Bitter Seeds

This strong human document analyzes the high suicide rate (one every 30 minutes) among cotton farmers in India. It is a story of bad weather (no rain), huge debts, genetically modified organisms (GMO), pesticides, farm sizes and world markets (prices). Nearly all Indian farmers were convinced (with the promise of higher returns) to exchange their local cotton seeds by GMO seeds provided by a transnational company with a monopoly. While with their local seeds they could constitute every year a stock of plant seeds for the next harvest, they can't do that with GMO. They have to buy every year new plant seeds, as well as the necessary pesticides sold by the same company. One bad harvest can be enough to put a small farmer into insurmountable troubles. Moreover, all farmers live in a community built on traditional Indian 'values', as status, reputation and dowries for daughters. If one can't pay a dowry, one will not find a 'perfect match' for his daughter, and the family will become the laughing stock of the whole village. Micha X. Peled explains perfectly through the eyes of an Indian student journalist who follows the tribulations of a farmer and his family, the harsh battle for survival of small farmers in the Third World. A must see for all those who want to understand the world we live in.

An excellent film that shows in real, life-and-death terms, the effects of multi-national companies as they expand their reach for profits. The topic of GMO seeds that filmmaker, Micha Peled focuses on are complex and layered, but he is able to synthesize the issue by focusing the lens on a single representative family as they make their way through one season of cotton farming in Central India. The new trials and vulnerabilities that they face as the necessary seeds get concentrated into new technologies controlled by Monsanto and marketed through layers of local sales agents and distributors, are profound and dire. With these seeds being generally ill-suited for the small-scale local farming that has sufficiently supplied a livelihood for millions, these shifts give way to a catastrophic undoing of centuries of a traditions and stability.