[Culture_aglist] IPR in Iraq

[Glenn Stone]

Tatiana is right, but you have to understand the context of these struggles over IPRs (intellectual property rights).  The disputes over crop IPRs in the past, like over the Plant Patent Act (1930) and the Plant Var. protection Act (1972), and even what some people called the "Seed Wars" of the 1970s,  were relatively lowkey "below the fold" issues.  There was a sea change change in 1995, with GMOs hitting the market and the GATT morphing into the WTO -- one of the main functions of which is the establishment of strong IPRs in developing countries.  This raised the stakes enormously, and the quality/quantity of  rhetoric changed, becoming more strident and misleading.  The specter of corporations stealing seed control from farmers has been one of the biggest guns in the rhetoric wars and yes, it sometimes gets fired a bit indiscriminantly.

This set of amendments to Iraq's patent law doesn't ban replanting per se --  no laws do -- but it does establish a totally inflexible ban on replanting any seeds registered for plant variety protection.  This is remarkable.  Even the US law allows exemptions; farmers are allowed to replant and even sell "brown-bagged" seed as long as it isn't on a commercial scale.  (That's why seed companies have to use contract law to keep farmers from replanting GM seeds; when you buy Roundup-ready soybeans you have to sign a use agreement not to replant.)

Increasing corporate control of seeds, either through biological means like hybrids and GURTs, or through legal means (like this Iraq law), is a profoundly important process (Kloppenburg's masterful work on this, First The Seed, is on its way out in 2nd edition).   But those of us who actually do research on agriculture have to move beyond the activists' sound bites, including the incessant claims about farmers saving their seeds.  Where I am working in India, rice farmers voluntarily buy about 2/3 of their rice seed every year. I am studying cotton farmers who not only buy seed every year, but they actually cite as a major reason for selecting a seed that it is brand new -- i.e., they place a premium on seed they neither they nor anyone else in their community has grown (cf. to the tales of accumulated local knowledge about landraces).  Many have come to associate seed saving with being obsolete/poor/uneducated and they are enthusiastic seed buyers instead of savers, in a country where there is widespread concern about IPRs in seeds.


Glenn Davis Stone
Prof. of Anthropology and Environmental Studies
Washington Univ., St. Louis


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tatiana Schreiber" <tatianas at sover.net>
To: "Lois Stanford" <lstanfor at nmsu.edu>
Cc: "'Culture and Agriculture'" <culture_aglist at colfa.utsa.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, November 16, 2004 10:31 AM
Subject: Re: [Culture_aglist] FW: [asfs] Seeds of Change in Iraq


> I read the article on the GRAIN website... It looks to me that the law in
> place prohibits the replanting of patented seeds by transnational seed
> companies (which include seeds that
> may have been provided to farmers in "rebuilding Iraq" projects...) but
> does not prohibit the replanting of seeds per se... in other words, the
> articles about this seem very misleading to me, because they imply that
> the law would prohibit farmers from saving seeds across the board which I
> don't see anywhere in the law as far as I could tell. I think
> the law is very problematic, because it imposes a US style patenting
> law on  Iraq, encourages the use of GMO seeds, and endangers farmers by
> threatening them with legal action if they replant these seeds -- but I'm
> also troubled by the misleading character of the
> articles about this. I'd be very curious as to others' point of
> view.
>
> Tatiana Schreiber (doctoral student, Environmental Studies, Antioch
> New England Graduate School).
>
> On Tue, 16 Nov 2004, Lois Stanford wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Ellen J Fried [mailto:ejf208 at nyu.edu]
> > Sent: Monday, November 15, 2004 2:25 PM
> > To: ASFS ListServ
> > Subject: [asfs] Seeds of Change in Iraq
> >
> > Two website sites - of clear political stance - are claiming that the
> > interim laws in Iraq put into place by Paul Bremmer firmly establish
> > patented seeds as the agricultural wave of the future in Iraq, to the
> > detriment of farmers who have practiced saving seed from one generation
to
> > the next.
> >
> > The law itself is dense, but clearly contains provisions that are
familiar
> > to those who have followed Monsanto's and other seed firms' efforts to
> > prohibit seed saving and prosecute those who do.
> >
> > The success of future farming in Iraq depends on alot more than seed
laws.
> > Are the laws a positive step toward modernization and entry into the
global
> > trading community? Or the continued corporate rape of a country?
> >
> > Links below:
> >
> > http://www.vegsource.com/articles2/iraq_seeds.htm
> > http://www.grain.org/articles/?id=6
> >
> >
http://www.iraqcoalition.org/regulations/20040426_CPAORD_81_Patents_Law.pdf

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