November 2007
Farmers' organizations who were invited to attend a United Nations meeting on the Treaty that governs the exchange of crop seeds for research and plant breeding late yesterday told the assembled governments that the Treaty would have to be suspended.
English: Read the news release and declaration
Español: El communicado del prensa | la declaración
Français: La déclaration
The second meeting of the Governing Body of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture ("the Law of the Seed") began on Monday and is expected to run through Friday but has been blocked -- indeed, almost completely silent -- because its 115 member governments have been unable to find the $4.9 million necessary to keep the lights on in its Secretariat and to maintain fundamental monitoring mechanisms that could ensure equitable sharing of the benefits of the seeds to be exchanged for research. Governments have also failed to commit funding to support in situ ("on-farm") seed conservation or for capacity building in the global South.
"We are faced with the greatest case of institutional biopiracy ever seen," said Andrew Mushita of the Community Biodiversity Development and Conservation Network (a network of conservation programs in 21 countries). "In effect, governments are now enabling multinational seed companies to impose a legally-binding regime that forces the exchange of farmers' seeds without reciprocal benefits," said Mushita who also addressed governments yesterday.
Agricultural biodiversity of all food species is a vital sub-set of general biodiversity, which is currently being threatened by globalisation of food markets and tastes, intellectual property systems and the spread of unsustainable industrial food production, but it provides the basis of the food security and livelihood security of billions of people and the development of all food production, including for industrial agriculture and for the biotechnology (Life) industries. It is the first link in the food chain, developed and safeguarded by farmers, herders and fishers throughout the world. which has been accelerating throughout the 20th century in parallel with the demands of an increasing population and greater competition for natural resources. The principal underlying causes include:
The rapid expansion of industrial and Green Revolution agriculture, intensive livestock production, industrial fisheries and aquaculture (some production systems using genetically modified varieties and breeds) that cultivate relatively few crop varieties in monocultures, rear a limited number of domestic animal breeds, or fish for, or cultivate, few aquatic species. Globalisation of the food system and marketing, and the extension of industrial patenting and other intellectual property systems to living organisms have led to the widespread cultivation and rearing of fewer varieties and breeds for a more uniform, less diverse but more competitive global market.
As a consequence there has been:
Marginalisation of small-scale, diverse food production systems that conserve farmers' varieties of crops and breeds of domestic animals, which form the genetic pool for food and agriculture in the future.
Reduced integration of livestock in arable production, which reduces the diversity of uses for which livestock are needed.
Reduced use of 'nurture' fisheries techniques, that conserve and develop aquatic biodiversity.
UKabc: Bringing together Public Interest UK organisations concerned with Sustainable Use, Conservation, Benefit Sharing, Trade, Patents, Intellectual Property, Biopiracy, Biotechnology, Genetic Engineering, Biosafety and other issues related to the Equitable Use of Agricultural Biodiversity for Food Sovereignty and Local Food and Livelihood Security