Sustainable food expert speaks at University of Montana

            MISSOULA – A critic of genetically modified crops and corporate-led globalization will deliver the next installment of the 2015-16 President’s Lecture Series at the University of Montana.

Vandana Shiva, the founder and director of the Research Foundation for Science Technology and Ecology and founder and managing trustee of Navdanya Trust in New Delhi, will present “We Are All Seeds: Food Security and Environmental Sustainability” at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 24, in UM’s Dennison Theatre. The lecture is the Brennan Guth Memorial Lecture in Environmental Philosophy in collaboration with UM’s Environmental Studies program.

Shiva also will lead a seminar earlier that day titled “Living Seed, Living Soil and Earth Democracy” at 3:10 p.m. in Gallagher Business Building Room 123. The lecture and seminar both are free and open to the public.

Trained as a physicist at the University of Punjab in Pakistan, Shiva completed her doctoral work at the University of Western Ontario in Canada. She later shifted toward interdisciplinary research in science, technology and environmental policy, which she pursued at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India.

In 1982, she founded an independent institute – the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology in Dehra Dun, India – dedicated to the study of ecology and social issues. The foundation partners with local communities and social movements.

In 1991, Shiva founded Navdanya, a national movement to protect native seeds and to promote organic farming and fair trade. Sixty seed banks were established through the initiative. She received the Right Livelihood Award in 1993, which is considered an alternative to the Nobel Peace Prize.

In 2004, she started Bija Vidyapeeth, an international college for sustainable living in Doon Valley, India, in collaboration with Schumacher College of the United Kingdom. She is a board member of the International Forum on Globalization.

The most recent of her more than two dozen books is “Seed Sovereignty, Food Security: Women in the Vanguard of the Fight against GMOs and Corporate Agriculture.”

The President’s Lecture Series at UM consists of eight talks throughout the academic year on vital topics by distinguished guest speakers. For more information on the series, visit http://umt.edu/president/events/lectures/ or call UM history Professor Richard Drake at 406-243-2981.