{"id":225267,"date":"2022-12-19T12:00:51","date_gmt":"2022-12-19T12:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=225267"},"modified":"2025-01-10T15:04:10","modified_gmt":"2025-01-10T15:04:10","slug":"vandana-shiva-bill-gates-is-promoting-surveillance-agriculture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/12\/vandana-shiva-bill-gates-is-promoting-surveillance-agriculture\/","title":{"rendered":"Vandana Shiva: Bill Gates Is Promoting \u2018Surveillance Agriculture\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vandana Shiva and Russell Brand discussed the history of agriculture, the role of Big Food in the current global cost-of-living crisis and how Gates is promoting \u201cbasically a surveillance agriculture.\u201d <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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5 Dec 2022 – <\/em>Prior to World War II, big corporations had no role in growing food, according to Vandana Shiva, Ph.D. \u201cGrowing food was an act of care, an act of love,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s food and agriculture system is \u201cvery violent,\u201d Shiva \u2014 environmental activist, author and founder of Navdanya International<\/a> \u2014 told comedian and political commentator Russell Brand on a recent episode of his show, \u201cStay Free with Russell Brand<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

After World War II, \u201cThe same corporations that made chemicals for Hitler\u2019s concentration camps [and] poison gases for the war started to trade in food as a commodity, rather than food as nourishment and food as life,\u201d Shiva said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen a bunch of them created junk food and ultra-processed food<\/a> that\u2019s responsible for 75% of the chronic diseases in our times,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

Brand asked Shiva about Big Food\u2019s<\/a> control over agriculture<\/a> and how it affects the current global cost of living crisis<\/a> and if she thought there was a \u201cconcerted effort\u201d to exert control over the \u201cbasic components of human life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shiva said that since the global financial crisis of 2008<\/a>, \u201cthe financial system has gotten into food.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you look at the current cost of living crisis \u2014 whether it\u2019s energy or it\u2019s food \u2014 both basic needs should be public goods,\u201d she said, \u201cand should be regulated as public goods. Most of the hike in the prices is related to speculation and financialization.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Bill Gates ordered a hamburger\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Brand asked Shiva about the role of Bill Gates<\/a> and other Big Tech<\/a> \u201cmongrels and titans\u201d in this increasing \u201ctechnologization\u201d of food and agriculture.<\/p>\n

Shiva responded with a story.<\/p>\n

Years ago, she explained, Gates visited the Indian president at the presidential palace where \u201creally beautiful banquets are put out for international guests.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHere was all this wonderful Indian food, and Bill Gates ordered a hamburger,\u201d Shiva said, adding, \u201cThat\u2019s the level of his food literacy.\u201d<\/p>\n

She criticized Gates\u2019 gene-editing in food production<\/a>, noting that \u201clife is complex [and] self-organized. It\u2019s not a Word program that you can cut and paste with no consequence.\u201d In editing one gene, 1,500 other genes get destabilized, she told Brand.<\/p>\n

Shiva also criticized Gates\u2019 \u201cdigital agriculture<\/a>.\u201d The concept doesn\u2019t make sense, she said, because agriculture is about \u201cliving seed\u201d and the trillions of organisms outside and inside our gut, she contended.<\/p>\n

According to Shiva, what Gates is promoting<\/a> as digital agriculture relies on large-scale monocultures \u2014 \u201cbasically a surveillance agriculture\u201d \u2014 in which farmers are \u201cforced to get addicted to chemicals and chemical fertilizers<\/a>\u201d that harm the planet and people while reducing natural biodiversity.<\/p>\n

There was \u201cno way\u201d a surveillance drone could monitor her highly biodiverse farm, she said. \u201cIt would get thoroughly confused.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brand told Shiva that digital agriculture sounded like an example of \u201cextremist materialism to the point of ecocide,\u201d in which \u201cthe idea of spirit or mystery or symbiosis or Gaia has been extracted\u201d by an \u201cobsession and fetishization of measurement and control.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added that although it might sound like a sci-fi trope, \u201cit appears that we\u2019re doing this already by adopting a kind of AI [artificial intelligence] rationalist mentality that excludes the immeasurable value of that which is difficult to know.\u201d<\/p>\n

Watch the Russell Brand segment here:<\/strong><\/p>\n