Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

permaculture - [permaculture] 'Democracy' Descends Upon Iraq

permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: permaculture

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Deborah" <dtv13@verizon.net>
  • To: "G-USOB" <usob@topica.com>
  • Cc: F-Sue <bemused@academicplanet.com>, G-Big Bio Group <Bioreg@yahoogroups.com>, G-Permaculture Groups <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>, Rad-JudyK <judy_kew@greenbuilder.com>, G-AustinPerm <austinperm@yahoogroups.com>
  • Subject: [permaculture] 'Democracy' Descends Upon Iraq
  • Date: Sun, 7 Nov 2004 18:16:52 -0600

World Food Day: Iraqi farmers aren't celebrating

NEWS RELEASE For immediate release

When the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) celebrates biodiversity on
World Food Day on October 16, Iraqi farmers will be mourning its loss.

A new report [1] by GRAIN and Focus on the Global South has found that new
legislation in Iraq has been carefully put in place by the US that prevents
farmers from saving their seeds and effectively hands over the seed market to
transnational corporations. This is a disastrous turn of events for Iraqi
farmers, biodiversity and the country's food security. While political
sovereignty remains an illusion, food sovereignty for the Iraqi people has
been made near impossible by these new regulations.

"The US has been imposing patents on life around the world through trade
deals. In this case, they invaded the country first, then imposed their
patents. This is both immoral and unacceptable", said Shalini Bhutani, one of
the report's authors.

The new law in question [2] heralds the entry into Iraqi law of patents on
life forms - this first one affecting plants and seeds. This law fits in
neatly into the US vision of Iraqi agriculture in the future - that of an
industrial agricultural system dependent on large corporations providing
inputs and seeds.

In 2002, FAO estimated that 97 percent of Iraqi farmers used saved seed from
their own stocks from last year's harvest or purchased from local markets.
When the new law - on plant variety protection (PVP) - is put into effect,
seed saving will be illegal and the market will only offer proprietary
"PVP-protected" planting material "invented" by transnational agribusiness
corporations. The new law totally ignores all the contributions Iraqi farmers
have made to development of important crops like wheat, barley, date and
pulses. Its consequences are the loss of farmers' freedoms and a grave threat
to food sovereignty in Iraq. In this way, the US has declared a new war
against the Iraqi farmer.

More at: http://www.grain.org/nfg/?id=253<http://www.grain.org/nfg/?id=253>



  • [permaculture] 'Democracy' Descends Upon Iraq, Deborah, 11/07/2004

Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page