Published on Wednesday, March 22, 2006 by Inter Press Service Peasants Say No to ‘Selling' Traditional Knowledge by Mario Osava
CURITIBA, Brazil - These announcements were made by the two global movements on Tuesday, at the 8th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP8), taking place in this southern, "ecologically-minded" Brazilian city from Mar. 20 - 31.
...the central, strategic battle will be waged around seeds, pitting peasant farmers who have produced and improved seeds for 10,000 years, thus expanding their genetic diversity, against the transnational corporations that want to control the entire agricultural chain from production to marketing.
Roberto Baggio, Landless Rural Workers' Movement (MST), Brazil Land, water and other natural resources, including genetic diversity, as well as the traditional knowledge of indigenous communities, "are priceless," and to pay for them with part of a company's profits from patents "is privatisation," which Via Campesina opposes, bee-keeper Karen Pederson told IPS.
Pederson is women's president of the National Farmers Union in Canada, one of the Via Campesina member organisations.
Via Campesina, a worldwide network of rural movements, is developing a "structural project" for agriculture in which seeds, food, forests and other natural resources cannot be treated as "merchandise, objects to be bought and sold," added Roberto Baggio, a leader of Brazil's Landless Rural Workers' Movement (MST).
Sharing the profits arising from appropriating something that is "a product of collective accumulation, at the service of all people," so that "knowledge becomes merchandise that can be traded," is the beginning of exploitation and privatisation, the activist argued. This is in conflict with the "long-term vision" of the peasant movement, which is aimed at "preserving goods in common ownership," he added.
An example of the harm that this can bring about happened in Canada in the past, when industry bargained with indigenous peoples, offering them benefits in return for land and knowledge, and "they lost everything," Pederson said.
Baggio and Pederson were speaking at a press conference to explain Via Campesina's position on biodiversity and COP8.
Their fellow activists Alberto Gómez, of the National Union of Autonomous Regional Farmers' Organisations (UNORCA) in Mexico, and Ballo Mamadu, a herdsman from Togo, defended food sovereignty and condemned the "mercantilisation" or "commodification" of products like seeds.
In Africa "we cannot afford to buy seeds every year," stressed Mamadu, a representative of a network of peasant organisations in West Africa, criticising Terminator seeds developed by multinational agribusiness firms and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which produce infertile plants, whose seeds cannot be used from one growing season to the next.
Despite the world moratorium imposed on this "restricted use" technology, research is still being carried out in Canada, the United States and Europe in laboratories and in one case, even a greenhouse, said Pederson.
At COP8, "the central, strategic battle will be waged around seeds," pitting peasant farmers who have produced and improved seeds for 10,000 years, thus expanding their genetic diversity, against the transnational corporations that want to control the entire agricultural chain from production to marketing, said Baggio...."
