In June of this year some 10,000 peasant farmers took part in a protest march in Haiti’s central plateau. At the end they symbolically burnt several bags of seed, part of a 60-tonne donation made by the giant US-based biotech company, Monsanto. After an earthquake in January killed 230,000 people and forced half a million to move back to the countryside, Haiti is painfully trying to rebuild its economy. Seeds, in particular, are in short supply, because peasant families were forced to use seeds saved for next year’s planting to feed the unexpected arrivals from Port-au-Prince. Why on earth would farmers want to destroy a gift so precious?
We can save our native seeds – creole seeds, as we call them – from one year to the other. But you can’t do that with Monsanto’s seeds. You have to buy new ones each year. But it’s worse than that. They are not right for our land
