I chose Manifestos on the Future of Food and Seed as the first book of my learning about the environment project. I never thought that there would be a better introduction than the manifestos to start the project. And since the book is very thin, I thought I would finish it in one sitting and share it with you immediately, but I could only finish one episode in one sitting. Manifestos on the Future of Food and Seed is not a book that is easily read. Fortunately not!
There are dozens of things to explore on every page of the Manifestos on the Future of Food and Seed, and since I am a person who is always defeated by her curiosity, I always found myself doing research at the computer. These studies, of course, caused me to go deeper, and I eventually forget why I sit at the computer. I finally caught myself dreaming of studying gastronomy at a university in Italy (UNISG). There are now thirty new articles in my list of websites and blogs to read. Manifestos on the Future of Food and Seed, which you will understand, opens the doors of a much larger world.
This world is so beautiful and so clean that it shows you things you won’t want to get out of as you get inside. The most important thing is to instil hope and activate people. It doesn’t make people say: “Well, what are we going to do?”. It explains very clearly what is what, how it should be, what you can do as an individual. Manifestos on the Future of Food and Seed is a book that will make you think a little while buying tomatoes, and it is a significant change. Be sure to read as soon as possible. Your life will change!
Manifestos on the Future of Food and Seed
“Shiva is a burst of creative energy, an intellectual power.”—The Progressive
Manifestos on the Future of Food and Seed is a short, pocket-sized collection that goes to the heart of our existence—what we eat and how we grow it.Manifestos on the Future of Food and Seed covers the questions:
How are seeds cultivated and saved? How far must food travel before reaching our plate? Who gets paid for the food we eat? Why does our food taste like this? We live in a world where of the eighty thousand edible plants used for food, only about 150 are being cultivated, and just eight are traded globally. A world where we produce food for 12 billion people when there are only 6.3 billion people living, and still, 800 million suffer from malnutrition and 1.7 billion suffer from obesity. A world where food is modified to travel long distances rather than to be nutritious and flavorful.
Manifestos on the Future of Food and Seed lays out, in practical steps and far-reaching concepts, a program to ensure food and agriculture become more socially and ecologically sustainable. The book harvests the work and ideas produced by thousands of communities around the world. Emerging from the historic gatherings at Terra Madre, farmers, traders, and activists diagnose and offer prescriptions to reverse perhaps the worst food crisis faced in human history.
Manifestos on the Future of Food and Seed: There is a growing realization that food politics is vital to the health of our bodies, economies, and environment—in other words, a matter of life or death. Carlo Petrini, founder of Slow Food, writes, “Reinstating food as a central, primary element in our lives seems an obvious thing to do, since without food, no living things would exist.” Thousands of communities around the world are working to do just this.
A world-renowned environmental leader and thinker, Vandana Shiva is the author of many books, including Earth Democracy, Water Wars, and Staying Alive. Manifestos includes essays by Prince Charles and Carlo Petrini.
Vandana Shiva
Besides being a physicist, ecologist, activist, editor, and author of numerous books, Vandana Shiva is a tireless defender of the environment. She is the founder of Navdanya, a movement for biodiversity conservation and farmers’ rights. She is also the founder and director of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy. Shiva fights for changes in the practice and paradigms of agriculture and food: “I don’t want to live in a world where five giant companies control our health and our food.”
Intellectual property rights, biodiversity, biotechnology, bioethics, and genetic engineering are among the fields where Shiva has contributed intellectually and through activist campaigns. During the 1970s, she participated in the nonviolent Chipko movement, whose main participants were women.
She has assisted grassroots organizations of the Green movement in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Ireland, Switzerland, and Austria with campaigns against genetic engineering. Shiva has also served as an adviser to governments in India and abroad as well as non-governmental organizations, including the International Forum on Globalization, the Women’s Environment and Development Organization, the Third World Network, and the Asia Pacific People’s Environment Network.
Her writings include Staying Alive, The Violence of the Green Revolution, Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge, Monocultures of the Mind, Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution, and Profit, and Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply, as well as over 300 papers in leading scientific and technical journals.
In 1993, she received the Right Livelihood Award, commonly known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize.” Other awards include the Order of the Golden Ark, Global 500 Award of the UN, Earth Day International Award, the Lennon Ono Grant for Peace, and the Sydney Peace Prize 2010.
In 2003, Time magazine identified Shiva as an “environmental hero,” and Asia Week has called her one of the five most powerful communicators of Asia.
Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
