Open Pollination # 01, Self Portrait Digital Poster, 2015

Self Portrait Digital Posters x 6 (photography, computer aided graphics and animations), 45 second videos on loop | Performance x 4 (videography, computer added graphics and animation), 30 second videos on loop

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Note : As text can't be formatted on Vimeo, the following text looks the same from the beginning to the end though it shouldn't be so. Paragraphs that are bracketed with "//////////" make up one thread while the other paragraphs without brackets make up another.

////////// Mono culture industrialised agriculture contributes to 40 per cent of green house gases. 80 per cent food production of the world come from family owned and small farms. In the US, more than 90 percent of agriculture subsidies go to farmers of five crops — wheat, corn, soybeans, rice, and cotton. In 2012, agricultural subsidies totalled an estimated $ 486 billion in the top 21 food-producing countries in the world. These subsidies push prices artificially down making agriculture in general unviable. //////////

The Mamre House is a place where one makes peace with the earth. It is an organic farm. ‘Open pollination’ primarily involved three people - two farmers and myself. One is Simeon who is from Burma. Simeon has first settled in Australia a few years ago as a political refugee. He has got a garden patch at Mamre. The other farmer is Nevin who has been living in St Clair, not far from Mamre for several decades.

////////// Agri giants are disempowering farmers around the world. Under the pretext of safeguarding patent/intellectual property rights, seed saving has been criminalised in some countries and number of states in the United States in favour of agri giants. In a landmark decision in 2013 the Appeal Court of India prevented Monsanto, a global agri giant from patenting seeds. Coincidently, in 2013, The Mamre House established a community seed bank in St Marys on the outskirts of Sydney. Its objective was to collect, preserve and distribute heritage seed. //////////

I began the conversation with Simeon and Nevin regarding their practice and experience in farming, consuming, storing, recipes, cooking, saving/sharing/preserving of seeds etc. I based my conversations on the exchange of my labour for some produce in return, by working in each one’s patch. ‘Open Pollination” allowed me to engage myself and immersed in the world of sustainable food production and consumption.

////////// Indian farmers fought back as a mass movement against the attempts to patenting seeds and subsequent restrictions on saving seeds. Navdanya, a grass-root mass movement leading the way to achieve seed sovereignty in order to achieve food sovereignty. It has established 111 Community Seed Banks in 17 States across India. 2,00,000 farmers have been converted to organic farming in different parts of the country. Navdanya has trained about 500,000 farmers, conserved 3,000 varieties of rice. //////////

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2015 (c) Jagath Dheerasekara

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