It’s hard not to immediately warm to the Indian activist Vandana Shiva, who traded in her studies of biotechnology into a one-woman campaign against industrial farming, genetically moderated organisms, and the Monsanto corporation in particular.
The documentary about her life and work, “The Seeds of Vendana Shiva” (Apple TV+, iTunes, streaming), begins with some of her strong declarations, calling “industrial farming the single biggest destructive force on the planet today, in terms of what’s happening to the Earth and in terms of what’s happening to society.”
She’s even ready to topple the patriarchy when she declares, while receiving the 2010 Sydney Peace Prize,“The war against the earth begins in the minds of men,” adding “And I mean men — especially men who control power and capital.”
The film doesn’t go too far on that front, but since multinational corporations are generally run by groups of men, it’s an assumed target (though Einstein is a longtime inspiration).
Tagging along on her appearances at rallies and conferences, the documentary also pauses to detail Shiva’s life growing up in the Himalayan forests where her father was a guard and studying physics in college. Inspired by a history of women activists — including the original tree huggers who banded together to prevent clear cutting forests — she found her targets in companies promising a pest-free seeds to farmers. Part of a misleadingly named Green Revolution meant to increase yields, the corporate initiative also pushed small farmers out of the picture, poisoned rivers, threatened the environment by shunning biodiverse seeds and led to disasters like the Union Carbide poisoning in Bhopal that killed thousands.