Who controls the seed?

Organiser(s):  Siegrid Herbst, Association of GM free breeders, Germany

Speakers:

Guy Kastler, Reseau Semences Paysanne, France

Outline:

Plant Variety Certificates (PVC) imposed by UPOV are often presented as an acceptable alternative to patents. However, PVCs have actually become worse. Similarly to patents they ban or impose royalties on farm-saved seeds. PVCs also legalise biopiracy by accepting the protection of « discovered » varieties without revealing their origin.  Exempted from the obligation to indicate the particular breeding method used, PVCs hide the clandestine dissemination of plants manipulated by mutagenesis, cellular fusion, nanotechnologies…By imposing the obligatory catalogue, PVCs are banning peasants’ seeds. The recent proposition of a catalogue for « conservation varieties » dismantles the last possibilities available to farmers for contributing to the renewal of cultivated biodiversity. Through the free trade agreements the current reform based on the European seed production model, cumulating UPOV and patents on genes, is being imposed worldwide.The rights of peasants to conserve, use, exchange and sell their seeds reproduced on farms, to access resources in collections and participate in national decision-making processes are inscribed in the International Treaty for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) ratified by several countries, which fail to apply it. Through benefit sharing and the freedom of trade, farmers are incited to trade their rights for the illusion of profiting from patents and PVCs that actually forbid these rights.  The confiscation of biodiversity locked up in gene banks and its generalised contamination by GMOs announce its final disappearance if it is not renewed in the fields. How can the collective rights of farmers be applied and protected as of now in order to guarantee the protection of cultivated biodiversity? What legal avenues are possible? What actions should we take: taking biodiversity out of gene banks, developing community-based seed houses, etc.?