Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

livingontheland - [Livingontheland] Ownership of plants?

livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Ownership of plants?
  • Date: Sun, 19 Nov 2006 20:07:13 -0700


Ownership of plants
http://www.purewatergazette.net/secret.htm

The Curious Custom of Plant Patenting


Under existing plant patenting legislation, corporations get protective
patents, royalties and vastly reduced competition. Farmers and gardeners
are faced with illegal varieties, hybrids whose seeds cannot be saved and
royalty fees they never had to pay for non-patented seeds. Plant patenting
laws offer protection for corporate profits while further narrowing the
genetic basis on which agriculture itself depends. Declaring certain
varieties illegal and patenting others is a bizarre luxury we cannot
afford. The 2nd Graham Center Seed and Nursery Directory (Rural Advancement
Fund, 1983).

The concept of ownership, even the parts we accept through long usage, can
be bizarre. Each year a Kansas oil company sends me two or three checks for
about $15 in payment for my .0065105000 royalty interest in crude oil taken
from beneath land described as NE/4 SW/4 NE/4 SECTION 20-12N-10E of
Okfuskee County, Oklahoma. Like the cab driver in the Harry Chapin song, I
always stuff the check in my shirt, but I can't quit wondering how I, among
all earth's creatures, was chosen to be the "owner" of something that was
in the earth eons before I was born. Apparently I own it because my
grandfather happened to plant corn on the land above it, but it would make
as much sense for me to claim a .0065105000 share of sunshine or the planet
Jupiter.

Suppose I decide to keep "my" oil rather than sell it to the Sonoco Oil Co.
(which I probably couldn't do, since I only "own" the right to sell it for
the price the oil company sets, not to possess it), and I learn to process
my oil in some special way that makes it unique and that I go to the U. S.
Patent Office and get a patent on my particular type of oil. All who sell
oil that falls under my patent description will then have to pay me
royalties. But my oil looks exactly like everyone else's and it is very
hard to enforce my patent, so I go back to the Patent Office and to help me
out they give me a patent on all oil that is black so it will be very easy
to tell who is using my oil. Imagine Exxon's dismay upon learning it will
have to pay to use my patented black oil.

This story isn't as far-fetched as you think; in fact, it closely parallels
the deal we got when the same multinationals who later brought us NAFTA and
GATT bullied Congress into allowing plant patenting. The patenting of
plants is an idea so absurd that sensible people would not entertain it,
but while Americans were getting their opinions on farm policy from Green
Acres , "ownership" of the cardboard tomatoes on their burgers quietly
passed from the public domain to ITT.

Ownership of plants falls in the same category as the ownership of
sunshine. Tomatoes, for example, are ancient beings. They were cultivated
by the Incas and Aztecs ("tomato" derives from an Aztec word). They were
"discovered" by Spaniards, taken to Europe, then "introduced" to America by
Europeans early in our history. They have been standard American fare since
the late 19th century. But by obtaining the right to patent plants, the
multinationals have put themselves in a position to "own" patented
varieties of tomatoes, to charge us a fee for using "their" tomatoes, and
even eventually to gain control over broad categories of tomato varieties
to protect their patent rights. In a recent example, a company that
obtained patents for two genetically altered varieties of snap beans was
given a patent over hundreds of similar snap beans. Cary Fowler, in the old
Graham Center Seed Directory for 1979, described events in Europe, where
Common Market interests brought in seed patenting before our own laws were
passed:

In Europe where the [seed patenting] laws were first passed, there have
been problems with enforcement. It is not easy to describe a variety of
tomato or anything else in such detail that it could be positively
distinguished from another variety in a court of law. Furthermore, as the
varieties are grown each year they often change (genetically) in subtle
ways in response to their environment. This presents more legal headaches
for the company trying to enforce its patent on a "product" which differs
from year to year. In an attempt to reduce these problems, European
lawmakers are phasing in a system which would make some plant varieties now
grown in Europe illegal! These varieties could not be grown commercially.
Their seeds could not be sold. Even backyard gardeners could not grow the
illegal varieties if their gardens were located within a certain distance
of a commercial plot. Think of being hauled into court on a charge of
growing a "Big Boy'' tomato!

Immediately after the passage of seed patenting laws in England, Shell Oil
of Great Britain bought 56 seed companies. In the United States, the number
of seed companies has fallen rapidly since plant patenting became law; most
of the old standard seed companies are now owned by multinational oil,
chemical, and pharmaceuticals companies. If you buy Burpee seeds, you are
now buying from ITT. Gurney belongs to Amfac, Golden Acres to Diamond
Shamrock, DeKalb to Monsanto, Ferry Morse to Limagrain of France. Other
highly invested seed company owners are Cargill, Ciba-Geigy, Union Carbide,
International Multifoods, Occidental Petroleum, Sandoz, Stauffer Chemical,
and Upjohn. Seeds aren't just business; with patenting, they have become
very big business.

Although the seed trade itself can be lucrative, especially if you "own"
certain plant varieties whose seeds can't be saved by customers, the
multinationals' main interest in seeds is that they complete a cozy loop
with their other businesses. Seeds fit nicely with agribusiness, the
processed food industry, oil, and pharmaceuticals. The idea is to create
monoculture crops that require lots of agricultural chemicals and
energy-intensive farming methods to produce food that is easy to package
and sell but so devoid of nutrients that the end product is medical and
pharmaceuticals customers. A cozy loop.

Because the people who make agricultural chemicals also sell seeds, much
research (paid for usually by public grants to universities) is dedicated
to developing pesticide-resistant plants. The push is to create plant
varieties that go best with oil-and-chemical-intensive agriculture and that
lend themselves to mass merchandising rather than consumer satisfaction and
nourishment. To believe that companies that take in millions per year on
headache remedies don't want you to have a headache is ultimately naive. To
drug vendors, nutritionally depleted, chemical-laden foods are as much an
asset as illness-producing drugs and vaccines.

The immediate effect of the multinational companies' takeover of the seed
industry has been a drastic and serious loss of plant diversity. Small seed
companies, often family owned, had for years been a mainstay against
government-supported standardization of agriculture. Old varieties of farm
and garden seeds were maintained and supplied as a matter of tradition and
as a service to customers, even when they were not best sellers. New
corporate owners, however, conducted the seed business the same way they
conducted their other businesses, with a bottom line of profit. Marginally
profitable varieties were quickly dropped in favor of the company's best
selling patented hybrids. [For non-farmers: Hybrids are produced by human
intervention through crossing two genetically different parents. Hybrids
are dear to seed companies' hearts because seeds cannot be relied upon for
future planting. You have to go back to the seed company for next year's
seeds.] Abandoned strains of traditional plant varieties quickly perish
unless a conscious effort is made to preserve them.

So much has been written about the importance of biodiversity in regard to
rainforest preservation that I won't belabor the point except to say that
the same urgent need exists for agricultural diversity. The adage that
variety is the spice of life does not go far enough. Variety is nature's
most persistent strategy for excellence and for survival. While most people
now grasp the importance of preserving endangered animal species, few are
concerned about losing the Chech's Bush tomato.

The junk news has woefully underreported the precarious state of America's
food production system. Few know, for example, that in 1970 we barely
averted disaster when corn blight wiped out a large part of the nation's
hybrid corn crop. The National Academy of Sciences warned that not only
corn but "most crops are impressively uniform genetically and impressively
vulnerable." Of the innumerable varieties of corn, large seed companies had
by the 1970s quietly squeezed a// but six varieties virtually out of the
market. Seventy-one percent of America's corn crop was grown from only six
varieties, and three of these were said to be virtually identical. Only one
variety of sweet potato accounts for 69% of our annual crop, and 95% of our
peanuts are from 9 varieties. It is a system designed to make money, not to
assure an abundant and secure supply of nutritious food.






  • [Livingontheland] Ownership of plants?, TradingPostPaul, 11/19/2006

Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page