The way things stand now, bees can’t be kept just anywhere in this modern world of ours – not to mention kept using natural methods. There are several reasons for this: huge swaths of land planted with monocultures, catastrophically impoverished and polluted natural environments, the large-scale use of pesticides and GMOs (genetically modified organisms). At the same time, a tremendous number of valuable crops (including fruit) depend on bee pollination. Therefore, so-called developed countries have recently been sounding the alarm concerning a sharp drop in the number of bee colonies, but there’s nothing they can do about it. After all, improving the situation would require moving in a completely different direction and beginning to search for an alternative path for all of humanity. Are we prepared to do that?

Excerpt from Keeping Bees with a smile: Principles and Practice of Natural Beekeeping

Churdan, IA: Iowa farmer Patti Naylor of Churdan participated in events at the United Nations Committee on World Food Security (CFS) in Rome, Italy. The 51st Plenary of the CFS took place on October 23 – 27, 2023 at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Her presentations focused on agriculture technology and price volatility in relation to food security.

India, a British colony until 1948, has a complex society, and like so many other regions of the world, is something we don’t hear much about in the USA. Estimates of over 500 million farmers across 2,000 ethnic groups, and up to 200 languages boggle the mind. Most of the farmers in India farm less than 10 acres, producing food for local populations. Others raise grains and pulses that are traded nationally and internationally.

Despite the obvious differences in farm size and cropping practices, the issues are the same, and these two movements share the understanding that farmers all over the world, especially now with recent free trade agreements, are victims of cheap food policy, otherwise known as free market economics.

The new laws dictated by the Modi government are identical to the early 1950 laws here in the US that broke the New Deal’s guarantee to family farmers of parity prices. The parity legislation aimed to heal the destruction of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl by stabilizing rural communities and allowing US farmers to produce healthy food sustainably which is what any democratic government would want for its citizens and future generations. The Indian farmers are absolutely correct in their analysis of the consequences of this new legislation They know that lower prices mean lower incomes that will drive farmers off the land, while bigger farms struggle to survive the incessant pressure of even lower prices, thus compromising their traditional methods that are more sustainable and less fossil fuel-intensive than any “modern” methods promoted by transnational agribusiness. . This new legislation is a demand from the Modi government on behalf of transnational corporation’s profit motive to “Get big or get out.”

I had the honor of participating in this international project as an advisor with Pesticide Action Network. The story of how genetically engineered crops have harmed cultures, traditional foods, and the environment is clearly articulated in this brilliant, animated short film.