LONDON: When a woman from a plant-gathering tribe in the Middle East slipped and accidentally dropped wild seed on the ground some ten thousand years ago, she never realized that in her trip, agriculture was born.

To her astonishment, when the woman passed that same spot the following year she noticed that grain was pushing its way through the soil. She threw more seed onto the ground and again it grew. It was the start of a new culture and for the past ten thousand years, farmers have exchanged seeds saved them from their previous year’s harvest with each other or sold them on in local markets.

But according to leading non-governmental organizations ActionAid and Consumers International, the rights of farmers to save, grow and sell seeds is now under threat from the intellectual property rights given to plant breeders. They point the finger at the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV), a Geneva-based intergovernmental organization, based on an international convention originally signed in 1961.

The purpose of UPOV is to encourage the development of new varieties of plants by granting breeders an intellectual property right. The UPOV secretariat says that new varieties of plants “are one of the most powerful tools to enhance food production in a sustainable way, to increase income in the agricultural sector and to contribute to overall development.”

An intellectual property right means that the breeder can take out a patent, and have exclusive ‘owner’ rights for up to 20 years. To be eligible for patent protection, varieties need to satisfy certain conditions, such as being distinct from existing, commonly known varieties, says the UPOV secretariat.

But ActionAid and Consumers International see the work of UPOV somewhat differently. They claim intellectual property rights on crops made possible by UPOV legislation could threaten the ability of poor farmers to make a living by restricting their rights to save, grow and sell seeds, and by making them more expensive because royalties have to be paid to patent holders.

The two NGOs also say that UPOV favours large-scale industrialized agriculture over small-scale subsistence farming, allows large transnational companies to monopolize the seed industries, and discounts the contribution of farmers in breeding and preserving plant varieties over generations.

And indeed, the giant transnational corporations have not been slow to take out patents on the food crops, which are central to most peoples’ diets.

ActionAid says there are now 918 patents on rice, wheat, maize, soybean and sorghum, with almost 70 per cent of them held by six corporations — Aventis, Dow, Du Pont, Mitsui, Monsanto and Syngenta.

Patents are being won on some plant varieties, claims ActionAid, “where there is little evidence of novelty or invention”. So farmers who have bred and developed plants down the centuries, without patent or payment, end up paying companies for the “right” to plant patented varieties.

Fifty-one countries are members of UPOV. Most are European and American countries; the only Asian members are China, Japan and South Korea. In Africa, only Kenya and South Africa are members.

But what now worries campaigners is that India has applied to join. And if India signs up, nowhere will be immune from the effect of the patent agreement fears Dr. Suman Sahai, president of a New Delhi-based organization Gene Campaign. She fears that other developing countries would follow India’s lead.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.