At a rally yesterday near the South African site of this year’s World Summit on Sustainable Development, anti-technology activist and self-described “goddess” Vandana Shiva was awarded this year’s “Bullsh*t Award for Sustaining Poverty” by the liberty Institute of Delhi, India.
The Institute’s Barun Shankar Mitra, shown here with the prestigious (if a little stinky) award, noted that while Vandana Shiva claims that “modern agricultural technologies are too dangerous for the poor,” impoverished rural farmers “seize the opportunity to use modern technologies to improve their agricultural productivity” whenever they have the choice.
Other contenders for this year’s award included the Third World Network and Greenpeace, both of which devote considerable time and money trying to drown out positive messages about genetically improved foods.