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Tue 1 Mar, 2005 09:12 pm
When L. Paul Bremer, provisional president of Iraq, stepped down from his post in the supposed transition to sovereignty at the end of June, he left in effect some 100 orders that continue have force of law today. One of these, number 81, prohibits Iraqi farmers from saving seeds. This means they cannot use the seeds from one harvest to plant the following season; they have to buy seeds each year from the agribusiness transnationals. In fact, the world commerce in seeds is actually dominated by five firms: Monsanto, Dupont, Syngenta, Bayer and Dow Chemical.
Apparently these agra-corps have a surplus of gentically altered seed stock that noone else will buy, so by law of Bremmer the Iraqi's will buy it or starve. This is according to Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero, director of the Proyecto de Bioseguridad Puerto Rico, a research associate at the Institute for Social Ecology and a senior fellow at the Environmental Leadership Program.
if that is true, they are bastids. How could that be enforced in a fledgling democracy when they can't even keep people from walking up and blowing up police stations?
It only applies to modified seed that they buy. It doesn't apply to traditional seeds.
If they buy seed off Monsanto and Monsanto has a patent on some aspect of the seed, then they are not allowed to save seed for replanting.
Intellectual property.
makes more sense, but it's still dumb, imo. I hate the modified seed deals the big companies were allowed to make.
and the purpose of Bremmer prohibiting the Iraqi's from reaping their own seed stock is?
to get them used to the ways of monsanto?
Bremmer did no such thing. The law basically just brings Iraq up to world standards in terms of patent law. They can save all the seed they want. Just not they ones that are patented.
Looks like Bremmer does just want to keep the patents honored
Quote:The seed saving practice has been part of the local farming for ages, but paragraph 66 of Bremer's Order 81 states that "Farmers shall be prohibited from re-using seeds of protected varieties."
COCO: International Code
ok thanks, it just all seemed too weird for words when I read it.
It is rather weird. Intellectual property is the new economic battleground.
It's not what you produce....it's what you have the patents on.
Dys, it may make more sense, like I said above, but I still don't like it.
Adrian wrote:Dueling quotes.
Quote:The law does not prohibit Iraqi farmers from using or saving "traditional" seeds. It prohibits them from reusing seeds of "new" plant varieties registered under the law - in practical terms, this means they cannot save those seeds for re-use. The report has been revised to express this more clearly.
http://www.mt-law.com/blog/2005/02/did-you-know-that-farmers-sign.html
When quote meets with quote in the jungle,
And neither will move from the trail,
Lie down 'til the quoters have spoken -
It may be fair words shall prevail.
(with apologies to Rudyard Kipling)
Adrian wrote:It is rather weird. Intellectual property is the new economic battleground.
It's not what you produce....it's what you have the patents on.
Are they not rushing to patent many traditional plants and herbal medicines, or instance?
I believe I have a friend who was in India recntly - partly looking at the Indian fight to maintain intellectual property rights to a numbeof their traditional medicines and healing plants, since many multi-nationals are suddenly interested in them - as a number of them are proving efficacious when tested by wstern methods.
Again the answer is...no...they are patenting innovations
based on the plants.
http://www.swaminomics.org/articles/19960915_patentingplants.htm
Most eople dont save hybrid seeds anyway, they are never true in form in F2 generations and beyond.This is true Even for GM seeds where the Bt splice(or whatever) is lost by the Hardy Weinberg expansion for successive generations. However, why this needs codifying is beyond me, unless the issue is "commercial seed stock"
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