In Eating Tomorrow: Agribusiness, Family Farmers, and the Battle for the Future of Food, Timothy A. Wise writes of a similar project in Malawi, where “high-yield” seeds developed by scientists in the Global North replaced heirloom seeds. The yields declined year after year, requiring farmers who usually save seeds and share them with neighbors to buy new ones as a matter of course. Local women call the hybrid version of maize “a marriage breaker” because it doesn’t make a good enough dish for their husbands; local varieties are “marriage builders.” It’s the rules attached to those subsidies (e.g., use GMO seeds, not heirloom) that force farmers’ hands into what isn’t traditional, into an arrangement that requires constant purchasing.
Whose brilliant, climate change-resilient future is this?