Bitter Seeds

An excellent film that shows in real, life-and-death terms, the effects of multi-national companies as they expand their reach for profits. The topic of GMO seeds that filmmaker, Micha Peled focuses on are complex and layered, but he is able to synthesize the issue by focusing the lens on a single representative family as they make their way through one season of cotton farming in Central India. The new trials and vulnerabilities that they face as the necessary seeds get concentrated into new technologies controlled by Monsanto and marketed through layers of local sales agents and distributors, are profound and dire. With these seeds being generally ill-suited for the small-scale local farming that has sufficiently supplied a livelihood for millions, these shifts give way to a catastrophic undoing of centuries of a traditions and stability.