Agroecology — sustainable farming that works with nature, rather than depleting nature — is the answer urgently needed to address global hunger, poverty and climate change, according to Vandana Shiva, Ph.D., environmental activist, author and founder of Navdanya International. Shiva told Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., on a recent episode of “RFK Jr. The Defender Podcast”:
“Asset management companies go to an indebted company and say, ‘Give us your forest and your mountains, and here’s the money to pay your debt.’ “Because we are in a debt crisis, this kind of new enslavement will increase unless we rise up and say, ‘Nature’s not for sale.’” Shiva’s latest book, “Agroecology and Regenerative Agriculture: Sustainable Solutions for Hunger, Poverty, and Climate Change,” provides evidence-based solutions for pressing crises in global ecology, agriculture and public health.
She told Kennedy she became an environmentalist when she realized corporations that sold chemicals and “poisons” wanted to own seeds and were promoting GMOs (genetically modified organisms) in order to patent the seeds. “I happened to be at a meeting where they were talking about this 1987,” she said. “That’s when I said, ‘No, the seed must be saved. We cannot allow the poison cartel to be the owners of life and take royalties from the farmers.’ Shiva and Kennedy discussed how the Rockefeller Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation pushed industrial agriculture on Indian farmers under the “so-called ‘green revolution,’ which really means “chemical farming,” Shiva said.