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Iraq's new patent law: A declaration of war against farmers (Sunday, Oct. 17, 2004 -- CropChoice news) -- GRAIN, Oct. 2004: With important implications for farmers and the future of agriculture in
Iraq, this order is yet another important component in the United States'
attempts to radically transform Iraq's economy. WHO GAINS? For generations, small farmers in Iraq operated in an essentially
unregulated, informal seed supply system. Farm-saved seed and the free
innovation with and exchange of planting materials among farming communities
has long been the basis of agricultural practice. This has been made illegal
under the new law. The seeds farmers are now allowed to plant -- "protected"
crop varieties brought into Iraq by transnational corporations in the name
of agricultural reconstruction -- will be the property of the corporations.
While historically the Iraqi constitution prohibited private ownership of
biological resources, the new US-imposed patent law introduces a system of
monopoly rights over seeds. Inserted into Iraq's previous patent law is a
whole new chapter on Plant Variety Protection (PVP) that provides for the
"protection of new varieties of plants." PVP is an intellectual property
right (IPR) or a kind of patent for plant varieties which gives an exclusive
monopoly right on planting material to a plant breeder who claims to have
discovered or developed a new variety. So the "protection" in PVP has
nothing to do with conservation, but refers to safeguarding of the
commercial interests of private breeders (usually large corporations)
claiming to have created the new plants. To qualify for PVP, plant varieties must comply with the standards of the
UPOV[3] Convention, which requires them be new, distinct, uniform and
stable. Farmers' seeds cannot meet these criteria, making PVP-protected
seeds the exclusive domain of corporations. The rights granted to plant
breeders in this scheme include the exclusive right to produce, reproduce,
sell, export, import and store the protected varieties. These rights extend
to harvested material, including whole plants and parts of plants obtained
from the use of a protected variety. This kind of PVP system is often the
first step towards allowing the full-fledged patenting of life forms.
Indeed, in this case the rest of the law does not rule out the patenting of
plants or animals. The term of the monopoly is 20 years for crop varieties and 25 for trees and
vines. During this time the protected variety de facto becomes the property
of the breeder, and nobody can plant or otherwise use this variety without
compensating the breeder. This new law means that Iraqi farmers can neither
freely legally plant nor save for re-planting seeds of any plant variety
registered under the plant variety provisions of the new patent law.[4] This
deprives farmers what they and many others worldwide claim as their inherent
right to save and replant seeds. CORPORATE CONTROL The new law is presented as being necessary to ensure the supply of good
quality seeds in Iraq and to facilitate Iraq's accession to the WTO[5]. What
it will actually do is facilitate the penetration of Iraqi agriculture by
the likes of Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer and Dow Chemical -- the corporate
giants that control seed trade across the globe. Eliminating competition
from farmers is a prerequisite for these companies to open up operations in
Iraq, which the new law has achieved. Taking over the first step in the food
chain is their next move. The new patent law also explicitly promotes the commercialisation of
genetically modified (GM) seeds in Iraq. Despite serious resistance from
farmers and consumers around the world, these same companies are pushing GM
crops on farmers around the world for their own profit. Contrary to what the
industry is asserting, GM seeds do not reduce the use of pesticides, but
they pose a threat to the environment and to people's health while they
increase farmers dependency on agribusiness. In some countries like India,
the 'accidental' release of GM crops is deliberately manipulated[6], since
physical segregation of GM and GM-free crops is not feasible. Once
introduced into the agro-ecological cycle there is no possible recall or
cleanup from genetic pollution[7]. As to the WTO argument, Iraq legally has a number of options for complying
with the organisation's rules on intellectual property but the US simply
decided that Iraq should not enjoy or explore them. RECONSTRUCTION FACADE Iraq is one more arena in a global drive for the adoption of seed patent
laws protecting the monopoly rights of multinational corporations at the
expense of local farmers. Over the past decade, many countries of the South
have been compelled8 to adopt seed patent laws through bilateral
treaties[9]. The US has pushed for UPOV-styled plant protection laws beyond
the IPR standards of the WTO in bilateral trade through agreements for
example with Sri Lanka[10] and Cambodia[11]. Likewise, post-conflict
countries have been especially targeted. For instance, as part of its
reconstruction package the US has recently signed a Trade and Investment
Framework Agreement with Afghanistan[12], which would also include
IPR-related issues. Iraq is a special case in that the adoption of the patent law was not part
of negotiations between sovereign countries. Nor did a sovereign law-making
body enact it as reflecting the will of the Iraqi people. In Iraq, the
patent law is just one more component in the comprehensive and radical
transformation of the occupied country's economy along neo-liberal lines by
the occupying powers. This transformation would entail not just the adoption
of favoured laws but also the establishment of institutions that are most
conducive to a free market regime. Order 81 is just one of 100 Orders left behind by Bremer and among the more
notable of these laws is the controversial Order 39 which effectively lays
down the over-all legal framework for Iraq's economy by giving foreign
investors rights equal to Iraqis in exploiting Iraq's domestic market. Taken
together, all these laws, which cover virtually all aspects of the economy
-- including Iraq's trade regime, the mandate of the Central Bank,
regulations on trade union activities, etc. -- lay the bases for the US'
bigger objective of building a neo-liberal regime in Iraq. Order 81
explicitly states that its provisions are consistent with Iraq's "transition
from a non-transparent centrally planned economy to a free market economy
characterised by sustainable economic growth through the establishment of a
dynamic private sector, and the need to enact institutional and legal
reforms to give it effect." Pushing for these "reforms" in Iraq has been the US Agency for International
Development, which has been implementing an Agricultural Reconstruction and
Development Program for Iraq (ARDI) since October 2003. To carry it out, a
one-year US$5 million contract was granted to the US consulting firm
Development Alternatives, Inc.[13] with the Texas A&M University[14] as an
implementing partner. Part of the work has been sub-contracted to Sagric
International[15] of Australia. The goal of ARDI in the name of rebuilding
the farming sector is to develop the agribusiness opportunities and thus
provide markets for agricultural products and services from overseas. Reconstruction work, thus, is not necessarily about rebuilding domestic
economies and capacities, but about helping corporations approved by the
occupying forces to capitalise on market opportunities in Iraq.[16] The
legal framework laid down by Bremer ensures that although US troops may
leave Iraq in the conceivable future, US domination of Iraq's economy is
here to stay. FOOD SOVEREIGNTY Food sovereignty is the right of people to define their own food and
agriculture policies, to protect and regulate domestic agricultural
production and trade, to decide the way food should be produced, what should
be grown locally and what should be imported. The demand for food
sovereignty and the opposition to the patenting of seeds has been central to
the small farmers' struggle all over the world over the past decade. By
fundamentally altering the IPR regime, the US has ensured that Iraq's
agricultural system will remain under "occupation" in Iraq. Iraq has the potential to feed itself. But instead of developing this
capacity, the US has shaped the future of Iraq's food and farming to serve
the interests of US corporations. The new IPR regime pays scant respect to
Iraqi farmers' contributions to the development of important crops like
wheat, barley, date and pulses. Samples of such farmers' varieties were
starting to be saved in the 1970s in the country's national gene bank in Abu
Ghraib outside Baghdad. It is feared that all these have been lost in the
long years of conflict. However, the Syria-based Consultative Group on
International Agricultural Research (CGIAR)[17] centre -- International
Centre for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA) still holds
accessions of several Iraqi varieties. These collections that are evidence
of the Iraqi farmers' knowledge are supposed to be held in trust by the
centre. These comprise the agricultural heritage of Iraq belonging to the
Iraqi farmers that ought now to be repatriated. There have been situations
where germplasm held by an international agricultural research centre has
been "leaked out" for research and development to Northern scientists[18].
Such kind of "biopiracy" is fuelled by an IPR regime that ignores the prior
art of the farmer and grants rights to a breeder who claims to have created
something new from the material and knowledge of the very farmer. While political sovereignty remains an illusion, food sovereignty for the
Iraqi people has already been made near impossible by these new regulations.
Iraq's freedom and sovereignty will remain questionable for as long as
Iraqis do not have control over what they sow, grow, reap and eat. NOTES [1] 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_Patents_Law.pdf [2] The PVP provisions will be put into effect as soon as the Iraqi Minister
of Agriculture passes the necessary executive orders of implementation in
accordance with this law. [3] UPOV stands for International Union for the Protection of New Plant
Varieties. Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland it is an intergovernmental
organisation with 53 members, mostly industrialised countries. The UPOV
Convention is a set of standards for the protection of plant varieties,
mainly geared toward industrial agriculture and corporate interests. See
http://www.upov.org . [4] Chapter Threequater Article 15 B: Farmers shall be prohibited from
re-using seeds of protected varieties or any variety mentioned?. [5] The World Trade Organisation, wherein the Iraqi Government has an
observer status. [6] http://www.grain.org/research/contamination.cfm?agenda [7] GRAIN, "Confronting contamination: 5 reasons to reject co-existence",
Seedling, April 2004, p 1. http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=280 [8] GRAIN, PVP in the South: caving in to UPOV,
http://www.grain.org/rights/tripsreview.cfm?id=64 [9] GRAIN, Bilateral agreements imposing TRIPS-plus intellectual property
rights on biodiversity in developing countries,
http://www.grain.org/rights/tripsplus.cfm?id=68 [10] http://www.grain.org/brl/?typeid=15 [11] http://www.bilaterals.org/article.php3?id_article=387 [13] http://www.dai.com [14] The University's Agriculture Program "is a recognised world leader in
using biotechnology?" & the University works closely with the USDA
Agriculture Research Service. [16] http://www.export.gov/iraq/market_ops/index.html [17] Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR)
system, with its 16 International Agricultural Research Centres (IARCs) of
which ICARDA is one, holds the world's largest collections of plant genetic
resources outside their natural habitat, which includes both farmers'
varieties and improved varieties. [18] In 2001 it was discovered that a US plant geneticist had obtained the
seeds of the original strain of the famed Thai Jasmine rice, Khao Dok Mali
(KDM) 105, from the Philippines-based CGIAR centre - International Rice
Research Institute (IRRI). But no Material Transfer Agreement (MTA) signed
in the process, despite international obligations on IRRI to enforce this. 'Against the grain' is a series of short opinion pieces on recent trends and
developments in the areas of biodiversity management and control. It is
published by GRAIN on an irregular basis, and is available from our website:
http://www.grain.org. Print copies can be requested from GRAIN, Girona 25,
E-08010 Barcelona, Spain. Email: grain@grain.org. This particular 'Against
the grain' was produced in collaboration with Focus on the Global South
(http://www.focusweb.org; email: admin@focusweb.org). | |
