Bio - Weapon

MYTHS OF PATENTING GM SEEDS AND MONOPOLY RIGHTS

1. Myth - Granting monopoly rights is an incentive to investors for innovation and technology transfer

  Reality - The worldwide promotion of monopoly rights as an incentive for investment on research,  innovation and transfer of technology is the arguments given by the WTO and MNCs. However, different studies have shown that concentration of the seed industries is resulting to less competition and less innovation and it has limited the choices for farmers instead. It proves that granting of the patents rights is not a necessary condition to promote transfer of technology (ToT). Therefore, it is vital to rethink about other appropriate incentive mechanisms for the investors to recognize their investment and contribution rather than of granting monopoly rights.

2. Myth - GM seed is the solution to feed the increasing population

Reality - Worldwide promotion of GM crops is in increasing trend and having multiple impacts on biodiversity, farmers’ rights, local autonomy and national sovereignty. Worldwide food insecurity and hunger is in fact the manifestation of inequity in production, distribution and benefit sharing mechanisms. Gene and trait specific GM crops are claimed to be insect pest resistant however, different studies have shown that these crops are not necessarily more productive compared to indigenous varieties but it requires high investment to prevent damages done by pests. For example, ‘international agriculture trade is worth around US$ 600 billions and pest damage to crops worldwide also runs into billions of dollars’vii and cost of pest management in GM crops even increasing. Hence, GM seed is not an ultimate solution to minimize cost of production, enhance productivity and feed the increasing population of the world.

3. Myth - Global trade as a solution to deal with climate change and price hikes

Reality - Promoting diverse and non-gene pollutant seeds has potential to make agriculture sustainable, promote healthy ecosystem through carbon sequestration and low carbon emission. Viable local food production system to a large extent can deal with negative impacts of global food insecurity and price hikes. Likewise, developed countries failed to implement their commitment of providing 0.7% of their GNP as development aid towards developing countries. Likewise, equitable investment in research and development, production technologies and optimize profitable marketing mechanisms is still a challenge especially in the mountain region of developing countries. Therefore, increasing trend of securing monopoly rights over “climate ready” genes kinds of initiatives within the trade package cannot be an only solution to deal with food security of poor people in the global south. Therefore, promotion of fair trade with equitable access to opportunities and benefits created by globalization can be more responsive to climate change and price hikes than to simply advocate for free trade.

STOP PATENTING OF SEEDS

Negative Effects of Patenting Seeds

Effects of Patenting on Seeds

India is an agricultural land and more than 65% of people are engaged in Agriculture. since the beginning of farming, farmers have sown seeds, harvested crops, saved best part of the harvest for seeds and exchanged seeds with neighbours. Every ritual in India involves seeds, the very symbol of life's renewal. The farmers saved money by avoiding the annual cost of buying new seeds. In 1996, when Monsanto introduced its first genetically-modified seeds and, although a legal precedent for seed patenting had already been established, it was then that it first entered into common practice.

Environmental Issues

Firstly The Monsanto establishes its market in developed countries only and after LPG Regime in 1996 it also entered in Indian market. The Scientists has expressed great trepidation over the widespread use of genetically-modified crops, and have noted the specific dangers that Monsanto's Roundup Ready brand of crops pose to the ecosystem. The use of these crops, engineered to resist specific pesticides, increase sales of Monsanto's Roundup herbicide. These crops can transfer their tolerance trait to nearby weeds and plants, unintentionally creating wild genetic hybrids which can then go on to thrive alongside the desired crops. Over time, the selection pressure intensifies in local flora, and farmers must increase herbicide use to curb the growth of unwanted species. Through increases in use due both to market factors and the resultant increase in other plants' resistance, farmers have to expose the soil to heavier levels of glyphosate-based herbicides, permanently altering the natural balance of the ecosystem.

Depletion of Natural Resources

As of 2010, six biotech and chemical companies owned 77 percent of the world's patents on living organisms. These companies were DuPont, BASF, Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer and Dow. Only 9 percent of similar patents were in the public sector. These patents extend beyond the genetic material of the seeds themselves, and also claim potential ownership of the crops they produce, and even to the food and feed products produced after harvest. Civil groups have urged the United Nations biodiversity conference to recognize such patents as a threat to biodiversity, as they can potentially place control of most of the world's biomass into these six companies' hands. This would include control of food, feed, fibers, fuels and plastics created from patented plant material, and could potentially give the patent holders control over both the supply and use of raw materials which go beyond plants and trees, to microbes, waste from livestock, food processing and garbage.

Supply, Competition and Price Controls

Once patent holders own the majority of the planet's seeds and biomass, they can easily manipulate available supplies in order to drive up market prices, should they find it a profitable practice, and those without access to these artificially limited resources then suffer. In the case of Monsanto, roughly 95 percent of all soybeans and 80 percent of all corn grown in the U.S. in 2010 were patented by the company. Monsanto fell under allegations that the company was using its dominance to prevent new biotech firms from achieving notable distribution of their products, and this decline of competition also increased the ease with which the patent holder could increase their selling price, making food more difficult for consumers to afford.

Cross-Pollination and Contamination

Because crops are farmed in open fields, where insects and the wind carry pollen from one farm to another, cross-pollination is not just a potential concern. It's a reality. As the genetic stock from patented crops mixes into unmodified fields, the offspring produced contain some patented genetic material. This occurs without the consent, let alone the intentional involvement, of the farmer who grew unmodified crops. But, regardless of that farmer's wishes, he now possesses illegally obtained patented crops.

Legal Action Against Farmers

Some farmers have reported being sued over unintentional cross-pollination. Monsanto charged Canadian farmer Percy Schmeiser, for example in 1998 when his canola crop was found to be contaminated with Monsanto-engineered genetic material from nearby fields. He was ordered to pay $15 per acre, and a federal judge also ruled that all of his profits from that year owed to the biotech firm. As biotech companies gain the legal right to contaminate farmers' crops, then sue them for damages, small farmers and those who specialize in organic food production face costly legal battles which can hinder their living, if not bankrupt them altogether, and further diminish the diversity of food supplies and the freedom of consumers to avoid patronizing agribusiness companies whose motives and trustworthiness they find questionable.

Conclusion

These are some of the negative effects of Patented seeds i.e., Genetically Modified Crops. so its a kind appeal to all the Mankind around the world to stop using GM crops and protect Mother Nature and Food security for all Humans.

N.R.P.AYYANAR  M.A. M.L.,

AN APPEAL TO SAVE FOOD SOVEREIGNITY

AN APPEAL TO SAVE FOOD SOVEREIGNITY

 

 For several years, patents on genetically modified seeds and animals have been granted worldwide. The damaging impacts on farmers, who are deprived of their rights to save their seeds, and on breeders who can no longer use the patented seeds freely for further breeding, are well known.

In Canada and the US, for example, the multinational seed company Monsanto has sued many farmers for alleged patent infringements.1 The same company has also filed court cases against importers of Argentinean soy to Europe.2 Furthermore, the possibility of patenting seeds has fostered a highly concentrated market structure with only 10 multinational companies controlling about half of the international seed market. Many farmers organisations and NGOs around the world are fighting against these patents. Because genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are still not grown in most countries, or only used in a small number of crops, the negative impacts of these patents are not being felt everywhere.


However, there is an alarming new trend for patents not only to be claimed on GMOs (such as Round-up ready soybeans), but also on conventional plants. For example, patent claims have been made for soy beans with a better oil quality3 covering parts of the plant genome when used in conventional breeding and technologies to improve conventional breeding (such as marker assisted breeding).

Some of the most threatening examples in this context are patent applications from Syngenta which claim huge parts of the rice genome4 and its use in breeding of any food crops that have similar genomic information to rice (such as maize and wheat).

The European Patent Office has also granted a patent on aphid resistant composite plants which are based on marker assisted breeding5. Other recent patent applications by Monsanto on pigs are also related to normal breeding methods6, indicating the increasing danger of agricultural genetic resources becoming monopolised by a few multinationals on a global scale.

Soon the Enlarged Board of Appeal of the European Patent Office will decide on another patent of this kind - for a method of increasing a specific compound in Brassica species7.


This decision will determine the patentability of conventional seeds in Europe.

Whereas patents on conventional plant varieties are normal practice in the US, many other countries, especially developing countries, do not grant patents on plants or animals. But as the recent history shows, the standards defined and used at the European, Japanese and US patent offices influence international regulations (the WTO agreement on trade related aspects of intellectual property rights, TRIPS , and the World Intellectual Property Organisation, WIPO). Patent offices all over the world are pushed to adapt their regulations and practices either through the international regulations or by bilateral agreements. India, for example, has just passed a third patent amendment in order to adapt its law to the TRIPS regulations.

This frightening new trend in patent policy will affect many more farmers and breeders, than has been the case with GMO patents. Any remaining farmers rights and breeders' access to plant varieties and animal breeds for breeding purposes, will disappear everywhere. These patents will destroy a system of farmers' rights and breeders' privileges that has been shown to be crucial for the survival of farmers and breeders, for food sovereignty, and for the preservation of biodiversity in agriculture. The vast majority of farmers in developing countries are small-scale farmers, completely reliant on saving and exchanging their seeds. In order to secure the continued existence of independent farming, breeding and livestock keeping and hence the food security of future generations, we, the undersigned farmers, researchers, breeders and civil society organisations from all over the world, restate our rejection of any patents on life, and urge policy makers and patent offices to act swiftly to stop any patents being granted on conventionally bred plants and animals and on gene sequences for use with conventional breeding technique, as well as on methods for the conventional breeding of plants and animals. We also urge companies not to apply for any patents of this kind.

NEEM - A CASE HISTORY OF BIOPIRACY

The Issue

The United States and India are currently involved in a biopiracy dispute over the rights to a

tree indigenous to the Indian subcontinent, the neem tree. While the neem tree has been used in India for over 2000 years for various purposes such as pesticides, spermicides and toothbrushes, a US company has been suing Indian companies for producing the emulsion because they have a patent on the process. The dispute is over the rights of companies to conduct research and development by using patents against the interest of the people who live at the source of the resource. To what extent can multinational companies claim and patent resources from the develping countries, like India? The movement around the issue of the neem tree and trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights (TRIPS) represents a challenge to the developing countries.

Case Study

A classic case of biopiracy by transnational corporations is that of the neem tree in India. Vandana Shiva provides the background to this attempt to appropriate an invaluable biological resource of the South.

DURING 1994, Indian farmers staged one mass demonstration after another against the proposed GATT Uruguay Round agreement. In March about 200,000 gathered in Delhi demanding, among other things, that the draft treaty - known colloquailly as 'the Dunkel draft' after chief negotiator, Arthur Dunkel - should be translated into all Indian languages. On 2 October, about half a million converged upon Bangalore to voice their fears about the impending legislation, aware of the threat that GATT poses to their livelihoods, by allowing multinational organisations to enter Third World markets at their expense.

In particular, many of them began to question the Dunkel Draft's call for an international harmonisation of property rights legislation. In their demonstrations, protesters carried twigs or branches of neem, a tree found throughout the drier areas of India.

Several extracts of neem have recently been patented by US companies, and many farmers are incensed at what they regard as intellectual piracy. The village neem tree has become a symbol of Indian indigenous knowledge, and of resistance against companies, which would expropriate this knowledge for their own profit.

A tree for all seasons

Of all the plants that have proved useful to humanity, a few are distinguished by astonishing versatility. The coconut palm is one, bamboo another. In the more arid areas of India, this distinction is held by a hardy, fast-growing evergreen of up to 20 metres in height - Azadirachta indica, commonly known as the neem tree.

The neem's many virtues are to a large degree attributable to its chemical constituents. From its roots to its spreading crown, the tree contains a number of potent compounds, notably a chemical found in its seeds named azadirachtin. It is this astringency that makes it useful in so many fields.

Medicine

Neem is mentioned in many ancient texts and traditional Indian medical authorities place it at the pinnacle of their pharmacopeia. The bark, leaves, flowers, seeds and fruit pulp are used to treat a wide range of diseases and complaints ranging from leprosy and diabetes to ulcers, skin disorders and constipation.

Agriculture

The Upavanavinod, an ancient Sanskrit treatise dealing with forestry and agriculture, cites neem as a cure for ailing soils, plants and livestock. Neem cake, the residue from the seeds after oil extraction, is fed to livestock and poultry, while its leaves increase soil fertility. Most importantly, neem is a potent insecticide, effective against about 200 insects, including locusts, brown plant-hoppers, nematodes, mosquito larvae, Colorado beetles and boll weevils.

These properties, and others, known to Indians for millennia, have led to the tree's being called in Sanskrit Sarva Roga Nivarini, the curer of all ailments', or in the Muslim tradition, Shajar-e-Mubarak, the blessed tree'. Access to its various products has been free or cheap: there are some 14 million neem trees in India and the age-old village techniques for extracting the seed oil and pesticidal emulsions do not require expensive equipment. A large number of different medicinal compounds based upon neem are commonly available.

In the last 70 years, there has been considerable research upon the properties of neem carried in institutes ranging from the Indian Agricultural Research Institute and the Malaria Research Centre to the Tata Energy Research Institute and the Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC). Much of this research was fostered by Gandhian movements, such as the Boycott of Foreign Goods movement, which encouraged the development and manufacture of local Indian products.

A number of neem-based commercial products, including pesticides, medicines and cosmetics, have come on the market in recent years, some of them produced in the small-scale sector under the banner of the KVIC, others by medium-sized laboratories. However, there has been no attempt to acquire proprietary ownership of formulae, since, under Indian law, agricultural and medicinal products are not patentable.

Patent appeal

For centuries the Western world ignored the neem tree and its properties: the practices of Indian peasants and doctors were not deemed worthy of attention by the majority of British, French and Portuguese colonialists. However, in the last few years, growing opposition to chemical products in the West in particular to pesticides, has led to a sudden enthusiasm for the pharmaceutical properties of neem.

In 1971, US timber importer Robert Larson observed the tree's usefulness in India and began importing neem seed to his company headquarters in Wisconsin. Over the next decade he conducted safety and performance tests upon a pesticidal neem extract called Margosan-O and in 1985 received clearance for the product from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Three years later he sold the patent for the product to the multinational chemical corporation, W R Grace and Co. Since 1985, over a dozen US patents have been taken out by US and Japanese firms on formulae for stable neem-based solutions and emulsions and even for a neem-based toothpaste.

At least four of these are owned by W R Grace, three by another US company, the Native Plant Institute, and two by the Japanese Terumo Corporation.Having garnered their patents and with the prospect of a licence from the EPA, Grace has set about manufacturing and commercialising their product by establishing a base in India. The company approached several Indian manufacturers with proposals to buy up their technology or to convince them to stop producing value-added products and instead supply the company with raw material.

In many cases, Grace met a rebuff. M N Sukhatme, Director of Herringer Bright Chemicals Pvt. Ltd, which manufactures the neem-based insecticide Indiara, was put under pressure by Grace to sell the technology for a storage-stable neem extract, which does not require heating or any chemical change. Sukhatme refused their offers, stating: 'I am not interested to commercialise the product.'

But Grace eventually managed to arrange a joint venture with a firm called P J Margo Pvt. Ltd. They are now setting up a plant in India which will process neem seed for export to the US. Initially, the plant will process 20 tons of seed a day. They are also setting up a network of neem seed suppliers, to ensure a constant supply of the seeds and a reliable price. Grace is likely to be followed by other patent-holding companies. In 1992, the US National Research Council published a report designed to 'open up the Western world's corporate eyes to the seemingly endless variety of products the tree might offer'.

According to one of the members of the NRC panel, 'In this day and age, when we're not very happy about synthetic pesticides, [neem] has great appeal.'

This appeal is blatantly commercial. The US pesticides market is worth about $2 billion. At the moment biopesticides, such as pyrethrum, together with their synthetic mimics, constitute about $450 million of this, but that figure is expected to rise to over $800 million by 1998. 'Squeezing bucks out of the neem ought to be relatively easy,' observes Science magazine.

Plagiarism or innovation?

Grace's aggressive interest in Indian neem production has provoked a chorus of objections from Indian scientists, farmers and political activists, who assert that multinational companies have no right to expropriate the fruit of centuries of indigenous experimentation and several decades of Indian scientific research. This has stimulated a bitter transcontinental debate about the ethics of intellectual property and patent rights.

In April 1993, a Congressional Research Service (CRS) report to US Congress set out some of the arguments used to justify patenting:

'Azadirachtin itself is a natural product found in the seeds of the neem tree and it is the significant active component. There is no patent on it, perhaps because everyone recognises it as a product of nature. But ... a synthetic form of a naturally occurring compound may be patentable, because the synthetic form is not technically a product of nature, and the process by which the compound is synthesised may be patentable.'

However, neither azadirachtin, a relatively complex chemical, nor any of the other active principles have yet been synthesised in laboratories. The existing patents apply only to methods of extracting the natural chemical in the form of a stable emulsion or solution, methods which are simply an extension of the traditional processes used for millennia for making neem-based products. The biologically active polar chemicals can be extracted using technology already available to villages in developing countries, says Eugene Schulz, chair of the NRC panel. Villagers smash'em [the seeds] up, soak [them] in cold water overnight, scoop the emulsion off the top and throw it on the crops.'

W R Grace's justification for patents, therefore, pivots on the claim that these modernised extraction processes constitute a genuine innovation:

'Although traditional knowledge inspired the research and development that led to these patented compositions and processes, they were considered sufficiently novel and different from the original product of nature and the traditional method of use to be patentable.'

'Azadirachtin, which was being destroyed during conventional processing of Neem Oil/Neem Cake is being additionally extracted in the form of Water Soluble Neem Extract and hence it is an add-on rather than a substitute to the current neem industry in India.'

In short, the processes are supposedly novel and an advance on Indian techniques. However, this novelty exists mainly in the context of the ignorance of the West. Over the 2,000 years that neem-based biopesticides and medicines have been used in India, many complex processes were developed to make them available for specific use, though the active ingredients were not given Latinised scientific names. Common knowledge and common use of neem was one of the primary reasons given by the Indian Central Insecticide Board for not registering neem products under the Insecticides Act, 1968. The Board argued that neem materials had been in extensive use in India for various purposes since time immemorial, without any known deleterious effects. The US EPA, on the other hand, does not accept the validity of traditional knowledge and has imposed a full series of safety tests upon Margosan-O.

The allegation that azadirachtin was being destroyed during traditional processing is inaccurate. The extracts were subject to degradation, but this was not a problem since farmers put such extracts to use as and when they needed them. The problem of stabilisation arose only when it needed to be packaged for a long time to be marketed commercially. Moreover, stabilisation and other advances attributable to modern laboratory technology had already been developed by Indian scientists in the 1960s and 1970s, well before US and Japanese companies expressed interest in them.

Dr R P Singh of the Indian Agricultural Research Institute asserts:

'Margosan-O is a simple ethanolic extract of neem seed kernel. In the late sixties we discovered the potency of not only ethanolic extract, but also other extracts of neem ... Work on the neem as pesticide originated from this division as early as 1962. Extraction techniques were also developed by a couple of years. The azadirachtin-rich dust was developed by me.' The reluctance of Indian scientists to patent their inventions, thus leaving their work vulnerable to piracy, may in part derive from a recognition that the bulk of the work had already been accomplished by generations of anonymous experimenters. This debt has yet to be acknowledged by the US patentors and their apologists. The CRS report claims that 'the method of scattering ground neem seeds as a pesticide would not be a patentable process, because this process ... would be deemed obvious' - a statement that betrays either lamentable misjudgement or a racist dismissal of indigenous knowledge. The discovery of neem's pesticidal properties and of how to process it was by no means 'obvious', but evolved through extended systematic knowledge development in non-Western cultures. In comparison to this first non-obvious leap of knowledge, it is the subsequent minor derivatives that are 'obvious'.

From waste to wealth?

W R Grace and P J Margo also claim that their project benefits the Indian economy. It does so, they say, by'providing employment opportunities at the local level and higher remuneration to the farmers as the price of Neem Seeds has gone up in the recent times because value is being added to it during its process. Over the last 20 years the price of neem seed has gone up from Rs300 a ton to current levels of Rs3000-4000 a ton.'

In fact, the price has risen considerably more than this: in 1992 Grace was facing prices of up to $300 (over 8,000 rupees) per ton.

This increase in the price of neem seeds has turned an often free resource into an exorbitantly priced one, with the local user now competing for the seed with an industry supplying consumers in the North. As the local farmer cannot afford the price that the industry can, the diversion of the seed as raw material from the community to industry will ultimately establish a regime in which a handful of companies holding patents will control all access to neem as raw material and all production processes. P J Margo claims that this is 'a classic case of converting waste to wealth and beneficial to the Indian farmer and its economy'. This statement is in turn a classic example of the assumption that local use of a product does not create wealth but waste; and that wealth is created only when corporations commercialise the resources used by local communities.

There is a growing awareness throughout India that the commoditisation of neem will result in its expropriation by multinational companies. On 15 August, Indian Independence Day, farmers in the state of Karnataka rallied outside the offices of the District Collector in each district, to challenge the claims of those multinational companies such as W R Grace demanding 'intellectual property rights'. The farmers carried neem branches as a symbol of collective indigenous knowledge.

Finally

Their campaign has been supported by many noted Indian scientists. Dr R P Singh expressed his 'whole [hearted] support [for the] campaign against the globalisation of the neem.' Dr B N Dhawan, Emeritus Scientist at the Central Drug Research Institute, maintains: 'It is really unfortunate that the benefits of all this work should go to an individual or to a company. I sincerely hope that .. the neem will continue to remain available for use by people all over the world without paying a high price to a company.'

Patented Seeds - an End to Farming?

Terminator Seeds Threaten an End to Farming

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.

Reactions to the Terminator

"This is a patent that is too profitable for companies to ignore," says Camila Montecinos of the Chilean-based Center for Education and Technology. "We will see pressure on national regulatory systems to marginalize saved-seed varieties and clear the way for the Terminator. More than a billion farm families are at risk."

"Governments should declare use of the technology illegal," she insists. "This is an immoral technique that robs farming communities of their age-old right to save seed, and their role as plant breeders."

To this, corporate breeders respond that the new technology simply does for hard-to-hybridize crops what the hybrid technique did for maize. Hybrid seed is either sterile or fails to reproduce the same-quality characteristics in the next generation. Thus, most maize farmers buy seed every year.

"Poor farmers can't afford hybrids either," Montecinos points out, "but there's a key difference. The theory behind hybridization is that it allows breeders to make crosses that couldn't be made otherwise and that are supposed to give the plant higher yields and vigor. The results are often disappointing, but that's the rationale. In the case of Terminator technology, there's absolutely no agronomic benefit for farmers. The sole purpose is to facilitate monopoly control, and the sole beneficiary is agribusiness."

Neth Dano of the civil organization SEARICE, based in The Philippines, sees a threat to the environment and to long-term food security: "We work with farmers who may buy a commercial variety, but its breeder wouldn't recognize it five years later. Women select the best seeds every year, and, over time, the rice molds itself to the farm's ecosystem. Women also cross the commercial variety with other rice strains to breed their own locally-adapted seeds. The Terminator could put an end to all this and increase crop uniformity and vulnerability. It poses a threat to the culture of seed-sharing and exchange that is led primarily by women farmers."

Terminate the Terminator

At the fourth Conference of the Parties (COP) to the Convention on Biological Diversity meeting in Bratislava, Slovakia, May 4-15, 1998, the Philippine resolution calling for a ban on the technology was supported by delegates from Kenya, Zambia, Pakistan, Rwanda and Sri Lanka. When it was announced on May 12th that the Delta & Pine Land Co. had been acquired by Monsanto, concerns were heightened about the potential dangers of this technology for farmers and food security. The COP has requested that the issue be considered by its Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSITA).

A genetic technology aiming to sterilize seed threatens to extinguish the right of farmers to save seed and breed new crop varieties, and threatens the food security of 1.4 billion people. RAFI and other nongovernmental organizations are calling for a global ban on the use of Terminator seeds. Both the patent and the technology should be rejected on the basis of common sense, food security and agricultural biodiversity.