then he sells off other
parts of his body, all that he can do. Then he can commit suicide. The rate of
suicide in Indian agriculture is phenomenally high. The government of India will
deny that, but my estimate is that in the last 10 years the number of farmers in
India who have committed suicide is more than 16,000. If you go to Uttar Pradesh
in south India and pick up a newspaper, every other day you will find reports of
a farmer who has committed suicide. He was a cotton grower, or he was a
vegetable grower, all kinds of farmers committing suicide. The state governments
are saying they can find no reason why farmers should be committing suicide,
they think there is something wrong with the psychology of these farmers. So
they say we need to send a team of psychiatrists to talk to farmers. There’s a
lesson here. Also, people are migrating to the urban areas. In 1995 the World
Bank did a study which said that the number of people migrating from rural to
urban areas in India is going to be equal to twice the combined population of
the United Kingdom, France and Germany by the year 2010. Look at the social
chaos we are going to have. It is also anticipated that India will have 20
mega-cities in next 10 years. So far we only have four mega-cities. There are
people who have estimated that New Dehli, which is 40 percent slums today, will
be 80 percent slums by the year 2010. Look at the kind of sad economic growth we
are talking about. There is something wrong somewhere.
ACRES U.S.A. Then it would be correct to say that India is a country that
needs to stay three-fourths rural and agricultural to avoid social chaos?
SHARMA. Yes. There are no employment opportunities for these people in
the cities. We have to ensure that they remain on the land. What we need are
policies that make agriculture an attractive proposition, a viable proposition
for them, so these people can survive and produce food for themselves and for
the country. Believe me, we have the capacity to produce food for ourselves. We
have the capacity to produce food to sell to the rest of the world as well. But
then everything is loaded against us. The poor farmers are getting displaced,
and I always say the biggest environmental crisis the world is going to face is
the displacement of farmers that the WTO is going to unleash. It’s already
happening.
ACRES U.S.A. How did biotechnology enter the scene in India?
SHARMA. Well, the Green Revolution agriculture reached a plateau, and then
it began to decline. Since there is no breakthrough coming by way of Green
Revolution technology, the focus has been on genetic engineering, on biotech.
ACRES U.S.A. When did you first hear about it in India?
SHARMA. About 10 years ago. The research began on various crops in India. We
have a
huge biotechnology research infrastructure, the universities and others. At the
moment we have research going on in rice, eggplant, tomatoes, corn, soya bean,
and so on. The only genetically modified crop that has been introduced in India
is cotton. We have Bt cotton, which was introduced in 2002.
ACRES U.S.A. What happened?
SHARMA. The crop failed. In the very first year. That was something that
was not said anywhere. We were made to believe that, like China, which has 7
million acres under Bt cotton, India was also going to gain when Bt cotton came
into use.
ACRES U.S.A. Why did it fail?
SHARMA. It failed because the technology was not the right technology for
the farmers. If you don’t give them the right variety, you don’t get the
record harvest. Also, the single Bt gene was not what was required for India.
The crops now grown all over the world have one Bt gene. The insects have
already developed resistance to one kind of Bt gene, although the biotech
scientists do not accept it. The reality is that now you have to spray more
insecticides for the same crop, which means that insects are developing
resistance. Look at China. At first they dropped to seven kilos of insecticide
per hectare, back from about 32 kilos. Now they’ve gone back up to 28 kilos
per hectare. A lot of pesticides are used on cotton. If you look at the whole
scenario, 55 percent of the pesticides used in India are used on cotton.
ACRES U.S.A. Was the government squarely behind the Bt cotton effort?
SHARMA. Yes. We all know why they were — everybody needs money for
elections, and the biotechnology industry has the money. So the crop failed. The
parliament set up a committee which looked into the Bt cotton case, and they
reported that the crop failed — but they offered no compensation to farmers
and invoked no liability clause to see that these companies are charged, so they
go on selling more seed. These seeds are expensive, too, so they have made their
profits. The farmers have suffered. They have demonstrated in some parts of the
country, and some of the farmers involved committed suicide. The promise was
that the additional income you would have from Bt cotton per acre of crop would
be 10,000 rupees, and it hasn’t happened. They’ve gone into bankruptcy,
they’ve gone into negative income. Again, nobody in power is really worried
about it because the poor have no voice, and the industries can go on pushing
these products.
ACRES U.S.A. At some point, you have to wonder about the intent behind
all this. Do you think the so-called developed nations are pursuing these
policies out of greed and self-interest, or do they have a coherent goal in
mind? Do they actually want to destroy the self-sufficiency of other nations?
SHARMA. To me it is clear that there is a dishonesty prevailing at the
international community level, and also at the scientific community level. If
you’ll recall, when we had the World Food Summit at Rome in 1996, they had all
these statesmen there. They said it is scandalous, it is shameful, it is a crime
to see that 800 million people go to bed hungry every night when we have more
food than we need. Therefore, there is a need for urgency. What urgency was
expressed? That by the year 2015, then 20 years away, they would reduce the
number of hungry by half — which means they would pull 400 million people out
of the hunger trap. But look at the dishonesty. They met again in Rome last
year. It was there that I stood up and said, “You know, you don’t have to
wait until the year 2015. And secondly, 320 million of the world’s hungry are
in India. If you link up Pakistan, Bangladesh, and some of the other neighboring
countries, roughly 45 percent of the hungry are in this region. Yet in 2001
India had a record surplus of 65 million tonnes of grains rotting within the
country — at a time when 320 million people are going to bed hungry. Why do
you have to wait until the year 2015? There is the food, and there are the
hungry. All you have to do is come up and join hands and see that hunger is
taken care of.” But nobody came up. There is no urgency. There is no moral
justification for what is happening. It is purely greed which is driving this
agenda. When they meet at the WTO, when U.S. Trade Representative Robert
Zoellick goes on record saying it is the developing countries that are going to
suffer, when The Economist runs an editorial saying that the developing
countries have lost — they are basically pushing that industrial agenda. But
to us the bigger problem is what to do with the hungry. Nobody’s worried.
It’s a shameful paradigm that we are living in today.
ACRES U.S.A. What happened to the surplus food in India?
SHARMA. Much of it rotted. Of course, the rats grew fatter and the
insects got busy. If you put every bag of grain one after the other, you could
have easily walked to the moon and come back. That was the extent of the grain
that we had in our country. Look at what we have done: Last year we exported 70
million tonnes of food surplus — the storage cost was too heavy, so the
government exported it. At a price for which the grain should have gone to the
poor, to the hungry, the government exported it. This is the economic paradigm
that we live in. We believe that the dollars that we earn will feed the hungry.
It has never happened in the past, and it will never happen in the future. You
realize that Mahatma Ghandi said, “The earth has enough for man’s needs, but
not for his greed.”
ACRES U.S.A. You’re also fond of quoting Jawaharal Nehru, aren’t you?
SHARMA. Nehru said that it is humiliating for a country to import food.
“Everything else can wait, but not agriculture.”
ACRES U.S.A. Can you give me an example of how the developed countries,
the members of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development,
attacked the self-sufficiency of the developing nations?
SHARMA. Several years back, I think it must be about 10 years back, we
had a minister in India named Jagjivan Ram. He was our agriculture minister. He
went to meet the UN’s FAO chief in Rome. He went with the famous agricultural
scientist M.S. Swaminathan, the father of the Green Revolution in India, who
told me what happened in that meeting. The number two guy in FAO is always an
American, so Ram went to meet this gentleman. That man told Jagjivan Ram, “You
think that you will be able to stop food imports from America? Because you are
now self-sufficient, you think that you will now be able to hold off American
imports?” Swaminathan recalls that the minister had some papers in his hand,
and he threw them at the FAO man’s face, and said, “India will remain
self-sufficient. Whatever you want to do, you go and do it.” And then he
walked out of that meeting. That will give you an idea that the effort has
always been to insure that the countries which became self-sufficient would have
their self-sufficiency base destroyed.
ACRES U.S.A. It was that naked?
SHARMA. Yes, it was that naked. This happened. Then came a situation
which involved Senator Dale Bumpers from America. Senator Bumpers in the late
’80s introduced a bill which said that America should withdraw funding from
research in crops that would go on to compete with American exports — it was
called the Bumpers Amendment. That was at a time when America was giving a lot
of research money for crops such as rice and wheat. So then the American aid was
withdrawn, and now America is not supporting research into those crops which
would ensure food security of any country if those crops are competing with
their exports. It is very clear what the agenda was.
ACRES U.S.A. How does the trade negotiating process shape the farm
subsidy issue?
SHARMA. If you look at the WTO, it was said that the countries in the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) needed to phase out
their agriculture subsidies. They brought in a system of boxes — green box,
blue box, yellow box and so on. Which subsidies do they need to protect?
They’d put certain subsidies in certain boxes as those they needed to protect,
saying they were not “trade-distorting” subsidies. Look at what the
trade-distorting subsidies were found to be. In India, for our 600 million
farmers, we provide a subsidy of $1 billion a year. This is an indirect subsidy
by way of cheaper fertilizer, cheaper water, cheaper electricity and cheaper
seed — there is no direct subsidy. It was considered to be trade-distorting.
The subsidies that farmers are paid here in the United States, which are
phenomenal, are considered to be non-trade-distorting. Checks written directly
to farmers were supposedly not distorting trade. It took a long time, but
policymakers finally analyzed these subsidies and decided that they, too, were
trade-distorting. These subsidies were therefore to be phased out.
ACRES U.S.A. And were they?
SHARMA. Let’s look at what happened: In 2002, President Bush needed two
more seats for his party in the Senate, and these seats would come from the
Midwest. So he announced a package of an additional $180 billion in subsidies
for your farmers. That was your Farm Bill. Out of this, $100 billion was to be
spent in the first three years. He made sure that this benefit was given to the
farmers in his own tenure. This was in a time when the subsidies were supposed
to be phased out. Look at the European Union — they have gone on adding to
their subsidies. Both America and the EU have a protection built in, and it is
called the Peace Clause. The Peace Clause was put into what is called the Blair
House Accord at the time of the original WTO negotiations. It actually exempted
the European Union and America from reducing their subsidies until December 31,
2003. For instance, India cannot take America to the dispute panel, saying that
your cheaper food is destroying our agriculture. At the same time, having built
this ring of protection around their own agriculture, they have made sure that
the developing countries have phased out their tariff barriers and other
protections. So we have no tariff barriers left, and we’ve become a dumping
ground. We have been told, “If you are protecting your agriculture, it is a
shame.” But I would respond that protecting your agriculture is economic
necessity. Look at that paradigm.
ACRES U.S.A. What does the trade insurgency at Cancun mean in the scheme
of things?
SHARMA. I think Cancun is a mere pause in the entire process of takeover.
I have a feeling that if the developing countries take a stand and are able to
halt or restrict this process, then the world will have to renegotiate the deal.
Otherwise we will be destroyed. This reminds me of a cartoon that appeared in my
newspaper when the WTO came into existence. It showed two people walking on the
streets on Bombay, with the high-rise buildings in the background. The banners
on the buildings were Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Cargill and so on. One chap says to the
other, “What does ‘WTO’ stand for?” And the other answers, “We Take
Over.” I think that’s an apt description of the WTO. If the developing
countries don’t stand up to this process, we will be completely marginalized.
Agriculture will be the biggest casualty.
ACRES U.S.A. Then was Cancun a watershed moment in the history of the
developing countries’ resistance?
SHARMA. We hope so. Can’t be sure about it, but it now looks like the
developing countries have finally realized their potential, realized that they
also have power. And I think that is very important. If you’ll remember, at
Dohar it was India alone that fought to the last. We were dubbed the bad guy,
the rogue state, and we were told that “you are now isolated in global
politics.” Look at Cancun two years later. The one country that had opposed in
Dohar became 21, we became G-21. There is arm-twisting going on now, and we know
that four or five countries have walked out of the G-21. But be assured that by
the time the next ministerial meeting takes place, there will be more countries
joining us. And in any case, India doesn’t need many countries to join us now.
After the failure of Cancun, the draft agriculture document that was separated
— the draft that was rejected at Cancun — India has said no, we don’t want
this draft, we have to negotiate a first draft now, to which Robert Zoellick
replied that it was not fair. India said, “It may not seem fair in your scheme
of things, but we will have to renegotiate a draft now,” because we realize
that if we are starting from the same position where we left off, we are not
going to benefit in any case.
ACRES U.S.A. What is behind these events in terms of politics?
SHARMA. This is all happening because the constituency of the political
masters of India are standing up and saying no to the WTO. Farmers are their
biggest constituency. The government of India right now is conservative, but
when the people are rising against this hegemonic process, the government has to
take notice because they have to go back to the people — and next year is an
election year in India. The government is very worried, just as the American
government is worried. We are very hopeful because more and more people are now
coming out openly and onto the streets, and even the economists are now coming
out against the WTO. India is a country that has shown remarkable resistance all
through history, so we are very hopeful that we will be able to stand up to
this.
ACRES U.S.A. What are your hopes for the next decade, in terms of a goal
you hope to see achieved? How would you like to see things structured?
SHARMA. In the last 10 years, we have been led to believe that we have
practically invented something new called trade. Trade has existed ever since
man began to domesticate agriculture. Why now? Why all this just now? I don’t
think this kind of trade is what we need. What we need is for each country to be
self-sufficient. Each country needs to evolve policies that ensure that its
people can be fed by food that its own people grow. That’s the kind of
sustainable model we need, not this kind of corporate agriculture under the garb
of trade. Do you think India was not trading in agriculture 10 years ago? We
were trading. When we needed food because we had a shortfall, we imported food.
When we needed to export food, we exported food. There was no problem. The
problem comes from the way they are now trying to monopolize trade, forcing this
model onto everyone until everyone falls into line. “If you are not with us,
then you are against us.” That is the kind of paradigm that is in play today,
which I think is very unfortunate. That was a remarkable era for India, when we
were protecting our borders, our farmers were self-
sufficient, and our country was self-sufficient. There were problems within the
country that were tackled within the country. If American agriculture faces a
problem, I think you will agree it has to be solved within America. I don’t
think India has a solution for American agriculture. Similarly, America
doesn’t have solutions for Indian agriculture. It has to be location-specific.
That is what we need to work towards. I am sure we will get there again, and
India will be able to resist this new kind of international trade, which is
simply a process of takeover.
ACRES U.S.A. Another front in the assault on the developing world
involves intellectual property rights, such as the recent effort to patent the
neem tree, which was repelled by villagers in India who fought back in the
courts. A similar fight was recently won over tumeric. What is the significance
of corporate moves on the genetic heritage of your country?
SHARMA. These are very serious developments in the history of
intellectual property rights. What has happened here, again, is the same
process. The first requirement of the WTO focus is, first, open borders. Now,
having done that, there is still a threat to maximum profits. India and China
have huge public-
supported research infrastructures — India has the second-biggest agricultural
research infrastructure in the world. We have 40 agriculture universities, and
we have 81 national institutes. They are all funded by the public sector. We
have 30,000 agricultural scientists in India, a huge bloc of scientific minds.
This is something that can always negate the impact of agribusiness investment.
Therefore the second requirement of the world trade focus is to destroy this
agriculture research sector.
ACRES U.S.A. And how would they go about destroying it?
SHARMA. They bring in Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights, an
agreement under WTO. All it says is that countries need to exercise intellectual
property rights over the plant varieties and animal species. Now it has gone
still further, and they want to draw up intellectual property rights over the
processes of plant breeding or transformation, and also the processes of making
products. What they are actually doing is this: because the biotechnology
research is in this part of the world — the United States and Western Europe
— the genetic makeup of plants is now being mapped, and their genes are being
patented. He who has control over the genes will have control over the research.
Devinder Sharma’s columns and books can be found at <www.dsharma.org>.
source: http://www.acresusa.com/magazines/archives/0304SharmaInterview.htm
3mar04
