Agricultural DRM in Iraq

[theknife]

aparently, among the various "reforms" we have imposed on the Iraqis, is a whole new chapter of patent law:

For generations, small farmers in Iraq operated in an essentially
unregulated, informal seed supply system. Farm-saved seed and the free
innovation with and exchange of planting materials among farming communities has long been the basis of agricultural practice. This has been made illegal under the new law.

The seeds farmers are now allowed to plant --- "protected" crop varieties
brought into Iraq by transnational corporations in the name of agricultural
reconstruction --- will be the property of the corporations. While
historically the Iraqi constitution prohibited private ownership of biological resources, the new U.S.-imposed patent law introduces a system of monopoly rights over seeds.

didn't we go into Iraq to grant them independence and help them gain sovereignty? apparently not...

Iraq has the potential to feed itself. But instead of developing this
capacity, the U.S. has shaped the future of Iraq's food and farming to serve
the interests of US corporations.

you might wonder how this found it's way into the Coalition Provisional Authority's set of orders...could it have anything to do with the fact that the global seed cartel of Dow, Monsanto, Bayer, and Syngenta are major Bush campaign donors?

http://www.grain.org/articles/?id=6

[Sinner]

Knife - did you even read the "CLARIFICATION" - February 2005

The report jointly issued by Focus on the Global South and GRAIN in October 2004 on Iraq's new patent law has received a lot of attention worldwide. It has also generated a misunderstanding that we wish to clarify.

The law does not prohibit Iraqi farmers from using or saving "traditional" seeds. It prohibits them from reusing seeds of "new" plant varieties registered under the law - in practical terms, this means they cannot save those seeds for re-use. The report has been revised to express this more clearly.



See the article you posted used a Fear Factor to get people, (mostly people against the War in Iraq), something to get all worked up about.

Did you know that farmers sign technology agreements when buying seed?
Farmers that purchase Monsanto's seeds must sign a "Monsanto Technology/Stewardship Agreement" (samples: 2003 Agreement, 2002 Agreement).

The Agreement require, among others, that the farmer agree:



To use Seed containing Monsanto Technologies solely for planting a single commercial crop.

Not to supply any Seed containing patented Monsanto Technologies to any other person or entity for planting. Not to save any crop produced from this Seed for planting and not to supply Seed produced from this Seed to anyone for planting.

Monsanto aggressively protects its patent rights and enforces its agreements according to this AP story, via Yahoo! News: Enforcing single-season seeds, Monsanto sues American farmers.

According to the article, Monsanto has sued farmer Homan McFarling for saving seed from one harvest and replanting the seeds the following season. A no-no according to Monsanto's Technology Agreement. But a practice past down from generation to generation.

Con't -- http://www.mt-law.com/blog/2005/02/d...mers-sign.html

“What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires -- desires of which he himself is often unconscious. If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.”

-- Bertrand Russell, “Roads to Freedom”

[miss_silver]

http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...03&postcount=9

[theknife]

Originally Posted by Sinner

Knife - did you even read the "CLARIFICATION" - February 2005

The report jointly issued by Focus on the Global South and GRAIN in October 2004 on Iraq's new patent law has received a lot of attention worldwide. It has also generated a misunderstanding that we wish to clarify.

The law does not prohibit Iraqi farmers from using or saving "traditional" seeds. It prohibits them from reusing seeds of "new" plant varieties registered under the law - in practical terms, this means they cannot save those seeds for re-use. The report has been revised to express this more clearly.

didn't know that had already been posted Miss S...

Sinner, what part of the link didn't you think i read? the part you reposted?
yup, i read that it doesn't apply to seeds they already have - that's not the point of the post. the point of the post is this: by allowing Monsanto et al to insert this into the CPA rules, we then set up thousands of Iraqi farmers to be the next Homer McFarlings, because the only new varieties allowed into Iraq are gonna be from corporations, not individuals. Iraq is a breadbasket of the Middle East and the genetic origin of wheat. should US agribusiness be allowed to own that heritage?

[Sinner]

Originally Posted by theknife

didn't know that had already been posted Miss S...

Sinner, what part of the link didn't you think i read? the part you reposted?
yup, i read that it doesn't apply to seeds they already have - that's not the point of the post. the point of the post is this: by allowing Monsanto et al to insert this into the CPA rules, we then set up thousands of Iraqi farmers to be the next Homer McFarlings, because the only new varieties allowed into Iraq are gonna be from corporations, not individuals. Iraq is a breadbasket of the Middle East and the genetic origin of wheat. should US agribusiness be allowed to own that heritage?

Here is Order 81 http://www.iraqcoalition.org/regulat...atents_Law.pdf

Nowhere does it say Iraqis must use GMO seeds. They can continue to farm the way they have for years. Order 81 is a WTO-style patent for protections on genetically engineered crops.

Also

A quote form Chris Horner the spokesman for Monsanto,- "For the record, Monsanto has no plans to introduce biotechnology in Iraq," -- "It doesn't fit with our business plans." If security and other factors improve, Horner says, "there could be opportunities for conventional seeds and chemicals. ... I would not characterize it as an emerging market." The outcry about Order 81 has "no basis in fact," says Horner. "How many new patented seed varieties are there in Iraq? Zero."

This is not an Iraqi problem, these laws have been around for years, i am not saying this law is right but to say Bush and America is trying to control farmers in Iraq is complete Bullshit. Want something to argue --

---Under NAFTA, "there wasn't supposed to be genetically modified corn coming to Mexico," yet GMO corn from the United States was discovered there in 2001. This February, a coalition of 70 groups from six Central American and Caribbean countries announced that GMOs – specifically, the infamous StarLink maize not authorized for human consumption – had been detected in U.N. food aid and commercial imports from the United States.---

Again i am not saying I am for these laws but that article is BS.....

History's lessons

Critics of American agribusiness warn that this confluence of privatization policies, GMO-friendly patent protections and U.S. exports is a volatile mix that could further destabilize war-ravaged Iraqi farmers while producing few benefits for their American counterparts.

"Any profit that's made will go to the companies that export it to Iraq, not to farmers," says George Naylor, Iowa farmer and president of the National Family Farm Coalition. Foisting Iraqi growers into a privatized free market will "destroy" small family farms there, just as similar policies have done in the United States, Naylor insists.

Mark Ritchie, president of the Minneapolis-based Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, argues that the U.S.-led overhaul of Iraq's agriculture is a "completely ideological" endeavor that ignores historic lessons. Well-recorded failings of large-scale industrial agriculture in the former Soviet Union and in the United States, he says, "haven't deterred people who ideologically think that's the way to go, so we're going to repeat the mistakes again if we have a chance."

Ultimately, Ritchie says, American taxpayers may also pay a stiff price for any wartime export bubble. He points to the Vietnam War, during which the American rice industry was temporarily enriched by huge exports. Then the postwar market evaporated, and the industry was propped up with big subsidy payments. "The U.S. can create a giant export flow for underpriced commodities, and taxpayers can just pay through the nose," Ritchie warns. "The dangers to producers there are real, and the dangers to American taxpayers are equally real, and Vietnam has shown us how devastating this is."

[Sinner]

to add---

Bill Rammell (Harlow, Lab) Hansard source

UK Government officials in Iraq, as members of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), and other officials in the UK were consulted and invited to comment during the drafting of CPA Order 81. The Order was the subject of consultation and co-ordination with the Iraqi Governing Council, and was consistent with the needs identified by the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for the development of Iraq and its transition from a centrally planned economy to a market economy.

The provisions of CPA Order 81 concern the registration and protection of intellectual property rights in new plant varieties. The Order should not affect the ability of Iraqi farmers to save seeds from traditional sources. Any restrictions would relate only to patented biotech inventions or protected plant varieties. This is the normal effect of introducing such an intellectual property law. To secure protection, plant varieties would have needed to have been shown to be new, distinct from other varieties in common knowledge, uniform and stable. Farmers will have a choice of sources for their seed supply: they may choose to continue using current sources, such as saving their own seeds of traditional and unprotected varieties, or may choose to buy seeds which are subject to patent or plant variety rights protection.

The implementation, application and interpretation of all CPA orders is now a matter for the Iraqis. The newly elected Transitional National Assembly, together with the Iraqi Transitional Government, have the power to overturn or rewrite any existing CPA Orders that they feel do not address the needs and rights of the Iraqi people.

[JackSpratts]

The issue isn’t whether they’ll be arrested for planting traditional seeds, the issue is whether patent law should recognize life forms, which apparently under the old Iraqi code it did not. Now that it does, and if Monsanto does get a beachhead in Iraq, using Monsanto seeds will give farmers a production edge over the farmer who doesn’t. Hold outs, those who use the traditional seeds, will normally find themselves with lower yields and at a competitive disadvantage compared to farmers using the Monsanto patented crops. The reason for this is at it’s base chemical, not genetic, because the new crops are highly resistant to the toxic effects of Monsanto’s signature herbicide, Roundup, and this allows massive use of the toxin on a scale that would ordinarily be prohibitive, because along with the weeds and other living elements in the soil the product would also kill the farmer’s cash crop as well. No longer. Now roundup can be applied in such heavy quantities it has led researchers to dub the practice Chemo-farming, after the non dissimilar therapy for cancer sufferers that attempts to kill cancer cells but all too often winds up killing many of the patients as well. Roundup migration to other fields (called “drift”) causes serious problems, where farms are small and the other fields are held by different owners. These innocent farmers who use herbicides in a totally different manor, if at all, now find their precious water tainted and their traditional crops “inadvertently” killed by the chemical, forcing them into the same burdensome financial cycle where they have to buy the new seeds and now Roundup in turn. Not to mention the problems associated with the health effects of cumulative exposure on the people themselves. While it’s highly touted as a product that “breaks down fast” it’s still the leading cause of illness, at least among California landscape and farm workers where it ranks as numbers one and three respectively.

So far from being this ridiculously simple equation the corporation mouthpieces would have you believe, “Don’t like Patent Seeds, don’t use ‘em!” turns out, as usual to be cynical sloganeering. The effects go way beyond the decisions of isolated individuals applying these engineered products on their own plots. By creating this system in patent law they can very well damage traditional farming, with a little knowledge of human behavior it’s relatively easy to craft laws in such a fashion that create dependence on chemo-farming along with the multi national conglomerates and the world leaders (and police and court systems) supporting and enforcing it, and ultimately that’s the only point of the exercise from the corporations’ point of view.

Creating in essence a class of serfs where you once had not rich but at least independent farmers is an underhanded practice the wealthy and powerful have regularly encouraged and often notoriously accomplished. So while nothing in law may directly prohibit growers from husbanding seeds and using traditional crops the system does stack the odds so far in favor of the conglomerates it all but accomplishes the same thing.

- js.

[theknife]

Originally Posted by Sinner

Here is Order 81 http://www.iraqcoalition.org/regulat...atents_Law.pdf

Nowhere does it say Iraqis must use GMO seeds. They can continue to farm the way they have for years. Order 81 is a WTO-style patent for protections on genetically engineered crops.

Also

A quote form Chris Horner the spokesman for Monsanto,- "For the record, Monsanto has no plans to introduce biotechnology in Iraq," -- "It doesn't fit with our business plans." If security and other factors improve, Horner says, "there could be opportunities for conventional seeds and chemicals. ... I would not characterize it as an emerging market." The outcry about Order 81 has "no basis in fact," says Horner. "How many new patented seed varieties are there in Iraq? Zero."

This is not an Iraqi problem, these laws have been around for years, i am not saying this law is right but to say Bush and America is trying to control farmers in Iraq is complete Bullshit. Want something to argue --

---Under NAFTA, "there wasn't supposed to be genetically modified corn coming to Mexico," yet GMO corn from the United States was discovered there in 2001. This February, a coalition of 70 groups from six Central American and Caribbean countries announced that GMOs – specifically, the infamous StarLink maize not authorized for human consumption – had been detected in U.N. food aid and commercial imports from the United States.---

Again i am not saying I am for these laws but that article is BS.....

the article about Mexico illustrates the potential problem ...GMO is not supposed to be in Mexico but there it is. so who owns it? well, under existing patent treaties, i guess whoever GMO'd it, owns it. so, like Homer McFarling, whomever owns the land where it's growing owes Monsanto (or whomever) money, no matter how it got there, right?

and do you really believe that CPA order 81 got written without any influence from the companies who will stand to benefit?

[Sinner]

Originally Posted by theknife

the article about Mexico illustrates the potential problem ...GMO is not supposed to be in Mexico but there it is. so who owns it? well, under existing patent treaties, i guess whoever GMO'd it, owns it. so, like Homer McFarling, whomever owns the land where it's growing owes Monsanto (or whomever) money, no matter how it got there, right?

and do you really believe that CPA order 81 got written without any influence from the companies who will stand to benefit?

The Order is there to protect intellectual property.

Are GMO's good or the Law fair? I really do not know. Not the point, I just have a problem with this quote you made...

didn't we go into Iraq to grant them independence and help them gain sovereignty? apparently not...

Because the answer is yes, their elections went very well and things are starting to change for the better in the Middle East.

[albed]

The propaganda war continues though.


Lol at the bird brains; can't even remember what they were squawking last month but think they're so much smarter than career farmers that they know what's best for them.


Guess they just saw the same propaganda again and forgot they'd already parroted it.


Wonder if they still get a cracker.

[theknife]

Originally Posted by Sinner

The Order is there to protect intellectual property.

Are GMO's good or the Law fair? I really do not know. Not the point, I just have a problem with this quote you made...



Because the answer is yes, their elections went very well and things are starting to change for the better in the Middle East.

pay attention to that man behind the curtain. the recent election has not brought sovereignty or independence to the Iraqis.

Food sovereignty is the right of people to define their own food and agriculture policies, to protect and regulate domestic agricultural production and trade, to decide the way food should be produced, what should be grown locally and what should be imported. The demand for food sovereignty and the opposition to the patenting of seeds has been central to the small farmers' struggle all over the world over the past decade. By fundamentally altering the IPR regime, the US has ensured that Iraq's agricultural system will remain under "occupation" in Iraq.

Iraq has the potential to feed itself. But instead of developing this capacity, the US has shaped the future of Iraq's food and farming to serve the interests of US corporations. The new IPR regime pays scant respect to Iraqi farmers' contributions to the development of important crops like wheat, barley, date and pulses. Samples of such farmers' varieties were starting to be saved in the 1970s in the country's national gene bank in Abu Ghraib outside Baghdad. It is feared that all these have been lost in the long years of conflict. However, the Syria-based Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR)[17] center -- International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA) still holds accessions of several Iraqi varieties. These collections that are evidence of the Iraqi farmers' knowledge are supposed to be held in trust by the center. These comprise the agricultural heritage of Iraq belonging to the Iraqi farmers that ought now to be repatriated. There have been situations where germplasm held by an international agricultural research center has been "leaked out" for research and development to Northern scientists[18]. Such kind of "biopiracy" is fueled by an IPR regime that ignores the prior art of the farmer and grants rights to a breeder who claims to have created something new from the material and knowledge of the very farmer.

While political sovereignty remains an illusion, food sovereignty for the Iraqi people has already been made near impossible by these new regulations. Iraq's freedom and sovereignty will remain questionable for as long as Iraqis do not have control over what they sow, grow, reap and eat.

http://www.newfarm.org/international...tent-law.shtml

[Sinner]

Originally Posted by Sinner

to add---

Bill Rammell (Harlow, Lab) Hansard source

UK Government officials in Iraq, as members of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), and other officials in the UK were consulted and invited to comment during the drafting of CPA Order 81. The Order was the subject of consultation and co-ordination with the Iraqi Governing Council, and was consistent with the needs identified by the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for the development of Iraq and its transition from a centrally planned economy to a market economy.

The provisions of CPA Order 81 concern the registration and protection of intellectual property rights in new plant varieties. The Order should not affect the ability of Iraqi farmers to save seeds from traditional sources. Any restrictions would relate only to patented biotech inventions or protected plant varieties. This is the normal effect of introducing such an intellectual property law. To secure protection, plant varieties would have needed to have been shown to be new, distinct from other varieties in common knowledge, uniform and stable. Farmers will have a choice of sources for their seed supply: they may choose to continue using current sources, such as saving their own seeds of traditional and unprotected varieties, or may choose to buy seeds which are subject to patent or plant variety rights protection.

The implementation, application and interpretation of all CPA orders is now a matter for the Iraqis. The newly elected Transitional National Assembly, together with the Iraqi Transitional Government, have the power to overturn or rewrite any existing CPA Orders that they feel do not address the needs and rights of the Iraqi people.

I would stop posting Propaganda From October of Last Year if I was you, I am not you so continue if you wish, Things have changed since then.

[theknife]

Originally Posted by Sinner

I would stop posting Propaganda From October of Last Year if I was you, I am not you so continue if you wish, Things have changed since then.

duh - still reading the original link, are we?

in one form or another, CPA 81 will live on. Iraq is the world's biggest cash cow right now - whomever needs CPA 81 to stay put will just buy off Iraq's newly elected officials. just like in America.

[Sinner]

Originally Posted by theknife

pay attention to that man behind the curtain. the recent election has not brought sovereignty or independence to the Iraqis.



http://www.newfarm.org/international...tent-law.shtml

From your Newest link -

Iraq's new patent law: A declaration of war against farmers
October 17, 2004 --


Do you even know what you post????

[theknife]

Originally Posted by Sinner

From your Newest link -

Iraq's new patent law: A declaration of war against farmers
October 17, 2004 --


Do you even know what you post????

well gee, i thought it was an op/ed piece from newfarm.org from last October, but i'll go back and click the link to double check. be right back.





ok, i'm back. yup, that's what it is.

[albed]

Check again, down at the bottom.

Source: URL: http://www.grain.org/articles/?

.

I'm not sure if anyone is still interested in this discussion, but I wanted to make some comments anyway. While there has been a lot of alarmist claims about CPA order 81 which appear to be technically inaccurate, the fact of the matter is that the seed saving legacy of the Iraq farmer IS threatened.

I tried not to be alarmist. I wanted to get it right.

Read order 81 carefully, but esecially Articles 14.C.1 and 14.C.2 and 15.

One of you mentioned it being WTO-styled.

In fact, the plant variety protection racket goes back to the end of the 19th century when hybridization was becoming a more modern science in the post-Mendel world of genetics.

The U.S. patent office consistently refused to patent life. The emerging USDA and some well placed bureaucrats began building a bypass around the U.S. patent office via legislation that developed throughout the 20th century:

1930 Plant Patent Act
1970 Plant Variety Protection Act

Anyone who is interested in learning more about the precedent being set by the courts and the legal frameworks that are developing should check out www.seedsofdeception.com and also read "Altered Harvest" by Jack Doyle, 1985. I believe Doyle's book is out of print. It appears to be 20 years ahead of its time, and the historical record is quite good.

Europe started the "International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants" (UPOV) - http://www.upov.int.

Canada has Plant Breeder's Rights Act - http://laws.justice.gc.ca./en/P-14.6/fulltoc.html and the associated Plant Breeders' Rights Office - http://www.inspection.gc.ca/english/.../pbrpove.shtml.

And now Iraq has order 81. Former CPA chief Paul Bremer also appointed some national security wanks with 5 year terms well before the recent election, in order to secure U.S. foreign policy power inside the new order.

All of these "patent" laws are simply frameworks for the biotech cartels.

Traditional seeds can be patented. All you have to do is map the genetic code and isolate the traits and file the paperwork. This is ALREADY happening in other countries. It WILL happen in Iraq unless the new government scraps order 81, which is unlikely due to the national security puppets who will scream to high hell about open markets being in the national interest and whatever other neoliberal BS they can come up with.

Farmers have been developing seed for centuries. ICARDA has 1000 specimens from Iraq stored in Syria. The Abu Ghraib genebank was looted/destroyed in the war. The same thing happened in Afghanistan - and they HID their germplasm resources.

Another issue is cross-pollination. GM traits can be passed through cross pollination. This is ALREADY happening. And if GM seed traits are passed to a traditional variety, guess who owns the seed that follows from the cross? You guessed it, the patent holder.

As for Monsanto spokestwit Chris Horner stating "for the record, Monsanto has no plans to introduce biotechnology in Iraq..." - it's BULLSHIT. Monsanto now controls 90% of the world's GM seed supply and 80% of the world's soybeans. Do you think they are going to let an opening market in Iraq sit dormant? The key words are "no plans". Plans change. They are buying up seed companies at an alarming rate. They are moving into water. Their chemicals have already invaded the soil. What else is left for agricultural hegemony except to control the weather.

All this talk about food security is a lot of prop-spin. Cozy language is being used for the idealogues to lap up. The facts are that GMO tech is threatening food security and biodiversity in the name of profits and foreign policy chess maneuvers. More importantly, GMO is not necessary. Like other militaristic technologies, it is about concentration of power. Traditional farming methods are much less threatening to biodiversity and provide REAL options for food security, but they are inheritantly more democratic - they prevent monopolies like Monsanto from operating that they do. Traditional farming is about building community and the open sharing of knowledge and a diverse seed base.

Do you all know about the corn blight of 1970? Read the intro to Altered Harvest at http://www.unsafescience.com/cms-sclb.html.

In any case, if terminator seeds (via GURTs) become a reality, this will all be a moot point, as the ability for farmer's to save seed will be severely marginalized, because the resulting seed from the GM varieties will be sterile. Should those varieties cross-pollinate and pass the terminator trait to other non-GM varieties in the same family - biodiversity meltdown.

[multi]

some good info there

heres some stuff about terminator seeds

The 12,000-year-old practice in which farm families save their best seed from one year's harvest for the next season's planting may be coming to an end by the year 2000. In March 1998, Delta ~ Pine Land Co. arid the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced they had received a US patent on a new genetic technology designed to prevent unauthorized seed-saving by farmers.
The patented technology enables a seed company to genetically alter seed so that the plants that grow from it are sterile; farmers cannot use their seeds. The patent is broad applying to plants and seeds of all species including both transgenic (genetically engineered) and conventionally-bred seeds. The developers of the new technology say that their technique to prevent seed-saving is still in the product development stage, and is now being tested on cotton and tobacco. They hope to have a product on the market sometime after the year 2000.
Over the last four years, USDA researchers claim to have spent nearly $190,000 to support research on what the Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI) calls "Terminator" seed technology. Delta & Pine Land, the seed industry collaborator, devoted $275,000 of in-house expenses and contributed an additional $255,000 to the joint research. According to a USDA spokesperson, Delta & Pine Land Co. has the option to exclusively license the jointly developed patented technology.
The USDA's Willard Phelps explained that the goal is "to increase the value of proprietary seed owned by US seed companies and to open up new markets in second and third world countries."
USDA molecular biologist Melvin J. Oliver, the primary inventor of the technology, explained why the US developed a technology that prohibits farmers from saving seeds: "Our mission is to protect US agriculture and to make us competitive in the face of foreign competition. Without this, there is no way of protecting the patented seed technology."
USDA stands to earn royalties of about 5 percent of the net sales if a product is commercialized. The day after the. patent was announced, Delta & Pine Land Company's stock rose sharply. While USDA and seed industry profits may increase, these earnings come at enormous cost to farmers and to global food security. ~
USDA researchers interviewed by the authors expressed a strong allegiance to the commercial seed industry and an appalling lack of awareness about this technology's potential effects, especially in the US South.
Impact In the South
Delta &r Pine Land Co.'s press release claims that its new technology has " the prospect of opening significant worldwide seed markets to the sale of transgenic technology for crops in which seed currently is saved and used in subsequent plantings."
Up to 1.4 billion resource-poor farmers in the South depend on farm-saved seed and
seeds exchanged with neighbors as their primary seed source. A technology that restricts farmer expertise in selecting seed and developing locally-adapted strains is a threat to food security and agricultural biodiversity, especially for the poor. The threat is real, especially considering that USDA and Delta &r Pine Land have applied for patent protection in countries from Brazil to Vietnam.
If the Terminator technology is widely licensed, it could mean that the commercial seed industry will enter entirely new sectors of the seed market - especially in self-pollinating seeds such as wheat, rice, cotton, soybeans, oats and sorghum. Historically, there has been little commercial interest in non-hybridized seeds such as wheat and rice because there was no way for seed companies to control reproduction. With the patent announcement, the world's two most critical food crops - rice and wheat, staple crops for three-quarters of the world's poor - potentially enter the realm of private monopoly.
In May, Monsanto announced it would acquire Delta &r Pine Land Company for $1.8 billion. This means that seed-sterilizing technology is now in the hands of the world's third-largest seed corporation and second largest agrochemical corporation.
Monsanto's 1996 revenues were $9.26 billion. The company's genetically engineered crops are expected to be used on approximately 50 million acres worldwide in 1998.
If Monsanto's new technology provides a genetic mechanism to prevent farmers from germinating a second generation of seed, then seed companies will gain the biological control over seeds that they have heretofore lacked in non-hybrid crops.
Nobody knows exactly how many farmers in industrialized countries save seed from their harvest each year. By some estimates, 20 to 30 percent of all soybean fields in the US midwest are planted with farmer-saved seed. Most North American wheat farmers rely on farm-saved seeds and return to the commercial market once every four or five years. Almost all of the wheat grown on the Canadian prairies is from seed produced in the communities in which it is grown. The same is true for lentils and peas.
More Options for Farmers?
Proponents of the Terminator technology are quick to point out that farmers will not buy seed that does not bring them benefits. But market choices must be examined in the context of privatization of plant breeding and rapid consolidation in the global seed industry. The top ten seed corporations control approximately 40 percent of the commercial seed market. Current trends in seed industry consolidation, coupled with rapid declines in public sector breeding, mean that farmers are increasingly vulnerable and have far fewer options in the marketplace.
A new technology that is designed to give the seed industry greater control over seeds will ultimately weaken the role. of public breeders and reinforce corporate consolidation in the global seed industry.
Advocates of Terminator technology claim that it will be a boon to food production in the South, because seed companies will have an incentive to invest in crops that have long been ignored by the commercial seed industry. But private companies are not interested in developing plant varieties for poor farmers because they know the farmers can't pay. Existing national public breeding programs tend to focus on seeds for high-yielding, irrigated lands, leaving resource-poor farmers to fend for themselves.
Half the world's farmers. are poor and can't afford to buy seed every season, yet poor farmers grow 15-20 percent of the world's food and directly feed at least 1.4 billion people - 100 million in Latin America, 300 million in Africa, and one billion in Asia. These farmers depend upon saved seed and their own breeding skills in adapting other varieties for use on their often-marginal lands.
Biosafety Concerns
The seed industry is expected to defend the Terminator technology by arguing that it will increase the safety of using genetically-engineered crops. Since the seed carries the sterility trait, say proponents, it is less likely that transgenic material will escape from one crop into related species and wild crop relatives. The seed industry is expected to argue that this built-in safety feature will speed up biotech advances in agriculture and increase productivity.
Molecular biologists who have studied the patent have mixed views on the potential ecological hazards of the sterility trait. The greatest fear is that the sterility trait from first generation seed might spread via pollen to neighboring crops or wild relatives growing nearby. Some biologists argue that pollen even if pollen does escape, it would not pose a threat. The danger is that neighboring crops could be rendered "sterile" due to cross pollination - wreaking havoc on the surrounding ecosystem. Given that the technology is new and untested on a large scale, biosafety issues remain an important concern. more..