Grandmother University

We'Moon Datebook for 2020

Vandana Shiva, the nuclear physicist,
went back to her land, India in the Himalayas,
to save seed for the farmers.
Organic farms, 
five times more productive than monoculture,
lead the way at Navdanya, “Nine Seeds,” 
her farm and home.
Saving fifteen hundred seeds, a biodiversity of seeds,
for local farmers to plant.
Farmers in the Cotton Belt have killed themselves
by the quarter million 
after Monsanto colonized the region.
“We learn from the seed.”
“We learn from the seed generosity. 
We learn from the seed diversity.”
Grandmothers, the elders, are the best link,
the true source of biodiversity.
“The link of the past to the future,”
says Vandana, her smile huge and warm, her eyes alight.
In the cotton regions,
Monsanto has colonized the seed,
limiting to five the thousands of cotton types known,
and from these five, genetically modified,
extracting royalties for their use.
And in Vandana’s way, at Navdanya, her ecological farm,
 “the Earth is generously saying,
‘Take everything from me.’”
“I have deep trust in the Earth.”

Annelinde Metzner
January 11, 2013


I am so grateful to the We'Moon sisterhood who have published so many of my poems over the years.  This year I am especially proud of the two poems in the 2020 issue, with the Tarot theme of "The World."   This poem is devoted to the brilliant and compassionate Vandana Shiva who is revolutionizing agriculture in India while resisting corporations such as Monsanto. Here is some info about Vandana.
     And some info about her movement, Navdanya.

Vandana Shiva

One of my poems in We'Moon 2020