Subtitles by explosiveskull
(calm and earthly strings music)
(seeds shake and rattle)
(soft and chill strings music)
When I first came here,
we are a hippy, back to nature, self-sufficient thing.
We were watching too many David Crockett,
Daniel Boone movies
and reading too much Thoreau.
(man sings song in foreign language)
We were trying to seek a different vision.
The first time I saw bean collections and so on,
it was like woo, a jewelry store, lit up,
and I've always just been dazzled by diversity.
I don't like people that are all straight, all gay,
all communist, all Christian,
let them all be there
and absolutely the different kinds of seeds.
My great grandfather was a farmer.
Looking through our family photo album,
I just wish that I could like somehow step into that photo,
say "Hi great grandma. It's me, Billy,
"can I have some of these?"
because I know for a fact
that 90 something percent of the things are now extinct.
They're my family, and they're gone.
I have this horrible vision someday
that the creator would look down
and he'd come look around and say,
"Well, where is this, well where did that go?
"I created this, where did it go?
"How come it's not here?"
I see myself as Noah, not God.
Noah didn't get to decide
whether the crocodiles came on the Ark or not,
or the black flies.
His job was to load 'em on,
ok, that's my job.
I have thousands of varieties that I am maintaining,
People of the future, plant breeders, and gardeners,
they will decide.
What the heck did Will save that for?
I don't get to make that decision.
My job is to keep these all on the Ark,
keep them alive for 40 days and 40 nights
until the flood's over.
I may discover 10 years from now
that that seed will be in huge demand
because it has in its genes
some resistance to some disease
which is only now evolving.
In many many cases,
what I've got is not available anywhere else.
She's my sweetheart.
The year that I fail to grow a variety
is the year it is lost to me.
And in some cases perhaps lost to the planet,
some of these things are right on the edge of extinction.
(calm and relaxing strings music)
We have this collection of several hundred
potatoes that are purple or black skinned
and with yellow flesh,
some with a purple skin hot pink flecks in them.
We have in the collection a variety of lumpers.
Most of the Irish in the 1830s and 40s were growing lumpers,
big yielder,
and none of those varieties
had any resistance to late blight.
This is the potato that killed a million Irishmen.
Because of the fact that they were the one or two
or three varieties that were totally vulnerable.
This is the variety that explains why O
is the biggest section of the South Boston phone directory.
Genetic diversity is the hedge between us and global famine.
(soft, somber strings music)
The diversity in our seed stocks is as endangered
as a panda or a golden eagle or a polar bear right now.
We have the largest seed shortage
in history.
(moves into calm ambient music)
It's this beautiful dance
between the plant and the humans,
that find each other
and make a culture possible.
In Mesoamerica over 10,000 years ago,
corn found humans, and humans found corn.
Corn really is this beautiful co-creation
between plants and humans.
The domestication of corn
was centered in the Oaxacan Valley of Mexico.
The incredible evolutionary leaps that we took with corn
is a miracle.
It ignited this sacred connection that
Corn seeds moved along the entire spine of the Americas.
It became this revolution,
it became this new way of being able to feed ourselves.
It's what fueled you from a small tribe to an empire.
Spies and traders and anyone who was around
and saw what it was doing grabbed a handful and took off.
It took 4,700 years to get it to the U.S. border.
Then about a thousand years ago,
corn is everywhere in what we now call the United States.
(moves into soft and melodic music)
[Rowen] Corn becomes so elastic and adaptive
that now we see corn being grown on every continent.
As keepers of the corn,
the corn has come up with us though our migrations,
sustaining us.
(man speaks in a Native American language)
Our first mothers were the Blue Corn
and White Corn women.
This is my grandmother, my grandfather,
my mom, my dad, my brother, my sister,
my kids, my grandkids and myself.
We all are one.
My father said "Son,
"never, never let go of the corn.
"When I pass on,
"carry on the way of the corn."
I've always been a farmer all my life.
From the day that I can remember,
I was out there with my grandparents,
my uncles and my father.
The spiritual people gave us the corn.
They say when the corn hears you,
then they start dancing with you with the leaves fluttering.
Crow, crow damage, but we still bring it in.
Everything is brought in.
People are too attracted to the big and beautiful.
But the Hopi woman and man say that
even this little one here is special,
because every corn seed has life.
Everything is special.
And I'll plant these, I'll plant this.
We don't throw them away.
We take care of them.
In the womb, human people are seeds.
We see the seeds,
being planted into the womb of the mother earth.
They may be calling me daddy
and say "Daddy, I'm glad I'm here with you," you know,
'cause these are my children.
(seeds rattle softly in jar)
Indian people, we talk in one language,
the language of the seeds.
The most important thing in my heart
it's taking seeds anywhere I can go.
My grandfather tell me one time,
"This is very important for life,"
and he put me before he died,
before he died he put me,
full of the seeds in my hand and he said this is life.
And put always in your pocket.
Because if you have seeds in your pocket,
you can walk and eat the seeds
and if you have money, you cannot eat the money.
This is gold! Seeds, they are our own medicine.
When we have to eat, we give a little bit to the earth.
I am working now for seven years in Tesuque Pueblo.
We lost our seeds,
we lost our food.
Pero, when you losing the seeds,
you losing completely your traditional ways of eating.
I bring some of the crops
to these Pueblo people.
Quinoa, Amaranth.
The lost crops of the Incas.
It's part of this prophecy, the condor and the eagle.
Exchanging seeds, exchanging knowledge.
In all these bags you see,
we have different type of the seeds.
This trailer there was not one seed.
Seven years
we fill up with our work, with our sweat,
and this is food for the future.
These seeds,
they're not very happy because they're one
on the top of the other one.
They are beginning to tell us "We need a new house."
A place where they can have a home,
like us.
(soft and calm flute music)
Native Seeds/SEARCH is a seed bank.
(seeds crackle off husk)
Most of the seeds came to us through Native Americans.
As modern creatures, we're in debt to that.
They are the last expression of these stewards
going back thousands of years
that took care of these things
and made sure that we got them.
I had somebody the other day call this Fort Knox. (laughs)
There's just so much wealth in here.
There's about two thousand different varieties
of invaluable agricultural crops.
All 38 generations,
all this energy comes down into the seed,
you get to hold it and then all the future
and the millions more that can come out goes out.
And you are at that point when you hold those seeds
in your hands.
Right here is the mother corn.
This is the ancient ancestor from which all corn came.
And that's what we're losing.
I mean we just don't have the time left again
on this small planet to recreate all this stuff.
That's why it's so invaluable.
Once it's gone, it's gone.
Seeds are living embryos. They do have a life span.
(calm but melancholy music)
We try to grow everything out every 10 years,
that's why we have the 60 acre farm here.
We are hugely vulnerable
with all of those seeds.
You think about crimes against humanity,
blow up a seed bank in war.
(loud explosions)
It becomes an immediate target to weaken a country.
(loud explosions)
When we invaded Iraq,
we destroyed that seed bank and we destroyed that garden.
And we destroyed that repository of the great ancient seeds
that had been collected by that government
for the benefit of mankind.
(machine gun clanks and fires)
(bomb explodes)
(cannons explode)
(metal creaks)
During World War II,
Hitler was aiming to conquer
Nikolai Vavilov's seed bank in Saint Petersburg.
And the people associated with that seed bank
holed themselves up in the building
and kept those seeds protected,
even though they were starving to death
and missiles and bombs were landing all around them.
(moves into soft and relaxing strings music)
I remember gardening with these little hands.
Now they have gardens of their own
and children of their own.
If there's no one to pass that seed onto,
that living link and that living seed is lost.
These are grandpa's Morning Glories,
the seed that started the whole movement.
When we started Seed Savers in the 70's,
we didn't have anything,
we just had an idea and a dream
so we had thousands of beans in my living room.
It was now our responsibility
to keep all those bean varieties alive
what we've saved over those years is irreplaceable
and if we hadn't started then, we would've lost a lot more.
It's always amazing to me
when I started out with two varieties of seed
and now I'm here looking at over 24,000 accessions of seed
that we're permanently maintaining at the seed vault.
All of our seeds are in air tight foil packs,
so they're not maintaining any moisture.
We also store a backup collection at the seed vault
off the coast of Norway, at Svalbard.
Svalbard has been called the doomsday seed vault.
The idea is that if one of these asteroids hits,
and causes a tsunami that wipes out part of the world
or there's catastrophic cultural and economic collapse.
You know, we see all the seed banks in the world looted,
just for food.
The idea was to have a backup,
like the ultimate backup just in case
the seed bank is destroyed and they need their seeds back.
But the problem with it is that
we think that we don't have to worry about this now.
It gives a false sense of security.
All the gene banks, they're all arks.
Ultimately, life does not go on in an ark.
I'm not confident that any of us.
Have got something long term in place
that can weather the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
that might come our way
(rain pours intensely)
We're now facing severity of climate change,
the most radical we've had since the last ice age.
This is happening at an unprecedented rate
and it's putting pressure on the diversity of life forms.
You know this is the driest they have seen
since 119 years.
The Golden state's drought the worst in over 1000 years.
In northern New Mexico,
we have a series of drier and drier years.
Normally, this time of the year,
we're going to get ready for planting,
but there's not any moisture.
Usually, you'll hit a wet spot.
Lot of the animals begin to feel the effects of the drought.
They consumed probably a third of our corn
and all of our beans.
It's tough for everybody.
(calm but somber woodwinds music)
Our corn is among the few places
that is environmentally adapted to drought.
The Hopi grow corn with no irrigation.
All of our ceremonies are for rain.
(drums beat in unison)
You petition the clouds to come and bless us.
We say in our prayers, may the cloud people come.
(thunder claps)
May the Cachina people come and visit us and bring us rain.
May the corn grow up and produce their young ones.
You never lose faith in the cloud people.
This is a way that my prayers have been answered.
One day,
our corn will become very, very valuable to human survival.
I was very, very fortunate when I was a child,
there was a fantastic tree.
My tree began from a tiny little seed
and I spent hours and hours up in the branches of that tree.
And how magic that it could actually grow into a big tree.
That tree is still in the garden today.
(moves into calm, upbeat music)
Seeds are so crafty.
There is a power, it's a magic.
To me it's magic.
It's a life force is so strong.
There are seeds that rely on fire
There are seeds that tangle up in the hair of an animal
They get carried for miles
There are seeds that can't germinate
unless they pass through the gut of an animal.
Darwin was amazed that a seed grew
after it had been 21 hours in the stomach of an owl.
A seed is a doorway
between the life of the old plant
and its gift to the new plant.
Our teachers are the plants.
And they're teaching us
that they have to sacrifice themselves
in order to be able to give something
to the next generation.
It's a form of reincarnation.
(moves into serene and calm violin music)
[Patrick] Come on in.
Come on in.
Hello Hello.
Come on in, welcome.
Oh my gosh.
Oh my gosh this is amazing!
Check it out, Check it out.
This is how we roll.
That's why they call me the corn,
they call me the corn hippie.
Guys, This is unbelievable.
There's so much corn here,
I mean, right here in these bags right here.
This one has 87 different kinds of corn
- from Urubama Vale. - Oh my God.
This is from the sacred valley.
It has to get certified with the phytosanitary
with the Peruvian government.
And once we get it certified,
then we're ready to ship it wherever we want to send it.
That's astounding.
Look at that fava.
For all the crazy people like me who sit there at night
and look at bags of beans,
it leaves us a mystery.
This is so precious.
No one even has an idea
how much they look like jewels.
They look like polished agates, look at this one.
It must be artistic genius of nature
that allows this to happen.
(soft, relaxing strings music)
I've gotta sleep with this one!
When I was six years old,
my parents asked me what I wanted for my birthday,
and I said, "Well I want squash."
I didn't want a G.I. Joe
and I didn't want a baseball bat,
I wanted squash.
And I wanted those because I wanted to save the seeds
and grow 'em.
My seeds are my kitchen table.
My seeds are my way of sharing food
with people all over the world.
I've been to over a hundred countries,
collecting thousands and thousands of seeds
Here from Bolivia, looking like a speckled Robin's egg
This bean here from Tanzania.
One that's coming from Zimbabwe.
A variety raised by the West Virginia hillbillies.
It's exquisitely sculptured seed
of a trichosanthes gourd from Vietnam,
The seed is a time capsule.
It's preserving things from the past
but it's also bringing things for the future.
And this is, uh.
I feel I have an obligation to the world,
whether that's unbalanced or not,
to bring this appreciation
to as big a swath of humanity as possible.
This tiny little skinny tree with really large leaves
is in the cacao family,
same plants that produce chocolate.
And this is just a distant relative of cacao
that still hasn't been commercialized.
What if there's all kinds of other seeds in nature
that have the potential for food production?
Way down there.
Feel the end of it?
Yeah.
[Man With Scarf] Can you hold him?
This is what we just harvested.
(soft, relaxing strings music)
[Patrick] You know that these,
these have been known to make grown men scream.
They say that you can have a fever for several days
if they bite.
[Jason] 'Kay, this is called Pietrina.
And it's for being used on cuts and sores
and almost has the look of iodine.
There's about 300,000 species of plants on the planet.
We come down to 30,000 different edible plants,
You put 'em in your mouth and just kinda suck on them.
120 are used on a really regular basis
and most of humanity subsists on a mere 10.
Beans, corn,
wheat, barley and rice.
Virtually nothing compared to the bigger picture.
We should put particular attention
to the seeds of wild plants
and figure out how we can get those into cultivation
because they're part of the biodiversity heritage
that will feed the world.
Pick 'em out of there, Patrick.
[Cameraman] There's a good one?
So we're getting a meal on a wild plant here, dali dali,
which is one of the finest roots in the world to eat.
Top chefs would go crazy over dali dali,
absolutely crazy over it.
So why don't we grow it more?
[Jason] Back in 1700s,
Thomas Jefferson wanted to get seeds of risotto rice,
And it was thanks to slyness
that he was able to carry out some of this contraband seed
and raise it near Monticello in the new world.
To feed this expanding continent
that immigrants were streaming into,
we needed a diversification of food crops.
In the 1890s,
over a billion packets of seed were distributed for free
to farmers around the country.
The American Seed Trade Association
hired the very first lobbyist
to stop the federal "seed giveaway" as they called it.
They saw seed as a commodity,
something that could be quantified, measured,
bought, sold, and traded on stock markets,
just a number on a spreadsheet.
By 1924, the federal government seed program would cease.
These great industrialists said
"The only way we can really make profit
"on American agriculture is to invent a seed
"that they can't save."
And that gave birth to the hybrid seed industry.
Hybrids were bigger and better and produces more.
Success is yield.
Hybrid companies fueled that fever
to get the biggest and the best.
Corn contests was rampant throughout the midwest.
You were measured not by how many times you went to church,
it was how good of corn you grew.
Everybody was winning that had hybrid corn!
If you save the seeds from a hybrid and plant it again,
you get what I call "Mr. Toad's Wild Ride".
Recessive genes that were hidden in the parents
express themselves again.
This is like the grandparents,
the grandkids start coming out
with all sorts of weird traits.
A little more like the mom, a little more like the dad,
like old uncle Harry.
Farmers took it for granted
that we go to a shelf in a store to buy our seeds.
A profound change 'cause seed is the beginning of all of it.
If you're relying on someone else for your seed,
then it's like you're relying for someone else
on your soul or something.
This is like this is where it all starts.
To not control that part of it
is a major abdication of control and responsibility,
and yet we did it wholesale.
It destroyed the natural seed banks
and the seed practices of the farmers.
(exhilarating but melancholy music)
Hybrid corn was the atom bomb of agriculture.
(bomb rumbles and explodes)
Right after the Second World War,
the Green Revolution starts in Mexico.
When you hear about the Green Revolution,
people sometimes think,
well you know that's about windmills
and tofu powered sandals or whatever it is.
The Green in the Green Revolution
was never about environmental consciousness.
The Green was meant to be the opposite of a red revolution.
The visions of the Rockefeller Foundation
kicked off the Green Revolution.
To provide cheap food,
so that people would remain capitalism
and would not riot and become communist.
This is about developing kinds of seed that matter
for large scale commercial farmers wherever they are.
The Green Revolution was taking
this rich knowledge of peasant farming
that evolve over millennia
and tossing into the dustbin of history,
replacing it with modern industrial agriculture.
All of sudden,
men in white coats become the champions
and the sole arbiters of knowledge about seeds globally.
Seeds of the green revolution,
what are called the miracles varieties.
They were bred for taking up more chemicals.
The hungry industry of war chemicals
wanted to deploy these chemicals as agrochemicals,
trying to push chemicals into agriculture.
90% of the seed that we use to grow our food,
is owned by chemical companies,
by pesticide and by pharmaceutical companies.
Now there's a huge conflict of interest.
When the chemical companies own the seeds,
they not only want you dependent on the seed as a farmer,
but they also want you dependent on their chemicals.
We use 80 million pounds a year of Atrazine,
just in the U.S.
Atrazine's demasculinizing frogs and fish,
it can completely cause males to develop into females.
Atrazine leads to promoting breast cancer.
It's associated with miscarriages and birth defects.
We should've learned this lesson way back with DDT.
And we're just learning it over and over
and over and over and over again.
The big concerns are Cancers
that pesticides are associated with.
My whole entry into this area was because of Atrazine.
The actual manufacturer hired me to look at Atrazine.
Novartis told me
I couldn't talk to people about my research.
I couldn't publish it and I couldn't write it
and I thought, what do you mean?
Then they started trying to manipulate data.
And that's when I realized,
I've helped the chemical industry
keep this chemical in the market that I know is bad.
And go home to my wife and kids
and go "Oh, guess what I did today."
I did a study that confused all the sciences
and now people don't know that this chemical's bad.
Novartis and Syngenta spent millions fighting me.
And when you look Novartis and Syngenta's strategy,
the first thing that they say is discredit Hayes.
They couldn't prove my science was bad.
They wrote down a checklist of things
they were going to do to me,
to hurt my students, to investigate my wife.
They actually wrote it down!
The first page in the secret spy evil handbook
is don't write it down
or you eat it or it self destruct, right?
I do everything I can in a position that I'm in.
But you know what some of the dangers are,
being an academic and speaking out for what's right.
We all have to do it.
(waves crashing calmly)
(soft, relaxing music)
We live in the most self sustainable place on earth.
We can grow any plant from Kakela to Hanalei.
It's such a cycle of life around here
with the ocean and the land.
Hawaiians knew from the beginning of time.
Our whole world revolves around Aloha A'ina,
giving back to the land because the land gives to us.
Native Hawaiians have this incredible agricultural system
able to sustain three times today's population.
In the 1800s, plantation agriculture happened in Hawaii,
and what you see is private land ownership
happening in Hawaii.
(moves into calm and serene music)
The original missionary families
are still the primary private landowners.
The descendants of the original missionaries
open up the first sugar cane plantations.
The last sugar cane mill on this island closed down
eight years ago.
And in its place biotech chemical seed companies came in
and took over agriculture.
They say sugar ruled Hawaii, sugar was king.
Well, now I would say the biotech industry,
these chemical companies are king in Hawaii.
(sings in Hawaiian)
I live in a community that consists of
pure Native Hawaiian native speakers.
I have waited for an opportunity to own my own home.
And not just own my own home,
but a space as a single mother to raise my children.
Many Hawaiians die waiting
for their opportunity
at an Hawaiian homestead.
I moved out here and at the time sugar was just moving out
and the fields around us were fallow.
I started to see different fields pop up
that I've never seen before.
It alarmed me.
I had no idea what was, what was happening,
what was taking the place of sugar.
Then I started to experience very bad allergies,
migraines and illnesses,
just not being able to get over colds.
My doctor said, "Oh you have full blown adult asthma."
What I started to see
that the farmers were spraying pesticides.
(moves into calm but somber music)
They are spraying things at night while we are sleeping.
My two daughters wake up with
blood-soaked pillows.
There's hundreds and hundreds of acres
where these chemical corporations test their seed.
18 tons of restricted pesticides being dumped,
right next to schools and neighborhoods.
I'm a teacher at Waimea Canyon Middle School
for the past 18 years.
There's ag lands adjacent to our campus.
It is literally 100 yards up wind from our school.
That's the field that they were spraying
and we can actually feel the mists.
I contacted Syngenta and said
we believe that drift is occurring.
During PE,
a cloud of gases came over them
and kids just started dropping.
(car horn honks)
There was chaos on campus, it was horrific.
(emergency vehicle sirens blare out)
There wasn't enough room in the health room.
About 140 children were seeking assistance.
There was this effort by administrators and politicians
to whitewash it over,
and immediately in the newspaper,
you know, school evacuated because of stink weed,
and that became the specious explanation,
that became the story.
Teachers came together and stood up.
"Stop poisoning our children".
Monsanto, Dow, Dupont, and Hawaii and elsewhere,
they've got a blank check to experiment
with any chemical they want on these test plots.
You've got the most toxic insecticides
by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
(calm but serious strings music)
The seed companies, the chemical companies,
especially Monsanto,
use every means of control
to manipulate our government and other governments.
They pour huge amounts of money into political campaigns.
They pour huge amounts of money into lobbying.
They have many of their own people embedded
in the key decision making roles in the U.S. Government.
In 1992,
the approval of genetically engineered crops
was done by Michael Taylor,
who was a lawyer for Monsanto
and went right from Monsanto to working for the government.
Tom Vilsack was named
the Biotechnology Industrial Organization's
governor of the year.
His law firm defended Monsanto in the Supreme Court
and he became the Secretary of Agriculture.
Here you have somebody who's in control
of agricultural policy,
absolutely linked to the hip to the biotechnology industry
and to Monsanto's interests
The revolving door between Monsanto and government
is going to fast, it's almost dizzying.
The corporations,
they said we wanna really own these seeds.
We want patents on life.
It was fast tracked to the Supreme Court.
It was a five-four decision with Clarence Thomas,
in the lead of the five,
saying "Yes, you can patent seeds, you can patent life."
Very few people know,
but Clarence Thomas was a Monsanto lawyer.
When I first heard about the idea of patenting a seed,
or any kind of plant,
I was absolutely horrified and I thought,
surely that'll never be allowed.
You can't own nature.
(soft and calm violin music)
Under section 101 of the Patent Act,
which defines what can be patented in the United States,
you can only patent a machine, a manufacture,
or an inventor's composition of matter.
And I fail to see how a seed can be either of those.
Monsanto takes one gene out of tens of thousands of genes,
changes that, and says "No, no, now we own the whole plant."
It's one of the most extraordinary giveaways,
giving corporations the natural reproduction
of all life forms,
saying you can make a profit
on every one of those reproductions.
So they don't just own the seeds,
they own all of the offspring of those seeds,
and patent them forever.
(calm and somber music)
The threat is there by conglomerates to
legally saying they own it
because they're the first to patent it.
We're the custodians of this knowledge and the corn,
and how dare others take it away.
Once these corns get contaminated,
there's no way you can breed it out.
The only safe thing to do is actually incinerate,
y'know I wouldn't feed it to animals,
I wouldn't compost it because it's in the DNA,
it's an abuse to seeds and to us as indigenous people
With the GMO seeds that are out there.
We need to protect our seeds
We need to save our seeds and we need to plant them
for the survival of our communities
and survival of Earthmom.
Our people know that where there is wild rice,
there are Anishnabe.
It is our most sacred food.
We have harvested this rice for thousands of years.
This wild rice doesn't grow anywhere else in the world.
We engaged in a battle with the corporations
and with the University of Minnesota.
(moves into calm but intense drum music)
The University of Minnesota
wanted to genetically engineer wild rice.
We were very concerned
That would potentially contaminate our wild rice
so we fought them.
The first opposition witness out of the gate
for three years in a row was Monsanto.
They came out every time we testified.
They said if the Ojibwe were able to stop
the genetic engineering of wild rice,
it would send a chilling message to the biotech industry.
When they go and take that dignity of that food from you
and turn it into something else it is offensive,
it hurts our people, it hurts us economically,
and it hurts us spiritually.
Wild should mean something.
And I would assume that that would mean
not genetically engineered.
Genetically modified plants,
it's doing something which isn't natural in the plant world.
(calm but exciting strings music)
Genes from a completely different species
are being introduced into these plants.
And the plant fights.
The plant is not happy to receive an alien species.
You can put a pig in a room with a tomato
and you can turn the lights down low
and play some nice music and you serve some wine,
but no matter how hard you try,
you're not going to get the pig to mate with a tomato.
But the genetic engineers
can take genes from the pig and force it into the tomato.
They've taken genes from spiders and put them into goats.
They've taken human genes and put it into rice and corn.
They're eliminating the natural species barriers
and in a sense playing God.
You shoot gold particles laden with genes.
But it's a very unreliable process,
so you have to also add antibioresistance markers.
You also have to add viral promoters.
And every genetically engineered seed
is a bundle of bacteria, toxins, viral promoters.
As we remove the barriers between species,
mixing these genes and viruses,
the threshold also gets broken
for the spread of new infectious diseases.
A genetically modified seed is the sorcerer's apprentice.
We have the capacity to start all this stuff,
but we don't have the capacity to stop it,
and when we manipulate a species,
that is a kind of hubris that we will pay for.
You can't see the difference
between genetically engineered corn
and non-genetically engineered corn.
This is not seeable by a consumer.
Independent scientists were beginning to see indications
that consuming genetically engineered foods
could have kidney and liver damage.
We are seeing possible reproductive issues
in laboratory animals,
these are peer reviewed science
and now we're beginning to see problems
that could come from them.
(moves into upbeat and rhythmic music)
Wheat was the holy grail for companies like Monsanto.
If they could have had all the wheat in the United States
be genetically engineered, that was really the holy grail.
Monsanto spent ten years developing
the genetic modified wheat.
Wheat farmers decided we did not want them
to release a genetically modified wheat.
We said "No, we're not doing that."
We don't have to take the chance to fool
with the genetic modified plants.
We said "Nope, we don't want it," and now we've got it.
We thought that this had been put to bed.
We thought those wheat seeds had been destroyed.
Apparently not.
The Department of Agriculture had told us don't worry,
we can keep these seed trials confined
and time and time again they have failed to do so,
and they have escaped.
Once you take that stuff out of the laboratory,
there's a thousand things that can go wrong
that lets that seed get away.
As far as a duck can fly, they eat seed,
and they excrete that seed,
and seed grows in place where it wasn't intended.
You can't pull it back.
You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube.
International wheat markets shut down for months.
That cost farmers hundreds of millions of dollars.
USDA opened an investigation.
They've never been able to discover
how the genetically engineered wheat
got in the farmer's field.
We're fooling with Mother Nature in a way that,
quite frankly,
may end up not being near as rosy of a panacea
as these seed companies want to point out.
If our wheat is contaminated, I'm out of business.
(calm but worrying guitar music)
In 1998,
we were just beginning harvesting canola
in the middle of August.
My neighbor had grown GMO canola
and our fields were contaminated.
And a bus station phoned up
and I thought that's unusual
and they said there's a parcel here for you.
Later on that evening, open it,
here's a lawsuit from Monsanto,
and I didn't think much of it!
What's this patent infringement?
Didn't even know what that was.
Our family lawyer looked at me and he says,
"Percy, I think you're in trouble."
I said "What for?"
Well, he said,
"They're charging you that you have their GMO seeds,"
and I said, "What are GMO seeds?"
The judge's stated that it does not matter
how you're contaminated.
You violate the patent and you no longer own your seeds.
That right should never be taken away from a farmer.
You are taking seed that has been there
for thousands of years and put a patent on it
and say you own it.
Basically it's robbery.
To me, that's really a violation of human rights.
Henry Kissinger said
"If you want to control the country, control the oil,
"if you want to control the people, control the food."
Vandana Shiva says, "If you want to control the food,
"control the seed."
(moves into soft, foreboding music)
When seed started to become a patented product
sold by corporations,
you destroy seed freedom.
When a company as powerful as Monsanto enters a country,
it starts to control that country's decision making.
Monsanto started to buy up Indian seed companies.
60 Indian companies can only sell Monsanto seeds.
The companies will take video vans into the villages.
They had every Indian epic.
And they would, very cleverly, sell the seeds.
So Hanuman is carrying white gold seeds
of Monsanto.
So when Hanuman comes as a salesman of Monsanto,
they believe in them.
So that was the first trap through which they took over.
Then they also told the farmer
"Why are you using these old seeds? Sell them to us."
A farmer has always had seed,
and a farmer would say
"Oh, they're giving me some money for the seed.
"I'll just get it from my neighbor tomorrow."
Not realizing the neighbor has also been approached
in the same way,
and the next village, and the next village.
In one season,
this thing they called seed replacement
has destroyed the entire native seed supply.
You have a seed dictatorship established,
then the farmer can't get out.
Farmers will be forced to come back to buy seed every year.
We could have very, very large scale famine.
But unlike all famines of the past, no resurrection,
because every famine of the past, seed was always there.
This time's famine will be based on a seed famine.
What this free-trade system has given us is
instead of seed being "Of the farmers, by the farmers,
"for the farmers and all citizens,"
it is now seed "For the corporations,
"of the corporations".
NAFTA will create the world's largest trade zone,
and create 200,00 jobs in this country.
When NAFTA was introduced
between United States and Mexico,
all of the sudden the US was selling
subsidized corn into Mexico
that was below the cost of production in Mexico,
forcing a couple million farmers off their land.
(soft, somber strings music)
We planted the seeds of that migration.
A lot of that corn is contaminated with transgenics.
We are destroying the basis of the world's agriculture.
(moves into simple and peaceful music)
Oaxaca is the region of Mexico
where subsistence agriculture holds on.
The subsistence agriculture is slowly being phased out.
But if that agriculture is gone,
we have lost that resources for our future.
Our diet has been our plants,
our seeds,
our fruits.
Our challenge is to preserve native seeds
Otherwise it will be very difficult
for our communities to survive.
(women sings in Spanish)
(church bells chime)
(moves into soft, festive guitar music)
Itanoni is a doorway to the world
of corn that exists in the grandpa's villages.
(waiter speaks in Spanish)
In Mexico the traditional tortillerias
are disappearing.
I work with farmers to create the market they need.
When we have extra corn
we sell to the restaurant Itanoni.
We're getting famous because of the corn.
[Amado] This treasure can only be preserved
by reproducing it.
(calm and relaxing sitar music)
My name is Suman Khulko.
I live in a small village of Ranchi in Eastern India.
I am the only daughter.
My father is handicapped.
When I was young
my grandparents had passed away.
I would visit a wise woman who was blind.
She taught me about traditional seeds,
so I started collecting seeds.
My mother had no interest in saving seeds,
so I would hide the seeds from my mother.
We were told if we used chemicals
our farming would be better.
My brother saw farmers using chemicals
and making more money.
He said to me, "We will do chemical farming."
I said, "Don't use chemicals."
But he didn't listen.
Our family will drown in debt.
It hurt to the core of my heart.
My uncle took a loan from the bank,
bought seeds,
and planted them.
The rains did not come.
His mind stopped working.
He went completely mad.
He committed suicide
by drinking the chemical pesticide.
When I heard what my uncle did,
I started thinking of my brother.
[Brother] We are short on money.
How will we arrange for this money?
Our hybrid seeds got a fungus disease.
These hybrid seeds are not useful for next year.
[Vandana] We have lost 270,000 farmers to suicide.
(somber orchestra music)
Pioneer Dupont and DOW chemical,
they have all the acreage leased
all the way up from the mountains,
all the way down to the ocean,
and this is where all the experimentation goes on.
This is the dust
that's blowing in the fields.
It blows over the cliffs and into our homes
and we breathe this stuff.
The neighborhood is filled with people who have passed away
of some form of cancer.
So many people back here have died.
My wife, she got breast cancer. She almost died.
We just could not gamble with her life. She had to leave.
Then I started getting worse and worse.
I would gasp for air.
If I stay here much longer, I might die.
I have to move.
I'm getting weaker and weaker and I can feel it,
that's the warning sign for me.
These chemical corporations occupy lands
that are considered very sacred to native Hawaiians.
Our land, our aina, and everything that comes from it,
that is our ancestor.
As a native Hawaiian, it's, well,
it's a disgrace to our culture.
There really will be nothing left for our children
if no one is willing to speak up.
The future of Hawaii is all at stake.
Everything I love is being threatened.
(protesters speak in Hawaiian)
I'm fighting for the whole island.
Say something, or die.
(festive music)
Six thousand people, there out of the love in their heart.
For our children, for our land, for our ocean.
I met with the chemical companies.
They would say
"No, we are not experimenting with pesticides."
And they would tell me, "This is safe,
"there's nothing wrong with this stuff."
Could you tell me what you are spraying?
And they refused to tell me.
The more these companies would lie to me,
I had to do something.
And that's when we started piecing Bill 2491 together.
To get disclosure.
Could any of you disclose to me
the amount of general used pesticide that you use
on an annual basis?
With all due respect, I asked you an hour ago,
if you would tell me today
how much general use pesticide you are using
and you said no with your silence.
I would say that I don't think I would want to comply
with the bill as is.
My second son here, Pa' akatanao,
was born with an extremely rare heart defect.
Because our son was dying,
his heart unable to pump his own blood through his body
and endured nine surgeries during those months.
All I know is that while pregnant,
I took every precaution to grow a healthy baby inside of me.
By not passing this bill,
you are telling me that I don't have the right to know.
If I had known,
I would have chosen to not expose my unborn child
as I innocently worked day in and day out in Kai'kaha.
If I seem a little emotional,
it's because it really hits home to me
speaking on behalf of unborn son.
My son has a condition called gastroschisis,
basically the stomach is on the outside.
I don't blame anybody but I just want to stop the poisoning!
I have a baby in the world
that has to get cut open right away.
Consider this,
that something might be wrong on this island, 'kay?
Something might be wrong 'cause children don't deserve this.
(speaks in Hawaiian)
The trust is gone for these companies.
The trust is gone.
And I don't know how they are going to gain the trust back,
other than backing this bill
and working with the communities, you
And you know, like I said before,
It's time to put human health over corporate wealth.
They are suing the county of Kauai
for the right to spray poisons next to schools,
and these are the largest companies in the world.
So we're gonna have a huge battle.
[Protesters] OMG, GMO, people have the right to know!
OMG, GMO, people have the right to know!
This is a historic battle.
They're fighting for a profit, we're fighting for our lives,
(audience applauds)
and those who fight for their lives do not give up,
do not let down, never say no.
[Protestors] GMO has got to go
because we need to know!
GMO has got to go!
No one said give me GM food, anywhere.
This has never been voted for by any community
anywhere in the world.
The reason Americans are being condemned to eat GM food
is they've been denied the right to know.
(exciting and festive music)
64 countries around the world have some form of labeling
of genetically engineered foods.
The United States does not.
Monsanto and the other companies
are so frightened of labeling
because once people have a choice,
why would they choose a product
that only offers them risks and no benefits?
(calm but suspenseful music)
I started Navdanya in 1987.
I named it Navdanya which means nine seeds,
but also means the new gift.
Oh look at the birds. Going above you.
I took inspiration from Gandhi.
Gandhi had dealt with a smaller imperialism
of the British by taking out the spinning wheel.
He said "We will be free, we will spin our own cloth."
And I said we will save our own seed.
The seed will be the spinning wheel of our times.
When I heard these companies talk about patenting seed.
We will refuse to obey laws
that force us to accept GMOs and patents.
We have launched a campaign this year
for a global alliance for seed freedom.
We need to protect the diversity, integrity,
and freedom of life.
Give seed its own freedom
so that we as humans can have our freedom
and the work we do for Navdanya
is to encourage farmers to grow enough for themselves,
to bring respect back for their own seed,
for their own farming.
O Mother Earth, my respects for you.
You have provided us food. Hail Mother Earth.
Our community seed banks
are both the networks of the farmers
as well as the distribution network
for moving seed wherever it's needed.
More than 110 community seed banks have started.
If there's a drought, getting drought-resistant seed.
If there's a flood, getting flood-resistant seed.
So these are seeds of hope.
These are seeds that do not lock you into debt.
And we are training the young people to spread seed saving.
Because that freedom is tied-up to our duty to the planet
and our duty to the future.
I found out about Navdanya on the way to school.
Vandana Shiva was talking about organic farming.
I then came to Navdanya,
I learned how I can make our farming better.
So it will be beneficial for us
and be healthy for us.
[Vandana] For the farmer,
they're going to honor the land and make it beautiful,
and you can only make it beautiful through biodiversity,
and only when we have the seeds of biodiversity
will the landscape be beautiful.
(people applaud and laugh)
Y'know, there's that Garth Brook's song "The Rodeo".
Well for me,
the rodeo is going out into the wilderness
and finding things to eat.
It's like an obsession that never ends.
Big, huge treasure hunt.
(calm and soft strings music)
When people say "How do we feed a hungry world?"
What about the wild things?
The devil's claw.
We don't wanna get the sap.
Holy Moly! This is a male plant!
So this baby is pollinating somebody else,
let's see who it's pollinating!
Look at the little nara melons!
Look at them! I've never seen them before!
I've been waiting to get these seeds
for probably 15 years.
And you would not imagine that this would grow out
in the desert.
We get just a few of these growing in a few places,
it won't be but a couple of years and the people themselves
will be able to start growing their own.
So a seed in this case is extremely precious.
And what does that mean, it's worth as much as gold.
You get up there and rub and I am going to hold this tight.
Get up and rub it.
You let the wind catch it.
We're getting them out though.
We did good.
Acanthosicyos naudinianus, it's called the gemsbok cucumber,
and these are one of the treasures of the desert.
It should be edible.
Now if they are green,
what I've heard is they're gonna burn the crap
out of your mouth.
You gonna try the first one? Do we have a spoon?
- Oh look at that. - Okay.
Sweet?
[Friend] What's it taste like?
Tastes terrible.
Does it taste bad?
Yeah. (laughs)
(woman speaks in foreign language)
So, they're cooking them.
That gets rid of the hotness in it.
You gotta poke a hole in them so they don't explode.
Look at that!
(soft and relaxed strings music)
They're the original botanists, aren't they?
I'm nothing,
all I'm doing is learning it in books
and wanting to find out about it
but they're knowing everything about it.
It's bigger than he said probably
It's a group effort digging up this monster.
- Unbelievable. - It's incredible.
(group cheers)
This is the incredible marama bean,
Produces tubers up to 500 pounds.
About ten pounds?
It is a future potential crop
unlike any other on the planet.
And how many other beans do you know produce
a giant, giant sweet potato?
How many others produce a giant cashew,
macadamia sized nut?
This is an amazing plant.
(group cheers and claps)
The people in the Kalahari depend upon this for survival.
It doesn't need water for 3 years and it can still survive.
You can go back eons and be like a hunter walking out here
when he was just surviving with the elements.
Strange thing to get impressed with but I'm impressed.
We do have a beautiful world,
and something like this to me
is just a marvel the planet we live on.
(man sings in foreign language)
I don't suppose anyone's up for the Merry Dwarves
are they?
We could try I suppose. There's enough of us!
I don't know, okay.
Hi Ho cried the Merry Dwarfs.
And then bump, bump.
The timing is all important, just like with seed saving.
Time is a big deal.
Alright, let's hear it now.
[Group] High ho
cried the merry dwarfs, dum dum.
It's off to the woods we, dum, are.
We like to stay but time is, dum dum, short.
I hope like the merry dwarfs.
Magnificent, Magnificent, that was it!
You did it, right off like that!
Woo! Okay!
(upbeat strings music)
Saving seeds is a gas.
Seed saving is all about sex.
And humans are all obsessed with sex,
even if it's rutabaga sex.
You can hire someone to come fix your plumbing.
I'm sure we know for a fact that you can hire someone
to make love to your spouse, for example,
and they'll sure as hell do a better job than you will,
but no somehow we feel like,
"Nah, I really want to do that myself."
Some things are just too important.
This is right up there with making love to your spouse.
So this is the office where all my stuff is stored.
I don't know quite how many thousands
of varieties and samples of seeds are here.
This is a horrible mess.
Uh, this is about as good as it gets here.
I live in chaos
and this room is one of the more chaotic parts of the house.
All of these boxes on top are waiting to get refiled.
I never can seem to get enough.
I've tried to level off in recent years
to something that I can handle.
Rutabagas, over here.
Sometimes thought that if the house were to catch on fire
and I had to do something very, very quickly,
hopefully I would first make sure
that all the family were all safely out,
but somehow, deep inside,
I'm afraid that I would probably rush in here,
smash out the windows and
start throwing boxes of seeds out to the firefighters
and hope that they understood what to do with them,
don't turn the hoses on them or something.
I have sweat a lot over the things that I lose.
No one in the future can save them, they'll already be lost.
I see no end, no end in sight, except when I am cremated.
That concerns me sometimes, who will take this over.
(calm and serene strings music)
It took six years to save seeds.
I have to cultivate the entire farm organically.
I said to my brother,
we need to save our traditional seeds.
I was overjoyed when my brother agreed.
I felt so happy,
my family agreed to do organic farming.
(women sing in Hindi)
Whatever I have learned,
I want to spread that in my entire region.
Suman emerged as a leader.
She came forward for this noble purpose
to serve her community.
If another farmer does not have the seed
then I can give it to him.
We can help each other with our seeds.
(easygoing and festive drum music)
(low rumbling)
Jack and the beanstalk is a true story!
The idea we all laughed at,
that he would trade his pig or his cow or whatever
for a handful of beans is like,
what a silly thing is that.
But if you think about the potential
of the self replicating system
that's in your hand and what it can potentially produce.
We should all trade in everything we have
for a handful of beans.
One of our fairytales is actually trying to teach us
that's unbelievably important.
(giant grumbles)
(soft and relaxing strings music)
I woke up one night about three o'clock in the morning,
I sat up straight in my bed and I went
"Ah seed school! We gotta teach this stuff."
We got to open up a space and teach them what we know,
to having this resilient fabric again.
I'm going back to the 10,000 year old way of doing it.
To have everybody, everywhere,
saving and storing and sharing their own seeds
regionally, the way it always has been done.
When we teach about seeds,
we rewrite ourselves back into that evolutionary dance
between plants and humans.
We initiate a whole new generation of people
who care for life.
It's the seeds asking to be spoken for again.
As a Mohawk woman,
seeds embody the sense of hope for the future
that we could create something different,
a new paradigm for our children.
We have to make that promise to the corn,
that we will nourish ourselves from it
but we will also give back.
All of these seeds,
they are going to move to his new house.
We have the, I would say, the blessing of the great spirit,
of the mother earth.
All the protectors and the spirits of this land
and they say you guys have to finish the seed bank.
(calm and serene music)
We beginning to make the impact on our pueblo,
in our community.
Stone by stone, mud by mud we have this building.
All these seeds they have memory.
They happy in this moment.
(moves into joyous strings music)
The seed bank, it represents life.
(group sings in foreign language)
Those young men and women are carrying on a tradition
of our community.
And I see the young people happy and the corn is happy,
the birds are happy, because that's who we are.
We grow a really great variety of squash.
Archaeologists dug down and they came upon a clay ball
that was about this big.
And in that clay ball,
they shook it and they heard something.
They cracked it open and it was a squash seed.
They carbon dated it 800 years old.
And I always laugh
because I say white guys get to name things all the time.
So I'm gonna name this one and I call it Gete-Okosomin,
which means really cool old squash.
(moves into sweet and lighthearted strings music)
It's time for us to take back that manna.
It's so important to get back to our food source.
Take back that ability to self-sustain
as our ancestors once did.
This food forest here, could feed hundreds of people.
We could be the self-sustainable epicenter of the world
and there's no reason we can't be,
we can grow any fruit or vegetable on these islands.
We planted 21 banana trees today,
as a team as a family, we can accomplish anything.
And we went from this much diversity,
took 10,000 years to create,
down to this pinch with only four percent left,
and we're right here.
Right?
And so we're gonna, we're waking up.
We're gonna do this
it's knowing that in each individual seed
is the potential to change it all back.
(seeds rattle)
Subtitles by explosiveskull
(moves into soft and melodic music)
♪ In the heart of the seed, there's a story
♪ Waiting to be born
♪ Our grandmothers breeded, our grandfathers breeded
♪ Kindered the ancient call
♪ In the heart of the seed, there's a story to read
♪ In the heart of the seed
♪ There a whole tribe to feed
♪ Our sweet savers know it
♪ Our fathers, they grow it
♪ And from that seed we are born
♪ Mother nature is essential for ascension for the land
♪ Granulations are essential for ascension in our life
♪ Old creation from our beings is essential for us to thrive
♪ Anticipation for our nations is essential for our tribe
♪ For our tribe
♪ Mother nature is essential for ascension for the land
♪ Granulations are essential for ascension in our life
♪ Old creation from our beings is essential for us to thrive
♪ Anticipation for our nations is essential for our tribe
♪ For our tribe