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A Call to Action and Transformation

It is time to abandon our resource intensive and profit intensive economic systems that have created havoc in the world, disrupting the planet’s ecosystems and undermining society’s systems of health, justice and democracy. It has been clearly proven that Big Industrial Agriculture and food systems, based on large-scale monocultures, genetically engineered crops and intensive use of chemicals, are major contributors to this collapse.

Now, the new so-called philanthrocapitalism is boosting the corporate takeover of our seed, agriculture, food, global health systems, information and democracy, and has emerged as a pervasive force, able to derail the international agenda, and push our future and the future of our planet towards extinction and ecological collapse.

In the last 30+ years, we have been defending Seed Freedom, Food Freedom and Earth Democracy through Navdanya and the Seed Freedom network, and in coalition with many other civil society movements across the world.

From the 2nd to the 16th of October (and beyond…), we invite you to join people and communities around the globe, and work together to launch a Satyagraha for Life and Freedom, to take back our Seed, Food, Democracy and Freedom, and celebrate our seeds, our soils, our land, our territories, to create an Earth Democracy based on Living Seed, Living Soil, healthy communities and living economies.

“Let us align our creative potential with the higher planetary laws and higher laws of humanity which make life and well being possible for all” —Dr Vandana Shiva

What is Satyagraha?

Satyagraha —the force of truth—is Gandhi’s word for non-cooperation with and non-participation in systems, structures, laws, paradigms, policies that destroy the earth and rob us of our humanity and our freedoms, that crush our potential for compassion and sharing, that atrophy our hearts, our minds, our hands.

Satyagraha, the force and power of truth in creative, non-violent form is central to our freedom during the rule through “post truth “ during which illusions and constructions displace reality, colonise the Earth and our minds, and manipulate our minds to think our enslavement and our disposability is “progress” and liberation.

Force of Truth for democracy

Satyagraha is the deepest practice of democracy, a “No” from the highest consciousness —the moral duty to not cooperate with unjust and brute law and exploitative and undemocratic processes because there are higher laws we must obey .

The brute laws of today’s dominant economic paradigm of corporate globalisation based on limitless greed and the illusion of limitless growth is driving extinction. It is feeding ecocide and genocide.

As Gandhi reminded us:
“The Earth has enough for everyone’s needs, but not for a few people’s greed”

The shift from fossil fuel driven corporate globalisation to localisation of our economies has become an ecological and social imperative. Economic localisation implies that whatever can be produced locally with local resources should be protected to build a vibrant local economy so that both livelihoods and the environment are protected. This was Gandhi’s concept of Swadeshi.

Let us prepare for a Recovery where the health and wellbeing of all peoples and the planet are at the centre of all government and institutional policy, community building and civic action.

Ecological food and agriculture systems that are fossil fuel free, and poison free have the potential to address the multiple crisis by working with nature, not against her laws, by working with our hands, heads and hearts to create sacred economies based on care and compassion, not greed and disposability of people, specially farmers and artisans.

The creation of local ecological economies based on “bread labour” and co creativity with nature is the only way to sustain the earth and human societies through rejuvenation of real work. We are creative intelligent beings given creative heads, hearts and hands. Every human being has a right to be creative to live to their full potential and evolve their intelligence in diverse ways. Creativity cannot be reduced to designing the next algorithm for living in virtual reality. Creativity is above all our co-creativity to join our intelligence with the intelligence of the earth and all beings. Through our common creativity we can say an effective “No” to the assumption of fossil fuel based throwaway economies which creates throwaway people .

Join the Earth Day Communiqué – One Planet, One Health – Making Peace with the Earth: Sign the Pledge

Key Dates

2nd October 2020: Gandhi’s birth anniversary – International Day of Non-Violence

5 October 2020 (TBC, TBA): Launch of Navdanya International’s Global Report “Gates to a Global Empire”. Online Panel Debate with the authors (more details soon).

16th October 2020: World Food Day

…more soon

Join us in a new series of events and actions from 2nd to 16th October (and beyond), to celebrate the Earth’s biodiversity and add strength to the movement for poison-free, fossil-fuel free organic communities.

We’d love to hear from you…
Write to us, send us a photo of your garden or terrace, and let us know about your ideas and work, as well as issues, projects and actions in your community, and learn more on how to get involved. Contact form
Organise an event. In these times of forced physical distance you can organise activities with your family (cooking, sharing a meal, tending your garden, sharing knowledge with your children). You can organise activities online, such as promoting Community Supported Agriculture and Purchase Groups in order to support your local farmers and producers, or you can organise online meetings, conferences, to share ideas, strategies and knowledge. You may announce your event and help us promote it by adding it to the Seed Freedom calendar http://seedfreedom.info/events/submit-your-event.
And/or you can later share with us your photos, videos, thoughts through our Contact form, so that we can share them with the Navdanya community!
Unleash your creativity! Hashtags #OnePlanetOneHealth #PoisonFreeFoodFarming #ExposeGates

Actions for sowing the seeds of a new Earth Democracy include:

  • Promote and protect biodiversity richness in our forests, our farms and our food to stop the destruction of the earth and the sixth mass extinction.
  • Practice sustainable agriculture based on integration of diversity of crops, trees and animals.
  • Save, grow and reproduce traditional seed varieties to safeguard biodiversity. They need to be saved not as museum pieces in germplasm banks, but in living working seed banks as a basis of a health care system.
  • Create poison free zones, communities, farms and food systems.
  • Support, regenerate and strengthen communities.
  • Create Gardens of Hope, Gardens of Health everywhere – in community gardens, institutions, schools, prisons, hospitals in the cities and countryside.
  • Demand that your government stop subsidising industrial agriculture and unhealthy systems that create a burden of disease. Public subsidies should be redirected to systems based on agroecology and biodiversity conservation, which provide health benefits and protect common goods.
  • Demand that your government halt subsidies and further investments in the fossil fuels sector, including fossil fuel based agricultural inputs, as real climate action.
  • Demand that your local/national government, your municipality stop favouring industrial junk food and unhealthy food systems based on toxic and nutritionally empty commodities.
  • Demand that your local/national government, your municipality put an end to monocultures, genetic manipulation of plants and factory farming of animals which are spreading pathogens and antibiotic resistance.
  • Demand that your government stop deforestation, which is expanding exponentially through industrial monocultures for corporate interests. Forests are the lungs of the Earth.
  • Demand that your government and international bodies introduce policies to assess the costs of damage to health and the environment caused by chemicals and enact the polluter pays principle.
  • Demand that your government and international bodies put Health must as priority over corporate interests with respect to chemical and pesticide use in food and agriculture. The precautionary principle must be enacted.
  • Demand that your local/national government, your municipality transition from globalisation to localisation and make permanent deglobalisation. Stop the corporate takeover of our food and health.
  • Demand that your local/national government, your municipality introduce local circular economies which increase the wellbeing and health of people.
  • Demand that your government and international bodies stop using Growth’ and GDP as measures of the health of the economy. GDP is based on the extraction of resources from nature and wealth from society.
  • Demand that your government and international bodies adopt citizens wellbeing as a measure of the health of the economy.

“Every human being has a right to be creative to live to their full potential and evolve their intelligence in diverse ways .Creativity cannot be reduced to designing the next algorithm for living in virtual reality. Creativity is above all our co-creativity to join our intelligence with the intelligence of the earth and all beings. Through our common creativity we can say an effective “No” to the assumption of fossil fuel based throwaway economies which creates throwaway people .This is the Satyagraha for a Sacred Economy. It is a Satyagraha for life. It is a Satyagraha against disposability and extinction.”—Dr Vandana Shiva

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