APPS
The limited screening of this film has ended, but you can still donate to The Seeds of Vandana Shiva Global Impact campaign to make a difference for the future of farming and food. Each tax-deductible contribution supports Vandana Shiva's mission and helps bring global awareness to the issues highlighted in this film.
“Food is a weapon. When you control seed, you control life on earth.”
Vandana Shiva
The Seeds of Vandana Shiva focuses on the people, circumstances and seminal events in Vandana’s life—what shaped her thinking and defined her purpose. It also shows how the battle against multinational agribusiness has become an international struggle between two visions for feeding the world: The first, a multinational corporate model of chemically dependent monoculture that rewards a capitalist imperative of profit and growth. And the other, ‘Earth Democracy, that honors ecology, biodiversity, sustainability and community—what Dr. Shiva demonstrates is the only way forward for the future of food.
1:21:41 | 2022
In 1995, Vandana Shiva set out to build Bija Vidyapeeth (School of the Seed), also known as Earth University, in an old eucalyptus orchard in the Doon Valley in Utterkahand, India. Many said this could not be done, but Dr. Shiva persisted and transformed the soil and land into a successful thriving organic farm. Today, Navdanya's Bija Vidyapeeth is a fully operational 47-acre organic farm, seed bank, and biodiversity research center for farmer's, educators, students, and thought leaders from around the world to come visit and learn about regenerative farming, agroecology, and the Navdanya movement.
Through Vandana’s evolution as an activist against the global Goliaths of food and farming, the film also aims to shine a light on where we are today—industrial food accounts for up to 40% of carbon emissions, while pesticides destroy soils, water systems and biodiversity, and harm human health. Contrary to the spin that industrial food is essential to feeding the world, today more than two billion people face food insecurity across the globe.
Vandana speaks for an ecological vision for food and farming in which we can regenerate the environment and human democracies. Our hope is that Vandana’s extraordinary story will act as a catalyst for more awareness around the issues, and to inspire audiences to be part of the change.
Vandana Shiva, a world-renowned environmental thinker, activist, feminist, philosopher of science, writer and science policy advocate, is the founder of Navdanya Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology in India and President of Navdanya International.
Trained as a Physicist at the University of Punjab, she completed her Ph.D. on the ‘Hidden Variables and Non-locality in Quantum Theory’ from the University of Western Ontario, Canada. She later shifted to inter-disciplinary research in science, technology and environmental policy, which she carried out at the Indian Institute of Science and the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore, India.
In 1982 she founded the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology (RFSTE), an independent research institute that addresses the most significant problems of ecology of our times, and two years later, Navdanya (‘nine seeds’) the movement in defense of biodiversity and the contributions made to the climate, environment and society by small farmers.
The recipient of many awards, including the Right Livelihood Award, (the ‘Alternative Nobel Prize’) and the Sydney Peace Prize, she has been named among the top five “Most Important People in Asia” by AsiaWeek.
She is a prolific writer and author of numerous books and serves on the board of the International Forum on Globalization, and member of the executive committee of the World Future Council.