Kerala - Kochi   

Retail outlets will force out farmers: Vandana Shiva

Kochi: Environmentalist Vandana Shiva on Thursday said that the opening of retail outlets by corporate giants would uproot the peasantry.

She was delivering the fourth law lecture series organised by the V.R.Krishna Iyer National Foundation for Law and Social Justice.

She said that when corporates took control of agriculture, they sold high cost inputs such as seeds and agrichemicals and machinery to farmers on credit.

Indebted farmers later had to sell cheap produce to the same agri-business corporations.

The corporates would make profits by alienating indebted farmers of their land. Most of the lands in the United States are now owned by corporates and banks.

If this model were to be applied to India with only 2 per cent people owning the land, 65 per cent of India would be rendered dispensable.

This model was a recipe for social and economic disintegration. It was a threat to the country’s food security, she said.

The Kerala High Court Advocates’ Association president M.P. Krishnan Nair presided. President of the foundation and former High Court Judge K.A. Nair was present.

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