Page 33 - Award Winning Feature Docs

PEOPLE & CULTURE
bitter seeds

Bitter Seeds explores the future of how we grow things. The worldwide debate
focuses on how farming is being drastically transformed by the demands of
industrial agriculture. Companies like the U.S.-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. In India, the controversy has become a matter of life and death.
Every 30 minutes one farmer in India, deep in debt and unable to provide for his

family, commits suicide.
Definition Episodes
HD 1
Following a U.S. complaint to the World Trade Organization, India had to open Producer YOP
its doors to foreign seed companies. Within a few years, multinational Teddy Bear Films Inc 2011
corporations have taken over India’s seed market in a number of major crops.
Now only GM seeds are available at the shops, requiring India’s farmers pay an
annual royalty. The GM seeds are much more expensive, they need additional
fertilizers and insecticides and must...