Dying in abundance - part 5

Full English documentary here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsvqbNRq3Zk&feature=player_embedded#at=416

Dying in abundance – text

Part 5http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryHgXDODNxc&NR=1

The village learns that this man made no income. Not even the usurer lends money to him, the banks neither. So he falls into depression. And some day he does something! The seeds got us in this tragic situation. But even if the farmers manage to keep seeds for the next year, they run the risk of being sued by the company. The seeds are patented, Monsanto holds their copyright.  It sounds strange, but Monsanto owns a patent for a living thing. That grants the company exclusive rights of exploiting over the product for 20 years. If a farmer save seeds to plant them in the next year, he is persecuted as a criminal. The fine is 25000 rupees (380 euro). Can these farmers pay it?  We used to keep and plant our own seeds every year for free. And now the farmers must run to them for seeds? Tell me, is this humanly right?

(excuse maker a.k.a. Monsanto spokesperson)
“Farmers have a contract with us stating that they will use the seed for producing 1 season, and then for some reason choosing to use the seed for the following season. That violates the contract that we had with these farmers , it is a very small number ,and in most cases we look to sort out these differences out of court.”

(Pat Mooney, ETC group (against patents)“So if you apply a (inaudible) rule and say that you cant save your seed for another growing season, then first of all your massively increasing the cost for production for farmers, massively !”

“we borrow money from everybody to purchase these seeds. All our saving were gone.
Is this why your husband committed suicide?
Yes , for these debts… We couldn’t save money anymore. He was in depression. The debt was huge. Now I don’t know what to do. It was my husband who was bringing the money. Nobody lends money to a woman.”

(Monsanto spokesperson)
“ Cotton seed earlier did not have the protection against worms, farmers had to spray pesticides. Agriculture scientists all over the world were able to find more sustainable way to protect the plant against that worm. That was a technology called BT cotton, which is (inaudible).  It is a product of the science industry .

(Pat Mooney, ETC group (against patents)“(inaudible 3:31) that controls that food  supply , the seed supply. And those companies now are going beyond the patenting of a single plant variety to saying “we can patent all plants, all crops, with a single patent. We are claiming trades within those varieties and in those crops , that are common to all of them, so we control everything now, we control the food system” ”.

“Was it them who created the seeds? No. So far nature has made them. Did they make anything alive? No, they couldn’t. “

(Pat Mooney, ETC group (against patents)“Where as 1970’s there is no  prietory(inaudible) seeds planted what so ever, none. Today 82 % of the seeds sold are praetory (inaudible 4:23) , they are part of a patent. That’s the enormous change. “

(Vandana Shiva – Pro-farmers activist
“genetically engineered crops do not produce more food , but they tell the lie to bribe the markets. More trade does not feed people , it leaves more people hungrier because the globalized trade then becomes a trade controlled by 5 agribusiness cooperations , who can fit the prices as they want – and they want to speculate upwards, they speculate upwards. When they want to fix the prices downwards to capture markets, they take the prices downwards. And as their profits increase , people starve.”

(Pat Mooney, ETC group (against patents)
“So they got what they need out of this, they got the control. And frankly now, because they have that control they don’t need biotech anymore. They have got the market place , they control the first link in the food chain. So they have won.”

“control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people!”
-Henry Kissinger, 1974

(showing images of mentally ill people 5:48)

(Speculator – saying very retarded things )
“Water, possibly… it’s not traded now but it could be in the future perhaps, sure. I don’t know much about it , because there is no market to buy and sell  water .Maybe there will be in the future.”

“If I have a market where people who need water and a market of people who have water can get together and through their own best interest discover – that’s an important word- discover the price of that commodity.

(again some images of the mentally ill)

(same guy saying even more retarded things)
“How dare a government, how can a government, how can a group of supposed intellectuals say: “this is the price of water, everywhere around the world” Will there be circumstances where some people will not have water (showing images of a starving child sipping on a water), yes, that will happen , that is the harsh reality of how markets function . Do you sometimes run out of soap? Yes, who’s fault is that? Probably yours, because you didn’t go to the store to buy any. Should you blame the government? No, it’s you fault”.

Dying in abundance - part 4

Dying in abundance – text

Part 4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBSlw1APouo&NR=1

For centuries Indian farmers were planting the seeds provided by mother earth. A gift from gods that anyone had the right to use.
“ We used to plant our own seeds. We kept a small part of the harvest, to plant in the next year. They were natural seeds. They would flourish with or without water. No need to buy seeds from the market, so no extra expenses.”
“We used to have cotton, corn, pepers, we had everything.
These seeds were yours?
Yes , peppers, corn, cotton, everything was ours.
And you won a prize for your agriculture
Yes, I won a prize too!
If your seeds were good, why did you have to buy from elsewhere?
Others were using them, I thought the production would be better. But these seeds got us debts. They promised us production 200 KG per field. The first time the expenses for the seeds were low. Then we used fertilizers once or twice. Now we use them 5 times and it’s still not enough.
Lands has lost its power because of the BT cotton. No harvest at all with other seeds.
You don’t use your own seeds?
Not anymore, they fooled us to an extend you cant imagine. They brought us BT seeds and told us they don’t need many chemicals. This happened for a year. But new pests came a year after, like milibug. At first they told us that we didn’t need to spray at all. But then “you have to use products for that worm, for the other worm…” The condition now? Monsanto produces the chemicals too. The biggest chemical company? Monsanto!
Do you think they will stop selling this pest killing products now? Would a company lose its profits? No! Indian farmers do costly cultivation. They depend on the multinational companies for the seed and the fertilizers they need more and more. A farmer didn’t have to spend on seeds before. Now he gives 40% for the seeds alone.
There was no need for expenses on fertilizers before. Now he gives 20% for them. He gives 10% for insecticides, once unnecessary. All these expenses make 70%/ It’s them who left the farmers with this weight.”

200.000farmers have committed suicide due to debts from 1997 to 2008.

“it was a bad day. He was walking around. His mother was sick in bed. He sat back. His wife was sleeping over there. We didn’t see what he was doing. He had poured oil on him. We saw a strong fire. Then he came here and collapsed. We were all together and he was being burnt in front of our eyes. He was burnet very quickly. We did whatever we could. We transferred him to the hospital. He died 2-3 hours later.
He was tellins us… he knew… We told him not to take this matter too seriously. We couldn’t imagine what he was about to do. He was upset, he was thinking for hours alone. We were telling him that the hard days would pass.”

(Vandana Shiva – Pro-farmers activist)
“A story that we have suddenly become Scandinavians and don’t see the sunlight and therefore becoming depressed and farmers are ending their lives . It is amazing how fertile mans imagination can be when it wants to find excuses to not understand the real roots of the crisis. The governments own data shows that the majority of farmers  who have committed suicide were deeply indebted.  Our data shows that the majority of them got into debt because of BT cotton.
More suicides of the 200.000 are in the cotton belt , most of them have grown BT cotton . The story of Indian farmers is the story of how these cooperation’s have emerged as criminal cooperations. I often say : if 200.000 people have been killed by a dictator we would have called it a genocide.”

(Monsanto spokesperson (example of an excuse maker))
“Suicides in India are a tragic phenomenon , and unfortunately have existed way before the introduction of BT cotton in 2002. The primary cause for suicides is indeptiveness and some of the other causes are inadequate infrastructure, irrigation , not enough rainfall, and so forth. “

(family from suicide)
“He was telling me anything about the load. I was always finding him glum, absent in thinking. He was thinking all the time. He was never happy. He only pretended he was happy when he was outside home. I told him “god is testing us, lets not be sad , we will get over it”. He said that this was improbable, because we have debts and no vintage. “how will we live? How will we raise our children?”. He was sad about that and he talked little.
We were at school and the girls told me “your father drank poison”. I didn’t know what that was. “

(farmers)
“The seeds he gives us are the main reason for the suicides. They put “terminators” inside them. If we were keeping a tree’s seeds and planted them a year after, the new tree would be the same. But if we plant seeds from that mutated tree, nothing will come out. But nobody told that to any farmer at the beginning. “

Dying in abundance - part 3

Dying in abundance – text

Part 3http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unsvD1978oA&feature=related

“Before narutio (or something, inaudible) we were growing , we were producing 97 % of the total (inaudible) We were importing only 3 % but now we are importing 47 %. “

When the food products became expensive, India, along with other countries, limited the exports, to feed the people.

“Our first responsibility is to our own people. So if the prices within the country begin to go up, we take all measures to ensure the stability of places within the country. So we very correctly put a ban on the export of rice for some time, so that the prices here stabilize. “

But the WTO responded with anger and blamed the country for harming the free trading.

“No I thought it was an utterly illogical decision . It was a very bad decision in a world where free trade is always trying to grow and the world is smaller and trade is becoming freer. I think that the process that India adopted is really quite illogical.”

Mr. Lespinage bets with food. He buys harvests of wheat and rice that don’t exist, but are about to exist in the future.

(Speculator)

“You are not trading the actual cash physical grain, you are trading promises, for grain to be delivered a month or 6 months or 12 months or 18 months in the future. So you might be trading grain that actually exists, but you might be as well more often be trading grain that doesn’t even exist yet. So you are trading promises, and you trade em back and forth. And if you make a promise  to buy at a certain price at a certain time, you can cancel that by selling that same contract back into the market. And that is what happens with most contracts, they are never actually delivered upon. They are traded back and forth and cancel each other out .”

From all the amounts of wealth traded at the Chicago Grain Exchange Market, only 4 % will reach real recipients.
But let’s see how does this system work. We need a farmer to produce wheat. Then we need a purchaser. They agree on the amount of the wheat to be delivered and on its price and that the commodity will be ready in, say, 1 year. Then they sign a contract.
These futures, as they are called, can secure both parties from the risks, like bad weather conditions or the sudden changes of the prices, respectively.

(Speculator)

“If you’re a farmer, you’re afraid the prices are going to fall. You can lack in the price months ahead of when you harvest, by selling here and get rid of the risk. You can do the same when you’re a food buyer or processor, like general mills or Kellogg’s, and you can lack in the price of the grain months ahead of when you actually need to buy it – so when you actually do need to buy it , prices are much higher and you bought it already at a much lower price.”

But these futures don’t stay as they are in the meantime. Speculators buy them and sell them. A contract may change hands tens of times until it expires. They can buy a contract for low priced wheat. If the prices rise, they make profit.

(Speculator)

“We are transferring risk, the whole purpose of the exchange is to transfer risk from people that have it , farmers, and don’t want it – to people like myself , speculators, that take the risk because if you take a risk and your right you make money. Of course when you’re wrong , you loose money.”

Since 2006 there are some “big fish” on the Chicago Market. Now you can find managers of huge enterprises at the pits, people not interested in such an investment until recently.(Vandana Shiva – Pro-farmers activist)

“2 years ago , the financial markets which had been very greedy in lending money for mortgages in the united states, lost on the mortgage market. The supreme crisis as it was called led to a collapse in investments.”

The mortgage crisis made the speculators to pursuit new chances with the food market. They started buying huge amounts of futures at the Chicago Market. That boosted their prices.(Vandana Shiva – Pro-farmers activist)
“investors jumped out of real estate and housing, and jumped on the band wagon of primary commodities – food commodities .  Their money, and the monopoly control of agribusiness companies like cargill drove the prices upwards. “

(speculator)
“I totally disagree with that kind of talk, I , speculators are not behind the big rise in prices . Speculation has very very little to do with it.”

“when bubble brakes, liquid gets splashed all over the place, and yes there is not a question there was some correlative selling.
I don’t doubt for a moment that speculators move grain prices. Do I think that they move grain prices by a 100 % , no I think that speculators probably move the grain prices by 20- 15 %”

(speculator)
“prices would have gone up anyway, because of the weather problems, and the weak dollar, and the export bands, and tight world stacks. That’s why prices went up.”

(Vandana Shiva – Pro-farmers activist)
“The hunger, that has become permanent and globally. Is totally a creation of the global food system. The global food system is not created to feed the people of the world. It’s created to maximize the profits for Monsanto , for seeds of Cargill , for trade , for selling pesticides , herbicides , fertilizer . In the period of 2007-2008 while food prices doubled – the profits of these companies also doubled. So if you want to understand why prices are going up, why people are eating less, you just have to look at these companies.”

(showing a Cargill’s commercial about a healthy dietary supplement for healthy joints, saying “this is how Cargill works with customers. Showing total hypocricy. 07:47)

“In this time of transformation there is 1 company who have solely focused on agriculture , 1 company who’s success depends on yours , 1 company taking its future on the future of agriculture , that company is Monsanto.”

(Vandana Shiva – Pro-farmers activist)
“95 % of genetically modified seeds sold today is controlled by Monsanto. Monsanto is buying up every seed company of the world. Cargill controls about 70 % of staple food trade in the world and they would like to control 100%. And they would like a situation where the prayer that sais “give us this day our daily bread “ is a prayer not to go to the creator, but is a prayer to Cargill and Monsanto. “

The American Monsanto is the biggest producer of genetically mutated seeds worldwide today. It began as a small chemical company. It supplied the US Army with the “orange agent”, the notorious chemical that was used in Vietnam and led to desertification, cancer and teratogenicities, still evident today.
In 2002 the company was licensed by the Indian government to sell a mutated cotton seed, the cotton BT, genetically engineered to kill the pests.

(Monsanto spokesperson)

“We have been able to develop a technology , a BT cotton technology where we produce seed that has inbuilt protection to pests, thereby helping farmers to almost double their cotton production, reduce the number of pesticides they have been using in the field to control to pests, and generally increasing their average income. The 6 years after the introduction of BT cotton , India has become the worlds 2^nd largest producer , and the 2^nd largest exporter in 6 years of introduction of BT cotton.”

Dying in abundance – Part 2

Dying in abundance – text

Part 2http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgQUUFNmiAM&feature=related

(Showing Indian farmers)

India is the second major producer of rice in the world, after China. India is also the 3^rd biggest wheat producer. In 2008 it set a new record, with a production of 227 million tons.
You would expect India to have low rates of hunger and malnutrition. But the most of the planet’s starving people live there, actually. Over 200 millions. And to complete this paradox: most of them are farmers.

(Vandana Shiva – Pro-farmers activist)

“Farmers who are growing our food, are going hungry.  Because them grain is being sold to pay back the depts for chemicals and seeds.  This “negative agriculture” as I call it - is the reason for hunger in the world today.”

(showing people walking with barrels on their heads. In Madhya Pradesh state Thyeora commynity)

The Madhya Pradesh state has the highest numbers of starving children, and therefore, the highest rate of child mortality in the country. The situation is as much critical as it is in Ethiopia, Africa.

(you may listen to the next part starting around 2:50 yourself, because some parts are inaudible for me)

“46 % of the children are malnourished in India, this has been reported by the national family health service. (inaudible) it will be 60 % children, they convert them into numbers about 6 million children. They are moderately malnourished.
So these children have more probability of dying then normal children. And 50 % of the under 5 mortality rate is due to malnutrition.
when the food prices has doubled , the quantity which they purchased (inaudible) has also reduced (inaudible).

Dr. Vandana Agarwal works for UNICEF. The organization arranges feeding centers in towns and villages, in collaboration with the government. There are colunteers monitoring the weight and health of the children. They have been assigned with feeding the children, because their families are very poor and they can’t afford for that.

“Now this is a typical case of severely malnourished children. This is her mother Rita, she works and in the morning she left around 8 o’clock and she’ll be back around 7 o’clock. “ Then they show how much the baby got to  eat. Half inch of something in the morning.  A very inadequate quantity of food for a 19 months old baby. They then show the thin body of the baby, and her high respiration rate. Measuring her arm , which indicates she has a severely malnourished diet, and that she needs special care, a good therapeutic diet and medical treatment.

(Madhya Pradesh, Baroda Community)
“We eat pies. Where can we find rice? We once needed 3-4 rupees for 5 kilos of flour. Now it costs 50-60 rupees. How will the people buy it? If only one in the family has a job, what can we buy? Shall we get a loan?
Shall we buy vegetables or wheat? Doctors need money too. The mill needs money too. Nothing can be done with 5 kilos of flour. What to buy with a day’s wage?
We, the poor people, have big troubles. Too much stress. People who have 1-2 children can’t feed them, they don’t get enough food. It is very bad. The poor cant feed himself, pay the doctor or feed the kids.”

“I get 60 rupees (1euro) a day. My daily expenses are 40-45 rupess. The prices at the market are very high. Oil costs 80 rupees per kilo. We hardly can afford it. 5 kilos wheat cost 60 rupees. Much higher than one year ago. If one of us works and we eat twice a day we run out of money. We eat less, so that we don’t deprive the children from food.”

The inhabitants depend on the state. In every city small stores run by the state provide food at low prices.

“We can get 35 kilos of good with 90 rupees. That’s how we make it. We take our papers and we go to the store. They give us what the analogous quantity.”

This is the biggest food aid program across the world.
(man explaining about it, hear for yourself lots of things inaudible for me 08:30)

But in 1997 India was forced to reform the public distribution system, according to the directions of the world bank and the world trade organization. Help to the masses was anti-competitive and against the market. The aid was reduced.

“We had a universal food distribution system , the PDS, the world bank forced us to dismantle it . As long as that system was in place, the farmers had a guaranteed market . Everyone had a guarantee to affordable food , with a piece of paper, a ration card, which was India’s identity card. With that ration card you could walk to your corner shop and get the 1 or 2 kilo’s of affordable food. The world bank dismantled that so that the corporations would get the market – that is why more people are hungry today then 15 years ago. That is why 70 % of India’s children are malnourished while India has a (inaudible) rate of 90 % .”

At the same time, the WTO urged India to dismiss all the limitations imposed on agricultural imports. That wounded badly the agricultural Indian economy.

Dying in Abundance – text version

Dying in Abundance – text version (Script/Direction: Giorgos Avgeropoulos)

Part1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPZDe47d-vc&feature=player_embedded

(showing people yelling in the stock market)

Brecht and the incomprehensible Grain Stock Market of Chicago.
“I had to describe the Chicago Grain Stock Market in a play. I thought I could acquire the necessary knowledge, by asking some experts.
But things turned to be different. Nobody of the people I asked could explain me the laws that rule the market.
I started to believe that the whole deal was unexplainable. Inconceivable and thus insane. The way of the global grain production was distributed didn’t” make any sense. This situation was unbearable to everybody, except a few speculators”. –Bertolt Brecht, “Philosophy and Marxism”.

(Man explaining the signs used at the stock market).
“This is buying, with your hands this way. This is selling, this is a quarter of a cent, your bidding a quarter of a cent…”

Mr. Victor Lespinage is a player at the Chicago Grain Stock Exchange Market. This market is different from those you know, because whats traded over here is food. Grain, corn, rice, soy, olive oil, milk, casings, even hog bellies.

(honorary member talking)

You might be at the desk and you flash an order into the pit and tell your broker “Ill buy 200 at the market”. And you’ll buy the 200 and then he’ll flash you back “want 200 at 7.5”. Or you could tell him “cancel the order”.

(showing stock market again)
The Chicago Grain Exchange Market is the biggest of its kind in the world. It defines the prices of the products we put on our tables every day.
It was founded in 1848 as an outdoor, noisy auction, where farmers could sell their harvest to the merchants. This practice hasn’t changed much since then. But the morals of the economy have changed a lot.

(showing stock market combined with the images of millions starving, poverty, lack of food. Showing the duality between the decisions people make on the market, and the real life impact on people around the world. Those people yelling in the market, all wealthy people that have houses and cars and food and clothing. Do they truly realize the impact their choices have on people across the globe? It is so crazy if you compare the stock market, to the real situation in the world. For that I suggest to see the video (this part starts at 03:40))

(woman speaking, Bette Sheeran)
This is what I call a silent tsunami. It is not 1 storm hitting in 1 place. This is something that knows no borders.

(voice)
The routine meeting of the heads of UN agencies turned into a crisis summit, as the world counts the costs of not acting on earlier warnings.

(showing an area of poverty)
Many patients have come to rely on a traditional remedy for hunger pains – made from the dry yellow dirt of the countries essential plateau, salt and vegetable shortening have become a regular source of sustenance.

(showing riots, killings, unrest because of rising food prices . They took a mans son and beat him severely breaking both his legs, which made him unable to walk or speak and is dying.)

Climate change and bio-fuels have been accused for lowering the food production and increasing the prices. Of course ,they had a role in that. Unexpected droughts destroyed vintages of wheat and corn. Large amounts of the US corn production are used as car fuels and not to feed people.
However, supply and demand is only a partial explanation to why in 2 years the rice’s price increased for 217 , the wheat price increased for 136, the corn price was increased for 125 and the soy price for 107.

(Pat Mooney, ETC group (against patents))
“There are theoretical ways to describe it, saying its greed, and there is practical ways to describe it saying its capitalism. Certainly the food system, which is always been somewhat corrupt and is now perhaps more in crisis and more corrupt then it ever been before in human history.”

(honorary member from earlier)
“I don’t know, I don’t think about that – I am trying to figure out what the market is going to do. Whether it is logical or not, to me is beside the points. Because what counts to me is: what is the markets reaction going to be. Because I am a speculator, I am trying to make money of the movement in the price of grain.”

9 children die because of malnutrition every minute.

(Dennis Gartman – Investor - Economic Analyst)
“Prices may have become a little, may have become too extended on the upside. But … and for a couple of weeks it appeared that : my lord this will never stop. But it did, prices do. So they have moderated rather dramatically since then. As we talk here in early November of 2008 I think prices have probably have gotten about as cheap as they’re going to get and may well start moving higher again. But the market acts really quite rationally. It just takes some time for that rationality to come to flourish and to correct.”

Until the prices were corrected, 75 million people were added to the figures of the starving people globally, thus increasing the population to 923 millions. Even if there is enough food for the whole planet and the production is the highest ever.

(Pat Mooney, ETC group (against patents))
“People have argued that it is because increased demand for meat and dairy products in India and China – that’s simply not true, it’s a negligible consideration. It is because the speculation, because it’s a commodity, like silver or gold that can be negotiated and horded to some degree. And we are seeing that taking place.”

(Vandana Shiva – Pro-farmers activist)
The high rise of food is because food has been put on the global casino, and this will lead to MASSIVE starvation, massive of famines. We have to bring food out of the international trading system, we have to bring food back into national and local food stocks (cant properly hear the last word)