Worldwide Restrictions on Seed Saving

In my last post I mentioned that in many places in the world seed saving is banned or effectively banned. North America is an important exception.

Of course as gardeners we realize there probably isn’t anywhere in the world the police are going to show up in our garden to test the genetics of what we are growing and haul us off to jail. These laws are not really targeted at home vegetable growers, even if they might technically apply in some cases.

At the same time these laws, government policies, subsidies, trade agreements and so on, can have a big impact on the types of plant materials available to home gardeners, to those of us who want to make money from plant breeding or farming, or simply to those of us who want to eat better tasting or more natural varieties.

The complexity of all these laws and policies is mind boggling! In addition there is a lot of misinformation, mostly presented by corporate interests but also by people who misunderstand the situation and present their own interpretation. This all came up in the last post. Consider for example this bit of propaganda sponsored by seed company interests, explaining how it was a good thing that huge amounts of money was being poured into Iraq’s agricultural system in order to ‘modernize it’ (and destroy or patent all of their historical plant resources). Or consider this document that is apparently the law that bans farmer saved seeds in Iraq, but the average person couldn’t see that because it is so complex. By the way, thanks to Gardenista for providing these links.

In the last few years a new layer of complexity has been added, because many of the worldwide treaties addressing these matters have fallen apart, like the recent ‘Doha Round’. Failure to reach agreements on a worldwide level has meant an explosion in bilateral agreements between countries. For example did you know very important trade agreements were just reached between Japan and Chile as well as between Japan and Indonesia? These agreements are going to have a big impact on the biodiversity of these countries.

So complex is the situation, as well as the individual laws and treaties, that it’s simply not possible for any one person to read and understand them — not to mention keep track of them all. The only way any of us can familiarize ourselves with them is to let other people research the issues, write about them, then read what they wrote. There is no other way!

For this reason too, you will generally not be able to read much about these matters in mainstream media. Generally journalists are in the same situation as everyone else, and unless it’s their field of expertise, they are unlikely to be able to read and understand these documents. As a journalist, it’s also difficult to accept as fact someone else’s interpretation of something, because they are under considerable pressure to only work with very reliable sources and there is little leeway for publishing small misinterpretations. So much of this information is ‘soft’, and a vague combination of facts and opinions. Also the volume of information being dealt with is so great, much of it not relevant, and it just doesn’t fit within the scope of normal news items.

The soft nature of this information doesn’t make it any less important!

If mainstream media won’t cover these stories, who will? A very good source for this kind of information as it relates to agricultural biodiversity is GRAIN. Grain is an Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), and a number of NGOs publish similar information. Other NGOs include Greenpeace and many others.

If this information isn’t going to come from NGOs, it’s probably going to come from blogs!

Why should you care?

If you live in Europe:

Currently farmers are allowed to save their own seeds under very limited circumstances. They must be considered a ‘small’ farmer. They must only grow and save seeds from permitted varieties that are on official lists. They are not allowed to save seeds from GM or hybrid varieties. They are not allowed to trade or sell saved seeds, can only be used by the farmer who saved them and only for replanting. Farmers are not allowed to breed their own varieties.

There are moves underway to close even this smallest of loopholes.

If you live in the US:

Currently patents can only be awarded on plant varieties, but not the genes contained within them (an exception to this is genes within GM varieties which are patentable). If you are a professional or amateur plant breeder, this means you are free to create your own varieties as long as they result from combinations of genes from two or more distinct varieties. This means for example you can create a new tomato by cross-pollinating two different tomato plants, but you would not be allowed to create your own variety by selectively saving seeds from just one kind of tomato. You can patent any new varieties you create, but this takes considerable money and time.

Even if you don’t choose to patent your new varieties, you are still free to sell them, you would just not have any protection in case someone else decided to save seeds and resell them. It’s also a risk someone else would try to patent them.

There are proposals to change the law so the individual genes would be patentable. This would mean anyone who wanted to create a new variety would have to identify all the genes contained within their plants and make sure no one had previously patented them, or get permission from the patent holders to use the genes.

This would potentially put anyone trading seeds over the Internet or other ways, in the same legal position as people who illegally download music or movies.

Regardless of where you live:

There are probably other proposals underway that could have a big impact on the varieties available to grow in your garden, and your ability to trade seeds with others.

What can you do?

One of the best things you can do is spend time to research some of these issues as they relate to you. You can link to other posts or rewrite the information yourself on your own site. If you rewrite the information, you need to do your best not to materially change the content. You don’t want to start Chinese whispers! If you do post something wrong, and someone points this out, you should be responsive when it comes to correcting or removing it.

The other thing you can do, is become involved in growing some of the varieties at issue and posting about them. For example, in the previous post I talked about growing Iraqi historical varieties and blogging about them, in response to the coalition forces banning their use by farmers.

Most importantly, you can keep yourself informed about these matters, so when the opportunity comes to do something you can do it in the most informed way possible.