[Mb-civic] Thanks to U.S., Monsanto and co. owns Iraq farmers

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

Iraqi Farmers Aren't Celebrating World Food Day
Nov 11, 2004 

As part of sweeping "economic restructuring" implemented by the 
Bush Administration in Iraq, Iraqi farmers will no longer be permitted 
to save their seeds. Instead, they will be forced to buy seeds from 
US corporations -- which can include seeds the Iraqis themselves 
developed over hundreds of years. That is because in recent years, 
transnational corporations have patented and now own many seed 
varieties originated or developed by indigenous peoples. In a short 
time, Iraq will be living under the new American credo: Pay 
Monsanto, or starve. 


 When the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) celebrated 
biodiversity on World Food Day on October 16, Iraqi farmers were 
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.

"If the FAO is celebrating 'Biodiversity for Food Security' this year, it 
needs to demonstrate some real commitment", says Henk 
Hobbelink of GRAIN, pointing out that the FAO has recently been 
cosying up with industry and offering support for genetic engineering 
[3]. "Most importantly, the FAO must recognise that biodiversity-rich 
farming and industry-led agriculture are worlds apart, and that 
industrial agriculture is one of the leading causes of the catastrophic 
decline in agricultural biodiversity that we have witnessed in recent 
decades. The FAO cannot hope to embrace biodiversity while 
holding industry's hand", he added.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:

>From GRAIN Shalini Bhutani in India [Tel: +91 11 243 15 168 (work) 
or +91 98 104 33 076 (cell)] or Alexis Vaughan in United Kingdom 
[Tel: +44 79 74 39 34 87 (mobile)]

>From Focus on the Global South Herbert Docena in Philippines 
[Tel:+63 2 972 382 3804]

NOTES

[1] Visit http://www.grain.org/articles/?id=6. GRAIN and Focus' 
report is entitled "Iraq's new patent law: a declaration of war against 
farmers". Against the grain is a series of short opinion pieces on 
recent trends and developments in the issues that GRAIN works on. 
This one has been produced collaboratively with Focus on the 
Global South.

[2] Patent, Industrial Design, Undisclosed Information, Integrated 
Circuits and Plant Variety Law of 2004, CPA Order No. 81, 26 April 
2004, 
http://www.iraqcoalition.org/regulations/20040426_CPAORD_81_Pa
tents_Law.pdf

[3] GRAIN, "FAO declares war on farmers, not hunger", New from 
Grain, 16 June 2004, http://www.grain.org/front/?id=24

source: http://www.grain.org/nfg/?id=253 16oct04

 

-- 
You are currently on Mha Atma's Earth Action Network email list, 
option D (up to 3 emails/day).  To be removed, or to switch options 
(option A - 1x/week, option B - 3/wk, option C - up to 1x/day, option 
D - up to 3x/day) please reply and let us know!  If someone 
forwarded you this email and you want to be on our list, send an 
email to ean at sbcglobal.net and tell us which option you'd like.



Action is the antidote to despair.  ----Joan Baez
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20041129/c6afb3e6/attachment.htm