We would like to bring your attention to a bright educated woman, Dr Vandana Shiva, President of Navdanya International.

Dr Vandana Shiva is a well-known lobbyist for food security, bio-diversity and respect for life and nature. She is the founder of Navdanya and “the Navdanya movement was created by Dr. Vandana Shiva 30 years ago in India to defend Seed and Food sovereignty and small farmers around the world. Navdanya pioneered the movement of seed saving and seed freedom, which began in response to the crisis of erosion of agricultural biodiversity and introduction of GMOs and patents on seeds through intellectual property rights (IPRs) and so-called ‘free trade’ agreements. It has long fought against biopiracy, the patenting of indigenous knowledge by self-interested multinational corporations and won cases related to Neem, basmati rice and wheat in India.” – source: https://navdanyainternational.org/about-us-navdanya-international/


“Artificial food is detrimental to ecological transition
ow can we heal our relationship with food in the age of artificial food? In
response to the crises in our food system we are witnessing the rise of
technological solutions that aim to replace animal products and other food
staples with lab-grown alternatives.


Artificial food advocates are reiterating the old and failed rhetoric that industrial
agriculture is essential to feed the world. Real, nutrient-rich food is gradually
disappearing, while the dominant industrial agricultural model is causing an increase in
chronic diseases and exacerbating climate change.


The notion that high-tech, “farm free” lab food is a viable solution to the food crisis
is simply a continuation of the same mechanistic mindset which has brought us to where
we are today – the idea that we are separate from and outside of nature.
Industrial food systems have reduced food to a commodity, to “stuff” that can then
be constituted in the lab. In the process both the planet’s health and our health has been
nearly destroyed.
Industrial agriculture is re-inventing its future based on “fake farming” with “fake
food”, with chemicals and GMOs, surveillance drones and spyware. Farming without
farmers, farming without biodiversity, farming without soil, is the vision of those who have
already brought us to the brink of catastrophe.


This is why artificial meat, invested in by the giant tycoons of factory farming, are
not viable alternatives. They are just additional sources of profit for the same players and
take political power away from regenerative farmers and local communities.
These modes deny the essential symbiotic relationships between humans, plants,
animals and microorganisms and, in turn, deny their potential to maintain and regenerate
the web of life. Food is the web of life and we cannot separate food from life. Similarly,
we cannot separate ourselves from the Earth.


Solutions to our global crises already exist and they come from building cultures
of interconnection and regeneration, as well as healing our relationships with food, nature
and community. We need to become aware of the connections that hold the opportunity
to regenerate the earth, our health, our food economies and food cultures through a real
agriculture that cares for the earth and for people. Real food is not created in a laboratory,
but comes from biodiverse farms that take care of the land by embracing a regenerative
agriculture model.


We must therefore work actively to renew and regenerate the Planet by
participating in ecological processes of reciprocity and restoring biodiversity. For this to
happen, the act of eating must once again become an ecological act, so that the false
solutions proposed by the advocates of artificial food, which do nothing to counter the
profit-driven agri-food industry, do not create further crises.“

Dr Vandana Shiva, President of Navdanya International

Source: https://navdanyainternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/The-Corporate-Push-for-Synthetic-Foods-Rev3.pdf

Photo is created by Kim van Vuuren and collected from Pexels.