11:54 AM Feb 25, 1997
IPRS CREATING BIODIVERSITY TOTALITARIANISM
by Dr. Vandana Shiva* New Delhi Feb (TWN) -- The Transnational Seed Industry is seeking total control of seed, the first link in the food chain, and through this control over seed, control the food system. If all farmers, who are the original breeders, could be forced into the market every year to buy their seeds, the seed industry will have a $7.5 billion market. Not only is the seed industry gaining total control over seed supply, it is also getting increasingly concentrated. Robert Farley of Monsanto has been quoted (RAFI Communique September 1996) as saying: "What you're seeing is not just a consolidation of seed companies, it's really a consolidation of the entire food chain." In the last year, Monsanto has taken over small start up biotech companies and large seed companies. These include: Agracetus, a subsidiary of W.R. Grace with species patents on cotton and soybean, acquired by Monsanto for $150 million; Calgene, a California-based plant biotech firm which launched the genetically-engineered `Flavr-Savr' tomato. Monsanto now has a 54% controlling interest in it; Asgrow seed, bought by Monsanto for $240 million; De Kalb, bought by Monsanto for $158 million; and Holden, bought by Monsanto for $1,02 billion. Holden, is a seed company with $45 million in annual sales. Monsanto has bought it at $1 billion or 23 times the annual sales. Thus seed, the first link in the food chain will fall into the hands of a handful of corporate giants who are accountable to no one, whose functioning is totally non-transparent and who control the entire food and agricultural system. As Bill Frieberg, editor of Biotech Reporter says, "big agricultural company profits will need to be squeezed out of farmers, one way or the other. And there's only so much blood that can be squeezed out of the proverbial turnip." The stronger the rights of TNCs, the weaker are the rights of farmers since it is the erosion of farmers rights which creates TNC monopolies. The Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) agreement of GATT/WTO is the global instrument that the biotech industry has used for gaining monopoly control over seed supply. James Enyart, the Monsanto spokesperson has said (in the RAFI Communique) about shaping the TRIPs agreement; "We were the physician, the diagnostician, and patient all in one". TRIPs agreement provides that all countries must either give patents for plants or have an "effective sui generis" system. Sui generis systems could also be legal systems centred on farmers' rights and on the conservation of biodiversity, in accordance with principles of the Convention on Biological Diversity. While it has not been explicitly stated, the transnational seed industry would like to see the Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plant (UPOV) implemented in every country, and the UPOV equated to the sui generis system. Farmers have been the original breeders and seed supply has been based on farmers contribution to conservation, breeding and utilisation of diverse species and crop varieties. In countries like India, 70% of the seed supply is still farmers' seed supply. In most industrialised countries, most farmers depend on the seed industry. Until recently, they could save seed and exchange seed among each other, under what was called the `farmers' privilege'. Recent changes in plant legislation in Europe and the US have however, allowed the seed industry to take away the last remnants of farmers' freedom and enslaved them to the seed industry. Farmers have been pushed into a situation of total lack of freedom to exercise their role as breeders, or as members of a community or producers, freely saving and exchanging plant material. The legislation pushes out farmers' varieties and makes farmers' breeding an illegal activity. The case of farmer Josef Albrecht in Germany and potato seed farmers in Scotland are examples of how Seed Acts prevent farmers from engaging in their own seed production. Josef Albrecht is an organic farmer in the village of Oberding in Bavaria. Not satisfied with commercially available seed, he developed his own ecological varieties of wheat. Ten other organic farmers from neighbouring villages took his wheat seeds. Farmer Albrecht was fined by the government of Upper Bavaria because he traded in uncertified seed. He has challenged the penalty and the Seed Act because he feels restricted in freely exercising his occupation as an organic farmer by this law. Albrecht has also initiated a non-cooperation movement against the seeds legislation. In Scotland, there are a large number of farmers who grow seed potato, and sell seed potato to farmers. They could, until the early 1990s, freely sell the reproductive material to other seed potato growers, to merchants, or to farmers. In the 1990s, holders of plant breeders' rights started to issue notices to potato growers through the British Society of Plant Breeders, and made selling of seed potato by farmers to other farmers illegal. Seed potato growers had to grow varieties under contract to the seed industry which specified the price at which the contracting company would take back the crop, and barred growers from selling the crop to anyone. The companies started to reduce the acreage and reduce the prices. In 1994, seed potato bought from Scottish farmers for one hundred and forty pounds sterling, was sold for more than double that price to English farmers. A high-profile court case was launched against a farmer from Aberdeenshire, and the farmer was forced to pay 30,000 pounds sterling compensation to cover royalties lost to the seed industry by the direct farmer-to-farmer exchange. Existing United Kingdom and European Union laws thus prevent farmers from exchanging uncertified seed as well as protected varieties. In the US also, farmer-to-farmer exchange has been made illegal. This has been established in a case filed by Asgrow Seed Company, now owned by Monsanto, against farmers Winterboers. Dennis and Becky Winterboer are farmers owning a 500 acre farm in Iowa. Since 1987, they have derived a sizable portion of their income from `brown bagging' -- sales of their crops to other farmers to use as seed. A `brown bag' sale occurs when a farmer plants seeds in his own field, and then sells the harvest as seed to other farmers. Asgrow (which has plant variety protection for its soybean seeds (A1957 and A2234) started a court case against the Winterboers, on the ground that its property rights were being violated. The Winterboers argued that they had acted within the law since according to the Plant Variety Act, farmers had the right to sell seed, provided that both the farmer and seller were farmers. The Federal Circuit Court interpreted marketing as requiring "extensive or coordinated selling activities, such as advertising, using an intervening sales representative, or similar merchandising or retail activities". The Supreme Court disagreed and interpreted marketing as holding forth property for sale, and hence ruled against the Winterboers.5 In 1994, the Plant Variety Act was amended, and the farmers' privilege to save an exchange seed was amended through Statutes 3136 and 3142, establishing absolute monopoly of the seed industry by making farmer to farmer exchange and sales illegal. The absolute rights of the seed industry and the absolute lack of rights for farmers has been further established in Monsanto's "Round-Up-Ready Gene Agreement" for Round-Up Ready Soybeans. The agreement, meant to enforce US Patents 4,535,060, 4,040,835 and 532,505, prevents the grower from selling or supplying the seed or material derived from it to any other person or entity or saving any of the seed. The agreement requires a payment of $5.00 per pound of `technology fee' over and above the price of seed and royalties. If any clause is violated, the grower has to pay one hundred times as damages, and this is not deemed to limit the amount of damages. Monsanto has a right to visit the fields of the farmer at any time even without the farmers' presence or permission for three years after the agreement. Thus the right to property of the farmer is not respected. This clause has made farmers extremely outraged. As one farmer put it, "We shoot intruders". The agreement is binding even on heirs and personal representatives of successors of growers, but growers' rights cannot be transferred without Monsanto's permission. Thus Monsanto's rights exist over other rights related to the farmer, but the farmer is denied his/her rights to transfer the agreement. In addition, the agreement has no liability clause. It has no reference to the performance of Round-Up Ready soybeans, and Monsanto has no responsibility in case they fail to perform as promised, or the ecological damage caused by Round-Up. This is especially relevant given the failure of Monsanto's genetically engineered cotton; `Bollgard'. In the 1996 season farmers ware forced to spray their fields to protect the cotton crop from Boll worm, even though the promotional material had stated that boll worms could cause no damage to Bollgard cotton. The Round-Up Ready gene agreement is thus the latest step in the seed industry claiming far-reaching monopoly rights over seeds and farmers, and bearing no ecological or social responsibility associated with the introduction of herbicide resistant or pest resistant genes into crops. This one sided system in which seed companies have all the rights and bear no social or environmental responsibility and farmers and citizens have no rights but bear all the risks and costs, can neither protect biodiversity nor provide food security. It is a system of biodiversity totalitarianism. (Dr. Vandana Shiva, is a noted ecologist and author of several books. The article is excerpted from a longer one on the draft Indian Plant Variety legislation)