The Asian Age: National: Thursday,
May 19, 2016.
May 22 has
been declared International Biodiversity Day by the United Nations. It gives us
an opportunity to become aware of the rich biodiversity that has been evolved
by our farmers as co-creators with nature. It also provides an opportunity to
acknowledge the threats to our biodiversity and our rights from IPR monopolies
and monocultures.
Just as our
Vedas and Upanishads have no individual authors, our rich biodiversity,
including seeds, have been evolved cumulatively. They are a common heritage of
present and future farm communities who have evolved them collectively. I
recently joined tribals in Central India who have evolved thousands of rice
varieties for their festival of “Akti”. Akti is a celebration of the
relationship of the seed and the soil, and the sharing of the seed as a sacred
duty to the Earth and the community.
In addition to
learning about seeds from women and peasants, I had the honour to participate
and contribute to international and national laws on biodiversity. I worked
closely with our government in the run-up to the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, when
the UN Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) was adopted by the international
community. Three key commitments in the CBD are protection of the sovereign
rights of countries to their biodiversity, the traditional knowledge of
communities and biosafety in the context of genetically-modified foods.
The UN
appointed me on the expert panel for the framework for the biosafety protocol,
now adopted as the Cartagena protocol on biosafety. I was appointed a member of
the expert group to draft the National Biodiversity Act, as well as the Plant
Variety and Farmers Rights Act. We ensured that farmers rights are recognised
in our laws. “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”, it says.
We have
worked for the past three decades to protect the diversity and integrity of our
seeds, the rights of farmers, and resist and challenge the illegitimate IPR
monopolies of companies like Monsanto which do genetic engineering to claim
patents and royalties.
Patents on
seeds are unjust and unjustified. A patent or any intellectual property right
is a monopoly granted by society in exchange for benefits. But society has no
benefit in toxic, non-renewable seeds. We are losing biodiversity and cultural
diversity, we are losing nutrition, taste and quality of our food. Above all,
we are losing our fundamental freedom to decide what seeds we will sow, how we
will grow our food and what we will eat.
Seed as a
common good has become a commodity of private seed companies. Unless protected
and put back in the hands of our farmers, it is at risk of being lost forever.
Across the
world, communities are saving and exchanging seeds in diverse ways, appropriate
to their context. They are creating and recreating freedom for the seed, for
seed keepers, and for all life and all people. When we save the seed, we also
reclaim and rejuvenate knowledge the knowledge of breeding and conservation,
the knowledge of food and farming. Uniformity as a pseudo-scientific measure
has been used to establish unjust IPR monopolies on seed. Once a company has
patents on seeds, it pushes its patented crops on farmers in order to collect royalties.
Humanity has
been eating thousands and thousands (8,500) of plant species. Today we are
being condemned to eat GM corn and soya in various forms. Four primary crops —
corn, soya, canola and cotton have all been grown at the cost of other crops
because they generate a royalty for every acre planted. For example, India had
1,500 different kinds of cotton, now 95 per cent of the cotton planted is GMO
Bt Cotton for which Monsanto collects royalties. Over 11 million hectares of
land are used to cultivate cotton, of which 9.5 million hectares is used to
grow Monsanto’s Bt variety.
A common
question is: Why do farmers adopt Bt cotton which harms them? But farmers do
not choose Bt cotton. They have to buy Bt cotton as all other choices are
destroyed. Monsanto establishes its seed monopoly through three mechanisms:
Make farmers
give up old seed, called “seed replacement” in industry jargon.
Influence
public institutions to stop breeding. According to information received through
RTI, the Central Cotton Research Institute did not release cotton varieties for
Vidharba after Monsanto entered with its Bt cotton seeds.
Lock Indian
companies into licensing agreements.
These
coercive, corrupt mechanisms are now falling apart. Navdanya created community
seed banks and farmers have access to open pollinated, native organic seeds.
The CCIR, under the leadership of Dr Keshav Kranti, is developing native cotton
varieties. Finally, the government also intervened to regulate Monsanto’s
monopoly. On March 8, it passed a seed price control order regulating the price
of seed under the Essential Commodities Act.
Monsanto and
the biotechnology industry challenged the government order. We were impleaded
in the Karnataka high court. On May 3, Justice Bopanna gave an order
reaffirming that the government has a duty to regulate seed prices and Monsanto
does not have a right to seed monopoly. Biodiversity and small farmers are the
foundation of food security, not corporations like Monsanto which are
destroying biodiversity and pushing farmers to suicide. These crimes against
humanity must stop. That is why on October 16, International Food Day, we will
organise a Monsanto Tribunal at The Hague to “try” Monsanto for its various
crimes.
(The
writer is the executive director of the Navdanya Trust)
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