“Vandana Shiva is one of the world's most prominent radical scientists . . . in Staying Alive she defines the links between ecological crises, colonialism, and the oppression of women. It is a scholarly and polemical plea for the rediscovery of the ‘feminine principle’ in human interaction with the natural world, not as a gender-based quality, rather an organizing principle, a way of seeing the world.” —Guardian

In this pioneering work, Vandana Shiva looks at the history of development and progress, stripping away the neutral language of science to reveal third-world development policy as the global twin of the industrial revolution.

As Shiva makes clear, the way this development paradigm is being implemented—through violence against nature and women—threatens survival itself. She focuses on how rural Indian women experience and perceive the causes and effects of ecological destruction, and how they conceive of and initiate processes to stop the destruction and begin regeneration. As the world continues to follow destructive paths of development, Shiva’s Staying Alive is a fiercely relevant book that positions women not as mere survivors of the crisis, but as the source of crucial insights and visions to guide our struggle.

A world-renowned environmental leader and thinker, Vandana Shiva is the author of many books, including Stolen Harvest, Earth Democracy, and Soil Not Oil. She is the founder of Navdanya and a leader in the International Forum on Globalization (IFG) and the Slow Food movement.

“Shiva is a burst of creative energy, an intellectual power.”—The Progressive

Manifestos on the Future of Food and Seed is a short, pocket-sized collection that goes to the heart of our existence—what we eat and how we grow it. It covers the questions:

• How are seeds cultivated and saved?
• How far must food travel before reaching our plate?
• Who gets paid for the food we eat?
• Why does our food taste like this?

We live in a world where of the eighty thousand edible plants used for food, only about 150 are being cultivated, and just eight are traded globally. A world where we produce food for 12 billion people when there are only 6.3 billion people living, and still, 800 million suffer from malnutrition and 1.7 billion suffer from obesity. A world where food is modified to travel long distances rather than to be nutritious and flavorful.

Manifestos on the Future of Food and Seed lays out, in practical steps and far-reaching concepts, a program to ensure food and agriculture become more socially and ecologically sustainable. The book harvests the work and ideas produced by thousands of communities around the world. Emerging from the historic gatherings at Terra Madre, farmers, traders, and activists diagnose and offer prescriptions to reverse perhaps the worst food crisis faced in human history.

There is a growing realization that food politics is vital to the health of our bodies, economies, and environment—in other words, a matter of life or death. Carlo Petrini, founder of Slow Food, writes, “Reinstating food as a central, primary element in our lives seems an obvious thing to do, since without food, no living things would exist.” Thousands of communities around the world are working to do just this.

A world-renowned environmental leader and thinker, Vandana Shiva is the author of many books, including Earth Democracy, Water Wars, and Staying Alive. Manifestos includes essays by Prince Charles and Carlo Petrini.

A leading voice in the struggle for global justice, Vandana Shiva is a world-renowned environmental activist and physicist. In Earth Democracy, Shiva updates the struggles she helped bring to international attention—against genetic food engineering, culture theft, and natural resource privatization-—uncovering their links to the rising tide of fundamentalism, violence against women, and planetary death.

Starting in the 16th century with the initial enclosure of the British commons, Shiva reveals how the commons continue to shrink as more and more natural resources are patented and privatized.  As our ecological sustainability and cultural diversity erode, so too is human life rendered disposable. Through the forces of neoliberal globalization, economic and social exclusion ignite violence across lines of difference, threatening the lives of millions.

Yet these brutal extinctions are not the only trend shaping human history. Struggles on the streets of Seattle and Cancun and in homes and farms across the world have yielded a set of principles based on inclusion, nonviolence, reclaiming the commons, and freely sharing the earth's resources. These ideals, which Shiva calls Earth Democracy, serves as an urgent call to peace and as the basis for a just and sustainable future.

Introduction
Chapter 1 The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply
Chapter 2 Soy Imperialism and the Destruction of Local Food Cultures
Chapter 3 The Stolen Harvest Under the Sea
Chapter 4 Mad Cows and Sacred Cows
Chapter 5 The Stolen Harvest of Seed
Chapter 6 Genetic Engineering and Food Security
Chapter 7 Reclaiming Food Democracy