Iraq's Crop
Patent Law
A Threat To Food Security
By GM Free Cymru
03 March 2005
Countercurrents.org
Aid
agencies and NGOs across the globe have been reacting with horror to
the news that new legislation in Iraq was carefully put in place last
year by the US that will effectively bring the whole of the country's
agricultural sector under the control of trans-national corporations
(TNCs). This will be a disaster for the Iraqi government and especially
for the country's farmers, since companies like Monsanto and Syngenta
will be empowered to control the food chain from planted seed (1) to
packaged food products, thus extending economic colonialism into every
walk of life.
The new Iraqi Government
is now being urged as a matter of priority to revoke Order 81, the offending
piece of legislation which was signed and brought into force by Paul
Bremer (the Administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority) on
26th April 2004.
The Order has been
described by NGOs as "cynical and wicked", since the section
relating to the registration and protection of plant varieties was slipped
in almost as an appendage to an Order dealing with patents, industrial
design, disclosure of information and integrated circuits (2). "The
manner in which this Order was imposed on the people of Iraq is an outrage
in itself," says Dr Brian John of GM Free Cymru. "There was
virtually no Iraqi input into the wording of the Order, since the country
and its people were on their knees following the Iraq War (3). The Preamble
to the Order justifies its provisions as "necessary to improve
the economic condition of the people of Iraq", as desirable for
"sustainable economic growth" and as enabling Iraq to become
"a full member of the international trading system known as the
WTO." That all sounds laudable, but when one looks at paragraphs
51 to 79 of the Order it is clear that they have been designed simply
to facilitate the takeover of Iraqi agriculture by western biotechnology
and agribusiness corporations."
It is not surprising
that Order 81 was written as "enabling legislation" for American
corporate interests. The US Agriculture Department, which aided Bremer
in writing the Order, was headed by ex-management of the huge US seed
and biotech companies, such as Monsanto and Cargill (4). Ann Veneman,
who recently resigned as US Secretary of Agriculture, had a long career
working for large US agribusinesses (including Calgene) before going
to work for the government. She appointed Cargill's Dan Amstutz to head
Iraqs agricultural reconstruction. The Order fits in neatly into
the US/TNC vision of future Iraqi agriculture - that of an industrial
agricultural system dependent on a small number of cash crops, with
large corporations selling both chemical inputs and seeds. It also arises
naturally from the USAID programme in Iraq, which unashamedly confirms
the thesis that foreign aid programmes are primarily "commercial
opportunity" programmes designed for the benefit of American companies
(5).
IRAQ'S FOOD CRISIS
Iraq is thought
to be the place where wild wheat originated, and it once had the world's
greatest diversity of wild and cultivated wheats. Many of its cereal
varieties have been exported and adapted worldwide through breeding
programmes. The country was once self-sufficient in agriculture and
was also the worlds number one exporter of dates. Twenty seven
percent of Iraqs total land area is suitable for cultivation,
over half of which is rain-fed while the balance is irrigable. Wheat,
barley, and chickpeas are the primary staple crops, and traditionally
wheat has been the most important crop in the country. Before the Iraq
War, average annual harvests were 1.4 million tonnes for cereals, 400,000
tonnes for roots and tubers, and 38,000 tonnes for pulses. Over the
last 20 years Iraq's agricultural sector has collapsed, and only half
of the irrigable area is now properly utilised (6). It is not known
how many of the country's 600,000 farmers are still able to produce
food. Grain production during 2003 was less than one-half the grain
production in 1990. On average, agricultural production levels have
been declining by 2.6 percent per year since that year, and today more
than 50 percent of the population is affected by food insecurity. The
Oil-For-Food Programme, while essential to the humanitarian situation
in Iraq, was a severe disincentive to food production. From the beginning,
it was criticized as a scheme designed to guarantee oil supplies to
the west and to create food dependency in Iraq. Now over half of Iraq's
total food requirement is imported, and a large portion of the population
is dependent upon government-financed food rations for survival. The
World Food Programme (WFP) plays a key role in coordinating the flow
of food aid , and recently three million tons of wheat have been imported
yearly, mostly from Australia, to be distributed to Iraqis as part of
their food rations. There is a lack of farm machinery and equipment,
water shortages, a low technology uptake, and a lack of profit incentive.
The cost of the annual food rations provided to Iraqis is estimated
at over $2 billion per year. Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) officials
and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Agriculture
Reconstruction and Development Program for Iraq (ARDI) are continuing
implementation of a national wheat production campaign, so as to reduce
the dependency on aid. Under the campaign, 1,500 tons of wheat seed
has arrived in Mosul. ARDI procured the seed to assist the MOA to distribute
high quality, certified seed to as many farmers as possible. Over 400
tonnes of this seed has already been distributed and incorporated into
high-profile "reconstruction and re-education" programmes,
and another 4,000 tonnes are on their way (1) (4). We have been unable
to discover which varieties are involved, who the seed owners are, and
the terms under which the seed stocks are being "donated".
But some of the seeds, at least, appear to have come from the World
Wide Wheat Company of Arizona, which has links with the Texas A&M
University.
FOREIGN AID -- A
NICE LITTLE EARNER
Order 81, like the
other 99 orders brought into law at high speed by Paul Bremer on behalf
of the Coalitional Provisional Authority, was conceived by the US administration
as part of the plan to install a "friendly and compliant"
and essentially colonial regime in Iraq. The Order explicitly states
that its provisions are consistent with Iraq's "transition from
a non-transparent centrally planned economy to a free market economy
characterised by sustainable economic growth through the establishment
of a dynamic private sector, and the need to enact institutional and
legal reforms to give it effect." Pushing for these "transitional
reforms" in Iraq has been the US Agency for International Development,
which has been implementing an Agricultural Reconstruction and Development
Program for Iraq (ARDI) since October 2003. To carry it out, a one-year
US$5 million contract was granted to the US consulting firm Development
Alternatives, Inc, followed by a further $96 million contract. At the
same time, there has been great speculation in sections of the American
press about the fate of Iraqi oil sales revenues since the invasion.
Only a part of it seems to be accounted for, and auditing procedures
appear to have been corrupt. It looks as if $9 billion worth of oil
revenues have simply disappeared, and it is reasonable to assume that
the "unrecorded" income has simply been recycled by the US
Administration and dressed up as multi-million dollar "aid"
from the people of America to the people of Iraq (7). ARDI claims that
it is rebuilding the farming sector of Iraq, but its real intention
is to develop agribusiness opportunities for western corporations and
thus to provide markets for agricultural products and services on an
ongoing basis. According to GRAIN and other NGOs, "reconstruction"
is not necessarily about rebuilding domestic economies and capacities,
but about helping corporations approved by the occupying forces to capitalise
on market opportunities in Iraq. The legal framework laid down by Bremer
ensures that although US troops may leave Iraq in the conceivable future,
the US domination of Iraq's economy will be sustained in law by one
hundred very convenient Orders.
ORDER 81
The critical part
of Order 81 deals with plant variety protection (PVP). Superficially,
its purpose is to protect the rights of those who develop new and improved
plant varieties (2), but it means that in future Iraqi farmers will
have little option but to plant protected crop varieties
defined as new, distinct, uniform and stable. The new law makes a very
basic change to Iraqi "intellectual property" law, for the
first time recognizing the "ownership" of biologic material
and paving the way for the patenting of life forms. It also opens the
way for genetically modified crops to be introduced into the country.
Crucially, there are no special provisions for GM crops -- they are
treated as no more novel (and no more controversial) than new varieties
developed through conventional breeding programmes. Where ownership
of a crop is claimed, seed saving will be banned, and royalties will
have to be paid by the farmer to the registered seed "owner".
Farmers will be required to sign Technology User Agreements relating
to seed supply and -- probably -- to the marketing of the harvest. Where
GM crops are involved (and possibly in other cases as well) they will
also be required to sign contracts for the purchase of herbicides, insecticides
and fertilisers.
Strictly, the new
law does not prohibit the saving of seed from the harvesting of traditional
or long-established varieties that are deemed to be "matters of
common knowledge." (2) (4) But with Iraqi agriculture in a state
of crisis, there are critical seed shortages, and as mentioned above
the "reconstruction" of the food supply system involves a
substantial involvement on the part of USAID and other food donor organizations.
"High quality seed" (whatever that means) is being given to
farmers along with technical advice; it is inevitable that that seed
comes from US registered varieties, and that within a year or two philanthropy
will be replaced by the collection of seed royalties. In addition, careful
digging reveals that Order 81 allows plant breeders to claim ownership
of old varieties (and to call them "new" varieties) if they
are the first to describe or characterize them. They can also then claim
the ownership of related crops if they are "not clearly distinguishable
from the protected varieties." The control of all protected varieties
will last 20 years for field crops and 25 years for trees and vines.
Farmers who do save seed or otherwise break their agreements, and farmers
unlucky enough to find the adventitious presence of "registered
varieties" in their fields, can be prosecuted, or else their harvests,
tools and buildings destroyed. Conversely, farmers will have no right
to claim compensation from the seed owners who, for example, allow their
GM crops to pollute organic cropping enterprises and destroy livelihoods
in the process.
HEADS I WIN, TAILS
YOU LOSE
In the end the Iraqi
farmer will have two choices. He can go it alone, and try to grow crops
from seeds of "traditional" crops that have become rare during
decades of war and sanctions; or he can sign up to the food aid / agricultural
programme and then buy seeds from companies like Monsanto, Dow, Syngenta
and Bayer. If he chooses the first option he may be left out in the
cold during the reconstruction programme (1) (4). If he chooses the
second option he will (after a period of free handouts and advice) be
trapped into a high-cost cash crop economy from which he will find it
impossible to escape. He will also be forced to use seeds which may
appear to be high-yielding but which may in reality be ill-adapted to
his local environment; so crop failures and even famine may follow.
About 10,000 years
ago the people of the fertile crescent (now Iraq) began saving seeds
from wild grains and planting them. That was one of the most crucial
developments in the history of our planet, and the beginnings of agriculture
led inexorably to the development of civilization. The saving and sharing
of seeds in Iraq has always been a largely informal matter. Local varieties
of grain and legumes have been adapted to local conditions over the
millennia. These strains of plant, developed by traditional methods,
are resistant to extreme heat, drought and salinity. They are not only
a national treasure for Iraq but could well hold the genetic key to
agriculture in other areas as global warming takes effect.
In 2002, FAO estimated
that 97 percent of Iraqi farmers still used saved seed from their own
stocks from last year's harvest, or purchased from local markets. Order
81 ignores that tradition, and it brutally disregards the contributions
which Iraqi farmers have made over hundreds of generations to the development
of important crops like wheat, barley, dates and pulses. If anybody
owns those varieties and their unique virtues, it is the families who
bred them, even though nobody has described or characterized them in
terms of their genetic makeup. If anything, the new law -- in allowing
old varieties to be genetically manipulated or otherwise modified and
then "registered" -- involves the theft of inherited intellectual
property, the loss of farmers' freedoms, and the destruction of food
sovereignty in Iraq.
GERMPLASM HELD IN
TRUST?
In recognition of
the unique "seed heritage" of Iraq, traditional varieties
were saved as from the 1970s in the country's national gene bank in
Abu Ghraib (sounds familiar?) outside Baghdad. There is genuine concern
that most of these have been lost during the latter years of Saddam
Hussein and in the recent conflict. However, the Syria-based Consultative
Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) centre and the
affiliated International Centre for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas
(ICARDA) still holds accessions of several Iraqi varieties in the form
of germplasm. These collections, providing tangible evidence of the
Iraqi farmers' historic plant breeding skills, are supposed to be held
in trust by the centre. In a sense, they comprise the agricultural heritage
of Iraq and they should now be repatriated. However, CGIAR is reluctant
to give assurances on this (8). Ominously, there have been situations
before where germplasm held by an international agricultural research
centre has been "leaked out" for research and development
to Northern scientists (1). "Biopiracy" such as this, apart
from involving a betrayal of trust, is fuelled by an IPR regime that
ignores the prior art of the farmer and grants rights to a breeder who
claims to have created something new from the material property and
"intellectual rights" of other people.
WIDER IMPLICATIONS
It has been pointed
out by Iraqis and by the "liberal" press that having finished
its military conquest, the US has now declared a new war against the
Iraqi farmer. Order 81 also goes against the United Nations Millennium
Forum Declaration (9) which aspires to "move towards economic reforms
aimed at equity, in particular to construct macroeconomic policies that
combine growth with the goal of human development and social justice;
to prevent the impoverishment of groups that have emerged from poverty
but are still vulnerable to social risks and exclusion; to improve legislation
on labour standards, including the provision of a minimum legal wage
and an effective social system; and to restore people's control over
primary productive resources as a key strategy for poverty eradication."
The signatories to the Declaration also seek "to promote the use
of indigenous crops and traditional production skills to produce goods
and services; to exempt developing countries from implementing the WTO
Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement and to take these
rights out of any new rounds of negotiations, ensuring that no such
new issues are introduced; and to examine and regulate transnational
corporations and the increasingly negative influence of their trade
on the environment. The attempt by companies to patent life is ethically
unacceptable."
Order 81 is also
in clear contravention of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)
in that it will increase chemical use, reduce the number of planted
crop varieties, accelerate the trend towards monoculture, extend GM
contamination, and decrease biodiversity (10). Biosecurity will also
be negatively affected, and the negative social effects will include
population displacement, rural decline and an extension of urban slum
dwelling. As to the Biosafety (Cartagena) Protocol dealing with GMOs
and their transboundary movement, the Order is apparently designed to
flout its aims and objectives, since there is no mention of any regulation
of GM crop shipments, plantings, harvesting or export. It is no coincidence
that neither the U.S. nor Iraq has signed the CBD and the Cartegna Protocol.
The Food Aid Convention
(cf Articles iii, viii and xiii) states that GM food aid should only
be offered and accepted after recipient countries have discarded "conventional"
alternatives and non-GM food aid as non-options (11). The United States
is a signatory to this Convention, but it has been widely accused of
violating it whenever it suits its own interests to do so.
The Rio Declaration
(1992) includes many progressive principles, including the polluter-pays-principle
(the polluter bears the costs of pollution) or the precautionary principle
(carry out environmental assessments to identify adverse impacts and
eliminate any potential harms from a project before it is started).
It advocates that today's development shall not undermine the resource
base of future generations and that developed countries bear a special
responsibility due to the pressure their societies place on the global
environment and the technologies and financial resources they command
(12). These principles are all flouted in Order 81.
The 2001 International
Treaty on Plant Genetic resources for Food and Agriculture (supported
by the FAO and the Convention on Biological Diversity) acknowledges
that plant genetic resources for food and agriculture are the raw material
indispensable for crop genetic improvement, whether by means of farmers
selection, classical plant breeding or modern biotechnologies, and are
essential in adapting to unpredictable environmental changes and future
human needs; that the past, present and future contributions of farmers
in all regions of the world, particularly those in centres of origin
and diversity, in conserving, improving and making available these resources,
is the basis of Farmers Rights; and that the rights recognized
in this Treaty to save, use, exchange and sell farm-saved seed and other
propagating material, and to participate in decision-making regarding,
and in the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising from,
the use of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture, are fundamental
to the realization of Farmers Rights, as well as the promotion
of Farmers Rights at national and international levels. Order
81 is in clear violation of these principles.
Again, Order 81
was supposedly drafted by the Coalition, and it purports to represent
the consensus view of the Coalition partners, including the UK and various
other members of the EU. The Order effectively extends the American
agenda of patenting life forms into the area of crops and agriculture,
in spite of a massive ethical debate about this within Europe. The PVP
afforded by Order 81 is almost the same as patent protection, and leaves
open the door for the future patenting of registered plant varieties
used in Iraq. The Order is also quite cynical (and provocative!) in
that it treats GM varieties as if they are no different from new "conventional"
varieties, in clear contravention of EU policy (13). One is justified
in asking why precautionary measures designed to protect the public
and the environment in Europe were not deemed to be relevant in Iraq.
That in itself demonstrates the feebleness of the British input into
the drafting process for Order 81, and it also constitutes a major insult
to the Iraqi people. Those who drafted the Order were clearly happy
to see the farmers of that blighted country blighted further by a "green
light" for GM contamination of the food supply and by commercial
enslavement.
Finally, we should
remind ourselves, and the rest of the world, that the American administration
which is supervising the rape of Iraq is supposedly driven by Christian
ethics and guided by the Holy Spirit. It seems to us extraordinary that
President Bush's personal Christian faith, based upon Biblical teachings,
appears to be incapable of translation into American foreign policy.
How many of the Ten Commandments, we wonder, have been broken in the
pursuit of American objectives in Iraq? Within Europe, Monsanto and
the US Embassy to the Holy See have promoted "Feeding a Hungry
World: The Moral Imperative of Biotechnology" as a theme to be
adopted by the Roman Catholic Church. The Pontifical Academy of Sciences
has connived in this enterprise, and has promoted the merits of GM technology
to the developing world. This has caused great distress to aid agencies,
and has led to a vigorous debate among churchmen and outside observers
(14). The Roman Catholic Church is widely perceived as having betrayed
countless thousands of poor farmers, having lost the trust of aid agencies
and NGOs, and having forfeited its moral authority on this issue (15).
Other Christian churches, and many other faith communities, have taken
a much more cautious approach on GM crops and famine (16), and believe
that the genetic modification and commercial ownership of traditional
food crops goes counter to long-held beliefs relating to stewardship,
sustainability and human dignity.
CONCLUSION
If one looks beyond
the convoluted language in the paragraphs and articles of Order 81 one
sees a classic win / win scenario. The American Government wins by extending
its economic colonialism into a country still reeling from the rule
of a tyrant and the horrors of war. And American business wins by forcing
the farmers and food merchants of Iraq into a regulatory regime which
will bring them multi-million dollar contracts, paid for mostly with
Iraqi oil revenues (17). Many of those contracts will be buried within
aid programmes or disguised as philanthropic enterprises. Not many people
will be fooled, for the Americans have done this before and they will
do it again. All of the other parties in this miserable affair will
be losers, and that is why we ask for a concerted campaign from people
of goodwill across the world to plead with the new Iraqi government
to see the evil that lurks within Order 81, and to revoke it at the
earliest opportunity.
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NOTES AND REFERENCES
(1) See this summary:
http://www.grain.org/articles/?id=6.
The Report is entitled "Iraq's new patent law: a declaration of
war against farmers". Against the Grain is a series of short opinion
pieces on recent trends and developments in the issues that GRAIN works
on. This one has been produced collaboratively with Focus on the Global
South.
Also Jeremy Smith,"Order 81" in The Ecologist, Jan 21st 2005:
http://www.theecologist.org/
archive_article.html?article=487&category=86
(2) Patent, Industrial
Design, Undisclosed Information, Integrated Circuits and Plant Variety
Law of 2004, CPA Order No. 81, 26 April 2004,
http://www.iraqcoalition.org/regulations
/20040426_CPAORD_81_Patents _Law.pdf
(3) House of Commons
Foreign Affairs Committee.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/
cm200304/cmselect/cmfaff/441/44105.htm#n218
(4) http://www.commonground.ca/iss/0412161/cg161_marya.shtml
Agricultural dictatorship in Iraq: THE ORGANIC WAY by Marya Skrypiczajko
See also: Silent Battallions of "Democracy" by Herbert Docena,
Middle East Report 232 Fall 2004 (Focus on the Global South)
See also: Iraqi Order 81: Saving heirloom seeds from one year to the
next is now illegal in Iraq --
The common worldwide practice of saving heirloom seeds from one year
to the next is now illegal in Iraq, by Rosemarie Jackowski
http://www.indybay.org/news/2005/02/1721859.php Print comments.
(5) The US boasts
that "The principal beneficiary of America's foreign assistance
programs has always been the United States." http://ngin.tripod.com/forcefeed.htm
Business Guide for Iraq (U.S. Department of Commerce) Revised January
28, 2005
"U.S. Government-funded contracts continue to be the leading business
opportunities in Iraq. Opportunities for U.S. firms to participate in
the reconstruction of Iraq are mostly associated with rehabilitating
the country's infrastructure. A convenient list of all recent contracts
and their known subcontractors, along with links to their website can
be found at http://www.export.gov/iraq/market_ops/contracts.html.
GRAIN, "FAO declares war on farmers, not hunger", New from
Grain, 16 June 2004, http://www.grain.org/front/?id=24
(6) Overview of
Key Industry Sectors in Iraq, June 4, 2004
http://www.export.gov/iraq/bus_climate/sector_overview.html
(7) "Essential
factor to victory for democracy: Avoiding the appearance of impropriety
and gaining trust based on fairness not profit" by D. Lindley Young,
The Modern Tribune - April 29, 2004
(8) Exchange of
Email messages between the author and staff of CGIAR.
(9) http://www.un.org/millennium/declaration.htm
(10) http://www.biodiv.org/biosafety/
Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, now ratified by 113 countries
http://www.biodiv.org/convention/default.shtml
Convention on Biological Diversity
(11) http://www.igc.org.uk/press/pr990331.htm
See also http://ngin.tripod.com/forcefeed.htm
(12) http://www.worldsummit2002.org/index.htm?
http://www.worldsummit2002.org/guide/riodeclar.htm
(13) See Directive
2001/18/EC
(14) GE Food: Feeding
the Hungry or Corporate Profits?
Father Sean McDonagh, SSC
http://www.columban.com/feeding_or_profit.htm
(15) http://www.guardian.co.uk/
gmdebate/Story/0,2763,1018256,00.html
(16) 'Genetically
Modified Organisms', Church of England Ethical Investment Advisory Group,
2000
http://www.cofe.anglican.org/view/gmos.rtf
'Making our Genes Fit: Christian Perspectives on the New Genetics',
Methodist Church, 1999.
http://www.methodist.org.uk/
'Modifying Creation? GM Crops and Foods: A Christian Perspective', Evangelical
Alliance, 2001.
http://www.eauk.org/
(17) "Iraqi
farmers have been made vassals to American corporations............
In short, what America has done is not restructure Iraqs agriculture,
but dismantle it. The people whose forefathers first mastered the domestication
of wheat will now have to pay for the privilege of growing it for someone
else. And with that the worlds oldest farming heritage will become
just another subsidiary link in the vast American supply chain."
Jeremy Smith, The Ecologist, 21st January 2005.