Slashdot Mirror
Iraq law Requires Seed Licenses
Doc Ruby writes "The American Administrator of the Iraqi CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) government, Paul Bremer, updated Iraq's intellectual property law to 'meet current internationally-recognized standards of protection.' The updated law makes saving seeds for next year's harvest, practiced by 97% of Iraqi farmers in 2002, the standard farming practice for thousands of years across human civilizations, newly illegal. Instead, farmers will have to obtain a yearly license for genetically modified seeds from American corporations. These GM seeds have typically been modified from IP developed over thousands of generations by indigenous farmers like the Iraqis, shared freely like agricultural 'open source.' Other IP provisions for technology in the law further integrate Iraq into the American IP economy."
Maybe you haven't seen this story/editorial from Harper's Magazine.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The "write up" is confusing. Are the Iraqis being forced to use the GM seeds? Can't just just continue using what they've been using?
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
Only if the farmers are using GM seeds. If they use normal seeds, then there is no problem with holding back seed for next year.
Typical bias.
Be it software or grain, the rules are the same - if you don't like the license, don't use the product - use a competing product with a license you can accept.
www.eFax.com are spammers
The problem is that snce a small part of their crop is contaminated by GM seeds, there's no practical way of getting rid of them. They don't have the option to choose not to use them if they've used them in the past (when the IP laws were different), or if any of their regular seeds ever got mixed up with GM seeds by mistake.
-jim
As I read the article, there is nothing which forces the farmer in Iraq to make use of IP Protected GM seeds. They may continue to use domestic or free varieties. The only issue is that in the past there was no legal protection for seed crop IP in Iraq, and now it is available.
It seems in the end, that if they want to re-use seed crops, they need only refrain from purchasing those which require a license. While in the technology industry, customers may require that you provide products which include IP that must be licensed, When you're making food the rules are different:
You may need to license software from Microsoft to make a product that works on your customer's computer.
You do not need to license grain from ConAgra to make flour that my stomach can digest.
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
"Fasicst" applies to those who believe in the union of state and corporate power, by definition. Corporate-owned I"P" is the essence of such a union in the modern age - the government upholding and enforcing a damaging monopoly at the behest of a corporation.
And you read a book sometime, too - look, wheat can be cross-pollinated. That's an experimental fact, it has been demonstrated that genes will spread from wheat to wheat. It isn't as _likely_ as with some other species of grass, and usually the GMO wheat has to be relatively close by, but in this case, chances are subsistence farmer ekeing out a living in the field next door will have bowed to american pressure even if you didn't. And if the GMO gene confers some sort of advantage (and herbicide resistance tends to be...), once the gene is in your seed stock, it will probably spread.
Your were just wrong. Admit it, move on, and stop spewing fascist rhetoric. Or don't, but be aware that you're just making yourself look like an ass.
"The US solution to this problem is to provide GMO seeds, which require a license to use. The Iraqis don't have much choice in the matter... the economy has been devistated, and they need to take whatever they can get."
Uh huh.
1) "Many of the fields have withered and died because there hasn't been enough irrigation, or money to pay the labor to support the fields. "
2) "Grain houses have been destroyed. Crops have been contaminated. "
3) "The agricultural economy has collapsed... hard to sell your produce when there are warplanes bombing your village."
[Emphasis mine]
So how is GMO seeds going to "provide more irrigation", "money to pay farm labour", "rebuild grain houses", and "stop warplanes bombing your village"?
"The US solution to this problem is to provide GMO seeds, which require a license to use. The Iraqis don't have much choice in the matter... the economy has been devistated, and they need to take whatever they can get."
They have a choice in the matter. Just as they have "outside help" when it comes to stemming the US's meddling. They have neighbours that have seeds. But obviously "seeds" is the least of their problems as far as agriculture is concerned.
Wind
Let's go to original from which you cited those words, and look at the context.
... ... by 30 m. Therefore canola pollen can move at least this distance....9 6.htm
... ... have been too small to capture the full spread of altered ... "It's the longest distance ... Most previous studies of gene flow have been done on far ...S pread+for+Miles-status-25-newsID-277... - 24k - Cached - Similar pages
The issue for Iraq is whether the farmer can save the seed grown once an agribiz claims they have found their genes in samples from his farm.
The answer was no, in the Canadian case.
He said he didn't buy the GM seed and that pollen spreads. Monsanto claimed it doesn't spread.
Current research says he's right.
QUOTE, a couple hits from a Google search:
GENE TRANSFER BETWEEN CANOLA (BRASSICA NAPUS) AND RELATED WEED
www.isb.vt.edu/brarg/brasym96/brown
Genes From Engineered Grass Spread for Miles, Study Finds
gene-flow study
www.onlypunjab.com/ fullstory904-insight-Genes+From+Engineered+Grass+
END QUOTE
Too late for him in this court case though.
Monsanto, because of the legal choice they used, did not get to take his bank account and his farm -- but they did stop him from saving the seeds that grew in his field to reuse.
The rest of the quote you cited is:
"Outcome:The Supreme Court held that the patent was valid and defendant/appellant Schmeiser infringed. However, because Monsanto elected to seek profits as a remedy, and the infringer Schmeiser earned no profit from the invention, plaintiff Monsanto is entitled to nothing."
That's "$Nothing" not "nothing at all" -- and that's the important part.
Schmeiser's neighbors growing the same species bought "Roundup Ready" seed. He did not. They sprayed with Roundup, killing everything but their Monsanto GM plants. He did not. All the plants flowered and set seed (Monsanto should have changed the timing of flowering, to really have some kind of control on genetic movement, eh?)
More from that study:
"Seed movement. Canola plants have small seed (approximately 200 seeds/g). During normal farm operations the seed will inevitably be lodged in farm machinery and transported around the farm and surrounding area. Seed also can be distributed by animals and birds, and seed can be lost while being transported for processing. In the Pacific Northwest region of the U.S.A., spring canola has only recently been grown commercially and already volunteer plants have been observed several kilometers from where they originated."
Remember -- once you know, or have reason to know, that your farm _may_ be producing some seed containing patented material, you're breaking the law if you save the seed growing in your own fields.
Once you know the stuff spreads, goes into weedy relatives of the crop (and back into crops elsewhere), spreads by birds, spreads in equipment tires and harvesting machinery that's taken from one field to another -- well, you know, eh?
Way back watermelon as we know them were nearly brought to extinction by a form of blight. Universities and such had developed breeds resistant to the disease, but either flavor, color, shape, and even the seeds were radically different from what we think of as the watermelon.
Frustrated, in about four years my great grandfather and cross-bred a breed that had black seeds, a red core, full flavor, and striped green that was nearly impervious to disease.
In his memoirs he comments on how people are amazed at how he didn't acquior a fortune on his creation. He talks about how natural life, such as watermelons, were on patentable and all anyone needed to produce them was the seed widely available from one of his melons.
Whenever stories like these crop up, I think about how rich my family could have been, and am always greatful that we aren't everytime I see a youngster enjoying a fresh cut melon. I am also grieved by the fact that patents like this even exist. And that companies, not the farmers, hold them and reap the financial benefit from them.
How long will it be before we will have to pay a licensing fee to cook with these IP laden herbs and vegetables?
==================
Hippie Logger Jock
==================
Uh. You should be careful - dictionary.com is an american corporation. Apparently connotations of American fascist vs. rest-of-world fascist is a bit like American liberal vs rest-of-world liberal (closer to american libertarian). Even so, the "stringent socioeconomic controls" part of the american definition hints at the corporatism that the rest of the world sees as an essential characteristic of fascism. Even its proponents must recognise strengthening I"P" as a socioeconomic control, whether it is sufficiently stringent or not to qualify as fascism is probably still a matter of opinion, until the effects are more widely analysed.
It always saddens me to see libertarians giving out about "damn european liberals", when it's european liberals that are most similar in outlook to libertarians outside america. Americans are so easily confused by spin and newspeak. This might be because of growing up monolingual (and though as far as I know a significant proportion of americans grow up bilingual AmEnglish/AmSpanish) - I find europeans particularly comfortable with the idea that word:meaning mappings can be many:many