Food Sovereignty and the Anthropocene: Food, Women and Resistance in Vandana Shiva s Select Writings

Food Sovereignty and the Anthropocene: Food, Women and Resistance in Vandana Shiva s Select Writings

Rituparna Sengupta

Abstract

The Anthropocene is generally considered a human-centric geological epoch where capitalism has altered the lives of humans and non-humans alike by changing the climate, food practices, marine ecosystem, and biodiversity. This article intends to explore the impact of patenting genetically modified production of ‘seeds’ in the neo-liberal economy of post-independent India and how it disrupts the culture of food in the subcontinent through the works of Vandana Shiva, focusing on her memoir Terra Viva: My Life in a Biodiversity of Movements (2022) and Seed Sovereignty, Food Security: Women in the Vanguard (2015). While acknowledging a sustainable approach through her narrative of activism and resistance, Shiva propagates the idea of archiving knowledge through food grains, i.e., women actively gather and preserve these seeds. She introduces the idea of ‘seed sovereignty,’ where Indigenous communities retain the power of owning, producing, and distributing food and the knowledge system around it. This article argues that employing self-sustaining methods and integrating non-anthropocentric ideas with futuristic farming practices, like planting ‘heritage seeds’ that can survive natural calamities, could help transcend the Anthropocene question. Since dietary consumption is the most intimate connection of the consumer with the external environment, dietary transformation at the elementary level will efficiently resist monocultures and the monopoly of rights retained by food corporations patenting genetically modified seeds. Thus, this article will look closely into the role of women in gathering, preserving, documenting, and, in turn, propagating food sovereignty by resisting corporate grab through activism.