Vandana Shiva's book 'Soil Not Oil' outlines the problems humanity faces from our abuse of the commons, it details the reasons we teeter on the brink of extinction and it provides a broad green boulavard to a solution. Shiva's latest book is filled with both scientific and small farmer based rational for our enslavement to agribusiness and solutions to help us wiggle out from its domination.One solution in immediate need of adoption is seed saving. Vandana's co-op at Navdanya walks the walk on this topic. 'Soil Not Oil' takes on the Monsanto mentality and clearly argues that saving heirlom varities of seed is our and our planets only long term hope of surviving the corporate agriculural model.
The central focus of the book is soil and its capacity to sequester carbon when allowed to. Instead our agribusiness' addiction to oil is destroying the living carbon sequestering soil by killing its teeming billions of microbes and funguses with agro-chemicals and creating huge dead zones where once thriving communities of microbes worked their miracles as part of the recycling of carbon through the enviroment.
A few facts from 'Soil Not Oil': Fully 30% of all Greenhouse Gases are produced by deforestation, almost all of it destroyed in the southern hemisphere to grow bio-fuels for export to the rich north. That the Structural Adjustment Programs demamded by the WB and IMF force impoverished countries and their already underfed populations to grow export cash crops on all productive land in order to pay back loans that were most likely stolen long ago by the dictators who were in charge at the time. Organic Agriculture sequesters 18.87 tons of carbon per hectare per year, oil based chemical fertilizers kill the microbes that have sustained our food chain and our lives up until now.
The solution to so many of our seemingly intractable problems lies in the changeover from agribusiness to sustainable organic farming methods and local distribution systems. We can either continue to serve corportate criminals or take hold of our future and that of our children and their children and their....Please read 'Soil Not Oil'.
