In her colourful sari and large scarlet bindi, Dr. Vandana Shiva is an arresting presence: She galvanizes crowds, advises government leaders, fields constant calls from the media—then retreats from big-city buzz to work alongside small farmers across the developing world.

Who is she? What is her mission? How did this woman from an obscure town in India become Monsanto’s worst nightmare, a rebellious rock star in the global debate about who feeds the world?

Among those engaged with organic food and farming, climate change, biodiversity, seed sovereignty, globalisation, and social justice, Vandana Shiva is an icon of a global movement.

But even among those who pride themselves on being well-informed, she’s relatively unknown. Few are aware of how this daughter of a Himalayan forest conservator rose from obscurity to become a world leader of Gandhian stature.

The Seeds of Vandana Shiva focuses on the people, circumstances and seminal events in Vandana’s life—what shaped her thinking and defined her purpose. It also shows how the battle against multinational agribusiness has become an international struggle between two visions for feeding the world: The first, a multinational corporate model of chemically dependent monoculture that rewards a capitalist imperative of extraction for profit. And the other, ‘Earth Democracy, that honours ecology, biodiversity, sustainability and community — what Dr. Shiva demonstrates is the only way forward for the future of food.