Secondly, its people who are predominantly small and marginal farmers are also financially very poor.[break]
When global seed corporations enter South Asia, they begin with hybrid seeds and then move on to genetically engineered patented seeds.
This has immediate consequences of wiping out our rich biodiversity and deepening the financial poverty of small and marginal farmers who get locked into debts to pay for the royalty of the high costs of non-renewable patented seeds.
The corporations are not alone in the big push to take over the seed supply. They are helped by the US Government.
A recent article in Forbes had a title: “Why Uncle Sam supports Frankenfood” which shows that the reason for the US Government helping Monsanto to enter the seed market of different countries is because it is the only area where the US earns massive amounts through royalty collections.
This is a new form of colonization based on bio-imperialism.
In the case of its Bt. Cotton alone in India, every year Monsanto takes out Rs 10 billion in royalties from impoverished Indian peasants. The consequence is debt and suicide. Seed monopolies, genetic engineering and farmers’ suicides.
An epidemic of farmers’ suicides has spread across four states of India over the last decade. According to official data, more than 250,000 farmers have committed suicide in India since 1995.
These four states are Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Punjab. The suicides are most frequent where farmers grow cotton and have been a direct result of the creation of seed monopolies, first with hybrids, followed by Bt. Cotton.
Increasingly, the supply of cotton seeds has slipped out of the ... hands of the farmers and the public system into the hands of global seed corporations like Monsanto.
The entry of seed MNCs was part of the globalization process. Under World Bank pressure and WTO rules, India was forced to open its seed sector to global companies. This is how Monsanto entered India and introduced Bt. Cotton.
Corporate seed supply implies a number of shifts simultaneously. Firstly, giant corporations start to control local seed companies through buyouts, joint ventures and licensing arrangements, leading to a seed monopoly.
Secondly, seed is transformed from being a common good to being the “intellectual property” of Monsanto, for which the corporation can claim limitless profits through royalty payments. For the farmer, this means deeper debt.
Thirdly, seed is transformed from a renewable regenerative, multiplicative resource into a non-renewable resource and commodity.
Seed scarcity and seed famines are a consequence of seed monopolies, which are based on non-renewability of seed, beginning with hybrids, moving to genetically engineered seed like Bt. cotton, with the ultimate aim of the “terminator” seed which is engineered for sterility.
Each of these technologies of non-renewability is guided by one factor alone – forcing farmers to buy seed every planning season. For farmers, this means higher costs. For seed corporations, it translates into higher profits.
Fourthly, the creation of seed monopolies is based on the simultaneous deregulation of seed corporations, including biosafety and seed deregulation, and super-regulation of farmers’ seeds and varieties.
Globalization allowed seed companies to sell self-certified seeds, and in the case of genetically engineered seeds, they are seeking self-regulation for biosafety.
This is the main aim of the recently proposed Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India, which is in effect a Biosafety Deregulation Authority.
The proposed Seed Bill 2004, which has been blocked by a massive nationwide Gandhian Seed Satyagraha by farmers, aims at forcing every farmer to register the varieties they have evolved over millennia. This compulsory registration and licensing system robs farmers of their fundamental freedoms.
State regulation extinguishes biodiversity, and pushes all farmers into dependency on patented, corporate seed. Such compulsory licensing has been the main vehicle of destruction of biodiversity and farmers’ rights in the U.S. and Europe.
Fifthly, corporate seeds impose monocultures on farmers. Mixed cropping of cotton with cereals, legumes, oilseeds, and vegetables is replaced with a monoculture of Bt-cotton hybrids.
The creation of seed monopolies, and with it the creation of unpayable debt to a new species of moneylender, the agents of the seeds and chemical companies, has led to hundreds of thousands of Indian farmers killing themselves since 1997.
The suicides first started in the district of Warangal in Andhra Pradesh. Peasants there used to grow millets, pulses, oilseeds. Overnight, Warangal was converted to a cotton growing district based on non-renewable hybrids which need irrigation and are prone to pest attacks.
Small peasants without capital were trapped in a vicious cycle of debt. Some ended up committing suicide.
This was the period when Monsanto and its Indian partner Mahyco were also carrying out illegal field experiments with genetically engineered Bt-cotton.
We at the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology used these laws to stop Monsanto’s commercialization of Bt-cotton in 1999, which is why approval was not granted for commercial sales until 2002.
The Government of Andhra Pradesh filed a case in the Monopoly and Restrictive Trade Practices Act (MRTP), India’s Anti Trust Law, arguing that Monsanto’s seed monopolies were the primary cause of farmers’ suicides in Andhra Pradesh. Monsanto was forced to reduce its prices of Bt-cotton seeds.
The high costs of seeds and other inputs were combined with falling prices of cotton due to a US$4billion US subsidy and the dumping of this subsidized cotton on India by using the W.T.O. to force India to remove Quantitative Restrictions on agricultural imports.
Rising costs of production and falling prices of the product is a recipe for indebtedness, and being in debt is the main cause of farmers’ suicides.
This is why farmers’ suicides are most prevalent in the cotton belt which, on seed industries’ own claim, is rapidly becoming a Bt-cotton belt. Hybrid seeds and Bt-cotton is thus heavily implicated in farmers’ suicides.
People’s victory in canceling Monsanto’s MOUs with Rajasthan Government. As announced by Dainik Bhaskar on November 8, 2011, The MOU’s of Monsanto and other seed companies with Rajasthan Agricultural Universities have been cancelled.
Under pressure of the Prime Minister’s Office (which in turn was under the pressure of the White House because of signing the US-India Agriculture Agreement, on the board of which sits Monsanto) the States were signing MOU’s with seed corporations to privatize India’s rich and diverse genetic heritage.
The Government of Rajasthan signed seven MOU’s with Monsanto, Advanta, DCM-Sriram, Kanchan Jyoti Agro Industries, PHI Seeds Pvt. Ltd, Krishidhan Seeds, and J.K. Agri Genetics.
While what was being undertaken was a great seed robbery under the supervision of the State, it was being called PPP – Private Public Partnership.
The MOU with Monsanto focused on maize, cotton and vegetables (hot pepper, tomato, cabbage, cucumber, cauliflower, watermelon). Monsanto bought up Seminis, the world’s largest seed company.
Monsanto controls the cotton seed market in India and globally. Monsanto controls 97% of the worldwide maize market, and 63.5% of the GM cotton market. And Dupont has had to initiate anti-trust investigations in the US because of Monsanto’s growing seed monopoly.
Thus, the MOU would have deepened Monsanto’s monopoly over seed supply.
The MOU violated farmers’ rights by handing over the genetic wealth of farmers to corporations without the consent of farmers.
On the contrary, the MOU’s were one sided and biased in favor of corporate intellectual property rights.
The Monsanto MOU stated: “Monsanto’s proprietary tools, techniques, technology, knowhow and intellectual property rights with respect to the crops shall remain the property of Monsanto although utilized in any of the activities outlined as part of the MOU.”
While public resources would have been freely given away to Monsanto as a subsidy, Monsanto’s IPR monopolies would have been protected. This was an MOU for “Monsanto takes all, the public system gives all.”
It was clearly an MOU for privatization of India’s seed and genetic wealth, its knowledge and a violation of farmers’ rights. The seed supplies that the agriculture universities were handing over to Monsanto were not the property of the state, or of Monsanto. They were the common property of farming communities.
That is why Navdanya started the campaign for cancellation of the MOU’s. On August 9, 2011 “Quit India Day,” the day 13 years ago when the Monsanto Quit India campaign sarted, Dr. Vandana Shiva and the Navdanya team undertook a seed sovereignty yatra in Rajasthan saving seeds and meeting with local groups and scientists and government representatives to intensify the call for the cancellation of the MOU’s.
The announcement of the cancellation is yet another success of Navdanya, the seed sovereignty movement, the seed keepers of Rajasthan and NGOs and independent scientists who work together to roll back the power of Monsanto and the seed MNCs.
I hope the success we have had with the cancellation of the MOU of Monsanto with Rajasthan Government will be repeated in Nepal with the cancellation of the agreement between the Nepal Government and Monsanto.
A world renowned physicist, environmental activist and eco-feminist, Dr Vandana Shiva has authored 20 books and over 500 papers in leading journals and has been the driving force behind the indigenous movement for conservation of biodiversity and farmers’ rights.
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