{ Part 6 : Winter } cont.

As in earlier colonial projects, this theft of the commons is ideologically concealed through claims of the sanctity of private property and made possible through the protection of the state. Such thievery has been deliberately mislabeled as "progress" and "development." Since WWII, corporations and national states have created an enormous (and enormously effective) propaganda campaign claiming that industrial farming is the only solution to population growth and world hunger. Industrial farming is portrayed as more "efficient", more "cost-effective" and even "more healthy."

Simultaneously, small farmers - and those that support them - are accused of being "anti-science," as being "unknowing" - a tried and true method of devaluing indigenous and local knowledge.

The effect of this latest assault on the commons has been devastating. Worldwide, more than 30,000 plant species are threatened, leading to a serious reduction of biodiversity In the United States, where many of the biotechnology corporations are headquartered and where last year there was over 28 million hectares of GE crops planted (a 1000 percent increase since 1996). A recent Worldwatch Institute report found that more than 80 percent of seed varieties sold a century ago are no longer are available (Tuxill, 1999). In China, nearly 90 percent of traditional wheat varieties have been lost since WWII. Farmers in Mexico now raise only 20 percent of the corn varieties cultivated in the 1930s. Heavy commercial demand in various regions is depleting varieties of wild plants used for medicinal and other purposes (Ibid.).

Biodiversity is essential to life on this planet. We live in a web of life in which each living organism affects and is affected by all others. Remove one and the whole ecological basis for life is altered. The level of destruction unleashed since WWII and the introduction of industrial farming has altered the basis for life on this planet to such a degree that there is now a serious and significant threat to our collective ability to survive. One, so far small, way that people the world over are trying to maintain biodiversity and even reverse the devastation unleashed by the nexus of capitalist and state power is to save traditional seed varieties.