Seeking global seed hegemony: Firms Seek Patents on ‘Climate Ready’ Altered Crops

[depakid]

A handful of the world’s largest agricultural biotechnology companies are seeking hundreds of patents on gene-altered crops designed to withstand drought and other environmental stresses, part of a race for dominance in the potentially lucrative market for crops that can handle global warming, according to a report being released today.

Three companies — BASF of Germany, Syngenta of Switzerland and Monsanto of St. Louis — have filed applications to control nearly two-thirds of the climate-related gene families submitted to patent offices worldwide, according to the report by the Ottawa-based ETC Group, an activist organization that advocates for subsistence farmers.

The applications say that the new “climate ready” genes will help crops survive drought, flooding, saltwater incursions, high temperatures and increased ultraviolet radiation — all of which are predicted to undermine food security in coming decades.

Company officials dismissed the report’s contention that the applications amount to an intellectual-property “grab,” countering that gene-altered plants will be crucial to solving world hunger but will never be developed without patent protections.

Many of the world’s poorest countries, destined to be hit hardest by climate change, have rejected biotech crops, citing environmental and economic concerns. Importantly, gene patents generally preclude the age-old practice of saving seeds from a harvest for replanting, requiring instead that farmers purchase the high-tech seeds each year.

The ETC report concludes that biotech giants are hoping to leverage climate change as a way to get into resistant markets, and it warns that the move could undermine public-sector plant-breeding institutions such as those coordinated by the United Nations and the World Bank, which have long made their improved varieties freely available.

“When a market is dominated by a handful of large multinational companies, the research agenda gets biased toward proprietary products,” said Hope Shand, ETC’s research director. “Monopoly control of plant genes is a bad idea under any circumstance. During a global food crisis, it is unacceptable and has to be challenged.

More: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/13/8930/

[thunder rising]

1. This is the same technique used by Nestles to sell baby formula in Africa. Killing a lot of babies

These corporations play on the ignorance of the population. In Africa a new mother is given a case of baby formula and told it is better than her own milk. The case lasts long enough for the mother to cease lactating and then without money to purchase formula the baby dies. Monsanto (et al) promise farmers rich rewards in crop production and when the crop does not produce it's the farmers fault. This shit has got to be stopped. The farmers cannot even reap seeds from the crop since they are licensed as well.

[Nihil]

2. What would be particularly interesting ...

... would be to track the donations from these companies and map them
onto the denier politicians ...

It is not unknown (to put it mildly) for companies to 'sponsor' (=buy)
politicians to put the most profitable options into a government's policies
but, in this case, (as the government intransigence would directly lead to
civilian deaths through lack of preparation) this would be getting *very*
close to the classification of a crime against humanity ...