Save our Seeds

KARACHI: Agriculture constitutes the largest sector of Pakistan’s economy and the majority of the population depends on it. It contributes about 24 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), accounts for half of the country’s employed labor force, and is the largest source of foreign exchange earnings. It feeds the whole rural and urban populations of Pakistan.

The country has a rich biodiversity and multinational companies have realized this. Thousands of varieties of seeds, medicinal plants and herbs have been developed over hundreds of years by farming communities, who were well-equipped with indigenous knowledge of the local environment, climate and conditions for agricultural production.

But the day is not far off when the entire seed business will be controlled by seed companies, leaving local farmers totally dependent on imported or multinationals’ seeds.

Food systems are either sources of nourishment forging the foundations of human health and well-being or one of the most substantial health risk factors.

An entire colonization of the earth, agriculture and our bodies has taken place over a century. Food and agriculture systems upon which we all depend have increasingly become industrialized and globalized. Commercial compulsions of current global agricultural and food systems, compounded by high levels of economic inequality are making healthy diets unavailable or unaffordable to large sections of the population in every part of the world.

Germany’s Bayer AG, which acquired US biotech firm Monsanto in June, recently said new Bt cotton seed technology cannot be introduced in India as it is no more profitable and financially viable because of royalty issues. The acquisition of Monsanto is over globally but is still in process in India.

Monsanto, which has been selling genetically modified (GM) cotton seeds in India through its joint venture Mahyco Monsanto Biotech that has sub-licensed Bt cotton seed technology to various domestic seed companies, is involved in legal battles with the Indian Government and Indian company Nuziveedu Seeds.

The company needs to be compensated for investment made in research and development (R&D) to come up with innovative products, Bob Reiter, global head of R&D, crop science division of Bayer, told a news agency.

Stagnant yields, pest attacks and skyrocketing fertilizer use have beset India’s first commercialised GM crop. Claire Robinson reports

GM Bt cotton in India has brought stagnant yields, massive pest attacks, and increased agrochemical use, according to data presented at a conference.

GMO advocates often claim that GM Bt cotton was responsible for increased cotton yield in India. But while yield did increase for the first few years of Bt cotton introduction, this gain was not sustained.

And the data show that even this temporary gain was not due to Bt cotton. During the years when cotton yields grew, from 2002–2005, the percentage of Bt cotton in the total cotton crop was minuscule – below 6% at the all-India level. As the percentage of GM Bt cotton in the total cotton crop grew to over 90%, yields stagnated and even declined.

At the Non-GMO Project, we believe that by encouraging a non-GMO seed supply, we are supporting the restoration of traditional seed breeding and the right of farmers to save and plant their own seeds and grow varieties of their choice. It’s one of our most important principles. But why do we need to restore these traditional farming practices in the first place? One important reason is that some of agriculture’s biggest corporations use patents to control how farmers grow crops.

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But What about Patents on Non-GMO Seeds?

Non-GMO seeds can be patented too. The key differences are the number of patents and the degree to which those patents impact large-scale agriculture. Some of the most commonly-patented non-GMO plants are actually flowers, not food. Meanwhile, some GMO-producing corporations hold more than thousands of patents (search here to explore these patents), and they hold them on major commodity crops such as soy and corn.

Do we really want to live in a world where we depend on just a couple companies for the whole world’s seed supply?

At the Non-GMO Project, we do not. We do, however, want to live in a world where individual farmers have the power to collect, crossbreed, and save their own seeds.

More than 200 participants from GMO Free Regions throughout Europe, as well as guests from North-America, Asia, New Zealand and Africa (35 nations in total) met in Berlin to discuss new an old challenges of genetic engineering in agriculture as well as the environment at large. They were relieved and reassured by the recent European Court of Justice’ decision that all forms of genetic engineering, including CRISPR-Cas and other forms of so called “gene editing” fall under the European directive on GMOs. This requires risk assessment and specific approval for each GM product, traceability and labelling.

However, participants agreed that the new GM technologies require special attention and debate and additional risk assessment. A new generation of GMO, “Gene drives”, designed to alter the genetic makeup of entire species, including their potential extinction, was of major concern. Such Gene Drive Organisms (GDOs) should not be released into the environment anywhere on the world, participants agreed.

The network of 64 gmo free regional governments, hosting the 2nd day of the Conference, adopted a Berlin Declaration, that calls for a European and global moratorium of Gene Drives and demands that national governments as well as the EU take on this issue at the upcoming meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity. When presenting the declaration, the networks President Dr. Beatrix Tappeser, said: “Let us continue the precautionary approach, and maintain our GMO Free pathway, that has served the European Regions so well over the past decade. There needs to be more public investment in the agriculture people really want.”

Benny Haerlin of “Save Our Seeds”, who organised the NGO-part of the conference, added: “The debate about GMOs, including recent promises of “new” genetic engineering are not just a matter of safety and precaution. The dispute about these technologies is about the kind of agriculture we want for the future: Multinational industry driven techno-innovation versus small farmers driven agroecology.”

European Network of Scientists for Social and Environmental Responsibility (ENSSER), Berlin, Germany

By Dr Eva Gelinsky and Dr Angelika Hilbeck – ENSSER

Introduction

“Nothing has been “banned”. Interpreting laws that simply recognise the novelty and distinctiveness of different kinds of GM breeding processes, the ECJ is merely offering a consistent framework of interpretation within which continuing healthy reasoned argumentation can be more rigorously played out.”

Soon after the pest attack, the Maharashtra government announced a compensation of Rs 30,800 a hectare to the affected farmers in a region already reeling under an agrarian crisis. Of this, Rs 16,000 a hectare was to to be paid by seed companies under the Maharashtra Cotton Seeds Act.

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Officials said the seed companies often challenge the state’s orders. “The companies always move court, challenging our orders, saying the farmers do not follow instructions on the seed packets,” another official said. “In some cases, the compensation slapped is more than the firms’ annual turnover.”

Experts and farmers’ activists agreed. “I don’t think these claims will be accepted by the seed companies, as they cite the lack of awareness among farmers about the pest attack,” said farm activist Vijay Jawandhia. “Instead of waiting for the compensation from companies, the government should first pay it to the farmers. He said only a-fourth of the cotton farmers applied for the compensation as they did not have awareness about the provision in the first place.

Bijay Kumar, additional chief secretary, agriculture department said, “The compensation is being claimed based on applications and depending on the loss assessed from the crop cutting system. While giving the compensation under NDRF norms, the government is more liberal, but the compensation is claimed more scientifically from the companies. Even if the companies move court against the orders, we are sure to win them in the court.”

Invitation to the public event on the evening before the 9th GMO Free Europe Conference:

Bound to fail – The flawed scientific foundations of genetic engineering

The Central Dogma is 60 years old - but has it always been the new clothes of the emperor?

Public and press event: Wednesday, September 5th 7 – 9.30 pm

GLS Bank, Schumannstraße 10, 10117 Berlin

With:

• Prof. Ignacio Chapela, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, California, USA

• Prof. Jack Heinemann, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

• Dr. Ricarda Steinbrecher, EcoNexus, Oxford, UK

• Dr. Angelika Hilbeck, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

• Dr. Sarah Agapito Tenfen, GenØk - Centre for Biosafety, Tromsø, Norway

Organizers:

• European Network of Scientists for Social and Environmental Responsibility

• GLS Gemeinschaftsbank

• Zukunftsstiftung Landwirtschaft

Mega-mergers and the concentration of power in the agri-food sector

What is corporate concentration, why does it matter for food security, and who are the biggest corporate players in each agrifood sector/"link" in the Industrial Food Chain? This accessible booklet (soon to be available in French and Spanish) answers these questions and more.

The Too Big to Feed: The Short Report was developed by ETC Group, in partnership with IPES-Food. It summarizes the full report Too Big to Feed, published by IPES-Food in October 2017. The full-length report (available here) includes additional data and a more detailed analysis on the impact of the consolidation of the agri-food sector.