Protests grow on global assault on seed sovereignty

From Asia to South America, the EU to the Caribbean, the seed industry is using international trade agreements to criminalise farmers for saving seeds.

by Dr Eva Sirinathsinghji

The multinational seed industry is continuing its multipronged attack on the most basic of human rights, the access to seed. Lobbyists of the seed industry are using trade agreements to pressure nations into adopting strict measures such as UPOV agreements that ensure the protection and ownership of new plant varieties for plant breeders. On top of this, corporate seed industry lobbyists are proposing revisions to the UPOV convention that promote further monopolisation of the seed industry through 'harmonisation' of procedures for registering and testing new plant varieties.

Protests in many regions around the world are putting up much needed resistance against this corporate takeover of the food system, successfully forcing governments to delay and even repeal the agreements. These movements are an inspiration for our continual global struggle against the relentless onslaught of agribusiness whose current biggest targets are the 'untapped' markets of the global South, with the spotlight on Africa and other regions where seeds have not yet been commercialized, and are still used in traditional systems that allow seed saving and exchange.

UPOV

The International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants or UPOV is a Geneva-based intergovernmental union so far of around 70 countries that accept common rules for recognizing and protecting the ownership of new plant varieties by plant breeders. First established in 1961, the convention entered into force in 1968 and was revised in 1972, 1978 and 1991. The latest version, UPOV-91 significantly increases the protection of plant breeders, handing over monopoly of seed rights, and even making it illegal for the farmer to save and exchange seeds for replanting.

Harmonisation

UPOV builds on the World Trade Organisation's agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) that was adopted in 1994 as the first international treaty to establish global standards for intellectual property rights over seeds. This has allowed corporations to force the "harmonisation" of patent laws across countries, ostensibly to create a unified global intellectual property regime with minimum standards and establish a dispute settle system to ensure its application and compliance.

Today all member countries are part of the 1978 or 1991 Act.

Back in 1998, there were only 37 countries in UPOV, the majority industrialised. With recent international trade agreements however, the global South have been pressured to join, being told that intellectual property protection benefits the biotechnology industry and hence the national economy as well as food security. These claims are unfounded, and in fact untrue; UPOV works to increase the profit of multinational corporations in the North, and is proving to be a threat to food security especially for people in the South.

In the 88th meeting of the Consultative Committee (CC) of UPOV on 15 October 2014 in Geneva, lobby organisations representing the corporate seed industry pushed for further 'harmonisation' of the UPOV plant breeders system. Their proposals include an international filing system, a UPOV quality assurance program and a central examination system for variety denominations, disguised as an "international system of cooperation" that would actually provide further protection to breeders with regards to filing and examination of new varieties in destination countries. In reality, these changes would increase patenting and biopiracy by commercial plant breeders, while placing the costs of the new system on individual nations and not the corporations commercialising the seed variety.

The International Seed Federation, the International Community of Breeders of Asexually Ornamental Fruit Plants (CIOPORA) and CropLife International, represent corporations that include Monsanto, DowAgroSciences, Syngenta, Bayer, and DuPont Pioneer, which together already control 75 percent of private sector plant breeding research and 60 percent of the commercial seed market. The new proposals would further increase the monopoly. T

hese pro-industry organisations proposed an international filing system of cooperation (IFC) for registering a plant variety that would use a single application form in the language of choice of the breeder and submitted to the destination country for planting the seeds. The IFC would then be involved in distributing processed applications to target countries. This, they suggested would result in more applications by breeders for more crops, in more regions and countries. One of the most dangerous aspects of the proposals is that such applications would be confidential with regards to the pedigree and parental lines of hybrids, thereby greatly facilitating biopiracy.

Examination

A preliminary review of the IFC would be sent to the destination country for DUS (Distinct, Uniform and Stable) testing, all at the expense of the destination country, which the lobbyists proposed, should take place in centralised "centres of excellence" that would need to be developed.

Breeders would send plant materials and fees for DUS testing to the centres of their choice, likely leaving governments without access to the plant material.

The industry lobbyists further propose that the IFC should force UPOV member countries to implement these procedures themselves.

These changes will compromise the right of UPOV member states to control the processing and examination of plant variety protection applications, and hence their national right to control their own food system in accordance with local climactic and ecological conditions that can decide the success or failure of a crop.

The proposed changes, such as the potential to increase the number of crop varieties, do not necessarily translate to lower food prices or higher food production. It does however impact small-scale farmers who rely on informal seed saving and swapping systems, a common practice in most developing nations, pushing up the price of seed and affecting livelihoods and food access in the process.

- Third World Network Features