← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Centinel
Thread ID: 16314 | Posts: 5 | Started: 2005-01-14
2005-01-14 20:53 | User Profile
[url]http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2005-01-13-biotech-pirates_x.htm[/url]
Posted 1/13/2005 6:51 PM
Enforcing single-season seeds, Monsanto sues farmers
By Paul Elias, Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO ââ¬â Monsanto's "seed police" snared soy farmer Homan McFarling in 1999, and the company is demanding he pay it hundreds of thousands of dollars for alleged technology piracy.
McFarling's sin? He saved seed from one harvest and replanted it the following season, a revered and ancient agricultural practice.
"My daddy saved seed. I saved seed," said McFarling, 62, who still grows soy on the 5,000 acre family farm in Shannon, Miss. and is fighting the agribusiness giant in court.
Saving Monsanto's seeds, genetically engineered to kill bugs and resist weed sprays, violates provisions of the company's contracts with farmers.
Since 1997, Monsanto has filed similar lawsuits 90 times in 25 states including North Dakota against 147 farmers and 39 agriculture companies, according to a report issued Thursday by The Center for Food Safety, a biotechnology foe.
In a similar case a year ago, Tennessee farmer Kem Ralph was sued by Monsanto and sentenced to eight months in prison after he was caught lying about a truckload of cotton seed he hid for a friend.
Ralph's prison term is believed to be the first criminal prosecution linked to Monsanto's crackdown. Ralph has also been ordered to pay Monsanto more than $1.7 million.
The company itself says it annually investigates about 500 "tips" that farmers are illegally using its seeds and settles many of those cases before a lawsuit is filed.
In this way, Monsanto is attempting to protect its business from pirates in much the same way the entertainment industry does when it sues underground digital distributors exploiting music, movies and video games.
In the process, it has turned farmer on farmer and sent private investigators into small towns to ask prying questions of friends and business acquaintances.
Monsanto's licensing contracts and litigation tactics are coming under increased scrutiny as more of the planet's farmland comes under genetically engineered cultivation.
Some 200 million acres of the world's farms grew biotech crops last year, an increase of 20% from 2003, according to a separate report released Wednesday.
Many of the farmers Monsanto has sued say, as McFarling claims, that they didn't read the company's technology agreement close enough. Others say they never received an agreement in the first place.
The company counters that it sues only the most egregious violations and is protecting the 300,000 law-abiding U.S. farmers who annually pay a premium for its technology. Soy farmers, for instance, pay a "technology fee" of about $6.50 an acre each year.
Some 85% of the nation's soy crop is genetically engineered to resist Monsanto's herbicide Roundup, a trait many farmers say makes it easier to weed their fields and ultimately cheaper to grow their crops.
"It's a very efficient and cost-effective way to raise soy beans and that's why the market has embraced it," said Ron Heck, who grows 900 acres of genetically engineered soy beans in Perry, Iowa.
Heck, who is also chairman of the American Soybean Association, said he doesn't mind buying new seed each year and appreciates Monsanto's crackdown on competitors who don't pay for their seed.
"You can save seed if you want to use the old technology," Heck said.
The company said the licensing agreement protects its more than 600 biotech-related patents and ensures a return on its research and development expenses, which amount to more than $400 million annually.
"We have to balance our obligations and our responsibilities to our customers, to our employees and to our shareholders," said Scott Baucum, Monsanto's chief intellectual property protector.
Still, Monsanto's investigative tactics are sewing seeds of fear and mistrust in some farming communities, company critics say.
Monsanto encourages farmers to call a company hot line with piracy tips, and private investigators in its employ act on leads with visits to the associates of suspect farmers.
Baucum acknowledged that the company walks a fine line when it sues farmers.
"It is very uncomfortable for us," Baucum said. "They are our customers and they are important to us."
The Center for Food Safety established its own hot line Thursday where farmers getting sued can receive aid. It also said it hopes to convene a meeting among defense lawyers to develop legal strategies to fight Monsanto.
The company said it has gone to trial five times and has never lost a legal fight against an accused pirate. The U.S. Supreme Court in 1980 allowed for the patenting of genetically engineered life forms and extended the same protections to altered plants in 2001. Earlier this year, a Washington D.C. federal appeals court specifically upheld Monsanto's license.
"It's sad. It's sickening. I'm disillusioned," said Rodney Nelson, a North Dakota farmer who settled a Monsanto suit in 2001 that he said was unfairly filed. "We have a heck of an uphill battle that I don't think can be won."
2005-01-14 21:22 | User Profile
We have already spread biological patents to Iraq, along with freedom and democracy.
[center] [font=Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif][size=4][color=#800080]Iraqi Farmers Aren't Celebrating World Food Day[/color][/size][/font] Nov 11, 2004
*[size=3]As part of sweeping "economic restructuring" implemented by the Bush Administration in Iraq, Iraqi farmers will no longer be permitted to save their seeds. Instead, they will be forced to buy seeds from US corporations -- which can include seeds the Iraqis themselves developed over hundreds of years. That is because in recent years, transnational corporations have patented and now own many seed varieties originated or developed by indigenous peoples. In a short time, Iraq will be living under the new American credo: Pay Monsanto, or starve. [/size]*
[/center]
<!-- Content Starts--> [font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][size=2]When the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) celebrated biodiversity on World Food Day on October 16, Iraqi farmers were mourning its loss.[/size][/font] [font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][size=2]A new report [1] by GRAIN and Focus on the Global South has found that new legislation in Iraq has been carefully put in place by the US that prevents farmers from saving their seeds and effectively hands over the seed market to transnational corporations. This is a disastrous turn of events for Iraqi farmers, biodiversity and the country's food security. While political sovereignty remains an illusion, food sovereignty for the Iraqi people has been made near impossible by these new regulations.[/size][/font]
[font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][size=2]"The US has been imposing patents on life around the world through trade deals. In this case, they invaded the country first, then imposed their patents. This is both immoral and unacceptable", said Shalini Bhutani, one of the report's authors.
[/size][/font]
[font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][size=2]The new law in question [2] heralds the entry into Iraqi law of patents on life forms - this first one affecting plants and seeds. This law fits in neatly into the US vision of Iraqi agriculture in the future - that of an industrial agricultural system dependent on large corporations providing inputs and seeds.[/size][/font]
[font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][size=2]In 2002, 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 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.[/size][/font]
[font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][size=2]"If the FAO is celebrating 'Biodiversity for Food Security' this year, it needs to demonstrate some real commitment", says Henk Hobbelink of GRAIN, pointing out that the FAO has recently been cosying up with industry and offering support for genetic engineering [3]. "Most importantly, the FAO must recognise that biodiversity-rich farming and industry-led agriculture are worlds apart, and that industrial agriculture is one of the leading causes of the catastrophic decline in agricultural biodiversity that we have witnessed in recent decades. The FAO cannot hope to embrace biodiversity while holding industry's hand", he added.[/size][/font]
[url="http://www.vegsource.com/articles2/iraq_seeds.htm"]http://www.vegsource.com/articles2/iraq_seeds.htm[/url]
2005-01-15 01:54 | User Profile
[B]Stalinism Lives![/B]
This sick and evil. A good part of the time I think we need to just do away with patents and copyrights.
More stuff!
Visit [url]http://www.grain.org/articles/?id=6[/url]. GRAIN and Focus' report is entitled "Iraq's new patent law: a declaration of war against farmers". Against the grain is a series of short opinion pieces on recent trends and developments in the issues that GRAIN works on. This one has been produced collaboratively with Focus on the Global South.
[2] Patent, Industrial Design, Undisclosed Information, Integrated Circuits and Plant Variety Law of 2004, CPA Order No. 81, 26 April 2004, [url]http://www.iraqcoalition.org/regulations/20040426_CPAORD_81_Patents_Law.pdf[/url]
[3] GRAIN, "FAO declares war on farmers, not hunger", New from Grain, 16 June 2004, [url]http://www.grain.org/front/?id=24[/url]
source: [url]http://www.grain.org/nfg/?id=253[/url] 16oct04
Related articles:
Monsanto's Royalty Grab in Argentina [url]http://www.vegsource.com/articles2/monsanto_argentina.htm[/url]
2005-01-15 02:26 | User Profile
Centinel,
No one should growing this stuff in the first.
[QUOTE]Some 85% of the nation's soy crop is genetically engineered to resist Monsanto's herbicide Roundup, a trait many farmers say makes it easier to weed their fields and ultimately cheaper to grow their crops.[/QUOTE]
These sick evil morons are poisoning the land and water. What happen to all that poison. It end up in the soil and ground water, and rivers.
2005-01-15 05:43 | User Profile
I don't know if you guys know this but in 2003 Monsanto gave the Iraqis some seeds in order to help them with the economy and in 2004 sue them for keeping some seeds for that year.
I am against that junk anyway but it looks like the US wants to control the world food supply with habyr seeds, Monsanto is only the front people for the US government.
By the way I don't know if you kow this but for the last 25 years the US tax payers has been paying for the experimentation of this seeds.