Demolishing the myth that Monsanto's engineered crops drove 270,000 Indian farmers to suicide

Author:

Paul Raeburn 11Mar 2013

droughts, genetically engineered food, GMOs, hybrid crops, Monsanto, monsoon, Roundup

Last Friday, the leftist television news program Democracy Now ended its Women's Day broadcast with an interview with Vandana Shiva, identified as an Indian feminist, activist, and thinker and the "author of many books." She talked about the effects on women of what she called "the world's violent economic order," which included, among other things, the sale of genetically engineered cotton seeds to Indian farmers. The transcript includes this comment: In India...the collection of royalties from seed has led to Monsanto controlling 95 percent of the cottonseed supply, 95 percent through a monopoly, not through the choice of the farmers, as it’s often made out to be. Farmers are getting indebted because the price of seed jumped 8,000 percent, and there’s no option...Two hundred and seventy thousand Indian farmers have committed suicide since Monsanto entered the Indian seed market. That’s more than a quarter-million. It’s a genocide.  The idea is that indebtedness to Monsanto is driving farmers to suicide--a scandal if true, and one with a claim to be called genocide.

But it isn't true....To Read More....