New Report: The Seed Giants Versus U.S. Farmers

Seed Giants vs. U.S. Farmers also exam­ines broader socio-economic con­se­quences of the present patent sys­tem includ­ing links to loss of seed inno­va­tion, ris­ing seed prices, reduc­tion of inde­pen­dent sci­en­tific inquiry, and envi­ron­men­tal issues.

Debbie Barker, Program Director for Save Our Seeds and Senior Writer for the Report, said today: “Corporations did not cre­ate seeds and many are chal­leng­ing the exist­ing patent sys­tem that allows pri­vate com­pa­nies to assert own­er­ship over a resource that is vital to sur­vival, and that, his­tor­i­cally, has been in the pub­lic domain.”

Among the report’s dis­cov­er­ies are sev­eral alarm­ing statistics:

• As of January 2013, Monsanto, alleg­ing seed patent infringe­ment, had filed 144 law­suits involv­ing 410 farm­ers and 56 small farm busi­nesses in at least 27 dif­fer­ent states.
• Today, three cor­po­ra­tions con­trol 53 per­cent of the global com­mer­cial seed market.
• Seed con­sol­i­da­tion has led to mar­ket con­trol result­ing in dra­matic increases in the price of seeds. From 1995-2011, the aver­age cost to plant one acre of soy­beans has risen 325 per­cent; for cot­ton prices spiked 516 per­cent and corn seed prices are up by 259 percent.

The report also dis­putes seed indus­try claims that present seed patent rules are nec­es­sary for seed inno­va­tion. As Bill Freese, senior sci­en­tist at Center for Food Safety and one of the report’s con­trib­u­tors notes: “Most major new crop vari­eties devel­oped through­out the 20th cen­tury owe their ori­gin to pub­licly funded agri­cul­tural research and breeding.”

Additionally, Seed Giants vs. U.S. Farmers reports a pre­cip­i­tous drop in seed diver­sity that has been cul­ti­vated for mil­len­nia. As the report notes: 86% of corn, 88% of cot­ton, and 93% of soy­beans farmed in the U.S. are now genetically-engineered (GE) vari­eties, mak­ing the option of farm­ing non-GE crops increas­ingly difficult.

While agri­chem­i­cal cor­po­ra­tions also claim that their patented seeds are lead­ing to envi­ron­men­tal improve­ments, the report notes that upward of 26 per­cent more chem­i­cals per acre were used on GE crops than on non-GE crops, accord­ing to USDA data.

Further, in response to an epi­demic of weed resis­tance to glyphosate, the pri­mary her­bi­cide used on GE crops, Dow AgroSciences is seek­ing USDA approval of “next gen­er­a­tion” corn and soy­beans resis­tant to 2,4-D, an active ingre­di­ent in Agent Orange. Monsanto is seek­ing approval for GE dicamba-resistant soy­beans, corn, and cotton.

At the launch of the report via tele­con­fer­ence today, experts from the Center for Food Safety and Save our Seeds were joined by Mr. Vernon Hugh Bowman, the 75-year-old Indiana soy­bean farmer who, next week, will come up against Monsanto in the Supreme Court Case. When asked about the numer­ous com­par­isons being drawn between his case and the story of David and Goliath, Mr. Bowman responded, “I really don’t con­sider it as David and Goliath. I don’t think of it in those terms. I think of it in terms of right and wrong.”

In December of 2012, the Center for Food Safety, and Save Our Seeds sub­mit­ted an ami­cus brief to the Supreme Court on behalf of Mr. Bowman, which sup­ports the right of farm­ers to re-plant saved seed. Arguments in the case are sched­uled for February 19th.

For the full report: http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Seed-Giants_final.pdf

Source: Center for Food Safety