“To let the water systems and food systems and planetary climate systems get destroyed that is the stupidity which rules us today so our challenge really is against stupidity”
“Finish the water, you’ll find a substitute finish the food, you’ll find a substitute but are there substitutes for the real things that make life work? No”
“I don’t think the planet will die I think the earth is too powerful she lived through hotter times colder times she’s lived with dinosaurs without dinosaurs she lived with human beings without him we are dispensable she find a way we need to protect ourselves”
“Women were left to do the work that was considered not important going to war and killing was considered important making profits at the cost of others was considered important that’s where men powerful men designed it and they sucked in not powerful men to do their dirty job women were left to do the real things provide the water provide the food take care of family”
“The values we need are the values of knowledge of how to live with nature that’s what women’s knowledge is certain we need knowledge of how to care that’s knowledge it’s considered it’s calling emotional intelligence now, we need knowledge, of how to share; that is a capacity we will need more and more in the future in a period of privatization and a period of extraction so women with their caring in shape will be the teachers of how to be human in the future”
“We are living the final stages of a very deceitful system that has made everything that is very costly for the planet costly, field producer look cheap for the consumer, so very high-cost production with GMOs and patents and royalties and fossil fuel is made to look like cheap food very costly production that kills the girls in Bangladesh in slave factories is made to look like cheap clothing this is a fake!”
“In this period of the end of the world, how do we sow the seeds of a possible world first every young person should recognize that working with their hands and their hearts and their minds and their interconnected is the highest evolution of our species working with our hands is not a degradation it’s our real humanity start a garden, create a playground in the way you grow food, save seeds, cook, it was treated as a backward activity that your mother cooked and oh sweetie does not work but she is the reason you are sustained, start cooking classes get grandmother’s to teach you how to cook create a community we are not atomized producers and consumers we are part of the earth family we are part of a human family we are part of a food community food connects us everything is food and finally never be afraid of deceitful dishonest brutal power that is true freedom”
“Can you imagine just the deepest love for the forests bringing about a change through a totally nonviolent movement? It opened my eyes to another way of looking at the world, and I learned two lessons then: First, that Nature is not out there; we are part of it. And second, protecting Nature is not a luxury.”
“The very foundation of every economic activity is the rivers and the land and the forest and the biodiversity.”
“We are giving 1.3 trillion rupees – that’s bigger than our defense budget – as subsidies for poisoning our soil, for synthetic fertilizers.”
“You add up all these things that seem to be different aspects – some people look at children’s malnutrition; some people look at climate change; some people look at land – it’s all interconnected.”
“Capitalist patriarchy gave us, first, the assumption that Nature is dead when it’s very much alive; the first error we need to correct, and women are correcting it. Second, you have to declare Nature dead to establish man’s empire over Nature, always “man’s” empire over Nature. That means all species can be exterminated, people can be dispossessed. It was actually called by Bacon “The birth of masculine time.””
“Till now, we have a resurgence of a holistic thought: inevitable consequences of fate, a mechanistic view of the world that could not see interconnections, that could not see cycles.”
“The government is finding it very difficult (to clean river Ganga) in spite of spending millions – they can’t get it right. But they can’t get it right because they’ve broken the cycle. The cycle of our nutrition that should go back to the land is today going as pollution to the rivers.”
“If only we corrected that (River pollution) through good town planning, good sanitation, we’d have no problem of soil infertility, and we’d have no river pollution either.”
“If the Green Revolution had given us more food, half of India wouldn’t be starving today.”
“Apple gave us iPod. It gave us iPad. It gave us iPhone. And the government’s giving us an “iDaal,” which is not a daal. It’s basically soya bean reconstituted and colored yellow.”
“We now have brilliant ways to prevent multiplication of seed: genetic engineering, terminator seed, patenting, which makes it illegal for farmers to save their own seeds.”
“[Reason] behind the farmer suicides: the high-cost seed, high-cost chemicals, debt, and indebtedness then leading to the suicides we witness.”
“So how are we changing this genocidal and ecocidal system that is both destroying the land, the water, the biodiversity, the lives of our farmers, the lives of our children? First, by recognizing one simple thing, that biodiversity is not a problem. The diversity of species, that is the base on which we produce our food. If you kill the soil organisms, you won’t have food. If you kill the bees and the pollinators, you won’t have food. And the beauty of it is each of us can be the change we want to see in the way food is grown.”
“Today, industrial farming is giving us climate change, water pollution, water waste. It has destroyed biodiversity. We used to eat 8,500 crops; we are eating 8 commodities. It’s destroying, of course, the farmers and public health.”
“Eating is an ecological act. Eating is an ethical act. Eating is a political act. And eating is an agricultural act.”
“Show me a person who is in a software company who has stopped eating. You still need the food, and the fact of forgetting about agriculture, forgetting about our field farmers, forgetting about the seed, and forgetting about the soil is at the root of the huge food and agrarian crisis. You are privileged, you don’t suffer it. But the producers are the worst sufferers of the food crisis.”
“Food after all is life, and every one of us eats two or three times a day; the greedy might eat many more times. But every time you eat, you can make a massive change. You can throw your weight behind ecosystems, behind diversity, behind farmers, or you can throw your weight behind greed, behind super profits, behind ill health that is killing both this planet and people. Make your choice. It’s easy. We’ve done it. And it’s just a matter of eating right and thinking holistically.”
