Nexus - 0221 - New Times Magazine-pages

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o- Have the multinational seed monopolies already sown our future? Stay alert and support your local seed bank. INE ULYUDAL SEEVS UVINSFIKRAUT otal control of the world's seeds—and ultimately the survival of mankind itself— is now in the hands of an elite cartel of multinational corporations. Complicitous governments worldwide are enacting Plant Breeders’ Rights legislation to enforce the seed monopolies, with six-month jail terms and fines of $250,000 for breach- ing patents or not paying royalties. Global biodiversity is under grave threat as genetically-engineered seeds—tolerant to herbicides, 'designer-gened' and primed for profits—replace heritage seeds. ‘Seed-saver’ networks and conservationists in many nations are fighting a grassroots action to protect natural and regional plant varieties from extinction and to alert the world to the threat of control of the world's food supply, genetic manipulation, and laws that will allow the process patenting of all plants, animals, fungi, genes and viruses. The world seeds market will be worth US$28 billion by the year 2000, yet only a hand- ful of major players—mainly petro-agri-chemical multinationals—will reap the rewards. Less than 20 major corporations now control global seed supplies; many are seeking patents on any newly-developed hybrids or those produced by transgenics (genetic engi- neering, or GE). Multinationals have acquired 1,000 seed and plant-breeding companies since 1970; in the 1980s alone they invested a staggering US$10 billion on company acquisitions. The world's largest seed company, Pioneer Hi-Bred International, holds 40 per cent of the US market in hybrid corn seed, around 50 per cent of the markets of Spain, Austria and Italy, and 90 per cent in Hungary and Egypt. Pioneer Hi-Bred also leads the seed market in Brazil, Thailand, the Ukraine and a large number of developing countries. Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) is the largest chemical conglomerate in the United Kingdom, and is now one of the world's biggest seed-suppliers. ICI became one of the major players on the US market in just five years: with the assistance of fellow UK giant British Petroleum, ICI swallowed up 11 of the largest seed companies from 1985-1990. W. R. Grace, DeKalb Shand, Monsanto and Cargill control the majority of other seed and plant-breeding companies in the Americas. French seeds giant Groupe Limagrain competes for European seed domination with ICI, Ciba-Geigy, Shell, Rhéne-Poulenc, Bayer, Pfizer (linked with deKalb), Hoechst and Pioneer Hi-Bred International. In Australasia and Oceania, ICI (Pacific Seeds) does battle with Pioneer Hi-Bred, DeKalb Shand, Cargill, AgSeed (a Limagrain company), Yates, New World Seeds and Seedco. Asia and Africa are also in the hands of the major US and European multinationals. Intense lobbying by the seeds cartel at the Uruguay Round of negotiations of the UN General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) paid off: countries under the Intemational Convention for the Protection of New Varieties (UPOV) are enacting Plant Breeders’ Rights (PBR) bills and launching them on unsuspecting communities around the world. Academics and civil libertarians have condemned the bills and the awarding of process patent rights that offer the multinationals absolute control over not only initial seed vari- eties but any derived plants, plus all transgenic and hybrid varieties they can produce. The patent laws will demand royalties from growers, while the seed companies have the ultimate power over mankind: control over what we eat, when we eat—or if we eat at all. Even more frightening is the awesome capability that transgenics gives to these corpo- by Ken Corbitt 14¢NEXUS THE GLOBAL SEEDS CONSPIRACY AUGUST - SEPTEMBER 1994