Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

New from GRAIN
27 August 2007
http://www.grain.org/nfg/?id=508

JAPAN DIGS ITS CLAWS INTO BIODIVERSITY THROUGH FTAS
Against the grain | August 2007

Available at http://www.grain.org/articles/?id=29

The Japanese government is increasingly using free trade agreements
(FTAs) to tighten corporate control over seeds and other forms of
biodiversity that are crucial to food, agriculture and medicine. Two
such deals sealed this month with Chile and Indonesia put Japan in
the big league of nations using bilateral deals to make seed-saving
on the farm a thing of the past.

Until now, Europe and the US were the main economic powers pushing
other countries to revise their intellectual property laws to give
private companies patent or patent-like control over seeds and other
forms of biodiversity through FTAs. Japan has now joined that club.
In a controversial FTA signed earlier this year with Thailand, Japan
insisted that the Thais cannot reject patents just because they
involve "naturally occurring" microorganisms. Two weeks ago, Tokyo
signed a deal with Chile obliging the South American state to join
UPOV, a group of countries following the same anti-farmer plant
variety property laws. Last week, a similar agreement was inked with
Indonesia.

These laws give large transnationals - like Yokohama-based Sakata
Seed Corporation, which ranks among the top ten global seed
companies - exclusive ownership over the nuts and bolts that make
food production and health care possible. That means that farmers
lose freedom to save seed from commercial varieties. But this is no
longer just a North-South affair, with industrial nations like Japan
pushing developing countries around. Home-grown agribusiness
conglomerates across Asia and Latin America also want a cut from the
market. After all, some 70% of the world's farmers save their seed.
That is a lot of people to convert into paying customers through
strict property rules like patents or UPOV regulations. And
developing country governments are following the money.

Now that Japan has set a precedent in getting these laws accepted
under its FTAs with Chile and Indonesia, farmers' organisations and
social movements in other countries negotiating bilateral trade deals
with Tokyo should expect the same. In the coming months, Japan will
be fast-tracking FTAs with India, Viet Nam and the Association of
South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN).

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RELATED GRAIN MATERIALS

-- "Bilateral agreements imposing TRIPS-plus intellectual property
rights on biodiversity in developing countries", August 2007,
http://www.grain.org/rights/?id=68

-- "The end of farm-saved seed? Industry's wish list for the next
revision of UPOV", February 2007, http://www.grain.org/briefings/?
id=202

-- "FTAs: Trading away traditional knowledge", in collaboration with
Dr Silvia Rodríguez Cervantes, March 2006,
http://www.grain.org/briefings/?id=196

-- A few FTA related photos, http://www.grain.org/photos/?t=12