Farmers right to sell seeds protected in new legislation

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, AUG. 17. The Government has conceded the point raised by several NGOs spearheaded by the Gene Campaign, to protect the farmers' right to sell seeds and retain control over seed production in the newly formulated Plant Variety Protection and Farmers' Rights Bill which has been passed by the Lok Sabha and is now slated to be placed in the Rajya Sabha for approval.

By including the crucial component of farmers' right to sell seeds, as against only seed companies and multi-national companies, the Government has effectively prevented private multi-national seed giants from monopolising control over seeds.

India is the only country to have included farmers' rights and this places it at the head of the developing countries, besides safeguarding farmers' livelihood and India's food security. Since all political parties are committed to farmers' welfare and rights, there is little chance of this Bill not becoming an Act.

The Bill was necessitated by the commitments that India made in the agreement on Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights when it ratified the Uruguay GATT Round in 1994. The Article 27.3(b) which dealt with the protection of new plant varieties, offers three options: to grant protection by a patent, an effective sui generis system or by a combination of the two. The system refers to grant of plant breeders' rights. India eventually opted for the sui generis option under which it has formulated the Bill.

Welcoming the decision, Dr. Suman Sahai, of the Gene Campaign said their single point struggle for a strong Farmers' Rights Bill had met with success. She said their position from the start had been that if plant breeders' right had to be granted there would have to be a strong farmers' right which should go beyond the farmers' right to save seeds to sow for the next crop and include the right to sell seeds from any variety of that plant. In other words, the Bill allows for farmers to retain the right to sell seeds from his/her harvest, to other farmers, as is the practice today.

Section 39, clause (iv) of the Act states that among other things, the farmer...``shall be deemed to be entitled to save, use, sow, exchange, share or sell his farm produce including seed of a variety protected under this Act in the same manner as he was entitled before the coming into force of this Act.

While maintaining that the draft needed some fine- tuning, Dr. Sahai suggested that a National Gene Fund be set up with the payments accruing from benefit sharing (use of farmers' varieties by breeders to breed new varieties). She also sought guidelines on this, as well as compensation to farmers in case of bad variety seeds.

She said although the Bill was a big improvement on what was initially proposed an area of concern remained, the special treatment given to Essentially Derived Varieties which will often be the Genetically Modified varieties. The creation of a separate track, a fast track, for their clearance raises questions.

Dr. Sahai said curiously the most determined opposition to farmers' rights came from the ``scientists of the Indian Council of Agriculture Research and the babus of the Agriculture Ministry''. However, a decisive event in March 1993 contributed a deal in compelling the Government to abandon its pro-patent stance and that was the coming together of the Gene Campaign with farmers from Haryana, Punjab and Karnataka behind Mr. Mahendra Singh Tikait.

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