Eco-Feminism & GMOs

This week the SJGELA group had a talk on eco-feminism by Patricia Hume, an eco-feminist who shared with us her views on environmental issues through a feminist perspective. She talked about the differences between nature and the environment, describing the term “environment” as the scientific form of what we know as “nature”. Nature, the more spiritual term, is what we need to be aware of in our everyday lives. Awareness is, in fact, the ultimate goal of eco-feminism according to Ms. Hume--the practice in our everyday lives and complete awareness of the world around us is what eco-feminism strives to accomplish.

Eco-feminism is also based on the idea that nature and women are both put down by a system of patriarchy. In this system, the power structure that exists in the world puts nature down by feminizing it, and puts women down by naturalizing them. In this way, both the environment and women are dominated.

SJGELA also visited a woman named Catherine Marielle, who works in Mexico City with a group called Grupo de Estudios Ambientales (GEA), studying the effects of transgenic and hybrid corn on the Mexican population. She told us about a program called the Sustainable Agro-Food System (SAS) Program, which was developed to as a way to promote agroecological alternatives and information on transgenics, biosafety, biodiversity, and food sovereignty in the Latin American region. The group also researches the patterns in corn crops and lobbies to see change in what they find to be a flawed and damaging system.

This talk highlighted the issue of food sovereignty in the lives of the people here in Mexico. We learned about how the use of transgenic and hybrid corn seeds are part of a system in which transgenic and hybrid seeds are sold to indigenous farmers from large companies. These seeds have been altered, either naturally (hybrid) or in a laboratory (transgenic), and are designed to no longer reproduce. This leaves indigenous Mexican farmers who have been gathering seeds with no choice but to continue purchasing seeds from these companies, year after year, planting a crop that does not grow without chemical fertilizers. This lack of seeds is just one of the problems that ensues with this system, in addition to a lack of water, pollution, unfair commerce, and often forced migration when a farmer loses his land when he is unable to purchase seeds for the following year. The talk on the system of hybrid and transgenic corn stressed the importance of a sustainable system that produced secure, healthy and diverse food.

It was also emphasized that the issue of corn is at the root of the struggles for food sovereignty, not only because it is one of Mexico’s largest crops but because maize is a basic part of life in Mesoamerica. The culture of maize is thousands of years old, complete with myths, legends and rituals. As we have seen while living with families in Mexico, the people here eat tortillas on a daily basis. Mexico has one of the world’s most diverse biosystems, complete with a unique maize population that is very diverse--there are at least 60 different landraces of maize in Mexico--and that could reproduce continuously when planted and harvested naturally.

Traditionally, the farmers of Mexico planted using an ancient policultivated system called MILPA, which combines corn, beans and squash crops with chilies and tomatoes to naturally complement each other, eliminating the need for chemical pesticides and fertilizers. Since the early nineties, food sovereignty has gone down in Mexico- the country now has to import native crops like corn and soy to survive.