The documentary, Bitter Seeds, showing tomorrow (Tue Oct 16) has a new, earlier start time.
The film will be introduced by The Food Sleuth, Melinda Hemmelgarn. “Bitter Seeds” documentary reveals the tragic toll of GMOs in India. When home-front battles over GMO labeling, beekeeping, and the Farm Bill get heated, we can sometimes lose sight of the fact that Big Ag’s influence extends far beyond our own borders. Micha Peled’s documentary “Bitter Seeds” is a stark reminder of that fact. The final film in Peled’s globalization trilogy, “Bitter Seeds” exposes the havoc Monsanto has wreaked on rural farming communities in India, and serves as a fierce rebuttal to the claim that genetically modified seeds can save the developing world. The film follows a plucky 18 year old girl named Manjusha, whose father was one of the quarter-million farmers who have committed suicide in India in the last 16 years. As Grist and others have reported, the motivations for these suicides follow a familiar pattern: Farmers become trapped in a cycle of debt trying to make a living growing Monsanto’s genetically engineered BT cotton. The always live close to the edge, but one season’s ruined crop can dash hopes of ever paying back their loans, much less enabling their families to get ahead. Manjusha’s father, like many other suicide victims, killed himself by drinking the pesticide he spreads on his crops.
Co-sponsored by Mid-MO WILPF Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and Osage Group of the Sierra Club.
Tue Oct 16, 2012, 6:30 pm
Friends Room, Columbia Public Library, 100 W Broadway, Columbia MO 65203
http://missouri.sierraclub.org/osage/
