Subject: [permaculture] Order 81 and the plunder of farming
Date: Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:58:25 -0400
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.”