Indigenous Farming Faces Crisis
Fight Against Patent Of Seeds

Introduction

The so-called ‘bio-colonisation’ of indigenous self-reliant technologies and natural resources including biodiversity by the multinational corporations (MNCs) in the name of patent rights and intellectual property rights has caused a threat not only to the seed sovereignty and community rights to biodiversity but also to the sovereignty and independence of the developing countries like Nepal. Developing countries are thus faced with the acute dilemma of their valuable indigenous wealth being taken away and exploited commercially by the resource- and technology-rich transnational corporations (TNCs).

The Problem and Need of the War

Even today, the third world peasants, the traditional breeders, treat seeds as a sacred and critical element in the great chain of being. Seed is not usually bought and sold. It is circulated as a free gift of nature. Even in the years of scarcity, seed is conserved in every household, so that the cycle of production is not interrupted by the loss of seeds. On the other hand, the green revolution and globalization have shifted the status of seed from a free farm resource to the costly input to be purchased in the developed world. This can be observed in most of the developing countries nowadays. Seeds regarded as a renewable resource, are thus converted into a non-renewable resource for only one or two years before they get genetically segregated or overtaken by the insect-pests and diseases.

Seed is vital to life. It is a priceless gift of nature, evolved, bred and used by the farmers over thousands of years to produce food for the people. Farmers select, save and exchange the best seeds from a good crop to plant them again at the next sowing. Corporatisation of seed and agriculture is now slowly destroying the independence of the farmers. A number of major agro-chemical companies are developing crop seeds/ plants with resistance to their brand of herbicides and pesticides only. The hybrid seeds produced by many TNCs have not performed well. The hybrid seed must be bought each year from the seed merchants. The genetically engineered seeds (GESs) or genetically modified seeds (GMSs) will increase this dependence of peasants on MNCs. Thus, a full integration of biological and chemical product lines has caused a complete control on agriculture and genetic resources. This anti-poor pro-corporate technology will do nothing good for the small farmers of the developing world and the environment. This type of hidden form of modern imperialism should not be tolerated at all by any sovereign people and state.

Giant seed companies like Monsanto-Mahyco-Cargill Seeds, Pro-Agro, Aventis are trying to monopolise seeds and are seeking to criminalize seed saving and exchange by farmers, and thereby enslave the farmers and drive them to suicide by introducing seed that forces farmers to use their chemicals. For example, Monsanto’s Roundup Ready seed forces to use Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide. Monsanto, the company responsible for nearly 90% of the area planted with genetically engineered crops, is aggressively enforcing its monopoly by requiring farmers to sign agreements that they will not replant seeds, and by prosecuting those who do save seeds from propriety lines. These giant seed companies are producing genetically-engineered seeds like Terminator, Bt Cotton, genetically engineered rice varieties, which could totally wipe out the crop diversity, destroy beneficial species, create super-weeds and super-pests, create new health hazards for consumers, and totally destroy agriculture and food security.

The World Bank (WB) and World Trade Organization (WTO) are also supporting this global phenomenon pushing the developing countries through laws such as patent on plants and plant variety legislation that allow private monopoly over seed. MNCs have already taken out patents on Basmati and other rice varieties, jasmine, corn, cotton, mustard, and other agricultural crops. Corporations like W.R. Grace have taken out patents on neem, and others have patents on turmeric, ginger, pepper, cumin, brinjal, bitter gourd, jamun, and other gifts of biodiversity. Some of these are endemic to Nepal. Other unexplored species are in the verge of unauthorised patenting by multinationals before they are explored.

Some Suggested Actions

To resist the ill effects of globalisation and to protect people’s sovereignty, we should demand the policy makers not to support laws that allow patents and plant variety legislation on seeds, plants, herbs and biodiversity. We can also save indigenous seeds at the local level and establish community seed banks. The vigorous exchange of seed should be encouraged. As far as practicable, we can practice participatory seed production and determine equitable seed sharing, use and management. The knowledge on seed and biodiversity should be declared not as a private property but as a common heritage. We should maintain community biodiversity registers to fight against unauthorized intellectual property claims and patenting on biodiversity. We should nationally boycott hybrid seeds, genetically engineered seeds and other agrochemical produced with some vested interests by the giant TNCs but promote our own indigenous genetic resources for our common interest. For the strong monitoring of any entry of hybrid and genetically engineered seeds at the local levels, we should prepare ‘Seed Sovereignty Watch Committee (SSWC)’ and get ready for social war against these activities. This will help in making our region a ‘Freedom Zone’, a zone that is agriculture patent free, chemical free and free from genetic engineering, and GESs and GMSs.

Conclusion

Considering all these facts, it is imperative that a good and strong network of the countries of the South be made for increasing public awareness through equivocal advocacy in order to protect seed sovereignty and community rights to bio-diversity. For halting the catastrophe at the economic, plant genetic and ecological level, the farmers, agricultural scientists and other well-wishers of the developing countries should join their hands and hearts together and be ready for social war against intervention on biodiversity and indigenous technology. If this situation is not changed, our dream of changing the present ‘subsistence agriculture’ into ‘sustainable agriculture’ will never come true. The time has come to wake up and think about this issue before it is too late. As seeds and biodiversity hold the potential for future generations, both for multinationals themselves and for us, why should we engage in certain folly of trying to control the cycle of seed generation for uncertain, short term and private gain?

Protection Of Police Dogs

By Rebecca Mahoney

A ROBBERY suspect had kept police back for 23 exhausting hours when officers pulled out their weapon: Solo, a 3-year-old German shepherd.

He had helped in 19 criminal arrests and found 11 missing people for the Monmouth County Sheriff’s Department in New Jersey. Officers knew he could flush out their man.

Solo went inside with only his fur to protect him. Within minutes, he was dead from two gunshot wounds.

His death in 1997 has helped to motivate children in more than 25 states, including Maine. They hold bake sales, wash cars and collect coins in tin cans to raise money to buy bulletproof vests to arm the officers’ best friend.

Dozens of programs work toward the same goal, including the Vested Interest Fund, a nonprofit group organized by the Associated Humane Societies after Solo’s death. But it seems that the children’s voices are having the greatest impact.

From her home in West Bath, 12-year-old Kelly Davis founded the first organization in Maine aimed at putting flak jackets on the backs of every police dog. She had raised enough money for 13 vests, at a cost of dlrs 650 apiece, since she started Maine Vest-A-Dog last November.

Her motto: "Protect the dogs that protect us." Her goal: to outfit each of Maine’s more than 50 police dogs with a bulletproof, stab-proof vest made of the same Kevlar material used to protect officers.

"Police go into a lot of places where they have to wear bulletproof vests, and it’s nice to know they have a vest that’s going to protect the dogs, too," Kelly said.

In East Dublin, Georgia, 12-year-old April Candlish raised dlrs 1,200 by making fliers on her computer and setting donation jars in stores. In Tucson, Arizona, 10-year-old Michael Valdez put 17 vests on police dogs through yard sales and selling bottled water at dog shows.

Twelve-year-old Stephanie Taylor of Oceanside, California, the founder of the national organization Vest-A-Dog, has raised enough money since 1999 to put bulletproof vests on more than 600 dogs.

"I feel a lot better knowing that the dogs are protected. And the officers can feel a lot safer sending their dog out there any time they go into a dangerous situation," she said.

The fund-raising comes at a time when many police departments are too busy trying to put enough officers on the streets to worry about the added expense of outfitting dogs with expensive vests.

Losing a dog, however, is not without expense.

It can cost upward of dlrs 10,000 to replace a police dog, which undergoes hundreds of hours of training, said Russ Hess, executive director of the U.S. Police Canine Association in Springboro, Ohio.

Although most K-9s are males, either male or female can be trained as police dogs. The breeds, however, vary depending on the task: Black labrador retrievers are often used for bomb sniffing, hounds in some searches, and labs, shepherds and Belgian Malinous are drug dogs. Most K-9s are hardy working dogs - shepherds or Malinous.

On average, two police dogs are killed each year in the United States, although no agency keeps track of the number of dogs killed in the line of duty the way the FBI does when officers are slain.

The emotional cost of losing a K-9 can extract its own toll on the handler, primarily because dog and officer also live together, and the bond is intense.

During the three years Mitch Lewis has handled Apache, a 4-year-old Malinous, the two have been inseparable.

"Off duty, he’s a friend; on duty, he’s a partner," said Lewis, an officer in the Bath Police Department. "Losing a dog is a tragedy for any officer."

Solo’s memorial service in 1998 drew more than 1,000 people, including more than 100 K-9 teams from four states. But a bulletproof vest may not have saved his life. Solo died from a gunshot to his head, which the vest doesn’t shield.

"Would a bulletproof vest have saved Solo? I don’t know," Monmouth County Sheriff Joseph Oxley said.

It’s like wearing a seat belt in a car, he said: It may not prevent death or injury in all circumstances, but motorists are well advised to wear one. "It’s better to have the vest on than not," he said.

Critics argue that the vests are hot and cumbersome, reducing the dog’s mobility and posing a potential distraction. They contend the vests could make it easier for a suspect to grab the dog during a struggle, but the same arguments can be made for the bulletproof vests officers wear.

"There have been no instances of a bulletproof vest preventing a K-9 from dying from a gunshot," Hess said. "Until we have that, there will be debate over whether the vests are necessary."

The vests help protect dogs from knife wounds, broken ribs and bruises, Hess said. But he admits K-9s are far more likely to die from heat exhaustion from being left in a hot patrol car than from being shot.

Hess knows of two dogs killed last year by gunshots. And in 1999, two police dogs in Jacksonville, Florida, were killed within a month of each other.

Only one police dog has been shot in the line of duty in Maine, a German shepherd, in 1981. His name was Ben.

He survived.

Tale of Repression & Grief

By Govinda Bhattarai

NO one in the village knew his real name. We as kids used to call him Pujari Budha (the old priest) as he was the chief to conduct any of the religious or cultural ceremonies of his tribe, the Majhi (fishermen) community. They need a lot of locally brewed liquor popularly known as jand to serve the guests at the festivals that may sometimes continue for weeks. A large quantity of corn, rice or millet goes for this. Subsistence as their economy was, the yearly yield was hardly enough for their survival all the year round.

Though the old man possessed two bighas of land, he always ran short of food for the family. Had the land been fertile and had he been a professional farmer instead of being a traditional fisherman (who is not very much used to farming), the land would have been sufficient for a ten-member family. Therefore, for 3-4 months of the year, he depended on one of the landlords of the village to feed his five-member family – wife, two sons and a daughter. As usual, he once borrowed 80 kilos of corn from the said landlord promising to pay as soon as he harvested his winter crops. Time went on without waiting for him and he could not pay the debt within the stipulated time. On top of that, his daughter came of marriageable age, which meant another blow to the poverty stricken Majhi. He decided to sell his land and the landlord was promptly ready to buy it. Most of the Pujari Budha’s relatives had finished their lands and had migrated to the nearby hillocks where public land was in abundance. They did not have to pay for it, for they could fell the trees and cultivate the virgin soil.

In order to transfer the land ownership, the landlord took the old man to the Land Registration Office at his own cost, paying the bus fare to and from Malangawa, Sarlahi district headquarters. The process took the whole day during which the old Majhi was fed curd and beaten rice, something he would get to eat out of the blue. The landlord had promised to hand over the negotiated money to the Majhi after they came back home. Next day, the old man went to the landlord’s house with a jubilant face to receive the promised purse. However, to his surprise, the landlord retorted, "How dare you ask for money again? Who paid the bus fare and, more than that, didn’t you relish the curd and beaten rice in Malangawa? And what about the 80 kilos of corn you borrowed from me last year? All totaled, the sum equals the price of the land." The old man’s sky fell upon his head. He was ruined. Forty thousand rupees just for 80 kilos of corn, a few rupees of bus fare and a plate of food!

Meek as he was, he could not argue with the thundering landlord. He moved away murmuring something to himself. By the time he reached home, to the horror of his family members, he was already a different man who kept on talking to himself staring blankly at the void of the sky. He would not respond to anyone, neither would he stir at his wife’s call for lunch.

He roamed about the village all day cursing the landlord and the company in his grumble. This went on for about four years before he died. He was deprived of justice, for nobody could speak anything against the powerful landlord who sucked the poor man’s blood and left him with his sweat and tears. When the landlord died a few years back, I was thinking about his past deeds during his cremation. What did he achieve? He died of several diseases and had to leave this world empty-handed. The ill fame he earned during his lifetime has now become a heavy burden to his lone son who has fallen prey to drinks out of frustration.