Long Island July 03, 2010
Sohan Gill
This event is around Dr Vandana Shiva – a Nobel Prize winner and founder of Navdanya. She has dedicated her whole life in the service of the dispossessed in India and has very innovative practical solutions to rural poverty which are currently in place in 16 different StatesIn 1982 she founded an independent institute, the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology in Dehra Dun which is dedicated to high quality and independent research to address the most significant ecological and social issues of our times
1984 was the year of the Punjab Violence and the Bhopal tragedy. This violence demanded a paradigm shift in the practice of agriculture. Navdanya was born of this search for nonviolent farming, which protects biodiversity, the Earth and our small farmers.
It is a network of seed keepers and organic producers spread across 16 states in India
Navdanya has helped set up 54 community seed banks across the country, trained over 500,000 farmers in seed sovereignty, food sovereignty and sustainable agriculture over the past two decades, and helped setup the largest direct marketing, fair trade organic network in the country
Navdanya has also set up a learning center, Bija Vidyapeeth (School of the Seed) on its biodiversity conservation and organic farm in Doon Valley, Uttranchal, north India.
Prof. Dr. Vandana Shiva trained as a Physicist.. In 1991 she founded Navdanya, a national movement to protect the diversity and integrity of living resources, especially native seeds. Dr. Shiva has contributed in fundamental ways to changing the practice and paradigms of agriculture and food. Her books, ‘The Violence of Green Revolution’ and ‘Monocultures of the Mind’, have become basic challenges to the dominant paradigm of non-sustainable, reductionist agricultural practices. Her other books are ‘Water Wars’, ‘Stolen Harvest’, ‘Earth Democracy’ and “Soil not Oil” (2009). Dr. Shiva is a Founding Board Member of many important organizations such as the International Forum on Globalisation and Diverse Women for Diversity. Time Magazine identified her as an environmental hero in 2003. She received the Right Livelihood Award in 1993 and the 2010 Sydney Peace Prize
