To this end, campaign tactics and strategies have been geared toward putting pressure within, at the institutional level, to influence policy; and raising critical awareness at the grassroots, mostly through knowledge-sharing with farmers, to influence public opinion.Over time, the campaign has evolved to form new coalitions and mobilize new tactics and strategies. But before updating on how it is unfolding, let’s address few criticisms aimed at the campaign. USAID/US Embassy in particular seems to be very keen on using Facebook to frequently pick up on the demographic/geographic form of the campaign as a way to delegitimize it; that it is ‘urban’ in its make-up and situatedness, enacting utopian resistance, and hence is isolated from the lived realities of farmers and farmlands.
For many core members of the campaign, farming may not be an embodied practice and most of us are city dwellers, yes. But to turn that into a basis for dismissing genuine concerns around food/seed production and distribution, and agro-biodiversity, is myopic and misplaced. Relationships, goods, networks are always mobile and extend beyond the boundaries of a body and a place, connecting us to diverse places and people that are seemingly disparate; they are all relational in reality. Food, more than anything else, cuts across the illusory rural/urban disconnect to connect us.
Not just through our families, friends and relatives who farm both for sustenance and commercial purposes, but also through our everyday visits to grocery stores, meat shops, farmer’s market and so on. After all, cities and towns in large parts are consumers of what our farmlands produce—from the green chilies of Ilam to the red tomatoes of Argakhachi.
For many non-Nepalis helping to move the campaign forward, it is not abnormal to voice concerns around domination over local/indigenous farming through non-local corporate intervention because it is not an identity-based nationalist concern. The repercussion of such intervention and the dominant role they have played in eroding traditional communal relation built on shared farming practice (such as shared seeds and water), environmental injustice suffered (such as loss of soil fertility and crop diversity due to mono-culture farming), and socially unjust economic dependence (such as creating credit cycle that is hard to get out of) they create not only “Nepali” concerns; they are global. Furthermore, while “Development” creates poverty out of the need to sustain itself (sustainable development?), development in theory is a benevolent idea. And in principle, it is only fair for anyone to question, on moral grounds, the rationale behind using ‘international development aid’ to fund a company like Monsanto with such dubious history.
We need to continuously mobilize our institutional and individual positions to challenge any potential intervention like Monsanto that puts our pursuit of good life under threat.
For many youth at the leadership of the campaign, it is not unusual to be in such position in the current political time in Nepal when there is so much openness institutionally, with people´s consciousness raised, and with ayounger and genuinely diverse group of people in parliament. Besides, this is a country that has ‘40’ as the magic number that defines ‘youth’ in political leadership anyways.
So! Let’s stop fussing over demographic/geographic make-up of the campaign and let’s move on to issues that need more serious attention already, because larger concerns are at stake than the campaign itself. On that note, let’s instead talk about two key moments in the last two weeks. First, there was a parliamentary hearing session on Monsanto, food/seed production and distribution, and agro-biodiversity on December 11. It wouldn’t be far off the mark to suggest that this might have been one of the more concrete issue-based focused sessions to take place in the parliament.
Some of the key concerns that parliamentarians raised for MOAC’s representatives in attendance were: What alternatives our agricultural ‘vision’ offers besides corporate dependency? Who is accountable should the Monsanto plan fail? What kind of subsidy and safety nets are in place for farmers? Why is our focus centered on seeds alone? What about irrigation, funding, and providing institutional and technical support in other areas of food/seed production and distribution? Why are we over-reliant on Western scientific knowledge at the expense of marginalizing our own knowledge?
If we import hybrid seeds, what message would that send to our own institutions like the ‘National Agriculture Research Center’ (NARC) who are producing local varieties of hybrid seeds and promoting community seeds banks? Should we not focus on rebuilding our own institutions? What about also promoting successful traditional/organic farming practices already in place that have produced yields equal to those claimed by hybrids but with lesser input? Many such pertinent questions were raised, a lot of which went unanswered. Which in turn called for a deeper discussion and so a follow-up parliamentary hearing is around the corner; this time with a broader participation of donor agencies, INGOs, NGOs, and civil society members.
Meeting with ‘Nepal Forum for Environmental Journalists’ (NEFEJ) on December 18 marked the second important moment. NEFEJ, as the name suggests, is a network of environmental journalists who also have strong networks within Nepal’s NGO sector, and have been at the leadership of promoting community radio movement all over Nepal for more than a decade now. The meeting has decided to organize a national seminar in the first week of January 2012; not just on Monsanto, but rather to engage with the kind of questions around food, farming and agriculture that the parliament raised. Those attending will be government representatives, environmental journalists, and representatives of farmers’ groups/bodies as well as NGOs/INGOs among many others.
These two moments have effectively turned the issues that the campaign has been raising for the past three months into a national debate. Ordinary Nepalis, non-Nepalis, farmers, non-farmers, men, women, young, and old should all take heart from the way collective action has infiltrated formal institutions and spheres of politics. We need to build on these moments of victory to continuously mobilize our institutional and individual positions to keep the activism alive not just around Monsanto, but to challenge any potential intervention like Monsanto that puts our pursuit of good life under threat.
As for the powers that be, let me reproduce this quote from the parliamentary hearing session: “If companies like Monsanto come to Nepal, they will eat us all.” Listen MOAC, that is your own spokesperson speaking.
The author is a member of ‘STOP Monsanto in Nepal’ campaign and a PhD candidate, University of Toronto
sninglekhu@gail.com
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