What did you think?
Major Points from the film Bitter Seeds
1. Sovereignty: India as a member state in the world trade organization lacks the ability to block Monsanto from entering India
2. Corporations and their economic practices can shape social and cultural practices and aggravate existing problems.
3. In this case free trade has led to diminished choice
Beware false choice
'Indian farmers can choose farming and assume the risks or leave it for another job'
'Indian farmers can choose to grow something else'
Environmental Justice
What happens 'there,' happens here.
Amazon rainforest is important in maintaining global climate. It is being destroyed by development, illegal logging and agricultural use.
Calculating the cost of environmental problems
With a concern for environmental Justice there is also the question of how to compensate for environmental pollution.
Environmental degradation does not happen outside of global political problems and issues
Global North: Heavily industrialized and wealthy. Has a history of using the resources of the global south for its processes of industrialization
Global South: developing, would like to use resources to develop and build wealth for it's nations citizens.
As the world has realized the dangers of unlimited development, there is conflict behind who should cut back and act more responsibly
Remembering Doreen Massey
Globalization has not meant that the world is a blank space with equally situated individuals. History, physical geography, systems of inequality matter. Progress is not guaranteed for everyone.
What are the conditions that shape the crisis in Vidarbha?
The Green Revolution
These policies have failed to see farming as a process, that includes the environment and society.
Starting in the 1930s, India embarked on nation-wide agricultural transformations that emphasized 'modern' agricultural techniques in order to produce higher yields.
Lepawsky and McNabb
Guiyu
---Liu, X., Tanaka, M., Matsui, Y. 2006. Electrical and Electronic Waste Management in China: Progress and the barriers to overcome. Waste Management and Research, 24, 92-101.
The globalization of your trash