[permaculture] Order 81 and the plunder of farming

Brent McMillan brent at gp.org
Wed Apr 1 15:58:25 EDT 2009


Business Standard
Order 81 and the plunder of farming
Latha Jishnu / New Delhi April 1, 2009, 0:52 IST

In recent days, the multinational force in Iraq has been putting out 
rather curious news releases. These state that visiting agriculture 
experts from the US have been helping Iraqi farmers to learn new farming 
techniques to help them “to compete in a free market economy by reducing 
prices”. Team Borlaug, as the expert group is called, is working to set 
up model farms where farmers can see the newest technology and 
techniques in action, according to a statement attributed to Dustin 
Kinder, the leader. Kirkuk is the third province in northern Iraq that 
the team has studied and after a six-month tour it will put together 
recommendations to improve Iraqi agriculture that has been in a shambles 
since the mid-1990s when global sanctions were imposed on the country.

There is an intolerable air of patronage — and duplicity — about the 
latest statement emanating from the military command of the occupying 
forces. It reflects a gross ignorance of the history of agriculture in 
the country which is now paying the price for Saddam Hussein’s 
adventurism and the Rambo-like invasion by US. Iraq, it must be 
remembered, has the oldest history of farming and one of the longest 
traditions of cultivation in the civilised world. Modern Iraq is part of 
the ‘fertile crescent’ of Mesopotamia where man first domesticated wheat 
more than 8,000 years ago, and is home to several thousand varieties of 
local wheat.

True, its production of wheat has declined to just a quarter of what it 
was in 1995 (1.2 million tonnes) and the land is degraded to a shocking 
degree. But the focus of the revival strategy that is under way in Iraq 
is intended not to help its farmers so much as to allow multinational 
seed companies to capture the market. Listen to Kinder whose entire team 
is linked to Texas A&M University: “We are going to help 25th Infantry 
Division put on an agricultural conference, and we will help them 
develop a strategic plan for agriculture in Iraq.” What the nation or 
its farmers want is not really the centre piece of this effort since the 
US has effectively tied up the Iraqi market for its seed giant.

This happened five years ago when Paul Bremer as head of Coalition 
Provisional Authority (CPA) imposed far-reaching laws on the country and 
made a mockery of the US claim it was bringing democracy to Iraq. Of the 
100 laws that Bremer inflicted on the Iraqi people, one of the most 
pernicious is Order 81, which deals with ‘Patent, Industrial Design, 
Undisclosed Information, Integrated Circuits and Plant Variety’ and 
hence the interest of this column in the current goings-on in. There are 
several reasons why this patent law is lethal.

Without any discussion or debate, it made sweeping changes in Iraq’s 
1970 patent law by allowing the patenting of plant forms and 
facilitating the introduction of genetically modified crops or organisms 
and introduced clauses that will be the death of traditional varieties 
of seeds. The Plant Variety Protection rules are for seeds that are 
“new, distinct, uniform and stable”, criteria that the traditional 
varieties all Iraqi farmers now use can never meet. These seeds are the 
product of millennia of traditional development and by their very nature 
share common traits and thus do not qualify to be ‘new’. Nor can they be 
termed stable or uniform because of their biodiversity. But the seeds 
that American and European seed giants are actively pushing in Iraq 
will, of course, qualify since Order 81 is designed to specifically to 
protect their interests.

Worse still is the injunction against farmers using their own seeds. 
Almost all Iraqi farmers (97 per cent, according to FAO) use their own 
seeds but Bremer’s more than clever order decrees that “farmers shall be 
prohibited from re-using seeds of protected varieties or any variety”, 
changing in one stroke the character of Iraq’s agriculture.

Five years after Order 81 was passed, farm activists across the world 
have got together to mark April 26 as International Seeds Day to help 
Iraqi farmers to break the vice-like grip of the global seed companies. 
The campaign is coordinated by the Institute of Near Eastern & African 
Studies (INEAS), based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and has got the 
backing of some organisations in India. I met Wafaa Al-Natheema of 
INEAS, when she was in India earlier in the year to drum up support for 
the campaign, and she says the world needs to respond to this threat to 
agriculture. Iraqi farmers, like the rest of the nation, are unaware of 
this law and how it could turn their world upside down. “They need our 
help to learn how to retain their seeds under these circumstances and 
how to lobby against this unjust law.”

Will the world rally to their cause?

http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/latha-jishnu-order-81the-plunderfarming/353518/ 


Posted by:
Brent McMillan, Steward of Woodhaven
Avilla, IN


More information about the permaculture mailing list