Debate
Seed power - in whose hands?

The choice, availability and cost of seeds helps determine the viability and profitability of farm crops. In the past, farmers exchanged or bought seed from neighbours or saved seed from their own crops. Crop improvement reflected farmer selection for desirable traits.

Modern crop breeding has greatly accelerated crop improvement but control of seed stocks has passed from farmer to breeder. Multinational seed companies now have almost total control of seed development and supply, and farmers are increasingly fearful that seed companies want and will get monopoly power.

How should the responsibility for, and cost and control of, agricultural seeds be shared?

"Several years ago the concept of Farmers' Rights developed. It was established to recompense, not individual farmers that would be impractical, but through a system like royalty generation. This would bring back funding into national systems to help them establish and sustain conservation programmes. This is how Farmers' Rights and any benefits that accrue from Farmers' Rights could have positive benefits. But it is almost impossible to quantify how germplasm has flowed between farms and even countries over generations."
Dr Mike Jackson, IRRI

"If any company or any country tries to take materials out of the public domain and make them private, there is a problem and something has to be done about it."
Geoffrey Hawtin, Director General of the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI) quoted in New Scientist, 14/2/98

"The Centres themselves will not seek Intellectual Property Rights of any kind over designated germplasm and they will ensure that those they distribute the germplasm to will not seek Intellectual Property Rights. They also have to see that Intellectual Property Rights aren't sought by the further recipients."
Susan Bragdon, legal specialist in genetic resources at IPGRI, speaking on the BBC World Service, 'The Farming World'

"The difficulty occurs because we have a very complex situation that people try to look at in black and white terms and it is too complex for that. The debate centres often on the rights and wrongs of Intellectual Property Rights Protection rather than on the benefits and disadvantages of a particular system at a particular level with an agricultural economy."
Dr Mike Jackson, IRRI

"I think there is an additional point to be considered: that of the cost of transportation, which increases the price of the seed for farmers far from the source, and these generally are the Third World farmers who most need the update in technology. Although a solution is not easy to find, I think 'distribution' should be included in the problem of seed power."
Rebecca Lee, Extension Coordinator, Horticulture Research Centre, University of Bogota Jorge Tad

The USDA and a Mississippi seed firm have been granted a patent for a technique that can sterilise the seeds produced by most agricultural crops.... Melvin Oliver of USDA, who invented the technique, claims that seeds manipulated in this way will grow into healthy plants that produce sterile seeds. He anticipates that it will be welcomed by seed companies who regard the replanting of seeds as theft of their intellectual property.
New Scientist 28/3/98

"The release of genes which confer no-germination from on-farm saved seed shall lead to monopoly of varieties. However, if such genes are patented, there should also be a gene-laibility by the patent holder to pay damages should this escape into the crop of the neigbour. The companies owning and releasing varieties with these genes should be liable for the damage caused to seed.The policy makers in developing countries should ensure that the seed companies wishing to release such genes agree to undertake full responsibility for compensation to the farmers who suffer economic lossses through escape of such genes. Even in the developed countries, many farmers save their own seed for planting the subsequent crop and may suffer similar seed losses through the escape of such genes into their crops."
Dr Beant S. Ahloowalia (personal view), International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna

"In the end, what is important is that the poor people, who for generations have protected the rare races, do not get marginalized and forgotten but, at the same time, that we do not set up a bureaucratic system that is so perverse that it blocks the freeflow of germplasm and the ability of people to enhance the new varieties for the public good of all."
Ismail Serageldin, a Vice-President of the World Bank and Chairman of the CGIAR (personal communication: April 1998)

Ecological interactions have no respect for national borders and both developed and developing countries rely on introduced crops for a part of their production and consumption. In some countries, crops from other parts of the world have become a national dietary staple and a major export. Generations of Malaysians have depended on rubber for much of their income but Malaysia did not have rubber trees originally; they came from Brazil. Cassava, called the "Third World Potato", currently grows on more than 19 millions acres in Africa, but it is not native to Africa: Portuguese slave traders brought it there from Brazil. Christopher Columbus brought maize from the West Indies to Europe in 1492 and carried wheat from Europe back to the West Indies the following year.
IPGRI publication "In Defence of Diversity"

There are substantial differences in the attitudes and methods of different agencies in this area of genetic resource conservation. There is also much rhetoric from all the actors: seed companies; advocacy groups; NGOs, etc. However, it is by no means clear that all agencies supporting local seed systems are improving the genetic resources base of local farming systems.......At the international level, there is a need for continued pressure to ensure that plant genetic resources are not monopolized under legislation on plant breeders' rights and intellectual property rights.
"Sowing beyond the state: NGOs and seed supply in developing countries" ODI publication

Farmers' rights have been formally recognized by the international community but still lack implementation. The concept must give rise to concrete mechanisms, legal, financial and technical, to ensure that farmers can actually take up their rights. Reasserting ownership over seeds is not so much the point if farmers are not in a position to further develop them. To be meaningful, farmers' rights must result in: capacity-building at the grassroots level, providing local communities with their own tools to improve stable, low-input production systems; the reorientation of national and international agricultural research to better suit small-scale farmers' needs; and substantial new funding for farmer-based initiatives.
Genetic Resources Action International (GRAIN) from "Growing Diversity: genetic resources and local food security" IT publication

"Entrusting genetic resource conservation to developed countries puts developing countries in a dangerous and artificially created situation of dependency. It is also unreliable, as the genebanks are vulnerable to breakdowns. To ensure world food security, an alternative approach is required, based on in situ conservation in the countries of origin. Developed-country NGOs can promote such an approach through advocacy at international institutions like the FAO and UNEP. Conservation of genetic resources must be freed from the control of the multinational corporations and government genebanks and returned to the farmers whose livelihoods depend directly upon them."
Didi Soetomo from "Growing Diversity: genetic resources and local food security" IT publication

"Ten years ago, genebank directors, with rare exceptions, wondered why farmers needed to save their own seeds, why they couldn't simply rely upon genebanks to take care of their needs. Today, many scientists in international agricultural research centres cannot understand why farm communities don't leave the breeding to the formal sector. Brazilian farmers answered the questions best in 1989 at the Santiago workshop: poor farmers can't trust rich scientists. The poor can never trust the rich to understand, act on, or continue to support the interests of poor people."
Pat Mooney, Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI) from"Growing Diversity: genetic resources and local food security" an IT publication

The RAFI is investigating 40 cases in which it alleges that Australian organisations may have falsely claimed rights to seeds from other countries. These include grasses from Kenya and Tanzania, lupins from Italy and Poland, clover from Turkey, nuts from Brazil and pearl millet from Zambia.
New Scientist 14/2/98

"The issue will come before a meeting of more than 150 governments in Rome in mid-June. In the meantime RAFI is urging all governments to honour the trust agreements with FAO. 'Both FAO and CGIAR have shown enormous concern and goodwill in addressing the problem'."
Pat Mooney, RAFI, quoted in International Agricultural Development March/April 1998

"It is true that landraces are the product of indigenous farmers and, in a sense, belong to a region. There is nothing to stop a nation or a group of farmers from registering a native landrace under varietal protection if it meets the criteria; currently most national governments that might lay claims to such landraces do not have the necessary characterization capacity...... payment for plant genetic resources to the developing world is also unworkable. For most crops it will be difficult to determine which genes, and how many, were used and to know what country or countries to pay."
Garrison Wilkes quoted in Scientists, plants and politics, an IPGRI publication

"At present they are running on parallel tracks and, if they don't start talking, yes, in fact many of these different types of legislative regimes may well come into conflict. And what we want to do is to avoid that conflict by allowing a reasoned discussion between the different actors and ensuring the rights of the voiceless and the weak and the marginalized, especially indigenous people, poor farmers, especially the women, to have a voice in this. And we, in the international system, I think have a responsibility to speak up on these issues."
Ismail Serageldin, a Vice-President of the World Bank and Chairman of the CGIAR, speaking on the potential conflict between different IPR systems (personal communication)

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