Seed patents 'are a fraud'

[marshlander]

BBC News hardtalk;- The prominent Indian environmental campaigner Vandana Shiva says she is opposed to the patenting of seeds by major corporations forcing many Indian farmers to only buy seeds from those companies.

Can't believe the interviewer when she said 'but farmers have always had to buy seed' she obviously has never heard of saving your own seed. The more the interviewer throws 'statistics' the more angry I'm getting. I so hate mon bl**dy santo grrrr.

Any law anywhere that makes seed saving exchanging and biodiversity a crime is bad law.

[eco-mick]

I was listening to just this coming home from work on Radio4

Shocking..

[The Riff-Raff Element]

I think there's a bit of dis-ingenuity on both sides here. Of course farmers have always been able save seeds from traditional varieties that have been grown for many years. I know that there have been attempts to patent things like basmsti rice based on little more than having de-coded the genome but they have failed because they had no validity whatsoever. On the other hand, if farmers want to grow the newest F1 hybrid varieties then they can hardly expect not to pay for them.

Where it does get insidious is when agrochems start the hard sell, package up their patent seeds with the pesticide of the month to which they happen to be resistant and then browbeat farmers who don't need these varieties and can't really afford them into buying them. Oh, and then try and sue other farmers because pollen from the GMO variety drifts over and crosses with whatever the other farmer happens to have sown. That's up there with Nestle and the powdered milk scandal.

[dustydave]

As I understand it the big seed companies make you sign an agreement when you buy their seed through one of their agents that you will not use it for future seed stock. While they have ‘ownership’ of the particular F1 variety it would be impossible for them to patent any subsequent F2, F3… strains that occur. Which in a way is a shame because at least if they had legal ownerships of strains originating from their original hybrid then we could take legal action to make them remove 'their' rape seed that is escaping and seems to be growing in increasing densities along lanes and meadows.

[EcoTreedweller]

I understand the seeds MonSatan offers farmers are altered so they will not produce further seed, therefore creating dependence - farmers will have no choice but to return to the big corporations for more seed. Such a monopoly over food supply is a very worrying prospect.

[Turtuga Blanku]

if ANYONE has the right to own patents on plants, it is the farmers themselves who've been working on plant breeding for more than 10000 years, not Monsanto which simply builds on all that work done by those farmers.

(b.t.w. I did a short 5Q-interview with Vandana Shiva: http://www.turtugablanku.com/5Q_intervi ... _Shiva.php)