peasant seed

The adoption of the future European regulation on plant reproductive material, known as the ‘seeds regulation’, has entered its final stages. The ‘provisional compromise’ is presented as a modernisation of the current legislation. Among other things, it extends the market for conservation varieties across the entire European Union and regulates the non-commercial exchange of seeds between farmers. However, this compromise has not achieved consensus. Whilst the peasant farmers’ organisation ECVC is calling for its rejection, organisations defending cultivated biodiversity welcome some of the progress made. The seed industry and the mainstream agricultural unions, for their part, welcome a framework that reinforces the current market organisation.

For some times now, the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture is discussing an expansion of its scope to all plant genetic resources for food and agriculture. Many stakeholders and observers are fearing this would end up in legitimizing biopiracy. As the next meeting will occur in Lima (Peru) starting in November, the 24th, Inf’OGM publishes the analysis of Nithin Ramakrishnan, from Third World Network, one of the stakeholders of this meeting.

At the beginning of April, the Tirpaa again discussed the expansion of the list of crops covered by the multilateral system and the revision of the contract governing their use. While some Member States of the Treaty are invoking the need to guarantee global food security, fears are being voiced that there will be a drift in widespread access to peasant and traditional seeds. This would facilitate their patenting, without any real sharing of the benefits, to the detriment of the countries of the “South” and the rights of the peasants.