September 2010 - Issue 435

Millions of years of growing natural diversity are in real danger of extinction. There's a bid by industrial agriculture to take complete control over seeds – and thereby of all the food we eat. As for genetic modification – promoted as the only way to feed the world, its one real benefit is that it conveys corporate ownership. Monopoly and monoculture are the result, together with increased dependence on fossil fuels and reduced adaptability to climate change. So the New Internationalist reports from Latin America, Africa and Asia on what peasant farmers are already doing to avert catastrophe.