The Hindu : Agricultural activism, Bove's style

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jan 20, 2004

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Agricultural activism, Bove's style

By Gargi Parsai

MUMBAI, JAN. 19. Jose Bove of the Confederacion Paysanne, France, seems to be in the habit of going to jail. Or rather, the authorities seem to be in the habit of jailing him for his protests.

Mr. Bove, a farmers' rights leader, is here to participate in the World Social Forum (WSF). He is against the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and has launched here the movement to get the anti-farmer organisation out of the farm sector.

The 50-year-old cheese manufacturer from France, came to fame when he first dismantled a MacDonald's restaurant in France. The reason: Taking advantage of the WTO regulations, the U.S. was forcing imports of "beef injected with hormones" on France. "The hormones were cancerous," he told The Hindu in an exclusive interview. He said the authorities in his country told him there were no courts he could approach. So he went ahead with a "symbolic protest".

"It got me into jail but it made local people sit up and take notice of what was happening around us and to us,'' he said.

It was clear at the WSF that Mr. Bove's reputation has travelled far and wide.

He was jailed again when he raided a godown of Monsanto seeds and mixed them with traditional seeds "so that they did not know one from the other'', he said with a smile.

In his last protest last year, he was joined by 500 farmers from Karnataka.

They participated in uprooting Genetically Modified Monsanto rice plants that had been surreptitiously planted. All of them were jailed for that. He was in prison till August last.

Mr. Bove recognises that in India too Monsanto-grown BT cotton seeds have been surreptitiously planted. "There is no transparency in what these multi-nationals do," he said. Asked about Cancun negotiations, Mr. Bove said the WTO had destroyed all agriculture. "The problem is that in Cancun some countries were using agriculture in the negotiations to bargain for other things. They were divided."

He said there had been no change in the stand of developed countries on agriculture. "So we have to take a stand that all negotiations end and WTO get out of agriculture."

Mr. Bove firmly believes that countries should have sovereign right over their food and agriculture and should be able to feed their people.

Asked why governments agree to what is detrimental to their people, he said perhaps they did not understand what was happening, taken in as they were by new economics and informatics.

On the future of their protests against the WTO, he said, "the future depends on what we do. We can stop the process. It is possible if we put pressure on our governments."

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