Peled, Micha. Bitter Seeds. San Francisco: Teddy Bear Films, 2011. 35 mm, 88 min. https://youtu.be/ZGTt8f5Dabg.
Bitter Seeds explores the future of how we grow things, weighing in on the worldwide debate over the changes created by industrial agriculture. Companies like the US-based Monsanto claim that their genetically modified (GM) seeds offer the most effective solution to feeding the world’s growing population, but on the ground, many small-scale farmers are losing their land. Nowhere is the situation more desperate than in India, where an epidemic of farmer suicides has claimed over a quarter million lives. Every 30 minutes one farmer in India, deep in debt and unable to provide for his family, commits suicide. Bitter Seeds features compelling characters to tell a deeply moving story at the heart of the worldwide controversy on the future of farming. (Source: Teddy Bear Films)
© 2011 Teddy Bear Films. Trailer used with permission.
This film is available at the Rachel Carson Center Library (RCC, 4th floor, Leopoldstrasse 11a, 80802 Munich) for on-site viewing only. For more information, please contact library@rcc.lmu.de.
- Carolan, Michael S. "The Multidimensionality of Environmental Problems: The GMO Controversy and the Limits of Scientific Materialism." Environmental Values 17, no. 1 (2008): 67–82. doi:10.3197/096327108X271950.
- Demeulenaere, Elise. “Reclaiming the Seeds, Becoming ‘Peasants’: On-Farm Agrobiodiversity Conservation and the Making of Farmers’ Collective Identity.” In “Fields and Forests: Ethnographic Perspectives on Environmental Globalization,” edited by Daniel Münster, Ursula Münster, and Stefan Dorondel. Special issue, RCC Perspectives 5 (2012): 59–66.
- Gruère, Guillaume, and Debdatta Sengupta. "Bt Cotton and Farmer Suicides in India: An Evidence-Based Assessment." Journal of Development Studies 47, no. 2 (2011): 316-37. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00220388.2010.492863
- Münster, Daniel. "Farmers' Suicides and the Moral Economy of Agriculture: Victimhood, Voice, and Agro-Environmental Responsibility in South India." In Suicide and Agency: Anthropological Perspectives on Self-Destruction, Personhood and Power, edited by Ludek Broz and Daniel Münster, 105-25. Farnham: Ashgate, 2015.
- Shiva, Vandana. Seeds of Suicide: The Ecological and Human Costs of the Globalization of Agriculture. London: Zed Books, 2005.
