Seed Of Death

IT'S been dubbed the Terminator and the "neutron bomb of agriculture". A US bio-tech company has patented a technology that denies a seed to be replanted after the first crop. A 'death' gene smuggled into the original seed sterilises it, leaving the farmer no option but to buy new seeds. Widely assailed as monopolistic, hazardous, and anti-poor farmer, the Indian government has banned these 'live-only-once' seeds.

The patent applies to plants and seeds of all species, including transgenic (genetically engineered) and conventionally-bred seeds. The seed-sterilising technology, argue critics, threatens to take away the age-old right of farmers to save seed from their harvest and imperils the food security of 1.4 billion farmers who depend on farm-saved seed. Says R.B. Singh, director, Indian Agricultural Institute: "They're fools if they think we'll allow this technology to enter our fields."

 Delta and Pine Land Co along with the US department of agriculture, the developers of the technology, have gone on record to say it will be targeted primarily in the South as a means of preventing farmers from saving proprietary seeds marketed by US seed corporations. They've applied for patents in at least 78 countries. Incidentally, Delta and Pine Land Co was recently bought over by US-based Monsanto, the world's second largest agrobusiness company which is now expanding its base in India. It says the technology is just a concept and would take years before it can be commercialised.

Canada-based Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI), which has launched an international campaign against this attempt, says it's an unabashed attempt to control the world food market. With the Terminator, says Vandana Shiva, director of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resources, "breeders will soon produce patented versions of previously 'open-pollinated' crops such as wheat, rice, sorghum, mustard—varieties our farmers have been breeding, saving and replanting for thousands of years." If staple crops such as rice and wheat can be locked up with the Terminator, investors will pump money into commercially-bred seed farmers will have to buy year after year.

Proponents of the Terminator argue that affluent farmers will have the option to buy these seeds while the small and poor farmer will still be free to buy standard varieties. Shiva argues "there'll be enormous pressure on public breeders to adopt this technology to feed cash-starved research departments with corporate dollars. Since the Terminator has a multi-billion dollar agrobusiness on its side, it's quite plausible that alternatives will be bribed or forced out of the picture."

 In recent times, says Geetanjali Bedi, who's studying farming trends in Punjab, "the seed industry has attempted to prevent farmers from saving or reselling proprietary seeds by using intellectual property laws (patents and plant breeders rights) to restrict the farmer's right to reuse or sell proprietary seed (for reproductive purposes). It's only in the last decade that seed companies have begun to use industrial patents to protect proprietary genes and traits." Under industrial patent law there's no exemption for farmers; it's illegal for farmers to save or reuse patented seed. Monsanto, for example, requires that its customers sign a licensing agreement that strictly forbids the farmer from saving the company's patented, transgenic seed. RAFI argues that if Delta and Pineland's new technology provides a genetic mechanism to prevent farmers from germinating a second generation of seed, then seed companies will gain biological control over seeds that they've heretofore lacked in non-hybrid crops.

The Terminator could also pose an ecological hazard. Some crop geneticists believe it's likely that pollen from crops carrying the Terminator trait will infect fields of farmers who either reject or can't afford the technology. Their crops won't be affected that season but some of their seed could turn sterile the season after.

Advocates of Terminator claim these fears are more speculative than real. In fact, they believe their technology will boost plant-breeding investment in the South because seed companies will have an incentive to invest in crops that have long been ignored by the commercial seed industry. RAFI rejects that claim and argues: "Private companies aren't interested in developing plant varieties for poor farmers because they know the farmers can't pay. Even national public breeding programmes tend to focus on hi-yielding, irrigated lands leaving resource-poor farmers to fend for themselves."