Devinder Sharma

Spring Series Rice and Food Sovereignty

Media Advisory 18mar04

Tuesday 30thMarch 2004 11.30 – 12.45 in G2
Dr Devinder Sharma

[Full UK Schedule]

We are very fortunate to have the Indian scientist Devinder Sharma visit us on 30th March. He will give a Spring Series talk on Rice and Food Sovereignty, of especial relevance this year – 2004 – the International Year of Rice and in the context of the international furore over GM crop production, agricultural trade of GMOs and GM food aid.

Devinder is one of the leading authorities in India on food and agriculture and an outspoken critic of Indian and international policy that keeps people hungry. India has the largest number of hungry people in the world – 320 million of its citizens – and yet its government’s warehouses are overflowing with 50 million tonnes of unsold food.

His talk will be comprehensive but will focus on rice, the world’s most widely consumed food. He will highlight the threats to its production and consumption from GMOs, patents and unjust trade agreements. He will emphasise the need for food sovereignty – local control over what is grown and eaten – and the need to keep rice and other crops free of intellectual property rights and genetic modification.

Devinder Sharma is a noted Indian writer on food and trade policy. He is well known and respected for his work on biotechnology, biodiversity and intellectual property rights, free trade and food sovereignty. He chairs the New Delhi-based Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security. Trained as an agricultural scientist, subsequently working as a Visiting Fellow at the International Rice Research Institute, University of East Anglia, Norwich and Cambridge University, Devinder has also been the Development Editor of the Indian Express.

His recent booklet “GM Food and Hunger: a view from the South” was published in January for the World Social Forum in Mumbai, at which he chaired the major panel on Food Sovereignty. He speaks on these issues widely, most recently at the launch, in Switzerland, of the 2004 International Year of Rice.

Note: Devinder’s talk will be taking place just as the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations announces that the International Seed Treaty (IT PGRFA) has received its 40th ratification and will be legally enforceable later this year.

The Treaty should ensure that the myriad varieties of the world’s most important food crops, including rice, 95% of which have been lost from farmers’ fields in the last century, are conserved and available to new generations of farmers worldwide. Under the rules of the Treaty, crops and their genes cannot be patented, privatised and removed from public use. The Treaty will also implement Farmers’ Rights to save and replant seeds.

Building on the success of the International Seed Treaty, a new Treaty to safeguard livestock breeds, also being lost at an alarming 5% per year, is now under discussion. This will recognise Livestock Keepers’ Rights.

Devinder will also refer to these current developments.