Update: Big Projects 2010: Garden

In response to my post a few days ago I received an email from someone representing the Global Crop Diversity Trust, the seed bank in Norway.  The main point of the email seemed to be taking exception to my rather broad statement that Bill Gates was a major funder, which I must admit wasn’t very well thought out or carefully phrased.  I’m not particularly convinced that I was substantially wrong however.

In any event, like everything else on this blog, you should consider it more my opinion than fact.

Anyway, if you would like to see their position on the matter, she provided the following link.

In particular she wished to be very clear that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation did not fund the construction of the vault, nor do they fund it’s day to day operations.

I hope in making this post I have given an opportunity for them to express their opinion, and if not I would welcome them leaving a comment in their own words laying out their own point of view.

The original point I was trying to make still stands.  I will not be seeking to use the funding or operation model of the Global Crop Diversity Trust in trying to assist public domain plant breeders!

13 Replies to “Update: Big Projects 2010: Garden”

  1. Dear Patrick,

    My previous correspondence was intended to ensure you that the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in fact does exactly what you were concerned about – it keeps the seeds stored there in the public domain.

    All seeds stored in the Seed Vault remain the property of the country or institution that sent them. There is no change of ownership; though, in
    any case, any seeds accepted for storage at the Vault must be freely available under the terms of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources. In other words, there are no seeds stored at the Seed Vault which would not be easily accessible simply by directly contacting the genebank which sent them.

    If you have any further questions about the Svalbard Global Seed Vault or the Global Crop Diversity Trust, I’d be happy to answer them.

  2. I agree with your general concern about control of the worlds resources by the wealthy, but I challenge you to research the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation a little more.

    He has taken his enormous wealth and become one of the biggest philanthropists of all time. Rather than invest in shortsighted solutions, his organization has focused it’s efforts on the bigger challenges of the world, including curing malaria and apparently, in supporting the Seed Bank as it is a important global resource.

  3. Hi Tom,

    As a Program Manager for Microsoft, you aren’t exactly free of bias here! Anyway, thanks for your comment, and I certainly accept there are many points of view here.

    I’m no expert on the activities of the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation, but the little I have read about what they do suggests there is always an element of back-handedness. For example, yes they are investing in solutions for malaria, but will people that need it be able to afford it? My general impression was the pharmaceutical companies were the ones that stood to gain the most.

    Yes, the seed bank in Norway has it’s degree of importance as a global resource, but it’s not of any particular benefit to the average person and since duplicate deposits are disallowed there is an element of needing to get there first, which only depositors with money can do. As far as I’m aware for example, average people cannot request seed samples via International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources, but large companies like Monsanto can. This would appear to guarantee them the right to use the genetic material in for their own research and any depositors need to agree to this in advance before submitting their seeds.

    There has been some debate among Seed Savers Exchange members if depositing seeds at Svalbard is the right thing to do, because large seed companies wouldn’t likely have both physical access to the seeds (which they pretty much have now anyway) together with the legal rights to use it in their research and possibly patent the results, if the deposits weren’t made.

    I’m certainly not impressed with the way Bill Gates helps individual people, and this is more my interest and priority. I understand you probably have other priorities.

  4. Dear Patrick,

    I don’t seem to get your point!

    As I see it, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is just a combined extension of seedbanks around the world. I know my local seedbank, NordGen (administrating the SGSV), has one place in Denmark for their base-collection, another place in Sweden for their working collection, and now a third security collection, independent of electricity.
    I’m only happy about that, and find it great that also developing countries have this opportunity, and grasp it. If things go well, nobody will ever take out any seeds of the SGSV.
    If you find problems gaining acces to seeds you wiuld like, I suggest you first ask the seedbank in question again, then ask NordGen for help.

    All seeds stored in the SGSV are in public domain, protected by the Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture” (PGRFA)

    Your friend,
    Søren.

  5. Hi Søren and everyone else,

    If there’s anything I hate debating more than international treaties, I don’t know what it is. They are always open interpretation and implementation can change over time. I can’t possibly stay on top of something so complex, together with all the changes and discussions over time.

    If I take the easy way out, and quote the Wikipedia page ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Treaty_on_Plant_Genetic_Resources_for_Food_and_Agriculture ):

    Critics say many of the central issues are unresolved or open to interpretation. Some of the points raised are:

    * to what extent will intellectual property rights be allowed on genetic resources in the MLS, within treaty rules: some argue an agreement aiming at open access to genetic resources for food and agriculture should not allow restrictive property rights, and the treaty says in Article 12.3.d that “Recipients shall not claim any intellectual property or other rights that limit the facilitated access to the plant genetic resources for food and agriculture, or their genetic parts or components, in the form received from the Multilateral System”;

    * to what extent will farmers and communities be allowed to freely use, exchange, sell and breed the seeds, and what enforcement procedures will be used by national governments to ensure principles of Farmers’ Rights will be respected;

    At some point, only official research and educational organizations were allowed to access genetic materials, and only with the written promise they would not share them with others.

    Then my understanding was the issue of Farmer’s Rights came up, and that it wasn’t properly addressed. Many seedbanks decided because of this they would distribute their seeds to anyone without written agreements. I don’t think any seed bank was required to change their policy in this way, and my understanding is many of them do not distribute their seeds to the general public. For example, here in the Netherlands seedbanks generally do not distribute to the general public, but rather through farmers organizations who then sometimes distribute them further.

    I don’t think it’s really completely accurate to say seeds stored at the SGSV are in the public domain, the situation is more complex than that. Only farmers and research institutions are guaranteed access, even though in practice others may also have access, and sometimes access can mean signing a MTA or other agreement restricting your rights to use the seeds or the genetics that lie inside.

    I need to emphasise here, I’m not active in making requests of this nature, and I don’t have any idea what the practicalities currently are. If Søren says it’s mostly no problem, I believe him!

  6. Hello again,
    now it makes sense to me 🙂

    The treaty is a result of international politics, and obviously have strange compromises. To clear things up, we need to get our politicians back into negotiations (I doubt they will do that for another 10 years). Blaming the Svalbard Global Seed Vault or any of the seed banks around the world seems little helpful to me.

    On seed banks: the varieties I keep in my garden, and share, are easy to “steal” and to claim the intellectual property rights. I see the seed banks as documentation for the varieties. Both entry date and the actual variety is documented. Does it make sense to claim intellectual property rights on a variety after the date it entered a seed bank? I hope not!

    The thing about paying for the use of the seeds I find rather complicated. But at the bottom line, the seeds are accessible, and the money you eventually will have to pay goes to a fund. The fund, to my understanding, arose from a claim from Latin American nations. Feeling exploited by big companies (could it be Monsanto?), they wanted some of the money earned by the big seed industry to flow back and benefit the local farmers in their part of the world. I honestly understand this. But I guess much has to be done, before this settle in a satisfactory way.

  7. Søren,

    Again, I’m not an expert on these things, and this is just my understanding.

    Yes, it’s possible for a company like Monsanto to ‘steal’ something from your garden and claim IP rights over it, but Monsanto did this before and had problems with it. The first GM Round Up ready soy beans were in effect such a theft. Monsanto took an ordinary soy bean variety, inserted their Round Up ready genes into it, then patented the entire soy bean variety including the genes that were previously in the public domain.

    This both upset a lot of people, but also Monsanto wanted the situation clarified for the future. It was part of what was negotiated in the Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture treaty. First that companies like Monsanto were officially allowed to use the varieties for their own research and patent them, but when this happened payments would be made back to their country of origin.

    Therefore varieties under the Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture treaty, are explicitly available for use in research by large seed companies and the results can be patented.

    Plants in your garden not covered by the treaty can also probably be stolen, but the situation is not as clear.

    In addition, what I remember hearing about the original discussions was that since these large seed companies like Monsanto were the ones who were going to benefit from these varieties that could now be used for research and patenting, the large seed companies like Monsanto were supposed to pay all the costs for running these seed banks. This was supposed to guarantee funding into the future, and prevent the contents of seed banks from being lost when for example governments went bankrupt. The large seed companies said okay, but then the seeds were only for them and they were not to be given away to the public.

    Then it was clear this funding model wasn’t working, the large seed companies weren’t paying what they were supposed to or making the seed accessible to farmers or research institutions. I guess this was the point the seed banks started distributing to the public, but like I’ve said, I’m not really sure what happened here.

  8. I’m also no expert.

    Do you think a company can patent a variety from a seed bank, without changing anything in it?

    I had the impression, they can only patent a variety if altering it, like breeding a new variety or doing some genetic engineering.

    I don’t think large seed companies care to pay for the seed banks, not even adding varieties they need no more. Seed bank are no more a service for the seed industry, but a food securing system, to rescue us, when the short-sighted industry have narrowed the genetics of their varieties so much, it can’t develop with the changing environment.

    But a lot of breeding are no longer done by seed companies. Living in Scandinavia, I have to do my own breeding, to improve or create new varieties that are worthwhile growing, and share with fellow gardeners.

  9. I think what happened is Monsanto inserted the Round Up ready genes into the soy variety, then received a patent that covered both the newly created variety as well as the original!

    Europe doesn’t recognize patents on plants however, as far as I know, because with have the lists of approved varieties as an alternative. So what happened was Argentina, which also doesn’t enforce plant patents started growing Round Up ready soy without paying Monsanto royalties, then sold the soy to Europe as animal feed. Since it wasn’t for human consumption, it didn’t need to be on the varietal lists.

    Especially since Tom’s visit, I’ve come to learn just how little public domain breeding work is being done. Yes you do this in your own garden, and we both know a number of other people doing this. There are certainly people in countries where English isn’t spoken, where we probably don’t know them. But really, with the Internet, we are all starting to get in touch with one another, and there aren’t very many!

  10. Patrick – Just found this. Payments under the FAO Seed Treaty are triggered by patenting of derivatives of samples but the payment does NOT go back to the country of origin but direct to FAO. The Treaty does not recognize `country of origin’ – it is multilateral.

    This is my problem with the Treaty: it does not reward country and farmers of origin. I spent several years in the tropics (three continents) collecting landraces and was always treated very well by some very poor farmers who always gave me seed quite free. Yet farmers of 67 countries that do not accept the FAO Treaty have to sign an MTA to get their own seed back and can not expect anything as a right from the Treaty funding. This is wrong. I am happy to debate this with `a paid representative of the Global Crop Diversity Trust’ as the Trust is part of the problem of denying farmers any rights.

  11. “The world’s seed collections are vulnerable to a wide range of threats – civil strife, war, natural catastrophes, and, more routinely but no less damagingly, poor management, lack of adequate funding, and equipment failures.”

    LMAO!

    Here is what they omitted in that paragraph:

    “Even more damaging, Globally corrupt politicians who mismanage tax moneys to operate seed banks or VAULTS , by borrowing and or channeling the funds away that are needed to more corrupt activity’s like small arms treaties, bio-diversity and climate change panels. Or they just prop up FIAT currency that devalues over time to nothing leading to no form of monetary exchange, thus the power is shut off,thus expending years of traditional seed saving down the drain. But hey it don’t matter, cause they got theirs and made sure they didn’t do with out in the end”

    What a disaster this U.N. AKA League Of Nations is.

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