Seed Sovereignty Documents | A Letter from Concerned Citizens of India and the USA

 

Moderator’s note: In 2005, in a widely-noted move, Monsanto
acquired Seminis, a seed company that at the time controlled 40 percent of
the U.S. vegetable seed market and 20 percent of the world market. Reports from
the Organic Seed Alliance at the time found that this acquisition gave the Gene
Giant control of 55 percent of the lettuce on U.S. supermarket shelves, 75
percent of the tomatoes, and 85 percent of the peppers, with strong holdings in
beans, cucumbers, squash, melons, broccoli, cabbage, spinach and peas.

In a more recent report issued last year by the
Center for Food Safety and Save Our Seeds (2013:2),
the top three agricultural biotechnology corporations – Monsanto, DuPont, and
Syngenta – were found to control 53 percent of the global commercial seed
market. This is the agricultural equivalent of a monopoly in biopower.

It is worth noting that the proponents of GE crops champion
adoption of the technology as an economic panacea for all that ails the
profit-hungry industrial farmers of the world. The economic argument takes the
form of the proposition that the use of transgenic seeds will reduce overall seed
costs proportionate to net revenue. This, it turns out, is a myth, even for the
economies of scale adopted by industrial growers in the USA and abroad: The
2013 CFS report on seeds, relying on USDA data, notes that the price of seed
per planted acre has increased dramatically between 1995 and 2011, especially
for the principal three crops that dominate the transgenic crop market: by 325%
for soybeans; 249% for corn; and 516% for cotton. 

This is hardly sustainable agriculture and results in
a hyperinflationary cycle that traps acquiescent growers into the equally
interminable GMO stacked traits treadmill. Like addicts, the hapless growers –
overwhelmed by resistant weeds and bugs – wait for the next round of miracle
[sic] crops from the transgenic product lines.

Let’s be clear: These are “product” lines designed to
make a profit for the producer not the grower and like any commodity transgenic
crops are promoted through ruthless, deceptive, and manipulative advertizing
and public relations campaigns. Moreover, these3 products are also based on
patents, and especially intellectual property rights (IPR) patents that
restrict and indeed eliminate the ability of farmers to keep and develop their
own seed stocks. Instead, the patenting regime allows the large multinational
corporations to dominate the seed market and thus control and define the nature
of the global food system, even if that means that hunger and malnutrition and
loss of local and culturally appropriate food self-sufficiency continue to
grow.

As products of capitalist corporations, the seemingly
endless stream of GE crops are antithetical to democracy and food justice. Indeed,
the patenting and commercialization of seeds is a threat to “seed freedom” and
“food democracy”. This is the principal message of an Open Letter to Prime Minister Modi and President Obama from
concerned citizens of India and the United States that we are posting today as part of
our continuing series, “Seed Sovereignty Documents”.

Image courtesy of seedfreedom.eu

Seed Freedom and Food Democracy

AN OPEN LETTER TO PRIME MINISTER
MODI AND PRESIDENT OBAMA

From democratic concerned citizens of India and the US

We, as concerned and democratic citizens of India, and the US, welcome
the coming together of two of the largest democracies of the world to work
together to protect the rights of their citizens and their biodiversity. Both
nations were founded on the principles of freedoms of our people, and the
unacceptability of colonialism and subservience to Empire.

President Obama, you have been invited by Prime Minister Narendra Modi,
to India’s Republic day celebrations on 26^th Jan,
2015. In 1930, on 26^th January, the people of India pledged to
demand Purna
Swaraj or complete
self-rule independent of the British Empire. (Literally translated from Sanskrit, purna, “complete”; swa, “self”; raj, “rule”.)

The people of India observed 26 January as Independence Day. The flag of India was hoisted publicly, across India, by Congress
volunteers, patriots and the citizens of India. The declaration stated the
following:

We believe
that it is the inalienable right of the Indian people, as of any other people,
to have freedom and to enjoy the fruits of their toil and have the necessities
of life, so that they may have full opportunities of growth. We believe also
that if any government deprives a people of these rights and oppresses them the
people have a further right to alter it or to abolish it. The British
Government in India has not only deprived the Indian people of their freedom
but has based itself on the exploitation of the masses, and has ruined India
economically, politically, culturally, and spiritually. We believe, therefore,
that India must sever the British connection and attain Purna Swaraj, or
complete independence.

We write this letter in the spirit of Swaraj-of Bija Swaraj
(Seed Freedom) and Anna Swaraj (Food Democracy), with the hope that your visit to India
will enhance and deepen the common freedoms of the people of India and the US,
not the freedoms of the Corporations undermining the freedoms of citizens in
both countries. Your visit coincides with pressure being put by the US, on behalf
of its corporations, to undermine seed freedom in India. Our particular concern
is Intellectual Property Rights in the area of biodiversity, seeds , and living
biological resources

On 30
September 2014, the US and India issued a Joint Statement on the occasion of
Prime Minister Modi’s meeting with President Obama, in
the US.

(a)greeing on the need to foster
innovation in a manner that promotes economic growth and job
creation...committed to establish an annual high-level Intellectual Property
(IP) Working Group with appropriate decision-making and technical-level
meetings as part of the Trade Policy Forum.

We hope
that fostering innovation refers to real innovation and not theft from nature
or other parts of the world.

LIFE IS NOT AN INVENTION

The
expansion of IPRs to cover living systems and organisms is a distortion of “innovation”
and “invention”. This distortion was introduced by corporations such as
Monsanto into the TRIPs (Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights) Agreement
of the WTO (World Trade OPrganization). Corporate influence on Patent Law began
with the drafting of the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS)
Agreement of the WTO by the Intellectual Property Committee (IPC) of the
multilateral corporations.

James
Enyart of Monsanto is on record illustrating just how deeply the TRIPs
agreement is aligned to corporate interest and against the interests of nations
and their citizens: 

“Once created, the first task of the IPC was to repeat the missionary
work we did in the US in the early days, this time with the industrial associations
of Europe and Japan to convince them that a code was possible….Besides selling
our concepts at home, we went to Geneva where [we] presented [our] document to
the staff of the GATT Secretariat. We also took the opportunity to present it
to the Geneva based representatives of a large number of countries… What I have
described to you is absolutely unprecedented in GATT. Industry has identified a
major problem for international trade. It crafted a solution, reduced it to a
concrete proposal and sold it to our own and other governments… The
industries and traders of world commerce have played simultaneously the role of
patients, the diagnosticians and the prescribing physicians.”

The
first case in the WTO was initiated by the US against India, to force India to
change it’s patent laws. Methods of agriculture and plants were excluded from
patentability in the Indian patent act to ensure that seed, the first link in
the food chain, was held as a common property resource in the public domain and
farmers’ inalienable right to save, exchange and improve seed
was not violated. And only process patents were allowed in medicine. The
pharmaceutical corporations, which are the same as the biotechnology
corporations, are seeking absolute monopolies on seed and medicine through
patents.

When
India amended her patent acts, safeguards consistent with TRIPS were
introduced. Article 3 defines what is not patentable subject matter. Article 3(d)
excludes as inventions “the mere discovery of any new property or new use for a
known substance”. This was the article under which Novartis’s patent claim to a known cancer drug was rejected.
This is the article that Novartis tried to challenge in the Supreme court and lost.

Article 3(j) excludes from
patentability “plants and animals in whole or in any part thereof other than
microorganisms; but including seeds, varieties, and species, and essentially
biological processes for production or propagation of plants and animals”. This was the
article used by the Indian patent office to reject a Monsanto patent on climate
resilient seeds.

While the Indian patent office rejected a Monsanto patent, the US
Supreme Court ruled on behalf of Monsanto against a farmer called Bowman who
had not bought seeds from Monsanto but purchased soybeans from an Indiana grain
elevator. The US Supreme court ruling creates intellectual property in future
generations of a grain or seed. This is biologically and intellectually
incorrect because all that Monsanto has done is add a gene for resistance to
its proprietary herbicide Round up, to (i) claim ownership of any plant/animal
that gene finds it’s way into and (ii) to enforce a RoundUp monopoly. Adding a
gene of RoundUp resistance does not amount to “inventing” or “creating” a soya
bean seed, its future generations and the species the gene pollutes.

In addition to suing farmers like
Bowman, Monsanto has sued farmers like Percy Schmeiser of Canada whose fields
were contaminated with Monsanto’s Roundup ready
canola. Instead of the principle of polluter pays, patents allow Monsanto to
work on the principle of polluter gets paid. This has recently happened in the
Australia in the case of Steve Marsh. While
Monsanto does not have a patent on Bt cotton in India, it goes outside the law
to collect royalties as “technology fees”. Most of the 291000 farmers suicides
in India since 1995 when WTO came into force are concentrated in the cotton
belt. And 95% of cotton seed is now controlled by Monsanto.

Intellectual
Property Rights are defined as property in the “products of the mind”,
including patents. Patents are granted for inventions, and give the patent
holder the right to exclude everyone from the use or marketing of a patented
product or process. Over the last 2 decades, patent laws have taken a different
direction, under the influence of corporations, from protecting the interests
of genuine inventions and ideas to ownership of life and control over survival
essentials like seed and medicine. Such monopolies are violations of article 21
of the Indian Constitution, which guarantees all citizens the right to life.

This is why 3(j) in India’s patent law
excludes essentially biological processes from being counted as an invention.

The
TRIPS article on Patents of Life was to be reviewed within four years of the
coming into force of the WTO agreement i.e. in 1999. India in its submission
had stated, “Clearly, there is a case for re-examining the need to grant
patents on life-forms anywhere in the world. Until such systems are in place,
it may be advisable to (a) exclude patents on all life-forms. The mandatory
review of TRIPS has been blocked by the US since 1999. This review must be
completed to remove the current IPR distortions.

Biopiracy is not “Innovation”

Biopiracy
is another example of false claims to “inventions”. Over the past decade,
through new property rights, corporations have gained control over the
diversity of life on earth, and people’s
indigenous knowledge. There is no innovation involved in these cases; they are
instruments of monopoly control over life itself. Patents on living resources
and indigenous knowledge are an enclosure of the biological and intellectual
commons. Life forms have been redefined as “manufacture”, and “machines”,
robbing life of its integrity and self-organisation. Traditional knowledge is
being pirated and patented unleashing a new epidemic of “bio piracy”. 

• 
Patenting of
Neem. The patenting of the
fungicidal properties of Neem was a blatant example of biopiracy and indigenous
knowledge. But on 10th May, the European Patent Office (EPO) revoked the patent
(0436257 B1) granted to the United States Department of Agriculture and the
multinational corporation W. R. Grace for a method of controlling fungi on
plants by the aid of an extract of seeds from the Neem tree. The challenge to the
patent of Neem was made at the Munich Office of the EPO by 3 groups : The
European Parliament’s Green Party, Dr. Vandana Shiva of
RFSTE, and the International Federation of Organic Agriculture and challenged
it on the grounds of “lack of novelty and inventive step”. They demanded the
invalidation of the patent among others on the ground that the fungicide
qualities of the Neem and its use has been known in India for over 2000 years,
and for use to make insect repellents, soaps, cosmetics and contraceptives and
the neem patent was finally revoked.

• 
Biopiracy of
Basmati. On 8th July 1994, Rice Tec
Inc, a Texas based company, filed a generic patent (Patent No. 5663484) on
basmati rice lines and grains in the United States Patent and Trademark Office
(USPTO) with 20 broad claims designed to create a complete rice monopoly patent
which included planting, harvesting collecting and even cooking. Though Rice
Tec claimed to have “invented” the Basmati rice, yet they accepted the fact
that it has been derived from several rice accessions from India. Rice Tec had
claimed a patent for inventing novel Basmati lines and grains. After protests,
and the case in the Supreme Court of India, the U.S. Patent and Trademark
Office struck down most sections of the Basmati patent.

• 
Syngenta’s Attempt at Biopiracy of India’s rice diversity. Syngenta,
the biotech giant, tried to grab the precious collections of 22,972 varieties
of paddy, India’s rice diversity, from Chattisgarh
in India. It had signed a MoU with the Indira Gandhi Agricultural University
(IGAU) for access to Dr. Richharia’s priceless
collection of rice diversity, which he had looked after as if the rice
varieties were his own children. The mass agitation by the peoples’ organisation, farmers’ unions and civil liberty groups, women’s groups, students’ groups and
biodiversity conservation movements against Syngenta and IGAU bore result and
Syngenta called off the deal.

• 
Monsanto’s Biopiracy of Indian Wheat. European Patent Office in Munich revoked Monsanto’s patent on the Indian wheat variety, Nap Hal.
Monsanto, the biggest seed corporation was assigned the patent (No. EP 0445929
B1) on wheat on May 21st, 2003 by the EPO under the simple title, “plants”. On January 27th, 2004 The Research Foundation for
Science, Technology and Ecology along with Greenpeace and Bharat Krishak Samaha
filed a petition at the EPO challenging the patent rights given to Monsanto,
leading to the patent being revoked.

• 
ConAgra’s Biopiracy claim on Atta (Wheat flour). Atta, a staple food and ingredient within India, is
currently under threat from the corporation ConAgra who filed a “novel” patent
(patent no 6,098,905) claiming the rights to an atta processing method, and was
granted the patent on August 8th, 2000. The method that ConAgra is claiming to be
novel has been used throughout South Asia by thousands of atta chakkis, and so
cannot justly be claimed as a novel patent.

• 
Monsanto’s Biopiracy of Indian Melons. In May 2011, the US company Monsanto was awarded a
European patent on conventionally bred melons (EP 1 962 578). These melons,
which originally stem from India have a natural resistance to certain plant
viruses. Using conventional breeding methods, this type of resistance was
introduced to other melons and is now patented as a Monsanto “invention”. The
actual plant disease, Cucurbit yellow stunting disorder virus (CYSDV), has been
spreading through North America, Europe and North Africa for several years. The
Indian melon, which confers resistance to this virus, is registered in
international seed banks as PI 313970. With the new patent, Monsanto can now
block access to all breeding material inheriting the resistance derived from
the Indian melon. The patent might discourage future breeding efforts and the
development of new melon varieties. Melon breeders and farmers could be
severely restricted by the patent. At the same time, it is already known that
further breeding will be necessary to produce melons that are actually
protected against the plant virus. DeRuiter, a well-known seed company in the Netherlands,
originally developed the melons. DeRuiter used plants designated PI 313970 – a
non-sweet melon from India. Monsanto acquired DeRuiter in 2008, and now owns
the patent. The patent was opposed by several organisations in 2012.

•  Monsanto’s Biopiracy of Climate Resilience. Monsanto applied for
blanket patents for “Methods of Enhancing Stress
Tolerance in plants and methods thereof” 
(The title of the patent was later amended to “A method of producing a
transgenic plant, with increasing heat tolerance, salt tolerance or drought
tolerance”). These traits have been evolved by our farmers over millennia
through applying their knowledge of breeding. On 5th July, 2013, Hon
Justice Prabha Sridevi, Chair of the Intellectual Property Appellate Board of
India, and Hon Shri DPS Parmar, technical member, dismissed Monsanto’s appeal against the rejection of these patents that
claim Monsanto has invented all resilience

Corporations
like Monsanto have taken 1500 patents on Climate Resilient crops. The climate
resilient traits will become increasingly important in times of climate
instability. Along coastal areas, farmers have evolved flood tolerant and salt
tolerant varieties of rice such as “Bhundi”, “Kalambank”, “Lunabakada”, “Sankarchin”,
“Nalidhulia”, “Ravana”, ”Seulapuni”,
“Dhosarakhuda”. Crops such as millets have been evolved for drought tolerance,
and provide food security in water scare regions, and water scarce years.

To end
this new epidemic and to save the sovereignty rights of our farmers and
citizens, it is required that our legal systems recognise the rights of
communities, their collective and cumulative innovation in breeding diversity,
and not merely the rights of corporations. It is the need of the hour to evolve
categories of community intellectual rights (CIRs) related to biodiversity to
balance and set limits along with boundary conditions for protection. The
Intellectual Property Rights as evolved are in effect, a denial of the
collective innovation of our people and the seed sovereignty or seed rights of
our farmers. 

FREEDOM TO SAVE SEEDS IS A FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT

In 2004, both India and the US introduced new seed laws that
criminalised the saving of traditional/heirloom varieties of all seeds. By
outlawing the availability of renewable, open-pollinated seeds, corporations
selling non-renewable patented seeds would be able to force everyone, from a
large scale farmer to a balcony gardener, to buy only the seeds they sold, ensuring an
absolute monopoly.

In India, hundreds of thousands of citizens petitioned the government
and worked with the Parliament to roll back the Seed Law of 2004.

India’s law titled Plant Variety Protection and Farmers Rights Act 2001
has a clause on Farmers Rights.

…a farmer shall be deemed to be entitled to save, use, sow, resow,
exchange, share or sell his farm produce including seed of a variety protected
under this Act in the same manner as he was entitled before the coming into
force of this Act. 

There is no such protection for citizens and farmers of the US. Not only
are citizens in the US being denied their right to know what they are eating,
they are now being denied their right and duty to save and exchange seed. The
Seed Laws of 2004 have been used in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and now, Minnesota,
to shut down seed libraries. 

Seed
saving is the foundation of Swaraj in our times. Seed saving is vital to
our ability to address hunger and malnutrition. Seed Saving is vital to bring
back taste, nutrition and quality in our food. And without conservation and
evolution of the biodiversity of our seeds, we will not be able to adapt to
climate change.

Seed
Freedom is an imperative for the poor farmers of India, but also for the
equally hard working farmers of the US; and the human species.

And the
duty to save seeds is an ethical and ecological imperative.

Patents
on life violate the “Ordre Public” or moral order
embodied in the philosophy of Vasudhaiv Kutumbhakam, all beings on earth as a
family. IP laws need to be subjected to ethical criteria, criteria of justice,
and on a clear definition of invention.

Life forms,
plants and seeds are all evolving, self-organized, sovereign beings. They have
intrinsic worth, value and standing. Owning life by claiming it to be a
corporate invention is ethically and legally wrong. Patents on seeds are
legally wrong because seeds are not an invention. Patents on seeds are
ethically wrong because seeds are life forms, they are our kin members of our
earth family.

When the US talks of
strong patent laws, it is restricting itself to the corporate interests. On
criteria of corporate rights at the cost of nature and people, US laws are
strong. On grounds of ethical considerations and social and ecological justice,
they are weak.

CORPORATIONS ARE NOT PERSONS; AN ASSAULT ON DEMOCRACY
IS NOT FREE SPEECH

During your first election
campaign, President Obama, you had promised you would implement a law for labeling
GMO foods. Sadly, $100 million has been used to defeat labeling laws in
California, Washington, Colorado, Oregon. And Vermont, which did pass a labeling
law, is being sued by corporations on the false premise of corporate
personhood, and the influence of money as corporate “free speech”. Denying
Citizens the Right to Know violates the fundamental principles of Food
Democracy.

When the County of Maui in Hawaii voted to be GMO
free, Dow and Monsanto sued them, subverting the democratic process, which
rests on the will of people, not the power of Corporations. This corporate
jurisprudence needs to be reversed if human rights and the rights of Mother
Earth are to be protected.

THE LETTER

Dear President Obama and Prime Minister
Modi,

Humanity and the Earth are at a critical
juncture. Patents on seeds and seed monopolies have created an ecological
crisis of biodiversity erosion, erosion of farmers’ rights and erosion of
people’s freedoms.

It is not India’s IPR laws that need changing but US laws. On criteria of rights of
nature and people’s rights, India’s laws are strong.  As our democracies deepen their interaction, the citizens of
India and the US expect that it will be ethical and ecological values that will
lead the dialogue, not the false claims of “invention” by corporations to
establish ownership of life on Earth. Ownership and royalty collections are the
only reason GMOs are being pushed by corporations. It is imperative that we
protect our cultural and indigenous intellectual property from being
appropriated for short-term profits of a few.

As citizens, we ask that in each of our
countries, you do not dismantle the protections that ensure the ethical fabric
of our societies and the fundamental freedoms like saving seeds and knowing
what we are eating, in order to allow corporate ownership of nature’s bounty
through false claims of innovation. We ask that our democratic representatives
take the strengths in our legislation (e.g. Article 3(d) and 3(j) of the Indian
Patent Act) and multiply our strengths. Working together, we resolve to protect
these rights that we have and should have. Prime Minister Modi, we count on you to uphold the science based definitions
in India’s patent laws 
that protect the rights of citizens, and play a leadership role to work
with President Obama to help correct the distortions in the US IPR system.

We ask that the US not put pressure on
India to undo article 3(d) and 3(j), and will instead take lessons from India
about how to respect the integrity of living systems and processes, and put the
rights of farmers and citizens first. For us, seed freedom includes farmers’
rights to save, exchange, breed, and sell farmers’ varieties of seeds – varieties that have been evolved over millennia without
interference of the state or corporations.

Prime Minister Modi and President Obama,
let this Republic day in India sow the seeds of Earth Democracy and Vasudhaiva
Kutumbhakam, for our times and the future.  We hope you show great leadership by working together to
strengthen the laws to protect your citizens and countries instead of making it
easier for corporations to take control over lifeforms for short-term profits.
Let us build Purna Swaraj for all life on Earth, freedom to grow our food and
know our food. Let us work toward a future where our food is our freedom.