Sowing The Seeds Of Dictatorship in India/Borlaug opposed patents

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GMW: Sowing The Seeds Of Dictatorship in India/Borlaug

opposed patents

 

 

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Tue, 15 Feb 2005 09:46:39 GMT

 

 

 

Sowing The Seeds Of Dictatorship in India/Borlaug opposed patents

http://www.gmwatch.org

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EXCERPT: Norman Borlaug the scientist behind the Green Revolution and

the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, made this clear in his statement

at a Press Conference at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute,

New Delhi on 8th Feb 96. He expressed concern against private companies

and TNCs gaining control of plant genetic resources and seeds and

patenting plants. Prof. Borlaug said,

 

" We battled against patenting. I and late Glen Anderson (of

International Wheat an Maize Research Institute) went on record in

India as well

as other for a against patenting and always stood for free exchange of

germplasm. "

 

He saw IPRs in PGRs as a prescription for famine. Commenting on the

U.S. demand for patents he said:

 

" God help us if that were to happen, we would all starve. "

 

" Besides using a fallacious essentialist argument about human nature,

Mr. Glickman [then US Ag Secretary] also stressed the inevitability of

farmers' dependence on MNCs for seeds due to trade liberalization and

its impact on agriculture. "

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The Indian Seed Act And Patent Act

Sowing The Seeds Of Dictatorship

by Vandana Shiva

 

ZNet, February 14, 2005

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=56 & ItemID=7249

 

 

Since the beginning of farming, farmers have sown seeds, harvested

crops, saved part of the harvest for seeds, exchanged seeds with

neighbours. Every ritual in India involves seeds, the very symbol of

life's

renewal.

 

In 2004 two laws have been proposed - a seed Act and a Patent Ordinance

which could forever destroy the biodiversity of our seeds and crops,

and rob farmers of all freedoms, establishing a seed dictatorship.

 

Eighty per cent of all seed in India is still saved by farmers. Farmers

indigenous varieties are the basis of our ecological and food security.

Coastal farmers have evolved salt resistant varieties. Bihar and Bengal

farmers have evolved flood resistant varieties, farmers of Rajasthan

and the semi-arid Deccan have evolved drought resistant varieties,

Himalayan farmers have evolved frost resistant varieties. Pulses,

millets,

oilseeds, rices, wheats, vegetables provide the diverse basis of our

health and nutrition security. This is the sector being targeted by the

Seed Act. These seeds are indigenous farmers varieties of diverse crops

†" thousands of rices, hundreds of wheats, oilseeds such as linseed,

sesame, groundnut, coconut, pulses including gahat, narrangi, rajma,

urad,

moong, masur, tur, vegetables and fruits. The Seed Act is designed to

" enclose " the free economy of farmers seed varieties. Once farmers seed

supply is destroyed through compulsory registration by making it

illegal to plant unlicensed varieties, farmers are pushed into

dependency on

corporate monopoly of patented seed. The Seed Act is therefore the

handmaiden of the Patent Amendment Acts which have introduced patents on

seed.

 

New IPR laws are creating monopolies over seeds and plant genetic

resources. Seed saving and seed exchange, basic freedoms of farmers, are

being redefined. There are many examples of how Seed Acts in various

countries and the introduction of IPRs prevent farmers from engaging in

their own seed production. Josef Albrecht, an organic farmer in Germany,

was not satisfied with the commercially available seed. He worked and

developed his own ecological varieties of wheat. Ten other organic

farmers

from neighbouring villages took his wheat seeds. Albrecht was fined by

his government 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.

 

In Scotland, there are a large number of farmers who grow seed potato

and sell seed potato to other 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. Soon, the companies started to reduce the

acreage and prices. In 1994, seed potato bought from Scottish farmers for

GBP140 was sold for more than double that price to English farmers,

whilst the two sets of farmers were prevented from dealing directly with

each other. Seed potato growers signed a petition complaining about the

stranglehold of a few companies acting as a ‘cartel’. They also

started to sell non-certified seed directly to English farmers. The seed

industry claimed they were losing GBP4 million in seed sales through the

direct sale of uncertified seed potato between farmers. In February

1995, the British Society for Plant Breeders decided to proceed with a

high profile court case against a farmer from Aberdeenshire. The farmer

was forced to pay GBP30,000 as compensation to cover royalties lost to

the seed industry by 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 as well, farmer-to-farmer exchange has been made illegal.

Dennis and Becky Winterboer were farmers owning a 500-acre farm in Iowa.

Since 1987, the Winterboers have derived a sizeable portion of their

income from " brown bagging " sales of their crops to other farmers to use

as seed. A " brown bagâ " sale occurs when a farmer plants seeds in his

own field and then sells the harvest as seed to other farmers. Asgrow (a

commercial company which has plant variety protection for its soybean

seeds) filed suit against the Winterboers on the grounds 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 both the farmer and seller were

farmers. Subsequently, in 1994, the Plant Variety Act was amended, and

the

farmers' privilege to save and exchange seed was amended, establishing

absolute monopoly of the seed industry by making farmer-to-farmer

exchange and sales illegal.

 

Similar laws are being introduced in India. The entire country is being

taken for a ride with the introduction of the Seed Act 2004 on grounds

that the Act is needed to guarantee seed quality. However, the Seed Act

1966 already performs the function of seed testing and seed

certification. Twenty labs have been declared as seed testing labs

under the 1966

Act in different States. Nine seed corporations have been identified as

certification agencies.

 

Under pressure from World Bank the Seed Policy of 1988 started to

dismantle our robust public sector seed supply system, which accounted

for

20% of the seeds farmers grow. Eighty per cent of the seed prior to

globalisation is the farmers' own varieties, which have been saved,

exchanged and reproduced freely and have guaranteed our food security.

 

The introduction of 2004 Seed Act needs to be assessed in the context

of the simultaneous introduction of the 3rd Patent (Amendment) Act. Our

1970 Patent Law has been changed under the coercive pressure of WTO in

spite of the overdue mandatory TRIPS review. Patents will now been

granted for seeds, plants, micro-organisms, cells and even GMO's and

animals.

 

Quite clearly a monopolistic patent regime cannot be established as

long as farmers have the alternative of their own zero cost, reliable,

time tested high value seeds of their traditional varieties of indigenous

agro-biodiversity.

The Seed Act 2004 has one and only one objective of stopping farmers

from seed saving, seed exchange and seed reproduction.

 

In the objective the 2004 Act clearly states that it is aimed at

replacing farmers saved seeds with seeds from private seed industries.

 

The repeated reference to " barter " in the Seed Act will prevent

farmer's exchange, a necessary aspect of maintaining high quality seed

supply

at the community level.

 

Further the compulsory registration of seed combined with the power of

seed inspectors to enter and search premises (which now mean farmers'

huts and fields), the power to break open any container and any door is

tantamount to creating a " Seed Police " to terrorize farmers who are

conserving biodiversity and practicing a sovereign self-reliant

agriculture. The fine for seed exchange and barter of unregistered seed

(thousands of farmers varieties has a fine of up to Rs. 25000). While

criminalizing farmers who consume biodiversity and traditional

varieties, the

Seed Act fails to do one thing it should have done, which is to regulate

and hold liable private seed industry for seed failure and genetic

contamination from GMO's. For Example the failure of maize seeds in Bihar

last year cost more than 1000 crores to Bihar farmers and the constant

failure of Bt. cotton annually is costing more than a billion dollars to

Indian farmers.

 

In the new Seed Act farmers can only claim compensation under the

Consumer Protection Act. This option is in any way is available to the

farmers presently and the brutal power of the Central Authority, which

acts

to prevent farmers from growing own seeds, provides no safety and

remedy to our farmers from untested and hazardous seeds MNCs are

selling in

the Indian market.

 

The Seed Act has also undermined the role of the State governments. The

Central Seed Committee in 1966 Act has representatives nominated by the

government of each State. Now only 5 State will be represented in the

Central Seed Committee and even these will be nominated not by the State

governments but by the Centre.

 

The 2004 Seed Act has nothing positive to offer to farmers of India but

offer a promise of a monopoly to private seed industries, which has

already pushed thousands of our farmers to suicide through dependency and

debt caused by unreliable, high dependency and non-renewable seeds.

 

The 1966 Act has served the country well and should continue to provide

the framework for seed testing and seed certification.

 

Farmer varieties and indigenous agro-biodiversity is already been

registered by Local Biodiversity Committee through Community Biodiversity

Registers (CBRs). We do not need a Centralized Seed Authority with police

power which uses compulsory registration to prevent farmers from

growing, saving and exchanging their own seeds.

 

It is the MNC seed industry that need regulation and not the small

farmers of our country without whose seed freedom the country will

have no

food sovereignty and food security.

 

Product Patent on Seeds

 

Methods of agriculture and plants were excluded from patentability in

the Indian Patent Act 1970 to ensure that the seed, the first link in

the food chain, was held as a common property resource in the public

domain. In this manner, it guaranteed farmers the inalienable right to

save, exchange and improve upon the seed was not violated.

 

But recently, two amendments have been made in the 1970 Patent Act. The

2nd Amendment makes changes in the definition of what is NOT an

invention. This has opened the flood gates for the patenting of

genetically

engineered seeds.

 

According to Section 3(j) of the Indian Patent Act, the following is

not an invention:

 

" Any process for the medical, surgical, creative, prophylactic or other

treatment of human beings or any process for a similar treatment of

animals or plants or render them free of disease or to increase their

economic value or that of their products. "

 

In the 2nd Amendment however, the mention of " plants " have been deleted

from this section. This deletion implies that a method or process

modification of a plant can now be counted as an invention and

therefore can

be patented. Thus the method of producing Bt. cotton by introducing

genes of a bacterium thurengerisis in cotton to produce toxins to kill

the

bollworm can now be covered by the exclusive rights associated with

patents. In other words, Monsanto can now have Bt. cotton patents in

India.

 

The Second Amendment has also added a new section (3j). This section

allows for the production or propagation of genetically engineered plants

to count as an invention. Its status as an invention thus deems it. But

this section excludes as inventions " plants and animals including

seeds, varieties and species and essentially biological processes for

production or propagation of plants and animals " . Since plants produced

through the use of new biotechnologies are not technically considered

" essentially biological " section 3j has found another way to create

room for

Monsanto. This loophole, couched in the guise of scientific

advancement, thus allows patents on GMOs and hence opens the flood

gate for

patenting transgenic plants.

 

What is most concerning is how the language of section 3j is a verbatim

translation into India law of Article 27.3 (b) of TRIPS Agreement.

Article 27.3 (b) of TRIPS states:

 

" Parties may exclude from patentability plants and animals other than

micro-organisms, and essentially biological processes for the production

of plants or animals other than non-biological and microbiological

processes. However, parties shall provide for the protection of plant

varieties either by patents or by an effective sui generis system or

by any

combination thereof. This provision shall be reviewed four years after

the entry into force of the Agreement establishing the W.T.O. "

 

As Monsanto had a hand in drafting the TRIPS agreement, it is not

surprising that the Monsanto Amendments have also made their way into

India's patent laws.

 

However, Article 27.3(b) is under review. The Government should have

insisted on the completion of the review, a commitment of the Doha Round,

instead of changing India's Patent Law. As a result of sustained public

pressure, after the agreement came into force in 1995, many Third World

countries made recommendations for changes in Article 27.3 (b) to

prevent biopiracy. India, in its discussion paper submitted to the TRIPS

Council stated:

 

" Patenting of life forms may have at least two dimensions. Firstly,

there is the ethical question of the extent of private ownership that

could be extended to life forms. The second dimension relates to the

use of

IPRs' concept as understood in the industrialized world and its

appropriateness in the face of the larger dimension of rights on

knowledge,

their ownership, use, transfer and dissemination

 

" Informal system, e.g. the shrutis and in the Indian tradition and

grandmother's portions all over the world get scant recognition. To

create

systems that fail to address this issue can have severe adverse

consequences on mankind, some say even leading to extinction. "

 

Clearly, we must re-examine the need to grant patents on life forms

anywhere in the world. As we continue to assess this situation, in the

meantime it may be advisable to:

 

1. Exclude patents on all life forms.

 

2. If (1) is not possible, then we must exclude patents based on

traditional/indigenous knowledge and essentially derived products and

processes from such knowledge.

 

3. At the very least, we must insist on the country of origin to

disclose the biological source and associated knowledge, and obtain the

consent of the country providing the resource and knowledge, to ensure an

equitable sharing of benefits.

 

To prevent competitors from selling seeds and to prevent farmers from

saving seeds, Monsanto has now turned to the patent laws to get monopoly

rights. The Monsanto Amendments of India's patent laws are a logical

consequence of the clearance for the commercial planting of GMOs in

Indian agriculture, as we saw earlier with the March 26th decision of the

Indian government to allow Bt. cotton.

 

Patents on seeds are a necessary aspect of the corporate deployment of

GM seeds and crops. When combined with the ecological risks of

genetically engineered seeds like Bt. cotton, seed patents create a

context of

total control over the seed sector, and hence over our food and

agricultural security.

 

Looking with closer analysis, there are three ways that the 2nd

Amendment and 3rd Amendment of the Indian Patent laws have jeopardized

our

seed and food security, and hence our national security.

 

Firstly, it allows patents on seeds and plants through sections 3(i)

and 3(j), as we saw above. Patents are monopolies and exclusive rights

which prevent farmers from saving seeds; and seed companies from

producing seeds. Patents on seeds transform seed saving into an

“intellectual

property crimeâ€*.

 

Secondly, genetic pollution is inevitable. Monsanto will use the

patents and pollution to claim ownership of crops on farmers' fields

where

the Bt. gene has reached it through wind or pollinators. This has been

established as precedence in the case of a Canadian farmer, Percy

Schmeiser, whose canola field was contaminated by Monsanto's " Round up

Ready

Canola " but instead of Monsanto paying Percy on the basis of the pollute

principle, Monsanto demanded $200,000 fine for " theft " of Monsanto's

" intellectual property " . Thousands of U.S. farmers also have been sued.

Will Indian farmers be blamed for theft when Monsanto's GM cotton

contaminates their crops? Or will the government wake up and enforce

strict

monitoring and liability?

 

When combined with the 3rd product patents amendment, these changes can

mean absolute monopoly. A decision on a plant patent infringement suit

has set a new precedent for interpreting plant patent coverage. In the

case of Imagio Nursery vs. Daina Greenhouse, Judge Spence Williams, for

the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, ruled

that a plant patent can be infringed by a plant that merely has similar

characteristics to the patented plant. When combined with the reversal

of burden of proof clauses, this kind of precedence based on product

patents can be disastrous for countries from where the biodiversity that

gave rise to those properties was first taken, more so, if the original

donors of the biodiversity are accused of " piracy " through such legal

precedence in the absence of the prior existence of laws on traditional

knowledge that prevent the misuse of such legal precedence.

 

In countries, where plant patents are not allowed, patenting genes is

available as an opening for patenting properties and characteristics of

the plant, and hence having exclusive rights to those properties and

characteristics. This is how Monsanto was able to establish monopolies on

seeds through patents on genes in Canada, even though Canada does not

allow patents on life forms.

 

Patent protection implies the exclusion of farmers' right over the

resources having these genes and characteristics. This will undermine the

very foundations of agriculture. For example, a patent has been granted

in the U.S. to a biotechnology company, Sungene, for a sunflower

variety with very high oleic acid content. The claim was for the

characteristic (i.e., high oleic acid) and not just for the genes

producing the

characteristic. Sungene has notified others involved in sunflower

breeding

that the development of any variety high in oleic acid will be

considered an infringement of its patent.

 

Corporate Rights Vs Farmers Rights

 

The State is under siege. New Intellectual Property Rights (IPR)

legislation is being introduced in the area of plant genetic resources

(PGR)

under pressure of the U.S. government as well as the requirements of

the TRIPS agreement of the W.T.O. while W.T.O. gives a five year

transition period to introduce PGR legislation, the U.S. pressure was to

introduce such legislation immediately. Further, the U.S. has been

demanding

monopoly protection for Transnational Corporations (TNCs) which control

the seed industry. On the other hand people's organisations are

fighting to protect farmers' rights to their biodiversity and their

right to

survival as well as the freedom of scientists to work for the removal of

hunger rather than corporate profits. Farmers organizations,

biodiversity conservation groups, sustainable agriculture networks and

public

interest oriented scientists are trying to ensure that farmers' rights

are

protected, and through the protection of farmers' rights, sovereign

control over our biological wealth and its sustainable use in

agricultural

production is ensured. The conflict over PGR legislation is a conflict

between farmers and the seed industry and between the public domain and

private profits, between an agriculture that produces and reproduces

diversity and one that consumes diversity and produces uniformity.

 

On January 29, 1996 at an address at the Indian Institute of

Agricultural Research, the Unite States Secretary of Agriculture, Mr.

Daniel

Glickman directly addressed the issue of the protection of seed

Multinationals (MNCs). He said, " I hope our new legislation will

provide a

responsible and reasonable protection to private seed companies, which

will

encourage them to provide the best seeds available for your farmers.

There would be very few inventions of anything, particularly in

agriculture, without patent protection because it is the fundamental

fact of

nature that people will not go through the expense of development of new

ideas just for the altruistic benefit of the human race.

 

The U.S. IPR orthodoxy is based on a fallacious idea that people do not

innovate or generate knowledge unless they can derive private profits.

However, greed is not a " fundamental fact of human nature " but a

dominant tendency in societies that reward it. In the area of seeds

and plant

genetic resources, innovation of both the " formala and " informal "

systems has so far been guided by the larger human good. Norman

Borlaug the

scientist behind the Green Revolution and the recipient of the Nobel

Peace Prize, made this clear in his statement at a Press Conference at

the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi on 8th Feb 96. He

expressed concern against private companies and TNCs gaining control of

plant genetic resources and seeds and patenting plants. Prof. Borlaug

said,

 

" We battled against patenting. I and late Glen Anderson (of

International Wheat an Maize Research Institute) went on record in

India as well

as other for a against patenting and always stood for free exchange of

germplasm. "

 

He saw IPRs in PGRs as a prescription for famine. Commenting on the

U.S. demand for patents he said:

 

" God help us if that were to happen, we would all starve. "

 

" Besides using a fallacious essentialist argument about human nature,

Mr. Glickman also stressed the inevitability of farmers' dependence on

MNCs for seeds due to trade liberalization and its impact on

agriculture. "

 

According to him,

 

" As income increases throughout Indian society, food needs will change

- higher vegetable oil consumption, a shift from rice to wheat in urban

areas and some shifting from grain to poultry and livestock products.

Also, the needs of the new food processing industries will change the

types of crops demanded. Therefore, farmers must have access to new crop

varieties in order to meet changing consumer preferences. "

 

In other words, what the U.S. government is coercing the Indian

government to do is introduce unhealthy fat and meat rich diets

through the

expansion of U.S. agribusiness, agroprocessing and fast food industry.

The proposal is to replace the small peasant and farmer based

agricultural economy of India with agribusiness controlled industrial

agriculture.

This shift is associated with a transformation of farmers as breeders

and reproducers of their own seed supply to farmers as consumers of

propriety seed from the seed industry. It is also a shift from a food

economy based on million of farmers as autonomous producers to a food

system

controlled by a handful of TNCs which control both inputs and outputs.

This is a recipe for food insecurity, biodiversity erosion and

uprooting of farmers from the land.

 

It is often stated that IPRs will not stop traditional farmers from

using native seeds. However, the Seed Act 2004 is designed to do just

that. Further when it is recognised that IPRs are an essential part of a

package of agribusiness controlled agriculture in which farmers no longer

grow native seeds but seeds supplied by the TNC seed industry, IPRs

become a means of monopoly that wipe out farmers rights to save and

exchange seed. This leads to TNC totalitarianism in agriculture. TNCs

will

decide what is grown by farmers, what they use as inputs, and when they

sell their produce, to whom and at what price. they will also decide

what is eaten by consumers, at what price, with what content and how much

information is made available to them about the nature of food

commodities.

 

IPRs are a significant instrument for the establishment of this TNC

totalitarianism. The protection of the rights of citizens as producers

and

consumers needs the forging of new concepts and categories, new

instruments and mechanism to counter and limit the monopoly power of

TNCs in

agriculture. Community rights are an important balancing concept for

protecting the public interest in the context of IPR protection for

corporations. In the field of food and agriculture, farmers' rights

are the

countervailing force to breeders rights and patents on seed and plant

material. Farmers' rights in the context of monopoly control of the food

system become relevant not just for farming communities, but also

consumers. They are necessary not just for the survival of the people but

also for the survival of the country. Without sovereign rights of farming

communities to their seed an plant genetic resources, there can be no

sovereignty of the country.

 

Farmers' rights are an ecological, economic, cultural and political

imperative. Without community rights, agricultural communities cannot

protect agricultural biodiversity. This biodiversity is necessary not

just

for the ecological insurance of agriculture. Rights to agricultural

biodiversity is also an economic imperative because without it our

farmers

and our country will loose their freedom and options for survival.

Since biodiversity and cultural diversity are intimately linked,

conservation of agricultural biodiversity is a cultural imperative

also. Finally,

without farmers' rights, there is no political mechanism to limit

monopolies in agriculture and inevitable consequence of displacement,

hunger

and famine that will follow total monopoly control over food production

and consumption through the monopoly ownership over seed, the first

link in the food chain.

 

 

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