Mark Lyn­der­say

The Green Screen En­vi­ron­men­tal Film Se­ries ends to­mor­row af­ter a suc­cess­ful two-week run. Host­ed by Sus­tain T&T, this year's se­ries was themed See­ing is Be­liev­ing and in­clud­ed lo­cal and for­eign films and ex­hi­bi­tions fo­cus­ing on en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues. The fea­tured film on clos­ing night is Bit­ter Seeds, a US-made film about the hu­man cost of ge­net­i­cal­ly-mod­i­fied agri­cul­ture. Mark Lyn­der­say saw Bit­ter Seeds and ex­plains how it urges us to con­sid­er the fu­ture of how we grow things.

Micha X Peled's doc­u­men­tary film, Bit­ter Seeds is a grim polemic, but un­like such is­sue-dri­ven fare, this is a sur­pris­ing­ly watch­able film with a strong, com­pas­sion­ate heart, calm rea­son­ing and at its core and the guts to ac­knowl­edge that the prob­lem isn't as sim­ple as Amer­i­can in­dus­tri­al im­pe­ri­al­ism.

Di­rec­tor Peled found Telung Tak­il; a vil­lage at the heart of In­dia in the re­gion of Vi­darb­ha which the doc­u­men­tar­i­an posits is ground ze­ro in a epi­dem­ic of farmer sui­cides oc­ca­sioned by the shame of pover­ty.

As the film opens, we are in­tro­duced to Man­jusha Am­bar­war, a sharp wit­ted young woman whose fa­ther, Ram­das, is iden­ti­fied as the first farmer to end his life af­ter re­al­is­ing that he could nev­er es­cape the moun­tain of debt in­to which he had in­ex­orably slid.

Then we meet Ram Kr­ish­na Kop­ul­war, a sad-eyed farmer who dogged­ly ploughs his three acres of land with two bul­locks.

The man and his two an­i­mals guide a sin­gle blade through earth that seems in­dif­fer­ent to their ef­forts.

Am­bar­war is keen to be­come a jour­nal­ist, not a fa­vored job op­tion for a young woman in rur­al In­dia. Kop­ul­war's beau­ti­ful daugh­ter, Saw­p­na, is be­ing groomed for the pre­ferred role–that of a wife to a suit­able hus­band.

The key play­ers are quick­ly set in place, set against the harsh beau­ty of the large­ly un­de­vel­oped land­scape of this part of In­dia and the es­sen­tial con­flict of their as­pi­ra­tions and the un­yield­ing re­al­i­ty of their cir­cum­stances quick­ly springs in­to sharp re­lief.

Peled's ba­sic the­sis in this film is in har­mo­ny with his oth­er doc­u­men­taries on the con­se­quences of glob­al­i­sa­tion on com­mu­ni­ties; Store Wars: When Wal-Mart Comes to Town and Chi­na Blue.

The vil­lain in Bit­ter Seeds is the multi­na­tion­al chem­i­cal gi­ant, Mon­san­to, whose ge­net­i­cal­ly en­gi­neered seeds have com­mand­ed the mar­ket, sold un­der li­cense as Jai BT and many oth­er at­trac­tive brand names dressed in colour­ful pack­ag­ing adorned with pho­tographs of flour­ish­ing cot­ton blos­soms.

In Peled's film, the ge­net­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied cot­ton seeds from Mon­san­to are not de­liv­er­ing the re­turns that farm­ers hope for and farm­ers us­ing the prod­uct are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing high­er than nor­mal crop fail­ure rates.

Ram Kr­ish­na Kop­ul­war al­ready has a loan from the lo­cal bank and now must turn to a mon­ey lender for the mon­ey to pay for the seeds for his next crop.

Mon­san­to's BT seeds are not self-re­gen­er­at­ing and must be bought for each crop seed­ing, con­tribut­ing to the ac­cel­er­at­ing cy­cle of debt.

Mon­san­to's rep­re­sen­ta­tives, though no­tably not any­one from the com­pa­ny it­self, dis­pute this. From the sales­men to the lo­cal com­pa­ny cre­at­ing the seeds un­der li­cense from Mon­san­to, they point in­stead to poor fi­nan­cial man­age­ment by farm­ers and an in­abil­i­ty to man­age the de­mands of the new seeds.

In the film, Van­dana Shi­va, an ap­peal­ing­ly pas­sion­ate en­vi­ron­men­tal ac­tivist, ar­gues that in­dus­tri­al agri­cul­ture doesn't trans­late well to the small­er acreages ofInd­ia's cot­ton farm­ers. In­dus­tri­al agri­cul­ture, she says, is a busi­ness of sub­sidy and en­gi­neered process­es, nei­ther of which are avail­able to small scale In­di­an farm­ers.

BT cot­ton, the film notes, re­quires more wa­ter and fer­tilis­er, which must be ap­plied on a very spe­cif­ic sched­ule. But most of the farm­ers of Vi­darb­ha have no ir­ri­ga­tion and de­pend on the rains.

In a par­tic­u­lar­ly mov­ing mo­ment in the film, Ram Kr­ish­na Kop­ul­war plays host to three men who have brought their son to for­mal­ly meet Saw­p­na with a view to ar­rang­ing a match.

Kop­ul­war sits un­easi­ly as the three gen­er­a­tions of men de­tail their de­mands for a dowry.

It's a price that he is un­able to pay and tells them so with a smile that's a heart­break­ing mask of shame and help­less­ness.

It's not hard to see how a man put in a po­si­tion of such ab­solute hu­mil­i­a­tion might con­sid­er end­ing a life with­out any ap­par­ent hope.

The film claims that a farmer kills him­self in In­dia every thir­ty min­utes. The sheer num­ber and scale of the deaths is undis­put­ed. More than a quar­ter of a mil­lion farm­ers have com­mit­ted sui­cide in the coun­try over the last decade and a half, but while the film strug­gles ad­mirably to skew­er Mon­san­to, it isn't clear that the com­pa­ny's seeds are the on­ly rea­son for the stag­ger­ing sui­cide rate.

In­deed Na­ture, the re­spect­ed sci­ence jour­nal, while frown­ing gen­er­al­ly on ge­net­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied seed stock, dis­putes the es­sen­tial the­o­ry of the film (here: http://ow.ly/qllfW) as part of its eval­u­a­tion of the sci­en­tif­ic ma­nip­u­la­tion of plant re­gen­er­a­tion.

What's par­tic­u­lar­ly trou­bling about the sit­u­a­tion out­lined by Bit­ter Seeds is the way that GM seeds ap­pear to have com­plete­ly tak­en over as the on­ly re­source for farm­ers in In­dia.

Tra­di­tion­al cot­ton seed stocks, which could be fer­tilised by cow dung and not ex­pen­sive chem­i­cal reg­i­mens while pro­vid­ing fresh seeds for the next crop have dis­ap­peared from the shelves of agri­cul­ture sup­pli­ers.

Kop­ul­war's crop falls prey to a mealy bug in­fes­tion af­ter be­ing saved by a last minute show­er of rain, and he los­es half his crop. His three acres of land will re­main in the hands of the mon­ey lender for an­oth­er sea­son af­ter he makes a pay­ment his orig­i­nal loan.

Af­ter months of work, he can bare­ly meet his debt to the bank, can't pay the money­len­der and has no hope of ar­rang­ing a match for his daugh­ter.

Micha Peled's film wres­tles might­i­ly with all the el­e­ments that In­dia brings to bear on his cho­sen sub­jects, but it ul­ti­mate­ly fails to of­fer a per­sua­sive con­clu­sion.

Sui­cide rates in In­dia were in­creas­ing be­fore Mon­san­to in­tro­duced its con­tro­ver­sial GM seed strains to the mar­ket and small crop farm­ers, scrap­ing by on the low­er end of the econ­o­my, are par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble to the so­cial and fi­nan­cial forces that are pres­sur­ing the poor and fi­nan­cial­ly mar­gin­al in that coun­try.

Man­jusha Am­bar­war pub­lish­es her first piece of writ­ing for the lo­cal agri­cul­ture fo­cused pa­per, win­ning her­self some clo­sure for her fa­ther's death, and per­haps a shot at a ca­reer that al­lows her to chart her own des­tiny.

We leave Ram Kr­ish­na Kop­ul­war where we found him, walk­ing sto­ical­ly across a fresh­ly ploughed field, still res­olute­ly de­ter­mined to wring a so­lu­tion to his prob­lems from earth that's equal­ly re­solved to fight him all the way.

And In­dia re­mains In­dia, a beau­ti­ful, ab­solute land of sud­den hard rains and dry crum­bling earth, of deep spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and de­vo­tion and hard di­vi­sions of class and knowl­edge in­to which the un­pre­pared stum­ble and some­times, nev­er re­turn.

tonight on the green screen

Green Screen serves up wine, choco­late and wa­ter tonight

Green Screen 2013 con­tin­ues this evening at Medul­la Art Gallery with Earth Wa­ter Woman and Noth­ing Like Choco­late. There will be a ques­tion and an­swer seg­ment, as well as cock­tails and a chance to sam­ple choco­lates by Co­co­bel.

7 pm Earth, Wa­ter, Woman (22 mins)

Earth, Wa­ter, Woman spot­lights the Fondes Aman­des Com­mu­ni­ty Re­for­esta­tion Project in T&T, and its charis­mat­ic leader Ak­i­lah Jaramo­gi, in their on­go­ing ef­forts to trans­form bar­ren hill­sides in­to a vi­brant, healthy ecosys­tem. With gor­geous cin­e­matog­ra­phy by Swati Guild, this doc­u­men­tary urges view­ers to ex­am­ine their re­la­tion­ship to Moth­er Earth.

Noth­ing Like Choco­late (63 mins)

Noth­ing like Choco­late, a doc­u­men­tary film nar­rat­ed by Su­san Saran­don, tells the mov­ing sto­ry of the re­lent­less and head­strong Mott Green, founder of the Grena­da Choco­late Com­pa­ny, as he pur­sues his unique vi­sion to cre­ate the best choco­late in the world, from scratch. See how the small­est choco­late fac­to­ry in the world is do­ing enor­mous things for co­coa com­mu­ni­ties, and the world's sweet tooth.