Lords of the Harvest/Farmers' rights - from Vermont to Iraq

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GMW: Lords of the Harvest/Farmers' rights - from Vermont to Iraq

 

 

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Fri, 11 Mar 2005 19:15:12 GMT

 

 

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Lords of the Harvest/Farmers' rights - from Vermont to Iraq

 

 

" Everywhere you turn, everybody is getting off the liability hook -

insurance companies, biotech companies - and it's the farmers who are

left

with all the liability from these crops. " (ITEM 2)

 

" $10 million: Monsanto's annual budget (plus 75 staff) devoted to

investigating and prosecuting U.S. farmers. " (for more disturbing stats -

ITEM 1)

 

" Farmers who save seed or otherwise break their agreements, and farmers

unlucky enough to find the adventitious presence of " registered

varieties " in their fields, can be prosecuted; or else their harvests,

tools

and buildings will (may) be destroyed. Conversely, farmers will have no

right to claim compensation from the seed owners... " (ITEM 3)

 

1.Lords of the (GM) Harvest

2.Vermont plows ahead on GE seed liability law

3.Iraqi Government Urged to Revoke " Cynical and Wicked " Patent Law

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1.Lords of the (GM) Harvest

(Stats - Compiled by Rose Marie Berger and Mark Betz)

Sojo.net, April 2005

http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=magazine.article & issue=soj0504 & article=0504\

42a

 

As if U.S. farmers weren't in enough trouble, now the " seed police " are

after them. Monsanto, the world leader in genetically modified grains,

is pursuing fines and jail sentences for farmers who use their seed in

noncontractual ways-such as saving it and sowing it the next season.

The Center for Food Safety has released an investigative review of

Monsanto's use of U.S. patent law to crack down on farmers. Monsanto has

filed 90 lawsuits against U.S. farmers in 25 states that involve 147

farmers and 39 small businesses or farm companies, according to the

report.

 

*500: The number of U.S. farmers under investigation annually by

Monsanto.

 

*$10 million: Monsanto's annual budget (plus 75 staff) devoted to

investigating and prosecuting U.S. farmers.

 

*$15,253,602: The total recorded judgments granted to Monsanto for

farmer lawsuits.

 

*$3,052,800: The largest recorded judgment in favor of Monsanto as a

result of a farmer lawsuit.

 

*8 months: The prison sentence given to a Tennessee farmer convicted of

violating an agreement with Monsanto.

 

Sources: " Monsanto vs. U.S. Farmers 2005 " (The Center for Food Safety);

The Associated Press.

http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/pubs/CFSMOnsantovsFarmerReport1.13.05.pdf

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2.Vermont plows ahead on GE seed liability law

By Andrew Barker

Special to the Vermont Guardian

Posted March 11, 2005

http://www.vermontguardian.com/local/0105/GMOSeedBill.shtml

 

And then there was one. Bills in the Montana and North Dakota

legislatures that would have held seed manufacturing companies liable for

injuries caused by the cultivation of genetically engineered wheat were

defeated last month. That leaves Vermont as the only state in the nation

with GE seed liability legislation still alive in the state capital.

 

A range of farm advocacy groups have argued that the bills are

necessary to protect farmers and food processors from potential losses

arising

from the use of genetically engineered seeds. For example, all three

bills called for allowing organic or conventional growers whose crops

were inadvertently contaminated by pollen drift from GE plants to sue

biotech companies for damages. That could include the loss of a price

premium for organic or non-GMO crops, or the cost of transporting and

re-marketing crops rejected by a potential buyer.

 

Currently, when farmers sign a technology agreement to grow GE seeds -

or even open the seed bag - they must agree to take on all liability

for the products, according to Bill Wenzel, the national director of the

Farmer to Farmer Campaign on Genetic Engineering in Staughton, WI, who

supports liability legislation. " We just don't think that's

reasonable, " he said.

 

Some biotech seed technology agreements also grant seed companies free

access to farmers' records, require the settlement of all legal

disputes in companies' home jurisdictions, and limit farmers' remedies

from

damages to the price of the seed, Wenzel added. " We just believe it's a

totally one-sided contract, and there needs to be some protection for

the farmer built in, " he said.

Vermont's proposed law would prevent biotech companies from suing

farmers who were found to be unknowingly or unintentionally growing

patented

GE crops.

 

To date, St. Louis, MO-based Monsanto Corp. has filed more than 90

lawsuits against farmers for patent infringement, winning judgments

totaling over $15 million, according to a new study by the Center for

Food

Safety, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit group that opposes the use of

GMOs. But many of the defendants claim that the crops with patented genes

appeared on their fields through no fault of their own, due to pollen

drift and cross-pollination from neighboring farms, the study said.

 

Amy Shollenberger, policy director at Rural Vermont, a nonprofit farm

advocacy group based in Montpelier, played a role in drafting the model

legislation for all three bills. Testifying before the Vermont Senate

Agriculture Committee last month, she said, " This bill will protect all

Vermont farmers, whether they grow genetically engineered crops, or

they do not grow genetically engineered crops. It does not judge the

technology. It simply says that the manufacturer should assume the

liability

.... f the technology is all that the manufacturers say that it is,

there should be no problem with this bill because they should be happy

to say that we stand behind our product. "

The Vermont bill appears to have substantial support in the

Legislature. Seventeen of 30 senators and 54 of 150 representatives

signed on as

co-sponsors, and the Senate Agriculture Committee gave it a favorable

recommendation. The bill is currently in the Judiciary Committee, where

most of the discussion has focused on making sure the bill's language is

internally consistent, according to Sen. John Campbell, D-Windsor, vice

chairman of the Agriculture Committee. " The major aim is to have a very

clean bill that both sides can live with, " he said.

Margaret Laggis, a lobbyist for the biotech industry association

CropLife America, said the Vermont bill is misguided because it

" contemplates

a zero tolerance level for pollen drift. A company selling a seed will

be held liable for the fact that the product is just following its life

cycle. " She also noted that pollen drift from GE crops does not

threaten a grower's organic certification or prevent a crop from being

labeled

and sold as organic, according to USDA organic standards. " Purity has

never been a standard attempted to be achieved in agriculture, " she

said.

The industry has argued before the Legislature that the " strict

liability " standard that the bill would place on biotech seed

manufacturers is

not reasonable. " That kind of standard is usually used for things like

explosives which are inherently dangerous, " Laggis said in a separate

interview. " It's hard to believe we're going to have that kind of

standard for corn seed, which is not an inherently dangerous product. "

" I look at it as a backdoor way of imposing a moratorium on [GE] seeds

in the state, " said Rep. William F. Johnson, R-Canaan, who has used GE

corn varieties on his 1,200-acre farm in the Connecticut River Valley

with good results. " I am sure the [biotech] companies aren't going to be

interested in selling seeds in the state if this legislation passes, "

he added, saying such a move would be a loss to Vermont farmers.

" These crops are profitable, they can reduce herbicide use, and they

can enhance water quality. We embrace technology in every aspect of our

lives. It's strange we would like to restrict it for farmers, " Johnson

said.

The Western debate

The Montana and North Dakota bills only addressed the liability issues

related to GE wheat varieties. No such varieties are commercially

available yet, but Monsanto has developed an herbicide-resistant product

known as RoundUp Ready wheat and grown it in test plots in several states

and Canadian provinces. The company withdrew its application for

federal regulatory approval of the crop last year, and has since said

it has

no schedule for bringing the crop to market. Still, many observers say

they expect GE wheat varieties to be available for sale within five

years or so.

Some farm groups are worried about losses that farmers in the upper

Midwest could suffer if and when GE wheat is introduced. " We export

mainly

to the Pacific Rim countries, who have said they don't want GE crops, "

said Cody Ferguson, an organizer for the Northern Plains Resource

Council in Billings, MT. If GE wheat varieties contaminate

conventional or

organic wheat - through pollen drift or commingling of grain - the value

of the Montana wheat harvest in export markets could drop

precipitously, he said.

Consideration of the Montana bill was indefinitely postponed on Feb. 19

after the full Senate deadlocked 25 to 25 on the measure, effectively

killing it. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Big Sandy, the Montana bill's lead

sponsor and an organic farmer, was disappointed about the defeat. " A

lot of

the arguments against it to my way of thinking weren't that good, but

they must have been better than mine, because they won, " he said.

" Ultimately, the Montana Legislature said we'd rather have farmers

suing each

other than getting recourse from the companies that produce the seed. "

The North Dakota bill was defeated in the Senate by a vote of 30 to 14. Leake, a wheat farmer in Emerado, ND, and a member of the Dakota

Resource Council, was disappointed. " It's still the attitude of the

legislature that, well, it's only farmers. They'll just have to take it

like they do the weather and everything else, " Leake said. He said wheat

farmers have to buy new " foundation seed " every five years or so as a

part of their regular practices because the crop readily cross-pollinates

with other varieties. The same cross-pollination would undoubtedly

occur with GE varieties, he said.

Leake pointed out that farm insurance companies in the region are

adding exclusions to some of their policies for damages related to GE

crops.

" Everywhere you turn, everybody is getting off the liability hook -

insurance companies, biotech companies - and it's the farmers who are

left

with all the liability from these crops. "

The legislation comes at a time when GE crops are becoming increasingly

prevalent on the nation's farms. Almost half of all corn, 75 percent of

cotton, and 85 percent of soybeans grown in the United States in 2004

was genetically engineered, according to the U.S. Department of

Agriculture. In Vermont, 19 percent of all field corn was genetically

engineered in 2004, the only crop for which the Agency of Agriculture has

released statistics.

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3.Iraqi Government Urged to Revoke " Cynical and Wicked " Patent Law

Dr. Brian John

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/GMiraq.php

A fully referenced version of this article is posted on ISIS members'

website. Details here

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/membership.php

" Cynical and wicked " imposition on occupied Iraq

Aid agencies and NGOs across the globe have been reacting with horror

to the news that new legislation in Iraq was carefully put in place last

year by the United States that will effectively bring the whole of the

country's agricultural sector under the control of trans-national

corporations. This spells disaster for the Iraqi government and the

country's farmers, paving the way for companies like Monsanto and

Syngenta to

control the entire food chain from planted seed to packaged food

products [1].

The new Iraqi Government is now being urged to revoke Order 81, the

offending piece of legislation signed and brought into force by Paul

Bremer, the Administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority, on 26th

April 2004.

NGOs have described Order 81 as " cynical and wicked " , as the section

relating to the registration and protection of plant varieties was

slipped in almost as an appendage to an Order dealing with patents,

industrial design, disclosure of information and integrated circuits [2].

The manner in which this Order was imposed on the people of Iraq is an

outrage in itself. There was virtually no Iraqi input into the wording

of the Order, as the country and its people were on their knees

following the Iraq War [3].

The Preamble to the Order justifies its provisions as " necessary to

improve the economic condition of the people of Iraq " , desirable for

" sustainable economic growth " , and enabling Iraq to become " a full

member of

the international trading system known as the WTO " . But when one looks

at paragraphs 51 to 79 of the Order, it is clear that they have been

designed simply to facilitate the takeover of Iraqi agriculture by

western biotechnology corporations.

It is not surprising that Order 81 was written as " enabling

legislation " for American corporate interests. The US Agriculture

Department,

which aided Bremer in writing the Order, was headed by ex-management

of the

huge US seed and biotech companies, such as Monsanto and Cargill [4].

Ann Veneman, who recently resigned as US Secretary of Agriculture, had a

long career working for large US agribusinesses before going to work

for the government. So did Dan Amstutz who headed Iraq's agricultural

reconstruction.

The Order fits neatly into the US vision of future Iraqi agriculture –

an industrial agricultural system dependent on a small number of cash

crops, with large corporations selling both chemical inputs and seeds.

It also arises naturally from the USAID programme in Iraq, which

unashamedly confirms the thesis that foreign aid programmes are primarily

" commercial opportunity " programmes designed for the benefit of American

companies [5].

Iraq's food crisis exploited

Iraq was once self-sufficient in agriculture and the world's number one

exporter of dates. It is the acknowledged centre of origin of many

cereal varieties that have been exported and adapted worldwide.

Twenty seven percent of Iraq's total land area is suitable for

cultivation, over half of which is rain-fed while the balance is

irrigable.

Wheat, barley, and chickpeas are the primary staple crops, with wheat

being traditionally the most important crop. Before the First Iraq War,

average annual harvests were 1.4 million tonnes for cereals, 400 000

tonnes for roots and tubers, and 38 000 tonnes for pulses. Over the

past 20

years, Iraq's agricultural sector has collapsed, and only half of the

irrigable area is now properly utilised [6]. It is not known how many of

the country's 600 000 farmers are still able to produce food. Grain

production during 2003 was less than (space) one-half the grain

production

in 1990; andagricultural production has been declining by an average of

2.6 % per year since.

Today more than 50 percent of the population is affected by food

insecurity. The Oil-For-Food Programme, while essential to the

humanitarian

situation in Iraq, was a severe disincentive to food production. Over

half of Iraq's total food requirement is imported, and a large portion of

the population is dependent upon externally-financed food rations for

survival. The World Food Programme (WFP) plays a key role in

coordinating the flow of food aid; and recently, three million tonnes

of wheat

have been imported yearly, mostly from Australia, to be distributed to

Iraqis as part of their food rations. Farm machinery and equipment are in

short supply amid water shortages, low technology uptake, and a lack of

profit incentive. The cost of food rations provided to Iraqis is

estimated at over $2 billion per year.

The Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) officials and the United States

Agency for International Development (USAID) Agriculture

Reconstruction and

Development Program for Iraq (ARDI) are continuing to implement a

national wheat production campaign, so as to reduce the dependency on

aid.

Under the campaign, 1 500 tonnes of wheat seed has arrived in Mosul.

ARDI procured the seed to assist the MOA to distribute high quality,

certified seed to as many farmers as possible.

Over 400 tonnes of this seed has already been distributed and

incorporated into high-profile " reconstruction and re-education "

programmes, and

another 4 000 tonnes are on their way. We have been unable to discover

which varieties are involved, who the seed owners are, and the terms

under which the seed stocks are being " donated " .

Foreign aid – a nice little earner

Order 81, like the other 99 orders brought into law at high speed by

Paul Bremer on behalf of the Coalitional Provisional Authority, was

conceived by the US administration as part of the plan to install a

" friendly and compliant " , and essentially colonial regime in Iraq. The

Order

explicitly states that its provisions are consistent with Iraq's

" transition from a non-transparent centrally planned economy to a free

market

economy characterised by sustainable economic growth through the

establishment of a dynamic private sector, and the need to enact

institutional

and legal reforms to give it effect. " Pushing for these " transitional

reforms " in Iraq has been the USAID, which has been implementing ARDI

since October 2003. For this purpose, a one-year US$5 million contract

was granted to the US consulting firm Development Alternatives, Inc,

followed by a further $96 million contract.

There has been great speculation in sections of the American press

about the fate of Iraqi oil sales revenues since the invasion. Only a

part

of it seems to be accounted for, and auditing procedures appear to have

been corrupt. Some $9 billion worth of oil revenues seem to have

vanished, and may simply have been recycled by the US Administration as

multi-million dollar " aid " from the people of United States to the

people of

Iraq [7].

ARDI claims it is rebuilding Iraq's farming sector, but its real

intention is to develop agribusiness opportunities for western

corporations.

According to GRAIN and other NGOs, " reconstruction " is not necessarily

about rebuilding domestic economies and capacities, but about helping

corporations approved by the occupying forces to capitalise on market

opportunities in Iraq. The legal framework laid down by Bremer ensures

that although US troops may leave Iraq in the conceivable (forseeable)

future, the US domination of Iraq's economy will be sustained in law by

one hundred very convenient Orders.

Order 81

The critical part of Order 81 deals with plant variety protection

(PVP). Superficially, its purpose is to protect the rights of those who

develop new and improved plant varieties [2], but it means that in future

Iraqi farmers will be forced to plant " protected " crop varieties defined

as new, distinct, uniform and stable. The new law makes a very basic

change to Iraqi " intellectual property " law, for the first time

recognizing the " ownership " of biologic material and paving the way

for the

patenting of life forms. It also opens the way for genetically modified

crops to be introduced into the country. Crucially, there are no special

provisions for GM crops - they are treated as no more novel (and no more

controversial) than new varieties developed through conventional

breeding programmes.

Where ownership of a crop is claimed, seed saving will be banned, and

royalties will have to be paid by the farmer to the registered seed

" owner " . Farmers will be required to sign contracts relating to seed

supply

and, probably, to the marketing of the harvest. Where GM crops are

involved (and possibly in other cases as well) they will also be required

to sign contracts for the purchase of herbicides, insecticides and

fertilisers.

Strictly, the new law does not prohibit saving seed from the harvesting

of traditional or long-established varieties that are deemed to be

" matters of common knowledge " [2, 4]. But with Iraqi agriculture in a

state

of crisis, there are (gap) critical seed shortages; and as mentioned

earlier, the " reconstruction " of the food supply system involves

(includes) a substantial involvement on the part of USAID and other

food donor

organizations giving " high quality seed " to farmers along with

technical advice. It is inevitable that that (most of this) seed comes

from US

registered varieties, and that within a year or two, philanthropy will

be replaced by the collection of seed royalties. In addition, Order 81

allows plant breeders to claim ownership of old varieties (and to call

them " new " varieties) if they are the first to describe or characterize

them. They can then also claim ownership of related crops that are " not

clearly distinguishable from the protected varieties " . The control of

all protected varieties will last 20 years for field crops and 25 years

for trees and vines. Farmers who save seed or otherwise break their

agreements, and farmers unlucky enough to find the adventitious presence

of " registered varieties " in their fields, can be prosecuted; or else

their harvests, tools and buildings will (may) be destroyed. Conversely,

farmers will have no right to claim compensation from the seed owners

who, for example, allow their GM crops to pollute organic crops and

destroy livelihoods in the process.

Heads I win, tails you lose

In the end, the Iraqi farmer will have two choices. He can go it alone,

and try to grow crops from seeds of " traditional " crops that have

become rare during decades of war and sanctions; or he can sign up to the

food aid / agricultural programme and then buy seeds from companies like

Monsanto, Dow, Syngenta and Bayer. If he chooses the first option he

may be left out in the cold during the reconstruction programme [1, 4].

If he chooses the second option, after a period of free handouts and

advice, he may be trapped into a high-cost cash crop economy from

which he

will find it impossible to escape. He will also be forced to use seeds

that appear to be high yielding but which may in reality turn out to be

ill adapted to his local environment; so crop failures and even famine

may follow.

It was some 10 000 years ago that the people of the fertile-crescent,

now Iraq, began saving seeds from wild grains and planting them. That

marked the beginnings of agriculture and western civilization. The saving

and sharing of seeds in Iraq has always been a largely informal matter.

Local varieties of grain and legumes have been adapted to local (space)

conditions over the millennia, and are resistant to extreme heat,

drought and salinity. They are not only a national treasure for Iraq but

could well provide key genetic resources for agriculture in other

parts of

the world as global warming takes effect.

In 2002, FAO estimated that 97 percent of Iraqi farmers still saved

seed from their own stocks for replanting, or purchased from local

markets. Order 81 will put an end to all that, and will brutally

disregard the

contributions Iraqi farmers have made over hundreds of generations to

the development of important crops like wheat, barley, dates and pulses.

The new law, in allowing old varieties to be genetically manipulated or

otherwise modified and then " registered " , amount to legalising the

theft of inherited intellectual property owned by traditional farmers,

the

loss of farmers' freedoms, and the destruction of their food

sovereignty.

Germplasm held in trust?

In recognition of the unique " seed heritage " of Iraq, traditional

varieties have been saved as from the 1970s in the country's national

gene

bank in Abu Ghraib outside Baghdad. There is concern that most of these

may have been lost during the latter years of Saddam Hussein and in the

recent conflict. However, the Syria-based Consultative Group on

International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) centre and the affiliated

International Centre for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA)

still hold

accessions of several Iraqi varieties in the form of germplasm. These

collections comprise the agricultural heritage of Iraq and they should

now be repatriated. But CGIAR is reluctant to give assurances on this

[8]. Ominously, germplasm held by international agricultural research

centres belonging to the CGIAR has been " leaked out " for research and

development to Northern scientists [1]. Such " biopiracy " is fuelled by an

IPR regime that ignores the prior art of the farmer and grants sole

rights to a breeder or researcher who claims to have created something

new

from varieties made by generations of indigenous farmers.

Wider implications

The US has now effectively declared a new war against the Iraqi farmer.

Order 81 also goes against the United Nations Millennium Forum

Declaration [9] which aspires to " move towards economic reforms aimed at

equity, in particular to construct macroeconomic policies that combine

growth

with the goal of human development and social justice; to prevent the

impoverishment of groups that have emerged from poverty but are still

vulnerable to social risks and exclusion; to improve legislation on

labour standards, including the provision of a minimum legal wage and an

effective social system; and to restore people's control over primary

productive resources as a key strategy for poverty eradication. " The

signatories to the Declaration also seek " to promote the use of

indigenous

crops and traditional production skills to produce goods and services; to

exempt developing countries from implementing the WTO Trade-Related

Intellectual Property Rights Agreement and to take these rights out of

any

new rounds of negotiations, ensuring that no such new issues are

introduced; and to examine and regulate transnational corporations and

the

increasingly negative influence of their trade on the environment. The

attempt by companies to patent life is ethically unacceptable. "

Order 81 is also in clear contravention of the Convention on Biological

Diversity (CBD) in that it will increase chemical use, reduce the

number of planted crop varieties, accelerate the trend towards

monoculture,

and decrease biodiversity [10]. Biosecurity will also be negatively

affected, and the negative social effects will include population

displacement, rural decline and an extension of (poverty and) urban slum

dwelling. As to the Biosafety (Cartagena) Protocol dealing with GMOs and

their transboundary movement, the Order is apparently designed to

flout its

aims and objectives, as there is no mention of any regulation of GM

crop shipments, plantings, harvesting or export. It is no coincidence

that

neither the US nor Iraq has signed the CBD and the Cartagena Protocol.

The Food Aid Convention (cf Articles iii, viii and xiii) states that GM

food aid should only be offered and accepted after recipient countries

have discarded " conventional " alternatives and non-GM food aid as

non-options [11]. The United States is a signatory to this Convention,

but

it has been widely accused of violating it whenever it suits its own

interests to do so.

The Rio Declaration (1992) includes many progressive principles,

including the polluter-pays-principle (the polluter bears the costs of

pollution) or the precautionary principle (carry out environmental

assessments to identify adverse impacts and eliminate any potential

harms from a

project before it is started). It advocates that today's development

shall not undermine the resource base of future generations and that

developed countries bear a special responsibility due to the pressure

their

societies place on the global environment and the technologies and

financial resources they command [12]. These principles are all

flouted in

Order 81.

The 2001 International Treaty on Plant Genetic resources for Food and

Agriculture (supported by the FAO and the Convention on Biological

Diversity) acknowledges that plant genetic resources for food and

agriculture are the raw material indispensable for crop genetic

improvement,

whether by means of farmers' selection, classical plant breeding or

modern

biotechnologies, and are essential in adapting to unpredictable

environmental changes and future human needs; that the past, present and

future contributions of farmers in all regions of the world, particularly

those in centres of origin and diversity, in conserving, improving and

making available these resources, is the basis of Farmers' Rights; and

that the rights recognized in this (the) Treaty to save, use, exchange

and sell farm-saved seed and other propagating material, and to

participate in decision-making regarding, and in the fair and

equitable sharing

of the benefits arising from, the use of plant genetic resources for

food and agriculture, are fundamental to the realization of Farmers'

Rights, as well as the promotion of Farmers' Rights at national and

international levels. Order 81 is in clear violation of these principles.

Order 81 was supposedly drafted by the Coalition, and it supposedly

represented the consensus view of the Coalition partners, including

the UK

and various other members of the EU. The Order extends the patenting of

life forms into the area of crops and agriculture, in spite of a

massive ethical debate about this within Europe. It also treats GM

varieties

as if they are no different from new " conventional " varieties, which is

in clear contravention of EU policy [13]. Those who drafted Order 81

were clearly happy to see the farmers of that blighted country blighted

further by a " green light " for GM contamination of the food supply and

by commercial enslavement. This is an edited version of an article

posted by GM Free Cymru, 4 March 2005.

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