America "liberates" Iraqi farmers...
The Americans prattle on and on about "freedom" and "the rule of law", well, dudes and dudettes, over at CorpWatch, they've let another cat out of the bag:
(Snaffled from a similar story on urban fox's excellent blog.)
In 2002, the Food And Agriculture Orgainsation (FAO) estimated that 97 percent of Iraqi farmers used saved seed from their own stocks from last year's harvest or purchased from local markets. When the new (U.S. imposed) law - on plant variety protection (PVP) - is put into effect, seed saving will be illegal and the market will only offer proprietary "PVP-protected" planting material "invented" by transnational agribusiness corporations. The new law totally ignores all the contributions Iraqi farmers have made to development of important crops like wheat, barley, date and pulses. Its consequences are the loss of farmers' freedoms and a grave threat to food sovereignty in Iraq. In this way, the US has declared a new war against the Iraqi farmer. FULL STORY >>>So much for America's idea of "freedom" and "the rule of law".
(Snaffled from a similar story on urban fox's excellent blog.)
posted by The Editor at
9:45 AM
4 Comments:
thanks.
Not quite sure why you're thanking me, mquest, but you're most welcome.
Sorry- For some reason seeds and seed propagation excite me. What you posted about was part of a larger trend by seed company's to produce seeds and make it illegal to reuse the seeds that plant naturally reproduce. Thus a farm must by new seeds every year at a great cost. The biggest problem is when plants naturally reseed and enter areas outside a farm. The next farmer may reuse the seed unknowingly. And set himself up for major problems with the large seed company.
Yes. It's just plain wrong. Farmers in the Andes who have grown their corn for centuries have beens sued by a corporation (I think it was Monsanto, but I'm not sure) which has patented the genetic code for that corn.
Eventually, if they fight expensive and drawn-out legal battles those indigenous farmers might eventually regain the rightful free use of their corn, but no-one else in the world will be able to grow that corn except by buying seeds from that corporation.
It's nothing less than the hijacking and ransoming of nature itself.
I wonder will it extend to pharmacology. What I mean is, will natural e.g. naturopathic, homeopathic, and various other forms of herbal healing and their associated products eventually be outlawed or hijacked by corporations who own the genetic code for the natural substance these remedies incorprate? That would be nothing less than the hijacking by big business of alternative medicine.
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