tagged w/ seed patents
-
In Monsanto v. Geertson Seed Farms, No. 09-475, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case which could have an enormous effect on the future of the American food industry. This is Monsanto's third appeal of the case, and if they win a favorable ruling from the high court, a deregulated Monsanto may find itself in position to corner the markets of numerous U.S. crops, and to litigate conventional farmers into oblivion.
Here's where it gets a bit dicier. Two Supreme Court justices have what appear to be direct conflicts of interest.
Stephen Breyer
Charles Breyer, the judge who ruled in the original decision of 2007 which is being appealed, is Stephen Breyer's brother, who apparently views this as a conflict of interest and has recused himself.
Clarence Thomas
From the years 1976 - 1979, Thomas worked as an attorney for Monsanto. Thomas apparently does not see this as a conflict of interest and has not recused himself.
Fox, meet henhouse.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The lawsuit was filed by plantiffs which include the Center for Food Safety, the National Family Farm Coalition, Sierra Club, Dakota Resources Council and other farm, environmental and consumer groups and individual farmers. The original decision :
The federal district court in California issued its opinion on the deregulation of “Roundup Ready” alfalfa pursuant to the Plant Protection Act on February 13, 2007. Upon receiving Monsanto’s petition for deregulation of the alfalfa seed, APHIS conducted an Environmental Assessment and received over 500 comments in opposition to the deregulation. The opposition’s primary concern was the potential of contamination. APHIS, however, made a Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) and approved the deregulation petition, thereby allowing the seed to be sold without USDA oversight. Geertson Seed Farms, joined by a number of growers and associations, filed claims under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) as well as the Endangered Species Act and Plant Protection Act. In regards to NEPA, they argued that the agency should have prepared an EIS for the deregulation.
Addressing only the NEPA claims, the court agreed that APHIS should have conducted an EIS because of the significant environmental impact posed by deregulation of the alfalfa seed. A realistic potential for contamination existed, said the court, but the agency had not fully inquired into the extent of this potential. The court also determined that APHIS did not adequately examine the potential effects of Roundup Ready alfalfa on organic farming and the development of glyphosate-resistant weeds and that there were “substantial questions” raised by the deregulation petition that the agency should have addressed in an EIS. Concluding that the question of whether the introduction of the genetically engineered alfalfa and its potential to affect non-genetic alfalfa posed a significant environmental impact necessitated further study, the court found that APHIS’s decision was “arbitrary and capricious” and ordered the agency to prepare an EIS. The court later enjoined the planting of Roundup Ready alfalfa from March 30, 2007, until completion of the EIS and reconsideration of the deregulation petition, except for those farmers who had already purchased the seed. In May of 2007, the court enjoined any future planting of the alfalfa. An order by the court in June, 2007 required disclosure of all Roundup Ready planting sites.
Monsanto filed appeals in 2008 and 2009. In both instances, they were unsuccessful in having the original decision reversed, so they appealed to the Supreme Court, who agreed to hear the case.
Alfalfa is the fourth most widely grown crop in the United States, behind corn, soybeans, and wheat. South Dakota alfalfa farmer Pat Trask, one of the plaintiffs, said Monsanto's biotech alfalfa would ruin his conventional alfalfa seed business because it was certain his 9,000 acres would be contaminated by the biotech genes.
Alfalfa is very easily cross-pollinated by bees and by wind. The plant is also perennial, meaning GMO plants could live on for years.
"The way this spreads so far and wide, it will eliminate the conventional alfalfa industry," said Trask. "Monsanto will own the entire alfalfa industry."
Monsanto has a policy of filing lawsuits or taking other legal actions against farmers who harvest crops that show the presence of the company's patented gene technology. It has sued farmers even when they have tried to keep their own fields free from contamination by biotech plants on neighbouring farms.
The case has implications beyond alfalfa crops. About eight hundred reviewed genetically engineered food applications were submitted to the USDA, yet no environmental impact statements were prepared. Even as this diary is being written, a federal judge in San Francisco is reviewing a similar case involving genetically modified sugar beets. The decision is expected this week and could halt planting and use of the gm sugar beets, which account for half of America's sugar supply.In Monsanto v. Geertson Seed Farms, No. 09-475, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear... more
-
-
NAIROBI: Researchers say farmers in developing countries are losing one of their best hopes to limit the impacts of climate change because of growing corporate control of the seeds they plant.
The warning issued on Monday comes ahead of the World Seed Conference which opens on Tuesday at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome.
The researchers - from the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and partners organizations in China, India, Kenya, Panama and Peru - say the diversity of traditional seed varieties is falling fast and this means valuable traits such as drought and pest resistance could be lost forever.
"Where farming communities have been able to maintain their traditional varieties, they are already using them to cope with the impacts of climate change," says project leader Krystyna Swiderska of IIED.
"But more commonly, these varieties are being replaced by a smaller range of 'modern' seeds that are heavily promoted by corporations and subsidized by governments. These seeds have less genetic diversity yet need more inputs such as pesticides and fertilizers and more natural resources such as land and water."
The researchers say that one reason for this is that while the international treaty on the protection of new varieties of plants - - known as UPOV -- protects the profits of powerful private corporations it fails to recognize and protect the rights and knowledge of poor farmers.
"Western governments and the seed industry want to upgrade the UPOV Convention to provide stricter exclusive rights to commercial plant breeders," says Swiderska.
"This will further undermine the rights of farmers and promote the loss of seed diversity that poor communities depend on for their resilience to changing climatic conditions."
The researchers also point out that in order to continue conserving and adapting their varieties, farmers also need to be allowed to freely save, use, exchange and sell farm-saved seeds.
Technologies which restrict these customary rights -- namely Genetic Use Restriction Technologies (GURTS) -- pose a very serious threat to genetic diversity, seed quality and the livelihoods of poor farmers.
"The farming communities that have developed and sustained a rich diversity of seeds over millennia urgently need incentives to continue sustaining them," says Ruchi Pant of Ecoserve in India.
"They need the same rights over their traditional seed varieties and associated knowledge as corporations have over modern varieties they develop and patent. The new seed laws being introduced in developing agrarian countries are posing a threat to the rights of small farmers to save, sow and exchange their traditional varieties."
end of excerptNAIROBI: Researchers say farmers in developing countries are losing one of their best... more
-
-
(That was) then
When I was a boy growing up here outside of Langdon, everything on the farm belonged to my family.
At about the age of ten, Dad taught me how to raise hogs. The sows we grew from Hampshire gilts were ours. So was the alfalfa field where we grew hay and hog pasture. Planted to Vernal seed (a public variety), it was where piglets played and slept in the warm summer sun. The wheat field we harvested later that summer was planted to Gage seed, another public variety. We harvested that wheat in July, then sold some for seed and some for grain. Dad saved seed for next years crop, and Mother cooked a little into breakfast cereal and even ground some flour.
After the wheat harvest, we mowed the stubble and baled the straw. The same pigs that grazed the alfalfa were farrowed and later bedded in our wheat straw as the days grew cooler, and Dad fed the shoats our own corn.
When we fed the hogs Dad told me about how he used to go to the corncrib and select ears of open pollinated seed corn from the thousands he had there. He told me how he'd sort through them and choose only the very best of what he'd grown.
And then he told me about how single cross seed corn had replaced open pollinated varieties that he had planted since he was a boy on his father's farm, where everything they grew belonged to them.
The open pollinated ears of corn from Dad 's crib were never worth more than about a penny apiece.
The cloth sacks that held the first single cross seeds he planted still rest in the attic of my home. Most of the seed company imprints on the sacks would be unrecognizable to young farmers today, but they tell a story that is very up-to-date. It is a story of progress, a story of consolidation, and a story of control.
Even as privatized seed came into being, competition made it difficult for one seed company to dominate another. Seed sales depended simply on appearance, the hybrid's ability to withstand stress, its harvestability, marketing, and most of all yield.
Those were the basic parameters of operating a successful hybrid seed company. Farmers might spend a little more for the very best hybrid, but the bottom line was always about profit on the farm. For a hybrid to be good, it had to be profitable because, after all, the profits belonged to the farmers who grew the crops.
snip
(Then came) Monsanto
The seed company where I bought my first private soybean variety seed was purchased lock, stock, and barrel, by Monsanto.
Monsanto was the first commercial company to patent seed, and first to aggressively enforce its rights as a patent holder of living things.
Monsanto has actively sued many farmers for seed patent infringement. Given the power of a billion dollars in earnings, Monsanto never loses a case. Right or wrong, the company can afford to maintain lawsuits in the courts for years. Eventually, farmers who may or may not have done what they were accused of are forced to capitulate or spend the farm to defend themselves.
Thanks to higher land costs and higher prices for petroleum, machinery, chemicals, fertilizer and seed, the cost to grow an acre of soybeans now approaches $500 per acre.
The 2008 national average soybean yield is predicted to be 40.5 bushels per acre -- or about the same yield I got from the public varieties I planted nearly 40 years ago.
At today's price of about $12 per bushel, an average acre of soybeans is worth $486 [barely a break-even price before federal subsidies.]
As a commercial grower who produces soybeans for the price of $12 per bushel, I haven't simply lost the right to plant my own seed.
I may also have lost the right to earn a profit.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
What Monsanto is doing to farming and the livelihoods of farmers is nothing less than a crime. And for those who wanted proof of that, there it is straight out of the farmer's pen.(That was) then
When I was a boy growing up here outside of Langdon, everything on... more
-
