And what works in the sparsely populated plains ain't gonna work a whole lot longer, is my bet.

Following the discussion of the benfits of the subsidized industrial model for the rest of the world, this article published by the NIH postulates that the policies contribute to an obesity pandemic and other nutritional problems. Hardly a good model to impose on the world.

It's getting nearly impossible to find anything that hasn't switched from using sugar (sucrose) as a sweetener to hi-frutose corn syrup. We have 3 drink vending machines at my work place and only 1 brand of ~20 is left that doesn't contain HFCS (unless you include the $1 bottles of water). vgkg

From what I read in the oca report subsidies may not be so much of a culprit as other factors in increased sugar consumption. In my opinion increased sweets, fats, and lessened exercise are the result of the modern ways of life for most people.

Corn prices......about 1952 levels.
tv prices......much less than 1952 levels.
Hence both will be consumed heavily.

Was corn ever so cheap in 1952? I would think it would be a lot cheaper now if what Sam is saying about yields in Nebraska is true.

And I think you would still find nearly as many tv sets being watched even if they were considerably more expensive; consider the fact that even those who cannot afford adaquate nutrition generally manage to have a tv.

Corn has been at record prices the last two years. Despite all the rhetoric about over production and the rest of the world not wanting to buy our products, some one is buying them. The demand has seldom been higher.

pn, what is going to happen on the plains?

Maybe, some of you need to take a trip through the mid section of the country. Of course non of you are old enough to remember the days of small farm feedlots with manure running down the road ditches to the nearest stream, or the wide spread release of organophosphates and the dead rabbits, skunks, and songbirds lying anywhere close to application. And the erosion from over tillage and excessive hilling needed to cover weeds in the row using two row equipment before herbacides. We worked the soil to death and today are still fighting the tiller compaction layer.

Minimum tillage, using wide equipment and modern zone building techniques have done much to stem erosion by exposing much less bare soil and the zonebuilding allows water to soak into the soil rather then run off.

Farmers now count earthworms as well as sample soil fertility when planning the inputs for the next crop. Once optimum soil fertility is reached, modern yield monitors allow farmers to replace just the amount of fertility to replace what was removed with the previous crop to insure the right fertility for the next crop.

Manure pits and lagoons allow manure to be slurried and knifed into the ground rather then the old way of surface spreading which allowed the nitrogen to escaoe and the phosphates to run off.

There are hybrids tailored to every soil type and climate type offering disease, insect, and drought tolerance. There has been an explosion of new hybrids the last five years, something like over 300 new hybrids last year alone. Advances are being made so fast that progressive farmers seldom plant the same hybids two years in a row. There is talk of target yields being in the 250 bushel range in the next few years.

One thing about using wide equipment vs. the older two and four row equipment is the advantage of sculpting the land reducing the old channels for water to quickly run off. This allows the water a greater chance of soaking into the subsoil where it can be used later in the season by crops.

Sam

Wayne, one possibility is that malnourished, obese people are drawn to a sedentary lifestyle. Both high fat/sugar foodstuffs and tv cater to that lifestyle, continuing the cycle.

Marshall; It could be meit could be having 340% normal rain for October, praying for the ground to drybut digressing to the original articlethe issue of the Iraqi-GMO deal; do the seed companies figure on getting something (besides the tech-fee) from some poor Iraqi-farmer-smuck who planted his saved seed? I just dont get the practical application. What are the seed companies going to do? Take his land? Take his mud hut? Confiscate the grain and sell it to the EU? I just dont get what leverage, what high-handed position the seed companies think they have over what I would consider some third-world peasant. Are they going to send their salespeople there to investigate who bought seed; who saved seed? Perhaps embed them with some military unit? I probably am ignorant of the scale of agriculture in Iraq but it seems to me that the scale of agriculture in Iraq is quite a far reach from agribusiness and its litigious nature as we know it in the US. And I obviously do not have the vision these GM companies have...I, seeing little more than rhetoric for explanations and huge costs to defend that rhetoric.

We'll finish picking nuts early next week. And there's a high side in our bogged-down situation...if it were a "normal" year we (California walnut growers) would have 85% of their crop in the mud instead of 15%. The crops came early. Regards, David

Sam,

you say:

"Corn has been at record prices the last two years. Despite all the rhetoric about over production and the rest of the world not wanting to buy our products, some one is buying them. The demand has seldom been higher."

That's great news for the farmers!
Does that mean we can expect to see them refusing govt subsidies/protection/ import tariffs etc?

Glad to see that they (you?) can stand on their own feet and make a real profit without taxpayers' assistance!

Congratulations!

Regards,

Shax

Sam, nice bit of hyperbole and very heartening; unfortunately I don't find USDA statistics supporting your rosy view of maize exports. See hyperlink below. The recent statistics for soymeal shows a small recent increase in exports but a fall off in exports to Asia.

http://www.fas.usda.gov/export-sales/soymeal.htm

China no longer is a net exporter of maize products, so that opens world markets for future US maize producers.

This from: http://www.commodities-now.com/content/market-news/market-news-2004100145331.php

" Oilseeds: Global consumption of edible oils will increase by 4% per year over the next two years. Soybean meal demand will continue to be driven by China, where livestock farming is increasing in importance. However, recent estimates of soybean have exceeded expectations causing substantial price reductions. We forecast ample supplies of the main vegetable oils in 2004/05, causing supply to outpace demand and resulting in further price declines. The substantial price premium that rapeseed oil has experienced in 2003/04 will be reduced in 2004/05, together with the discount of palm oil to soybean oil."

As the Chinese increase livestock production, US producers can expect a larger market for soymeal and other soy products. But the US is competing with Argentina and Brazil for this expanding market.

Sam, I don't believe I've set foot in the state of nebraska, nor yet even iowa. As I've stated before, my personal ignorance (and presumably my bliss level?) regarding the plains knows no bounds.

And I still believe that large-scale ag driven by fossil fuel and far distant from it's markets will not go on unchanged for many more years. Whether the plains of the US, Canada, Brazil, Russia, China, etc.

And it's not to say that some of the techniques you've mentioned aren't considerable improvements.

First of Shax, farmers have received very little from the government the last two years as subsidies only kick in when grain falls below a ceiling price. It has been above that set point the last two years.

pn, the bulk of grain is processed or fed near where it is produced. The reason why hog and cattle feeding operations are located in the cornbelt. It is cheaper to ship protein in the form of deboned meat then as grain. Also a very large percentage of corn is processed into ethonol with the brewers mash then going to cattle feedlots.

Less then 10% of grain is exported.

Marshall, have you not heard of the blight and other production problems in South America? Despite increased acreage, total harvest has been falling.

The demand for protein in the form of meat will only increase as the rest of the world raises it's standard of living. Midwestern farmers have been traveling to China the last few winters to assist the Chinese in farming techniques and livestock production. Some of the equipment people are building plants in China to produce modern equipment.

China is the fastest growing economy in the world right now and I see that as positive. It is hard to have a lucretive trading partner that has no money.

BTW, you folks need to watch RFD-TV on satellite to get an accurate picture of whats going on outside the city limits. All the ag shows have segments explaining to city folks what is going on in the ag community.

Sam

David,

Crops have been early here in the Mid-West too. My walnuts were very early and it's a good thing for the grain farmers too as cooler and wetter weather seems to be settling in now.

You all,
A glut of corn and soybeans have driven prices down from last year.......oh, for a glut of oil! [don't say anything, Marshall]

David, while awaiting Marshall's reply, I'll take a stab at your question. I think this is the first step to gaining a gm toe hold in the Middle East. Some of the articles from the link Marshall posted (great link btw), "biotechnology for developing countries", in spite of the pro-industry bias, explain industries' 3-pronged approach to infiltrating developing countries. They need to place seed distribution in the hands of dealers who will then partner with biotech companies and then work with local farmers developing test plots with local plant material. A complicit gvmt will grant intellectual property rights and will eliminate one of the biggest hurdles in gentech - the citizens have no voice in the decisionmaking process.

The following article from the link gives a good explanation of the problems of introducing biotech to developing countries.

Sam, I think few if any of us who post here live inside 'city limits'. What an odd and patronizing supposition on your part.

I said I hadn't been to nebraska - does that automatically equal living in the big apple? Maybe you should expand the scope of your cable-tv watching so as to improve your mental map of our broad country.

pn, you know what I meant by that statement. Many people have moved to the 'burbs and beyond and don't have a clue what is going on on the other side of the fence.

I travel in my work and have been to most areas of our country. And I take the time to understand what is going on across the fence while I travel.

Sam

I live in a city but didn't find Sam's comments patronizing. Actually, I feel kinda sorry for those in his situation who have to drive hundreds of miles to see crops being grown and rely on news that needs to be beamed into outer space, then bounced down to an expensive satellite receiver. I have the luxury of being able to walk a few blocks to one of the world's top five agricultural universities and see the latest research and technology in practice. If inclined, I can stop by the world class library on the grounds and easily access all of the latest news and reports from a wide range of publications. All of this is within the city limits.

Althea,
Good reply. Yet I wonder if you acess those resources very much.
For myself I often drive near Purdue University with its ag resources yet I don't stop in. I do visit the nearby prairie restoration farm. I suppose I depend on the internet and farm magazines for what is happening.

Thanks Wayne. Sam, what did you think of my reply???

Yes, I've made several trips a year for many years to the Horticulture demonstration garden which abuts one of the test fields. I've planted many things after first seeing them growing in the demo garden. Lately they've been incorporating veggies into the flower garden plantings which I'm really happy to see since that is the way I tend to garden. Since the other crop fields are so close and most on my way to somewhere, I can't help but to remain aware of them. There was a crop I didn't recognize in one of the fields this summer, but by the time I could go over for a closer look, it was harvested. I rarely use the library these days because so much is available on the internet.

Hi Althea,

You took the remarks in the spirit they were intended and thanks for your comments.

Actually, I with most of the folks on this list in spirit.

However, we live in a real world and certain things need to happen to keep our country and economy vibrant.

We are lucky enough to live in a time where science is progressing with the world environment as it's main concern.

Our activities and industry has progressed to the point where actions on one side of the globe affect the environment on the otherside of the globe.

Developing nations are having a larger impact on the overall quality of the worlds environment then what we are doing in this country. It behooves all of us to bring the rest of the planet up to our standards and the quicker the better.

BTW, those that can, immigrate to our country because of our freedoms and lifestyle and economy and most of them are doing very well and are some of the largest contribitors to our way of life.

I believe it is mostly due to ignorance and dominating local chieftains and not culture that holds most of the third world back.

The most eroision occurs in countries using a mule and sharp stick as opposed to a midwestern farmer using a no till 16 row planter.

Beware of those alternative sources.

Sam

The driving force behind immigration is greed. Always has been, always will be. Our country was founded in greed, and more people eager for the chance to have much arrive daily.

The freedom thing was hammered out so that at least some people would be free to pursue more getting. Freedom was not designed to facilitate those who object to unfettered greed, but we will use it so just the same.

Interesting view, Pat. I've been thinking on this subject and reading stuff on peasantry/yoemanry. The central theme of most has been survival as the first value among subsistence farming/herding/fishing/collecting peoples. The truth of this economic system is their lack of economic independence. Part of production is diverted to landowner, collective (community or state), or other dominant institution from the larger mainline community. From the pov of the peasant, the part allocated to the overseeing power is taken first; the subsistence remainder may or may not be sufficient to see the family, clan or village through to the next season.

There have been numerous examples in history of crises devasting to peasantry and leading to mass emigration of those surviving the disasters. Since WWII globalization and accelerated population growth have contributed to depopulation of peasant hinterlands. See NAFTA-subsidized US maize-depopulation of rural Mexican regions-waves of Mexican immigrants into the US. Damn greedy foreigners! My grandparents came from eastern Europe to this country in the late 19th century to get rich, of course, not to find a life offering more than subsistence and recurring hardship.

If you get a chance, read John Berger's PIG EARTH, first of a trilogy (INTO THEIR LABOURS) on peasantry. Vintage books put out a paperback edition of this 1979 book. The introduction is heavy on Marxist analysis but we can survive that. The triology is fictionalized history of French Alpine peasants among whom Berger lives or lived (must be in mid-80's if still alive.)

Our country has had enough of a "middle class" to escape some of the extremes of the nations of the world. I do believe that the Pilgrims learned a quick and hard lesson at Plymouth Rock concerning socialism carried too far.
I believe that many peasants are rather trapped due to many things. One of those things being even culture. I read statics this morning concerning African-American illegitimacy. With stats like that what can you expect?

Sometimes people vote not with a big agenda, but rather to try to savage a remanant of Godliness. Who forced the battle? Guess who is constantly probing for new territory there.

Wayne, check out illegitamacy rates in the white urban slums of Ireland and the UK, or amongst the rural impoverished here.

Thanks for the reference Marshall, I'm always looking for something good to read.

What I mean by "founded in greed" is not that every immigrant since 1620 has necessarily been motivated by greed, but merely noting that what made european settlement possible here in the first place was investors looking to enrich themselves. Super high risk capital looking for maximum returns. Then as now, that is the ultimate expression of greed - so much wealth that it can be turned to such risk. Of course desperate people were required to be the mules and the sacrifices.

I have an interesting book about how most new england towns were founded by groups of investors; the peasants who moved out and labored in these remote and often dangerous locations were not going to join in any profit. If they were lucky they might end up owning their farmsteads. These investors were the wealthy merchant class in the more established towns and cities.

Regarding modern day immigrants - sure - some are fleeing unlivable conditions. Most, though are coming to tap into the much more profitable american economy; some planning to divert it back home and raise their own condition far above that of their nieghbors, others to stay and quickly fall into the typical american over-consumption pattern.

And I do believe that the our original war for freedom was fought by our merchant and ruling class to do what they do best without interference from a distant government, not for the individual's right to be free from the trends of society.

Seems to me that high unemployment and even higher underemployment constitutes a strong basis for "unlivable conditions" in countries lacking a social safety net of the scale and scope found in the US. Yes, the Mexican family farmers/peasants could move to Mexican cities and many do, but most have few skills and little education to compete with their compadres. In a subsistence-dominated country, there is but small service and basic manufacturing sectors relative to those found in the US. Look at any construction job site in the SW US and you'd think you were in Mexico. Of course all these hispanic-looking folks are legal residence, even Bush voting citizens. :)

----------------------------------------

Yes, the American Revolution was a struggle of Colonial ruling elites against a distant ruling elites and their local loyalists who were perhaps in the majority. Still their campaign documents (the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation) were magnificent examples of Enlightenment thinking and education. Of course, once the Revolutionary War was won, the problems of truly democratic government and largely independent States were eased by a new Constitution. The Constitutional Convention established a Republic organized around a representative legislature (the House), an appointed Senate, a somewhat stronger Federal executive, and an independent judiciary to intervene in matters between the States (legislature) and the Federal executive. Mob rule (democracy) was not to be tolerated.

-----------------------------------------

I am from New England and am somewhat familiar with the history of settlement. The British Crown and its corporate wing did sell large land grants to entrepeneurs who in turn advertised in the Old Countries for emigrants to move to the colonies. I don't recall this being attempts to settle towns and villages but rather to clear lands and so increase their values. Unpopulated and uncleared wilderness had little value. There were no free lands open for settlement, but squatting was rife and the bane of the speculators.

Landuse patterns in old New England of the time followed European models of a village housing basic services and homes from which farmers and herders went out to the surrounding fields and pastures to work. In time with better security and transportation, the American pattern of diffused farmsteads arose. In my part of NH, most towns were settled between 1750 and early 1800's. By the mid 1840's to perhaps 1880's farm families spread into the countryside but also were participating in internal migrations from New England to the western frontier. The agrarian economy moved to sheep-raising with attendant depopulation of the hinterlands and even abandonment of villages in all but name of townships.

Labor was always short in the colonial and later period, so much so that the Establishment supported, for a time, indentured servitude (in part voluntary contract) and ultimately slavery. The lure of new opportunities continued to expand with the expansion of the US westward.

The colonial governments and the States and Commonwealths promoted westward expansion in order to solidify their claims on the lands of the Old North West and Middle Lands. Settlement broke out of the original coastal strip in the north once the British gave up claim to the lands between the Great Lakes and the Ohio River. The Louisiana Purchase opened the unrestricted way to the Plains and points further west at about the same time. The expanding system of railroads complemented the extensive system of navigable waterways in the new heartland and facilitated settlement of the frontier.

Sam wrote:
It seems the agenda of some is not to bring the rest of the world up to our standard of living, but to lower us down to theirs.

I never read a so stupid statement. Here are the facts:
USA represent less than 5% of the world population and they consume 25% of the energy produced in the world. So to bring the rest of the world up to our standard of living it would be necessary to produce 5 times more energy than we do. How do you propose to achieve this? Do you have a magic stem? How do you dare speak about an agenda? Ludicrous. Completely ridiculous.

Sam wrote:
I believe it is mostly due to ignorance and dominating local chieftains and not culture that holds most of the third world back.
That is a very naive point of view showing a lot of ignorance...

The obvious reality (regardless of agendas and widespread ignorance) is that both will happen:

Standard of living for peoples at the bottom is likely to improve, and for those at the top to decline (either that or armageddon). Regression to the mean. Except for the top 10-20% of the population of first-world countries, whose lifestyles are likely to become even more absurd.

Ah, I see we have digressed to doom and gloom and name calling.

Actually, there is plenty to go around. A lot of the earth's resources are vastly under used.

We have hardly scrached the surface in the reserves of hydocarbons.

Other sources of energy have hardly been tapped.

Most of the land being used for agriculture is not being fully managed to it's potential.

China's productivity has quadrupled in the last decade and they've got a long ways to go.

Our ag productivity has increased 25% in the last decade and you ain't seen niothing yet.

By the way, Nothotsuga, what country do you live in?

Sam

I guess I'm the doom and gloom part, for daring to suggest that "standards of living" will drop for most americans. But it will, and it is, and it has - steadily.

That is because any reasonable measure of a good life must include how much time people have to deal with things other than "work". Home life has continually shrunk and unrewarding work ever increasing.

Perhaps the most fascinating thing about all the increases in technology (including ag yields) is that they have not reduced the amount of time spent working for the average american. That is because our economy is based on people consuming to the utmost.

The dropping wages of American workers has been happening since the 1970's and has been accelerated by global competition. While there may be sufficient food to go around in the future average folks will be stretched to cope with medical and energy costs and their access to good jobs will be constrained by the high costs of college education as well as limited opportunities to good jobs that pay more than a basic living or offer health care and retirement. The looming problem as I see it for the next generation is going to be the costs of our budget and trade deficit on top of high costs of things like social security and medicare. Because we live in fantasy land where we want everything and pay for nothing and will neither cut spending nor raise taxes, our generation's gift to our kids and grandchildren will be these costs (high interest rates, a high tax payment on the interest on the debt, and a devalued dollar) which will be a drag for decades to come. We can expect (and will roundly deserve) to be cursed in our doddering old age by our kids who will inherit this mess.

We trade doing things at home for ourselves by working longer hours and paying some one else to do it. Look how many fast food places have popped up to feed us instead of us staying home and cooking it ourself.

Look at how many things we pay for today that our fore bearers didn't. Cable bills were unheard of 40 years ago. Internet charges were unheard of 20 years ago.

Personally, I work 80+ hours a week but most of that is for me and well over half of it is right here at home on my goat farm. But it is what I want to do. Work has different meaning today then it did a couple of generations ago. Work has become a four letter word and something to be disdained.

My father is 85 and still working.

What this has to do with peasant seed saving, I do not know.

Sam

Good post Sam. I agree. I think people anywhere in the world, regardless of their status, peasants, elite, and so on, should be able to spend as many hours a day they want, planting whatever seeds they want. Neither peasants nor elite should be required to adopt the agricultural or any other practices of another culture. Self reliance shouldn't be a first world luxury.

Althea,

'should be able to spend as many hours a day they want, planting whatever seeds they want.'...............Hey, unless someone blocks off those Dakota arctic blasts, I won't be planting many seeds for a while.

I like that, Althea!

"self-reliance shouldn't be a luxury" .....it really ought to go without saying, and yet it doesn't. It usually is a luxury.

I'm putting that in my mental quotation-book. Do you mind that I've paraphrased it?

I agree -- I am very impressed with Althea's succinct and spot-on response to farmersam's little elitist rant.

Thanks Pat & Marshall. That's nice to hear since I've spent the entire latter half of the week bemoaning the fact that I'm not an intellectual. The story behind this is saturated with p&r, but suffice it to say that the day I'm the one who speaks on behalf of reason & the intellect as a guide for moving forward, the world must be in a pretty sorry state. Even worse, I can't see myself becoming an intellectual in three weeks, the date of the next neighborhood meeting, yet I feel obligated to take on the responsibility since I'm the one who brought it up.

Pat, feel free to paraphase.

What's an intellectual?

They must be evil, cuz I heard China and Russia did away with all theirs a while back.

Don't worry; none of us on this forum is an "intellectual" of the intelligentia caste. We've all been dumbed down to a lesser or greater extent by cultural values and institutions. The code for intellectual now is East Coast Big City Liberal.

Actually, there is plenty to go around. A lot of the earth's resources are vastly under used.

Like what?
How do you explain then that billions of people are suffering from a lack of resources?
Even the economists are recognizing that the resources are limited.

We have hardly scrached the surface in the reserves of hydocarbons.

Oh I see, you don't mind increasing the CO2 level burning coal. Maybe you will even contribute to the mining?

Other sources of energy have hardly been tapped.

Other sources of energy will not be so easy to use for flight and agriculture.

Most of the land being used for agriculture is not being fully managed to it's potential.

Again wishful thinking. Productivity/acre is maybe increasing, but the ratio energy input/output is decreasing. And once the cheap oil is gone, there will be no easy energy source left as input. There is also a massive cost in term of pollution (pesticides, fertilizers in the water, genetic pollution, etc.).
Tons of fertile land go to the sea and the soils are sterilized because of agressive short-sighted land practices.

Oh yes, I forgot, soon it will be possible to plant potatoes in the toundra, well, I should say: the place now called toundra.

By the way, Nothotsuga, what country do you live in?

Obviously not on the same Earth as you.

You need to get your news and facts from other then alernative sources and you need to get out where the rubber meets the road.

Have you not heard of ethonol?

Pesticide release per acre has been decreasing per acre for over a decade now.

Soils are healthier now then anytime in recent decades. Witness the great increase in earthworm populations.

Erosion is less now then before the Great Plains were broken.

Erosion is greatest in areas where archaic methods are used.

Nutrient pollution is greatest where small numbers of animals are present on small acreages where entrapments are not feasible. The greatest culprit is animal waste, not applied commercial fertilizers. No one can afford to buy it and let it run off.

Ocean warming is the greatest contribitor to CO2 levels, many think is caused by under water eruptions.

A well managed farm program sinks CO2 in the ground in the form of humus. The byproduct of huge yields is huge crop residues which is left on the surface in mintill schemes.

Since when is presenting facts and real life experiences 'elitist'. Most 'elitists' are rich kid types trying to save the world or ne'erdowellers putting the blame for their failures on the system. Which are you?

It's OK to be born rich, nothing to feel guilty about if your ancestors did well.

It's OK to be born poor and create your own wealth.

It's not OK to wallow in your own mess and expect some one else to clean you up.

Sam

The results of the Iraqi election may prevent the patent law, the subjct of this thread, from becoming enacted.

This article by Vandana Shiva discusses two new propsed seed laws in India, giving an excellent explanation of how these laws work against farmers, in India and around the world.

From zmag.org
(http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=56&;
ItemID=7249)
.....
The Indian Seed Act And Patent Act
Sowing The Seeds Of Dictatorship
by Vandana Shiva
February 14, 2005

Since the beginning of farming, farmers have sown seeds, harvested crops, saved part of the harvest for seeds, exchanged seeds with neighbours. Every ritual in India involves seeds, the very symbol of lifes renewal.

In 2004 two laws have been proposed a seed Act and a Patent Ordinance which could forever destroy the biodiversity of our seeds and crops, and rob farmers of all freedoms, establishing a seed dictatorship.

Eighty per cent of all seed in India is still saved by farmers. Farmers indigenous varieties are the basis of our ecological and food security. Coastal farmers have evolved salt resistant varieties. Bihar and Bengal farmers have evolved flood resistant varieties, farmers of Rajasthan and the semi-arid Deccan have evolved drought resistant varieties, Himalayan farmers have evolved frost resistant varieties. Pulses, millets, oilseeds, rices, wheats, vegetables provide the diverse basis of our health and nutrition security. This is the sector being targeted by the Seed Act. These seeds are indigenous farmers varieties of diverse crops thousands of rices, hundreds of wheats, oilseeds such as linseed, sesame, groundnut, coconut, pulses including gahat, narrangi, rajma, urad, moong, masur, tur, vegetables and fruits. The Seed Act is designed to "enclose" the free economy of farmers seed varieties. Once farmers seed supply is destroyed through compulsory registration by making it illegal to plant unlicensed varieties, farmers are pushed into dependency on corporate monopoly of patented seed. The Seed Act is therefore the handmaiden of the Patent Amendment Acts which have introduced patents on seed.

New IPR laws are creating monopolies over seeds and plant genetic resources. Seed saving and seed exchange, basic freedoms of farmers, are being redefined. There are many examples of how Seed Acts in various countries and the introduction of IPRs prevent farmers from engaging in their own seed production. Josef Albrecht, an organic farmer in Germany, was not satisfied with the commercially available seed. He worked and developed his own ecological varieties of wheat. Ten other organic farmers from neighbouring villages took his wheat seeds. Albrecht was fined by his government because he traded in uncertified seed. He has challenged the penalty and the Seed Act because he feels restricted in freely exercising his occupation as an organic farmer by this law.

In Scotland, there are a large number of farmers who grow seed potato and sell seed potato to other farmers. They could, until the early 1990s, freely sell the reproductive material to other seed potato growers, to merchants, or to farmers. In the 1990s, holders of plant breeders rights started to issue notices to potato growers through the British Society of Plant Breeders and made selling of seed potato by farmers to other farmers illegal. Seed potato growers had to grow varieties under contract to the seed industry, which specified the price at which the contracting company would take back the crop and barred growers from selling the crop to anyone. Soon, the companies started to reduce the acreage and prices. In 1994, seed potato bought from Scottish farmers for £140 was sold for more than double that price to English farmers, whilst the two sets of farmers were prevented from dealing directly with each other. Seed potato growers signed a petition complaining about the stranglehold of a few companies acting as a cartel. They also started to sell non-certified seed directly to English farmers. The seed industry claimed they were losing £4 million in seed sales through the direct sale of uncertified seed potato between farmers. In February 1995, the British Society for Plant Breeders decided to proceed with a high profile court case against a farmer from Aberdeenshire. The farmer was forced to pay £30,000 as compensation to cover royalties lost to the seed industry by direct farmer-to-farmer exchange. Existing United Kingdom and European Union laws thus prevent farmers from exchanging uncertified seed as well as protected varieties.

In the US as well, farmer-to-farmer exchange has been made illegal. Dennis and Becky Winterboer were farmers owning a 500-acre farm in Iowa. Since 1987, the Winterboers have derived a sizeable portion of their income from brown bagging sales of their crops to other farmers to use as seed. A brown bag sale occurs when a farmer plants seeds in his own field and then sells the harvest as seed to other farmers. Asgrow (a commercial company which has plant variety protection for its soybean seeds) filed suit against the Winterboers on the grounds that its property rights were being violated. The Winterboers argued that they had acted within the law since according to the Plant Variety Act farmers had the right to sell seed, provided both the farmer and seller were farmers. Subsequently, in 1994, the Plant Variety Act was amended, and the farmers privilege to save and exchange seed was amended, establishing absolute monopoly of the seed industry by making farmer-to-farmer exchange and sales illegal.

Similar laws are being introduced in India. The entire country is being taken for a ride with the introduction of the Seed Act 2004 on grounds that the Act is needed to guarantee seed quality. However, the Seed Act 1966 already performs the function of seed testing and seed certification. Twenty labs have been declared as seed testing labs under the 1966 Act in different States. Nine seed corporations have been identified as certification agencies.

Under pressure from World Bank the Seed Policy of 1988 started to dismantle our robust public sector seed supply system, which accounted for 20% of the seeds farmers grow. Eighty per cent of the seed prior to globalisation is the farmers own varieties, which have been saved, exchanged and reproduced freely and have guaranteed our food security.

A License Inspector Raj for Seeds

The introduction of 2004 Seed Act needs to be assessed in the context of the simultaneous introduction of the 3rd Patent (Amendment) Act. Our 1970 Patent Law has been changed under the coercive pressure of WTO in spite of the overdue mandatory TRIPS review. Patents will now been granted for seeds, plants, micro-organisms, cells and even GMOs and animals.

Quite clearly a monopolistic patent regime cannot be established as long as farmers have the alternative of their own zero cost, reliable, time tested high value seeds of their traditional varieties of indigenous agro-biodiversity.

The Seed Act 2004 has one and only one objective of stopping farmers from seed saving, seed exchange and seed reproduction.

In the objective the 2004 Act clearly states that it is aimed at replacing farmers saved seeds with seeds from private seed industries.

The repeated reference to barter in the Seed Act will prevent farmers exchange, a necessary aspect of maintaining high quality seed supply at the community level.

Further the compulsory registration of seed combined with the power of seed inspectors to enter and search premises (which now mean farmers huts and fields), the power to break open any container and any door is tantamount to creating a Seed Police to terrorize farmers who are conserving biodiversity and practicing a sovereign self-reliant agriculture. The fine for seed exchange and barter of unregistered seed (thousands of farmers varieties has a fine of up to Rs. 25000). While criminalizing farmers who consume biodiversity and traditional varieties, the Seed Act fails to do one thing it should have done, which is to regulate and hold liable private seed industry for seed failure and genetic contamination from GMOs. For Example the failure of maize seeds in Bihar last year cost more than 1000 crores to Bihar farmers and the constant failure of Bt. cotton annually is costing more than a billion dollars to Indian farmers.

In the new Seed Act farmers can only claim compensation under the Consumer Protection Act. This option is in any way is available to the farmers presently and the brutal power of the Central Authority, which acts to prevent farmers from growing own seeds, provides no safety and remedy to our farmers from untested and hazardous seeds MNCs are selling in the Indian market.

The Seed Act has also undermined the role of the State governments. The Central Seed Committee in 1966 Act has representatives nominated by the government of each State. Now only 5 State will be represented in the Central Seed Committee and even these will be nominated not by the State governments but by the Centre.

The 2004 Seed Act has nothing positive to offer to farmers of India but offer a promise of a monopoly to private seed industries, which has already pushed thousands of our farmers to suicide through dependency and debt caused by unreliable, high dependency and non-renewable seeds.

The 1966 Act has served the country well and should continue to provide the framework for seed testing and seed certification.

Farmer varieties and indigenous agro-biodiversity is already been registered by Local Biodiversity Committee through Community Biodiversity Registers (CBRs). We do not need a Centralized Seed Authority with police power which uses compulsory registration to prevent farmers from growing, saving and exchanging their own seeds.

It is the MNC seed industry that need regulation and not the small farmers of our country without whose seed freedom the country will have no food sovereignty and food security.

Product Patent on Seeds

Methods of agriculture and plants were excluded from patentability in the Indian Patent Act 1970 to ensure that the seed, the first link in the food chain, was held as a common property resource in the public domain. In this manner, it guaranteed farmers the inalienable right to save, exchange and improve upon the seed was not violated.

But recently, two amendments have been made in the 1970 Patent Act. The 2nd Amendment makes changes in the definition of what is NOT an invention. This has opened the flood gates for the patenting of genetically engineered seeds.

According to Section 3(j) of the Indian Patent Act, the following is not an invention:

Any process for the medical, surgical, creative, prophylactic or other treatment of human beings or any process for a similar treatment of animals or plants or render them free of disease or to increase their economic value or that of their products.

In the 2nd Amendment however, the mention of "plants" have been deleted from this section. This deletion implies that a method or process modification of a plant can now be counted as an invention and therefore can be patented. Thus the method of producing Bt. cotton by introducing genes of a bacterium thurengerisis in cotton to produce toxins to kill the bollworm can now be covered by the exclusive rights associated with patents. In other words, Monsanto can now have Bt. cotton patents in India.

The Second Amendment has also added a new section (3j). This section allows for the production or propagation of genetically engineered plants to count as an invention. Its status as an invention thus deems it. But this section excludes as inventions "plants and animals including seeds, varieties and species and essentially biological processes for production or propagation of plants and animals". Since plants produced through the use of new biotechnologies are not technically considered "essentially biological," section 3j has found another way to create room for Monsanto. This loophole, couched in the guise of scientific advancement, thus allows patents on GMOs and hence opens the flood gate for patenting transgenic plants.

What is most concerning is how the language of section 3j is a verbatim translation into India law of Article 27.3 (b) of TRIPS Agreement. Article 27.3 (b) of TRIPS states:

Parties may exclude from patentability plants and animals other than micro-organisms, and essentially biological processes for the production of plants or animals other than non-biological and microbiological processes. However, parties shall provide for the protection of plant varieties either by patents or by an effective sui generis system or by any combination thereof. This provision shall be reviewed four years after the entry into force of the Agreement establishing the W.T.O.

As Monsanto had a hand in drafting the TRIPS agreement, it is not surprising that the Monsanto Amendments have also made their way into Indias patent laws.

As Monsanto had a hand in drafting the TRIPS agreement, it is not surprising that the Monsanto Amendments have also made their way into Indias patent laws.

However, Article 27.3(b) is under review. The Government should have insisted on the completion of the review, a commitment of the Doha Round, instead of changing Indias Patent Law. As a result of sustained public pressure, after the agreement came into force in 1995, many Third World countries made recommendations for changes in Article 27.3 (b) to prevent biopiracy. India, in its discussion paper submitted to the TRIPS Council stated:

"Patenting of life forms may have at least two dimensions. Firstly, there is the ethical question of the extent of private ownership that could be extended to life forms. The second dimension relates to the use of IPRs' concept as understood in the industrialized world and its appropriateness in the face of the larger dimension of rights on knowledge, their ownership, use, transfer and dissemination

Informal system, e.g. the shrutis and in the Indian tradition and grandmother's portions all over the world get scant recognition. To create systems that fail to address this issue can have severe adverse consequences on mankind, some say even leading to extinction.

Clearly, we must re-examine the need to grant patents on life forms anywhere in the world. As we continue to assess this situation, in the meantime it may be advisable to:

1. Exclude patents on all life forms.

2. If (1) is not possible, then we must exclude patents based on traditional/indigenous knowledge and essentially derived products and processes from such knowledge.

3. At the very least, we must insist on the country of origin to disclose the biological source and associated knowledge, and obtain the consent of the country providing the resource and knowledge, to ensure an equitable sharing of benefits."

To prevent competitors from selling seeds and to prevent farmers from saving seeds, Monsanto has now turned to the patent laws to get monopoly rights. The Monsanto Amendments of India's patent laws are a logical consequence of the clearance for the commercial planting of GMOs in Indian agriculture, as we saw earlier with the March 26th decision of the Indian government to allow Bt. cotton.

Patents on seeds are a necessary aspect of the corporate deployment of GM seeds and crops. When combined with the ecological risks of genetically engineered seeds like Bt. cotton, seed patents create a context of total control over the seed sector, and hence over our food and agricultural security.

Looking with closer analysis, there are three ways that the 2nd Amendment and 3rd Amendment of the Indian Patent laws have jeopardized our seed and food security, and hence our national security.

Firstly, it allows patents on seeds and plants through sections 3(i) and 3(j), as we saw above. Patents are monopolies and exclusive rights which prevent farmers from saving seeds; and seed companies from producing seeds. Patents on seeds transform seed saving into an "intellectual property crime".

Secondly, genetic pollution is inevitable. Monsanto will use the patents and pollution to claim ownership of crops on farmers fields where the Bt. gene has reached it through wind or pollinators. This has been established as precedence in the case of a Canadian farmer, Percy Schmeiser, whose canola field was contaminated by Monsantos "Round up Ready Canola," but instead of Monsanto paying Percy on the basis of the pollute principle, Monsanto demanded $200,000 fine for "theft" of Monsantos "intellectual property". Thousands of U.S. farmers also have been sued. Will Indian farmers be blamed for theft when Monsantos GM cotton contaminates their crops? Or will the government wake up and enforce strict monitoring and liability?

When combined with the 3rd product patents amendment, these changes can mean absolute monopoly. A decision on a plant patent infringement suit has set a new precedent for interpreting plant patent coverage. In the case of Imagio Nursery vs. Daina Greenhouse, Judge Spence Williams, for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, ruled that a plant patent can be infringed by a plant that merely has similar characteristics to the patented plant. When combined with the reversal of burden of proof clauses, this kind of precedence based on product patents can be disastrous for countries from where the biodiversity that gave rise to those properties was first taken, more so, if the original donors of the biodiversity are accused of piracy through such legal precedence in the absence of the prior existence of laws on traditional knowledge that prevent the misuse of such legal precedence.

In countries, where plant patents are not allowed, patenting genes is available as an opening for patenting properties and characteristics of the plant, and hence having exclusive rights to those properties and characteristics. This is how Monsanto was able to establish monopolies on seeds through patents on genes in Canada, even though Canada does not allow patents on life forms.

Patent protection implies the exclusion of farmers right over the resources having these genes and characteristics. This will undermine the very foundations of agriculture. For example, a patent has been granted in the U.S. to a biotechnology company, Sungene, for a sunflower variety with very high oleic acid content. The claim was for the characteristic (i.e., high oleic acid) and not just for the genes producing the characteristic. Sungene has notified others involved in sunflower breeding that the development of any variety high in oleic acid will be considered an infringement of its patent.

Corporate Rights Vs Farmers Rights

The State is under siege. New Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) legislation is being introduced in the area of plant genetic resources (PGR) under pressure of the U.S. government as well as the requirements of the TRIPS agreement of the W.T.O. while W.T.O. gives a five year transition period to introduce PGR legislation, the U.S. pressure was to introduce such legislation immediately. Further, the U.S. has been demanding monopoly protection for Transnational Corporations (TNCs) which control the seed industry. On the other hand peoples organisations are fighting to protect farmers rights to their biodiversity and their right to survival as well as the freedom of scientists to work for the removal of hunger rather than corporate profits. Farmers organizations, biodiversity conservation groups, sustainable agriculture networks and public interest oriented scientists are trying to ensure that farmers rights are protected, and through the protection of farmers rights, sovereign control over our biological wealth and its sustainable use in agricultural production is ensured. The conflict over PGR legislation is a conflict between farmers and the seed industry and between the public domain and private profits, between an agriculture that produces and reproduces diversity and one that consumes diversity and produces uniformity.

On January 29, 1996 at an address at the Indian Institute of Agricultural Research, the Unite States Secretary of Agriculture, Mr. Daniel Glickman directly addressed the issue of the protection of seed Multinationals (MNCs). He said, "I hope our new legislation will provide a responsible and reasonable protection to private seed companies, which will encourage them to provide the best seeds available for your farmers. There would be very few inventions of anything, particularly in agriculture, without patent protection because it is the fundamental fact of nature that people will not go through the expense of development of new ideas just for the altruistic benefit of the human race.

The U.S. IPR orthodoxy is based on a fallacious idea that people do not innovate or generate knowledge unless they can derive private profits. However, greed is not a "fundamental fact of human nature" but a dominant tendency in societies that reward it. In the area of seeds and plant genetic resources, innovation of both the formal and informal systems has so far been guided by the larger human good. Norman Borlaug the scientist behind the Green Revolution and the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, made this clear in his statement at a Press Conference at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi on 8th Feb 96. He expressed concern against private companies and TNCs gaining control of plant genetic resources and seeds and patenting plants. Prof. Borlaug said,

We battled against patenting. I and late Glen Anderson (of International Wheat an Maize Research Institute) went on record in India as well as other for a against patenting and always stood for free exchange of germplasm.

He saw IPRs in PGRs as a prescription for famine. Commenting on the U.S. demand for patents he said:

God help us if that were to happen, we would all starve.

Besides using a fallacious essentialist argument about human nature, Mr. Glickman also stressed the inevitability of farmers dependence on MNCs for seeds due to trade liberalization and its impact on agriculture.

According to him,

As income increases throughout Indian society, food needs will change higher vegetable oil consumption, a shift from rice to wheat in urban areas and some shifting from grain to poultry and livestock products. Also, the needs of the new food processing industries will change the types of crops demanded. Therefore, farmers must have access to new crop varieties in order to meet changing consumer preferences.

In other words, what the U.S. government is coercing the Indian government to do is introduce unhealthy fat and meat rich diets through the expansion of U.S. agribusiness, agroprocessing and fast food industry. The proposal is to replace the small peasant and farmer based agricultural economy of India with agribusiness controlled industrial agriculture. This shift is associated with a transformation of farmers as breeders and reproducers of their own seed supply to farmers as consumers of propriety seed from the seed industry. It is also a shift from a food economy based on million of farmers as autonomous producers to a food system controlled by a handful of TNCs which control both inputs and outputs. This is a recipe for food insecurity, biodiversity erosion and uprooting of farmers from the land.

It is often stated that IPRs will not stop traditional farmers from using native seeds. However, the Seed Act 2004 is designed to do just that. Further when it is recognised that IPRs are an essential part of a package of agribusiness controlled agriculture in which farmers no longer grow native seeds but seeds supplied by the TNC seed industry, IPRs become a means of monopoly that wipe out farmers rights to save and exchange seed. This leads to TNC totalitarianism in agriculture. TNCs will decide what is grown by farmers, what they use as inputs, and when they sell their produce, to whom and at what price. they will also decide what is eaten by consumers, at what price, with what content and how much information is made available to them about the nature of food commodities.

IPRs are a significant instrument for the establishment of this TNC totalitarianism. The protection of the rights of citizens as producers and consumers needs the forging of new concepts and categories, new instruments and mechanism to counter and limit the monopoly power of TNCs in agriculture. Community rights are an important balancing concept for protecting the public interest in the context of IPR protection for corporations. In the field of food and agriculture, farmers rights are the countervailing force to breeders rights and patents on seed and plant material. Farmers rights in the context of monopoly control of the food system become relevant not just for farming communities, but also consumers. They are necessary not just for the survival of the people but also for the survival of the country. Without sovereign rights of farming communities to their seed an plant genetic resources, there can be no sovereignty of the country.

Farmers rights are an ecological, economic, cultural and political imperative. Without community rights, agricultural communities cannot protect agricultural biodiversity. This biodiversity is necessary not just for the ecological insurance of agriculture. Rights to agricultural biodiversity is also an economic imperative because without it our farmers and our country will loose their freedom and options for survival. Since biodiversity and cultural diversity are intimately linked, conservation of agricultural biodiversity is a cultural imperative also. Finally, without farmers rights, there is no political mechanism to limit monopolies in agriculture and inevitable consequence of displacement, hunger and famine that will follow total monopoly control over food production and consumption through the monopoly ownership over seed, the first link in the food chain.
.....

Good post Althea.

To dis-empower the people over basic things like seeds or foods is troubling.

I see a parallel in the Codus Alimentary which would like to control the sales of alternative nutrients [natural] and make it difficult to forify one's diet as one sees fit.

Thanks Wayne-I was going to compare the Seed Act with Codex also. It seems the planet is being silently taken over. Just wish I knew what could be done about it. Pretty soon they'll tell me, as a home grower, that I can't save seed from my heirloom varieties without the threat of prison time. Sad.

Very good post, Althea. Now maybe some of you sceptics out there will come to understand my campaign against globalization as structured and directed by massive transnational companies and assisted by mostly Western governments.

Marshall, I don't know what all is driving the EU's unfriendly moves, but I blame the big drug companies for unfriendly actions over here.
Yes, I believe there is a battle going on for the minds and DOLLARS. Sickness treated with drugs pays more than nutrient fed wellness does...big time.

This should speak for itself.

ISIS Press Release 08/03/05
Iraqi Government Urged to Revoke "Cynical and Wicked" Patent Law

Dr. Brian John

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

"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 countrys agricultural sector under the control of trans-national corporations. This spells disaster for the Iraqi government and the countrys 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 Iraqs 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].
Iraqs food crisis exploited

Iraq was once self-sufficient in agriculture and the worlds 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 Iraqs 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, Iraqs agricultural sector has collapsed, and only half of the irrigable area is now properly utilised [6]. It is not known how many of the countrys 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 Iraqs 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 Iraqs "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 Iraqs 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 Iraqs 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 countrys 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 peoples 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 todays 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.

MATERIAL ON THIS SITE MAY BE REPRODUCED FOR ANY PROFIT FREE PURPOSES WITHOUT PERMISSION, ON CONDITION THAT IT IS ACCREDITED ACCORDINGLY AND CONTAINS A LINK TO http://www.i-sis.org.uk/.

Is that for real? Can we be that bad (afraid to say evil here) $$$ is the root.

Yes. They can be that bad.

I don't remember if I've posted this link on this forum. If I did, here it is again. The Sept. issue of Harper's had this article about this and other orders put in place under the occupation.

Back to the topic ...

According to this article, the U.S. Army is assisting with converting Iraqi agriculture to U.S. hybrid varieties (of corn at least). See the "How to Help Heading".