Pat Mooney on the Food Crisis and Climate Change

Just now, August 2009, I had the pleasure to film Pat Mooney, a Canadian authority on agricultural biodiversity and different food and related technology and economic issues. He opened my eyes to the extreme food situation that is emerging and the role of small farmers versus giant food corporations. How does climate change affect food security ? Did you know that the plan is to move hundreds of millions of peasants to the cities ? Who is really contributing to bio-diversity and new seeds ? How come huge investments are being made in bio-mass production and synthetic biology...and who is doing it ? What is the plan to survive the coming years ?

Just to reiterate some of the numbers that Pat Mooney mentioned (so you have them handy):

-450 million farmers in the world --of which there are...

-383 million small farmers

-1.2 billion people are hungry in the world --of which about...

-700 million live in rural areas

-100 million are fed by world food programs (UN)

-600 million hungry are fed by small farmers

-150.000 patented varieties of seeds (including many roses, chrysanthiums and decorative varieties)

-8000 varieties (hybrids) were introduced by green revolution people (last 50 years)

-1.9 million plant varieties were introduced by small breeders/farmers (non patented) during same time of which there are...

-105 new crop species (some say up to a 1000) new crop species (non patented) introduced by small breeder/farmers

-0 new species were bred by mayor seed companies who mainly concentrate their research money on genetically modifying....

-4 main crops: corn, cotton, soy and rice

-67 % of all seeds are controlled by top 10 seed companies

Please listen to Pat Mooney -- a sane voice on our emerging food crisis.