Kundrati Karma - Act Naturally, Documen...

Act Naturally is a  non-profit who promotes non-violent biodiverse  agricultural practices to solve problems in health and food security. We partner with farmers and communities, activists, volunteers and other N.G.O's to provide debt relief, organic education, and micro livestock, seedstock and bag garden donations.  With our  Khet Jyoti Fund, farmers who benefit from our debt relief program are put on a four year transition period toward full organic production where their risks are minimized through Act Naturally's partnerships that provide for their inputs such as seeds, and any loss of income from the transition. We effectively severe farmers ties with corporate agribusiness predators like Monsanto once and for all, eliminating costly inputs and the need for future debts. As part of our mission to increase public awareness worldwide about the benefits of organic agriculture and biodiverse farming practices, nutritional appropriation by agribusiness, and issues in national food security, we are raising money to create a 60 minute documentary.

SYNOPSIS

There are an estimated 1.2 billion people in India. In Mumbai, there are 27,000 people per square kilometer. Population is projected to rise to 1.6 billion by 2050 and everyone of them has to eat. But how? We have all seen images of an emaciated mother and child begging for scraps, with a wilderness of slums dotting a barren land behind her, and the task seems daunting.

There are those in government, industry and philanthropy who say, India can't feed her people unless she uses genetically modified seeds paired with special pesticides and fertilizers, along with motorized mono culture farming. As we now know, that approach creates environmental degradation, loss of biodiversity, displacement of farmers, high debt, and billowing profits for agribusiness empires.

Because of the noticeable schism between who makes the money and who is losing money, one begins to question, "What if the crisis itself is not true?" "What if it's a story maintained through billionaire foundations, agricultural and biotechnological universities, advertising, government policy, and corruption?" "What do we loose by believing this story?" "What does India gain by creating her own?"

The documentary begins by presenting visual scan of the juxtaposition of modern India - western fast food shops, growing waist lines, shots of BMWs whizzing past emaciated children, gated high rise communities, club life and fashions shows amid a struggling labor class, emaciated people and cattle, thick pollution, street vendors and slums.

We will ask biotechnology and agricultural students, doctors, investors, street vendors, rickshaw drivers, etc. "Can India feed her people?".And ask them to qualify how they know. We'll interview people from the growing urban middle class, and ask them the same question.

Ten minutes into the documentary will will present the history of how India came to rely on western industrial agriculture to feed its people through interviews with environmental and social activists, and agricultural policy makers, and reporters. We'll report on the story originators, the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations who laid the groundwork for an agricultural shift that would use chemical inputs, special seeds, and western agricultural techniques to improve food production - a story known as the Green Revolution. We'll show how in order to access the Indian market, foundations created reasons for India to adopt American industrial agriculture techniques. The perfect sales pitch was starvation and drought. The story says that rural peasants aren’t smart enough to manage their problem, their farming techniques are inferior and the elite class must intervene.

The next part of the documentary will ask "Can India feed her people?" to farmers and agricultural workers - those very people who have been in charge of feeding India for thousands of years. We will show successful movements such as the Deccan Development Society, Navdanya, Khet Virasat Mission, and Timbuktu Organics and interview prominent farm movement leaders, including the Indian chapter of La Via Campisino,and the KRSS movement in the south.

The last part of the documentary will show what happens when the question is answered by those in corporate boardrooms instead of the farmer in the field; farmers are pushed out of the equation through urbanization and enclosure. We will show examples of the plight of small land holding farmers who have lost their land do to escalating input costs. We will also interview a family who lost a farmer to suicide to escape their debts and humiliation.

Activist and writer Raj Patal says that the reason people go hungry is because of the way we distribute food through the market as private property and that those who starve are simply too poor to afford it. Alongside this, he argues that free-market development policies support and create the conditions of enclosure: Enclosure is when public land is turned into private property as a commodity, cutting off the rural poor  from their only means of survival, and silencing their participation in creating an alternate story of how India will feed her people. We will show examples of enclosure throughout the documentary, showing the irony of the developed India, -created and fed by the hands of the very people who can never access it.

At the very end of the documentary we will call for the creation of a new story, one that empowers farmers to farm; that allows for all of us to be more than consumers in the market, and transfers authorship to  India's people for their food sovereignty. The future will be shaped by our own will to imagine a different kind of society, a re-visioning of the story - and a new way of valuing the world without resorting to institutions that created the problem in the first place.

Act Naturally founder and activist Lua Cheia has teamed up with notable professionals:

Helkin Rene Diaz, an amazing cinematographer who shot "Jala" (see it here) (a documentary on India's scared waters being polluted) Please use the password "mandek" to access this video;  

Rohit Chawla, logistics and travel coordinator, translator and photographer www.cosurvivor.in and;

Emily Roland, editor, post production coordinator from Portland Community Media
to create this documentary.  

Any donation you can make is the right amount. Act Naturally is funded 100% by donations and we need your support to make this documentary from the ground up! Everyone who donates will get a copy of the final DVD. Donations over $150 will also receive an Act Naturally t-shirt along with the DVD.   Thank you for taking the time to visit our site, and for your compassionate caring interest.

Please feel free to write us with any questions at media@actnaturally.org.  If you would like to know more about India's agricultural situation visit our blog at www.actnaturallyblog.wordpress.com. You can also go to our brand new website at www.actnaturally.org to find out more about our programs. Will you Act Naturally with us?