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Stop “Corporatized” Seed Laws that Hurt Farmers-Defend Seed Rights of Women Farmers
La Via Campesina | GRAIN | 08 April 2015 | Publications
Seeds are under attack
everywhere. Under corporate pressure, laws in many countries increasingly put
limitations on what farmers can do with their seeds and with the seeds they
buy. Seed saving, a thousand-year-old practice which forms the basis of farming,
is fast becoming criminalised. What can we do about this?
Photo: Tineke d'Haese/Oxfam
Table of contents
1. How seed laws make farmers’ seeds illegal
2. African seeds: a treasure under threat
3. The Americas: massive resistance against “Monsanto laws”
4. Asia: the struggle against a new wave of industrial seeds
5. Europe: farmers strive to rescue agricultural diversity
Introduction
Seeds are one of the irreplaceable pillars of food production. Farmers all
over the world have been acutely aware of this throughout the centuries. It is
one of the most universal and basic understandings that all farmers share.
Except in those cases where they have suffered external aggressions or extreme
circumstances, almost all farming communities know how to save, store and share
seeds. Millions of families and farming communities have worked to create
hundreds of crops and thousands of varieties of these crops. The regular
exchange of seeds among communities and peoples has allowed crops to adapt to
different conditions, climates and topographies. This is what has allowed
farming to spread and grow and feed the world with a diversified diet.
But seeds have also been the basis of productive, social and cultural
processes that have given rural people the resolute ability to maintain some
degree of autonomy and to refuse to be completely controlled by big business
and big money. From the point of view of corporate interests that are striving
to take control of land, farming, food and the huge market that these factors
represent, this independence is an obstacle.
Ever since the Green Revolution, corporations have deployed a range of
strategies to get this control: agricultural research and extension programmes,
the development of global commodity chains, and the massive expansion of export
agriculture and agribusiness. Most farmers and indigenous peoples have resisted
and continue to resist this takeover in different ways.
Today, the corporate sector is trying to stamp out this rebellion through a global legal offensive. Ever since the establishment of the World Trade Organisation, and almost without exception, all countries of the world have passed laws giving corporations ownership over life forms. Whether through patents or so-called plant breeders’ rights or plant variety protection laws, it is now possible to privatise micro-organisms, genes, cells, plants, seeds and animals.
Social movements worldwide, especially peasant farmers organisations, have
resisted and mobilised to prevent such laws being passed. In many parts of the
world, the resistance continues and can even count some victories. To
strengthen this movement, it is very important that as many people as possible,
especially in the villages and rural communities that are most affected,
understand these laws, their impacts and objectives, as well as the capacity of
social movements to replace them with laws that protect peasants’ rights.
Today’s seed laws promoted by the industry are characterised by the
following:
a) They are constantly evolving and becoming more
aggressive. Through new waves of political and economic pressure - especially
through so-called free trade agreements, bilateral investment treaties and
regional integration initiatives - all the ‘soft’ forms of ownership rights
over seeds were hardened and continue to be made more restrictive at a faster
pace. Seed laws and plant variety rights are being revised again and again to
adapt to the new demands of the seed and biotechnology industry.
b) Laws that grant property rights over seeds have been
reinforced by other regulations that are supposed to ensure seed quality,
market transparency, prevention of counterfeits, etc. These regulations include
seed certification, marketing and sanitary rules. By means of these
regulations, it becomes mandatory, for instance, for farmers to purchase or use
only commercial seeds tailored for industrial farming. Or the regulations make
it a crime to give seeds to your son or exchange them with a neighbour. As a
result, seed fairs and exchanges - a growing form of resistance to control over
seeds - are becoming illegal in more and more countries.
c) In strengthening privatisation, these laws have been
disregarding basic principles of justice and freedom and directly violating the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These seed laws have imposed the rule
that anyone accused of not respecting property rights over seeds is assumed to
be guilty, thus violating the principle that people are innocent until proven
guilty. In some cases, measures can be taken against accused wrongdoers without
their being informed of the charges. These seed laws are even making it an
obligation to report alleged transgressors; they are legalising searches and
seizures of seeds on grounds of mere suspicion (even without a warrant) and
allowing private agencies to conduct such checks.
d) These laws are being drafted in vague,
incomprehensible and contradictory language, leaving much room for
interpretation. In most cases, the laws are being moved through legislative
chambers in secrecy or by means of international agreements that cannot be
debated nationally or locally.
Experience shows that people do not want these laws, once the
misinformation and secrecy used to push the laws through have been countered by
information campaigns and mobilisation on the part of social organisations.
Most people reject the idea that a company can take ownership of a plant
variety and prohibit farmers from reproducing their seeds. They find it
completely absurd. People also generally do not agree that the work that
farmers do to feed the world should suddenly become a crime. Wherever
resistance has been strong enough, the legal plunder embodied in these laws has
been stopped.
Experience also shows that those who want to privatise, monopolise and
control seeds on behalf of large transnational corporations have no limits.
There is no possibility to negotiate, make concessions, or reach common
agreements on this in a way that would allow the different interests to
co-exist peacefully. The corporate agenda is to make it impossible for farmers
to save seeds and to make them dependent on purchased seeds.
Similarly, experience shows that it is possible to resist and dismantle
these attacks. But doing so requires informative tools that can be widely
shared, in order to blow away the smoke of false promises and nice words, so
that people can see what really lies behind seed laws. This booklet aims to
help to make this work possible.
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Click here to download the poster. – Poster published by GRAIN and La Via Campesina