Monsanto’s business in India: On Seeds and Suicides

This report is part of our former “Harmful Cases” documentation, where we continuously and concisely recorded human rights violations, violations of international law or environmental destruction caused by companies.

Human rights violations and environmental hazards in India

Some 95 per cent of India’s cotton seed is controlled by Monsanto. Across the world, new seed laws are being introduced, which enforce compulsory registration of seeds. On the one hand, these measures aim at stabilizing the seed market and stock, but on the other hand force small farmers into dependency on multinational corporations – and thus into high debts.

The predominance of Monsanto with its specialization on GM seed patents has far-reaching ecological and social consequences. Besides a drastic disappearance of biodiversity, due to intensive and almost exclusive monocultural farming, India and its farmers are increasingly becoming financially dependent on giant seed corporations.

According to Vandana Shiva, laureate of the Right Livelihood Award or the Alternative Nobel Prize in 1993, the debt trap causes a wave of suicides of small farmers each year in India. With a suicide rate exceeding a quarter of a million since 1995, India has the largest recorded rate of suicides in human history. The majority of the victims are in the cotton belt.

You can find Vandana Shiva’s full article here.

For further information:

IndiaTribune.com

Handelsblatt.com (de)