@農자료창고

BEIJING - Although she grew up in the posh city of Hangzhou in eastern China, Luo Yi has opted to settle down on a farm in a northern suburb of Beijing.

The 23-year-old woman graduated from college last year with a journalism degree. She was won over by the Little Donkey Farm's organic farming concept and community supported agriculture (CSA) model, and now she spends her days watering vegetables, making pickles, and learning needlework

"I also had never lived in the countryside, and was quite curious about farm life," she said.

While a large number of rural youths have abandoned the traditional farming lifestyle in order to move to cities for more work opportunities, some young people from cities have looked to the countryside for an alternative lifestyle or a new career path.

"I really enjoy the simplicity of life here," Luo said, adding that she thinks life in the countryside is a good escape from the consumerism-driven lifestyle found in cities.

"I used to love shopping, especially for clothes and electronics. But since I came to live here, I have started realizing that I don't need those things that much."

She has stopped using her mobile phone and no longer shops for new clothes. Instead, she has learned to alter her old clothes into new styles, and she exchanges clothes with her female colleagues at the farm.

"My parents strongly opposed my decision to work in the farm. Over the past few months, they have been shocked by the changes in my life, and they have gradually come to understand me," she said.

GOING BACK TO THE FARM

The Little Donkey Farm was founded three years ago by Shi Yan, a young agriculture scholar from Renmin University of China. Shi was inspired by her six-month experience as an apprentice at a CSA farm in Minnesota, United States.

Shi has applied the CSA model to her farm, which grows organic vegetables and sells them directly to individual consumers in Beijing.

Consumers can sign a year-long contract to purchase organic vegetables grown by the farm, and choose to either pick up their produce at various locations throughout the city or have the farm deliver it directly to their door. They can also rent a 30-square-meter plot at Shi's farm to do their own gardening.

More than 30 young people are currently working for the farm, most of whom are from the cities and had not farmed prior to coming here. They are working side-by-side with about 20 local villagers.

Wang Rui, a young apprentice, decided to join the farm after failing the national civil servant exam last year.

Inspired by the CSA model, he hopes to start his own farm in the future, so he came here to gather experience.

"There's an increasing need for organic food in cities. CSA farms not only provide urban residents with what they want but also help farmers raise income," Wang said. "This will be a promising career."

When the farm was established in 2009, only 37 clients placed annual orders and 17 rented their own plots. But now over 460 clients order vegetables and 260 lease land, said Huang Zhiyou, vice general manager of the farm.

"We have made ends meet, but do not seek profits like most farms. We would like to promote the idea of CSA and organic agriculture technologies," Huang said.

They are trying to introduce a new type of consumer-producer relationship that promotes more interaction between the two sides, he said.

Clients and their families are often invited to join harvest celebrations and festival functions, listen to lectures on farming and agriculture, or watch documentaries and films. The farm also receives visitors from across the country.

Huang, the 30-year-old father of a baby boy, has been working for the farm since it opened. His family lives on the farm with him and the only income they receive is from his salary, which is about 2,000 yuan (318 U.S. dollars) a month.

"It's a bit hard to live in the countryside, but I never regret my choice as both my work and life are rooted here," he said.

He sees the farm as an experiment in reforming and developing rural society.

"Despite rapid economic growth in China, rural areas have lagged far behind cities, making them less appealing to young people. Villages are becoming less and less vigorous," he said.

The farm can be a way to revitalize the countryside, he said.

"Organic farms, which provide more income for farmers, might attract migrant workers to come home and return to farming. The farm is also a way for urban residents to learn more about rural areas and farming," he said.

According to the Rural Reconstruction Center under Renmin University, experimental projects like the Little Donkey Farm have been founded in 14 provinces in China and about 100,000 college students have taken part in rural development programs, including organic agriculture, eco-friendly architecture in rural areas and rural education.

NGOs accuse industry body of inflating claims that the acreage of biotech crops grew by 8% in 2011

• 
  John Vidal, environment editor
• guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 8 February 2012 11.36 GMT
• Article history

GM oilseed rape, one of the four main commercial GM crops. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty

Pro- and anti-GM organisations clashed on Tuesday over the accuracy of industry figures that suggested a rise internationally of 8% in the acreage of GM crops in 2011, a 16th straight rise since they were first sold in 1996.

The International Service for the Acquisition of Agribiotic Applications (ISAAA), an industry body funded by GM companies including Monsanto, Bayer CropScience and CropLife International, claimed in its annual report that biotech crops grew by 12m hectares, to 160 million hectares, in 2011.

"A record 16.7 million farmers, up 1.3 million or 8% from 2010, grew biotech crops – notably, over 90%, or 15 million, were small resource-poor farmers in developing countries. Seven million small farmers in China and another 7 million in India, collectively planted a record 14.5 million hectares of biotech crops," said the report.

ISAAA said that developing countries were expected to grow more GM crops than rich countries in 2012 for the first time. "Unprecedented adoption rates are testimony to overwhelming trust and confidence in biotech crops by millions of farmers worldwide," said Clive James, author of the annual ISAAA report.

The food crops, which are mostly herbicide-resistant varieties of maize, soya and oilseed rape, are grown now in 29 countries but over 40% by acreage is grown in the US. Much of the rest is grown in Brazil and Argentina, with Bt cotton grown mostly in China and India.

Wenonah Hauter, director of the NGO Food and Water Europe, accused the ISAAA of inflating the statistics by including "trait acres", a figure derived by multiplying the surface area grown by the number of genetic traits engineered in GM crops. Using this system, said Hauter, ISAAA could argue that a field of GM crops that had three genetically engineered traits became three "trait fields", thereby tripling the acreage.

"Our analysis ... reveals they derive their figures from reliance on biased data sources, overstating the benefits of GM for farmers and ignoring figures that don't support their pro-GM position. They have a vested interest in the success of GM technology, and their figures simply can't be trusted," said Hauter.

The ISAAA, which is based in the Philippines, could not be contacted last night.

Friends of the Earth Europe and Greenpeace both claimed that the industry had in effect given up trying to persuade Europe to accept the crops, due to opposition from the majority of consumers, farmers and politicians.

Greenpeace said in a statement: "Last month BASF, the world's biggest chemical company, said it was abandoning plans to develop and commercialise GM food in Europe. The total acreage grown in Europe is now 0.1% of the cultivable land available and only Spain marginally increased its acreage grown in 2011."

Mute Schimpf, food campaigner at Friends of the Earth Europe, said: "The public's rejection of genetically modified crops has ensured that they are confined to small pockets of the European Union. In comparison, organic farming accounted for 3.7%."
,

I thought all cows ate grass…

Minnesota Grassfed Beef

If asked, most people could not tell you where the meat on their plate came from. In fact, if they wanted to know, it would be darned difficult – if not impossible – to find out. on the other hand, while imagining that the beef cow they will be eating is frolicking on lush green pastures, the average American today does NOT want to meet their dinner while it is still standing.

No, Virginia, not all cows eat grass. That lovely image of a herd of cattle happily munching away and contentedly chewing their cud is mostly a figment of your imagination.

Over the last 70 years, the beef industry has evolved into an intense, industrial enterprise designed to put as much weight on animals as fast as possible and get the resulting meat to market as quickly as possible.

To do that, beef cattle – who are by nature ruminants (grass eaters) – are hustled off the pasture where they spent their first six months of life to spend the next six to eight months packed into confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) with no green pasture in sight. In those feedlots, they are fed grain – lost of grain – to bring them up to the target weight for slaughter. Since it takes as much as 7 pounds of grain (corn, barley, soybeans, and other grain) to develop a pound of meat and those cattle gain about 3 pounds a day, that’s a lot of feed.

Confined Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO)

At the same time, to keep the cattle gaining weight, they are given growth hormones and antibiotics. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, 70% of all antibiotics used in the United States are fed to livestock. And, as many as six different growth hormones may be given to beef cattle, three of which occur naturally and three of which are synthetic.(1)

Since those animals are eating 50 to 60 pounds of feed a day, a quick look at the source of that feed is important. Forty-four percent of the corn grown in the US is used for animal feed, and 86% of the corn planted in 2010 was bio-engineered varieties that contained insect- or herbicide-resistant genes (or both). Fifty-nine percent of the soybean harvest is crushed for oil, however the meal left over from the crush is used as animal feed. A whopping 94% of all soybeans grown are genetically engineered to be herbicide tolerant.

Meat and potatoes, please…

Montana Grassfed Beef

Researchers have linked serious health problems such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and certain types of cancer to heavy meat consumption. Americans eat more meat than ever before, and most of it is high in saturated fats.

We consume about 67 pounds of beef a year for each person – man, woman, and child. And those animals eat a lot of corn and other grain: most beef cattle are “finished” on grain before slaughter; only a very small percentage is entirely “grass-fed.”(2)

Ah, back to that question – don’t cows eat grass? More and more farmers and ranchers are raising grass-fed beef on a natural diet consisting of fresh grasses, legumes, and other plants and allowing them to roam about.

Many are choosing to follow organic practices in their herd management, which are clearly healthier and more humane for the animals. The good news is that meat from those animals is free of antibiotics, steroids, hormones, pesticides, herbicides and other potentially toxic substances. The bad news is that it can take nearly two years to bring those animals to market on grass.

Studies have shown that an animal’s diet can have an impact on the nutritional content of the meat on the consumer’s table. Grass-fed meat has been shown to contain less fat, more beneficial fatty acids, and more vitamins and to be a good source of a variety of nutrients. According to a study published in the Journal of Animal Science in 2009, eating grass-fed beef provides many benefits to consumers(3):

1. Lower in total fat
2. Higher in beta-carotene
3. Higher in vitamin E (alpha-tocopherol)
4. Higher in the B-vitamins thiamin and riboflavin
5. Higher in the minerals calcium, magnesium, and potassium
6. Higher in total omega-3s
7. A healthier ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids (1.65 vs 4.84)
8. Higher in CLA (cis-9 trans-11), a potential cancer fighter
9. Higher in vaccenic acid (which can be transformed into CLA)
10. Lower in the saturated fats linked with heart disease

Washington Grassfed Beef

Lower Fat – Meat from grass-fed cattle is much lower in fat, and therefore lower in calories. A 6-ounce steak from a grass-finished animal has almost 100 fewer calories than the same sized-piece from a grain-fed animal. If, like the average American, you eat about 67 pounds of beef a year, switch to grass-fed beef and you’ll save nearly 18,000 calories a year.

Omega-3 Fatty Acids – Omega-3 fatty acids are fats that are essential to human health. Sixty percent of the fatty acids in grass is omega-3, which is formed in the chloroplasts of green leaves. Grass-fed cattle can contain as much as two-to-four times more omega-3 fatty acids than grain-fed animals.

At the same time, a high ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids has been linked with an increased risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease, allergies, depression, obesity, and autoimmune disorders. A ratio of four to one or lower is considered ideal, Grain-fed beef has a much higher ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids than wild game or grass-fed beef. In grass-fed beef the ratio is approximately 2 to 1, while the ratio in grain-fed beef is more than 14 to 1.

More Vitamins – In humans vitamin E is linked with la lower risk of heart disease and cancer. Meat from grass-fed cattle is higher in vitamin E.; as much as four times higher in vitamin E than meat from feedlot cattle.(4)

Rich source of CLA – Meat from grass-fed animals is the richest known source of “conjugated linoleic acid” or CLA. Grass-fed cattle have been found to produce 2 to 5 times more CLA than cattle fed high grain feedlot diets. In laboratory animals, a  diet containing even a small amount of CLA greatly reduced cancerous growths.

More to Come

Over the next couple of weeks we will be looking at meat – particularly beef – as part of our diets, our culture, our economy, and our environment. Where does your meat come from? Do you really know?

________________________________________

Resources:

(1) Union of Concerned Scientists, http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/solutions/wise_antibiotics/pamta.html

(2) Farm Animal Statistics, http://www.humanesociety.org/news/resources/research/stats_meat_consumption.html

(3) S.K. Duckett et al, Journal of Animal Science, (published online) June 2009, “Effects of winter stocker growth rate and finishing system on: III. Tissue proximate, fatty acid, vitamin and cholesterol content.”

(4) Dietary supplementation of vitamin E to cattle to improve shelf life and case life of beef for domestic and international markets. G.C. Smith, Colorado State University, http://www.animalfeedscience.com/article/0377-8401%2895%2900901-9/abstract

산업형 식량 체계가 어떻게 이 행성을 가열하는가 

By GRAIN  2012. 2. 1.

A version of this piece originally appeared in Against the grain.

As we approach 20 years since the first United Nation’s Framework Convention on Climate Change occurred in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, the global impact of our broken food system continues to mount. In fact, the industrial food system – from production to deforestation to transport to waste – is responsible for 44 to 57 percent of all global greenhouse gas emissions. The article below by our colleagues at GRAIN shines a light on the hidden link between the industrial food system and global warming.

-----------------------------

 

Food is a key driver of climate change. How our food gets produced and how it ends up on our tables accounts for around half of all human-generated greenhouse gas emissions. Chemical fertilizers, heavy machinery and other petroleum-dependant farm technologies contribute significantly. The impact of the food industry as a whole is even greater: destroying forests and savannahs to produce animal feed and generating climate-damaging waste through excess packaging, processing, refrigeration and the transport of food over long distances, despite leaving millions of people hungry.
 

A new food system could be a key driver of solutions to climate change. People around the world are involved in struggles to defend or create ways of growing and sharing food that are healthier for their communities and for the planet. If measures are taken to restructure agriculture and the larger food system around food sovereignty, small scale farming, agro-ecology and local markets, we could cut global emissions in half within a few decades. We don’t need carbon markets or techno-fixes. We need the right policies and programmes to dump the current industrial food system and create a sustainable, equitable and truly productive one instead.  

 

Food and climate: piecing the puzzle together

Most studies put the contribution of agricultural emissions – the emissions produced on the farm - at somewhere between 11 and 15% of all global emissions.[1] What often goes unsaid, however, is that most of these emissions are generated by industrial farming practices that rely on chemical (nitrogen) fertilizers, heavy machinery run on petrol, and highly concentrated industrial livestock operations that pump out methane waste.

The figures for agriculture's contribution also often do not account for its role in land use changes and deforestation, which are responsible for nearly a fifth of global GHG emissions.[2] Worldwide, agriculture is pushing into savannas, wetlands, cerrados and forests, plowing under huge amounts of land. The expansion of the agricultural frontier is the dominant contributor to deforestation, accounting for between 70-90% of global deforestation.[3] This means that some 15-18% of global GHG emissions are produced by land-use change and deforestation caused by agriculture. And here too, the global food system and its industrial model of agriculture are the chief culprits. The main driver of this deforestation is the expansion of industrial plantations for the production of commodities such as soy, sugarcane, oil palm, maize and rapeseed. 
 

Since 1990, the area planted with these five commodity crops grew by 38%[4] though land planted to staple foods like rice and wheat declined.

 

Emissions from agriculture account for only a portion of the food system's overall contribution to climate change. Equally important is what happens from between the time food leaves the farm until it reaches our tables.
 

Food is the world's biggest economic sector, involving more transactions and employing more people by far than any other. These days food is prepared and distributed using enormous amounts of processing, packaging and transportation, all of which generate GHG emissions, although data on such emissions are hard to find. Studies looking at the EU conclude that about one quarter of overall transportation involves commercial food transport[5] The scattered figures on transportation available for other countries, such as Kenya and Zimbabwe, indicate that the percentage is even higher in non-industrialised countries, where food production and delivery accounts for 60-80% of the total energy - human plus animal plus fuel – used.”[6]  With transportation accounting for 25% of global GHG emissions, we can use the EU data to conservatively estimate that the transport of food accounts for at least 6% of global GHG emissions. When it comes to processing and packaging, again the available data is mainly from the EU, where studies show that the processing and packaging of food accounts for between 10-11% of GHG emissions, [7] while refrigeration of food accounts for 3-4% [8]of total emissions and food retail another 2%. [9]
 

Playing it conservative with the EU figures and extrapolating from the scarce figures that exist for other countries, we can estimate that at least 5-6% of emissions are due to food transport, 8-10% due to food processing and packaging, around 1-2% due to refrigeration, and 1-2% due to retail. This gives us a total contribution of 15-20% of global emissions from these activities.

 

Not all of what the food system produces gets consumed. The industrial food system discards up to half of all the food that it produces, in its journey from farms to traders, to food processors, to stores and supermarkets. This is enough to feed the world’s hungry six times over.[10]  A lot of this waste rots away on garbage heaps and landfills, producing substantial amounts of greenhouse gases. Different studies indicate that somewhere between 3.5 to 4.5 of global GHG emissions come from waste, and that over 90% of them come from materials originating in agriculture and their processing.[11] This means that the decomposition of organic waste originating in food and agriculture is responsible for 3-4% of global GHG emissions.
 

Add the above figures together, factor up the evidence, and there is a compelling case that the current global food system, propelled by an increasingly powerful transnational food industry, is responsible for around half of all human produced greenhouse gas emissions: anywhere between a low of 44% to a high of 57%. The graph [above] illustrates the conclusion:

• Agricultural production accoutns for 11-15 percent of GHG emissions
• Land use change and deforestation account for 15-18 percent
• Processing, transport, packing and retail account for 15-20 percent
• Water accounts for 2-4 percent
• All other non-food related emissions account for 43-56 percent of GHG emissions

 

Turning the food system upside down

Clearly, we will not get out of the climate crisis if the global food system is not urgently and dramatically transformed. The place to start is with the soil.

 

Food begins and ends with soil. It grows out of the soil and eventually goes back in it to enable more food to be produced. This is the very cycle of life. But in recent years humans have ignored this vital cycle. We have been taking from the soil without giving back .The industrialisation of agriculture, starting in Europe and North America, replicating later through the Green Revolution in other parts of the world, was based on the assumption that soil fertility could be maintained and increased through the use of chemical fertilisers. Little attention was paid to the importance of organic matter in the soil.

 

A wide range of scientific reports indicate that cultivated soils have lost from 30 to 75% of their organic matter during the 20th century, while soils under pastures and prairies have typically lost up to 50%. There is no doubt that these losses have provoked a serious deterioration of soil fertility and productivity, as well as contributing to worsening droughts and floods.

 

Taking as a basis some of the most conservative figures provided by scientific literature, the global accumulated loss of soil organic matter over the last century may be estimated to be between 150 to 200 billion tonnes.[12] Not all this organic matter ended up in the air as CO2, as significant amounts have been washed away by erosion and have been deposited in the bottom of rivers and oceans.  However, it can be estimated that at least 200 to 300 billion tonnes of CO2 have been released to the atmosphere due to the global destruction of soil organic matter. In other words, 25 to 40% of the current excess of CO2 in the atmosphere comes from the destruction of soils and its organic matter.

 

There is some good news hidden in these devastating figures. The CO2 that we have sent into the atmosphere by depleting the world's soils can be put back into the soil. All that is required is a change of agricultural practices. We have to move away from practices that destroy organic matter to practices that build-up the organic matter in the soil.

 

We know this can be done. Farmers around the world have been engaging in these very practices for generations. GRAIN research has shown that, if the right policies and incentives were in place worldwide, soil organic matter contents could be restored to pre-industrial agriculture levels within a period of 50 years – which is roughly the same time frame that industrial agriculture took to reduce it.[13]  The continuing use of these practices would allow the offset of between 24-30% of  current global annual GHG emissions[14].

 

The new scenario would require a radical change in approach from the current industrial agriculture model. It would focus on the use of techniques such as diversified cropping systems, better integration between crop and animal production, increased incorporation of trees and wild vegetation, and so on. Such an increase in diversity would, in turn, increase the production potential, and the incorporation of organic matter would progressively improve soil fertility, creating virtuous cycles of higher productivity and higher availability of organic matter. The capacity of soil to hold water would increase, which would mean that excessive rainfall would lead to fewer, less intense floods and droughts. Soil erosion would become less of a problem. Soil acidity and alkalinity would fall progressively, reducing or eliminating the toxicity that has become a major problem in tropical and arid soils. Additionally, increased soil biological activity would protect plants against pests and diseases. Each one of these effects implies higher productivity and hence more organic matter available to soils, thus making possible, as the years go by, higher targets for soil organic matter incorporation. More food would be produced in the process.

 

To be able to do it, we would need to build on the skills and experience of the world's small farmers, rather than undermining them and forcing them off their lands, as is now the case.

 

A global shift towards an agriculture that builds up organic matter in the soil would also put us on a path to removing some of the other major sources of GHGs from the food system. There are three other mutually reinforcing shifts that need to take place in the food system to address its overall contribution to climate change: The first is a shift to local markets and shorter circuits of food distribution, which will cut back on transportation and the need for packaging, processing and refrigeration. The second is a reintegration of crop and animal production, to cut back on transportation, the use of chemical fertilisers and the production of methane and nitrous oxide emissions generated by intensive meat and dairy operations. And the third is the stopping of land clearing and deforestation, which will require genuine agrarian reform and a reversal of the expansion of monoculture plantations for the production of agrofuels and animal feed.

 

If the world gets serious about putting these four shifts into action, it is quite possible that we can cut global GHG emissions in half within a few decades and, in the process, go a long way towards resolving the other crises affecting the planet, such as poverty and hunger.  There are no technical hurdles standing in the way-- the knowledge and skills are in the hands of the world's farmers and we can build on that. The only hurdles are political, and this is where we need to focus our  efforts.

 

Notes

[1] The IPCC says 10-12%, the OECD says 14% and the WRI says 14.9%.  See:

- IPCC, Climate Change 2007: Mitigation of Climate Change. Chapter 8: Agriculture,    http://tinyurl.com/ms4mzb

- Wilfrid Legg and Hsin Huang. OECD Trade and Agriculture Directorate, Climate change and agriculture, http://tinyurl.com/5u2hf8k

- WRI, World GHG Emissions Flow Chart, http://tinyurl.com/2fmebe

[2]    See: WRI, World GHG Emissions Flow Chart, http://tinyurl.com/2fmebe And: IPCC. 2004. Climate Change 2001:  Working Group I: 3.4.2 Consequences of Land-use Change. http://tinyurl.com/6lduxqy

[3]    See FAO Advisory Committee on Paper and Wood Products – Forty ninth Session – Bakubung, South Africa, 10 June 2008; and M. Kanninen et al., "Do trees grow on Money? Forest Perspective 4, CIFOR, Jakarta, 2007.

[4] See: GRAIN, 'Global Agribusiness: two decades of plunder', in: Seedling, July 2010.

 

[5] see: Eurostat. From farm to fork - a statistical journey along the EU's food chain - Issue number 27/2011 http://tinyurl.com/656tchm and http://tinyurl.com/6k9jsc3

[6]      FAO. Stephen Karekezi and Michael Lazarus,  Future energy requirements for Africa’s agriculture. Chapters 2, 3, and 4. http://www.fao.org/docrep/V9766E/v9766e00.htm#Contents

[7]     For EU, see: Viktoria BOLLA, Velina PENDOLOVSKA, Driving forces behind EU-27 greenhouse gas emissions over the decade 1999-2008. Statistics in focus 10/2011.http://tinyurl.com/6bhesog

[8]     Tara Garnett and Tim Jackson, Food Climate Research Network, Centre for Environmental Strategy, University of SurreyFrost Bitten: an exploration of refrigeration dependence in the UK food chain and its implications for climate policywww.fcrn.org.uk/frcnPubs/publications/PDFs/Frostbitten%20paper.pdf

[9]     S.A. Tassou, Y. Ge, A. Hadawey, D. Marriott. Energy consumption and conservation in food retailing. Applied Thermal Engineering 31 (2011) 147-156 AND Kumar Venkat. CleanMetrics Corp. The Climate Change Impact of US Food Waste

CleanMetrics Technical Brief.www.cleanmetrics.com/pages/ClimateChangeImpactofUSFoodWaste.pdf and Ioannis Bakas, Copenhagen Resource Institute (CRI). Food and Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions. www.scp-knowledge.eu/sites/default/files/KU_Food_GHG_emissions.pdf

[10] Tristram Stuart, “Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal”, Penguin, 2009,http://tinyurl.com/m3dxc9

[11] Jean Bogner, et. al.  Mitigation of global greenhouse gas emissions from waste: conclusions and strategies from the IPCC. Fourth Assessment Report. Working Group III (Mitigation) http://wmr.sagepub.com/content/26/1/11.short?rss=1&ssource=mfc

[12] Figures used for calculations were:

a) an average loss of 4,5- 6 kg of SOM/m2 of arable land and 2-3 kg of SOM/m2 of agricultural  land under prairies and not cultivated

b) an average soil depth of 30 cm, with an average soil density of 1 gr/cm3

c) 5000 million ha of agricultural land worldwide; 1800 million ha of arable land, as stated by FAO

d) a ratio of 1,46 kg of CO2 for each kg of destroyed SOM

[13] See: 'Earth matters: tackling the climate crisis from the ground up'. In: Seedling October 2009. http://www.grain.org/e/735

[14] The conclusion is based on the assumption that organic matter incorporation would reach an annual global average rate of  3.5 to 5 tonnes per hectare of agricultural land. For more detailed calculations, see: GRAIN, 'Earth matters: tackling the climate crisis from the ground up'. In: Seedling October 2009, table 2.

GRAIN is a small international non-profit organization that works to support small farmers and social movements in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems.

http://www.greenprophet.com/2010/12/rooftop-garden-middle-east/

With so many flat roofs across the Middle East, surely the region is ripe for a bit of rooftop gardening?

Recent reports that people in the Gaza Strip are embracing rooftop gardening has got us thinking about the urban gardening phenomena and it’s relevance to the Middle East. Whilst growing your own maybe something greenies love to do, there is a real incentive for those who have not bought into the green-agenda to take part too. That’s the beauty of urban gardening: it works on lots of levels and has multiple benefits. So as well as helping to reduce air pollution, keeping the city cool during hot summers and warmer during cold winters, the rooftop crops can help those living in poverty stave off starvation and even generate a decent income.

‘I Just Want To Feed My Family’

Neveen Metwally, a researcher at the Central Laboratory for Agriculture Climate in Cairo, Egypt spoke to IRIN about urban gardening in the region. She explained that city dwellers must be convinced of the benefits of urban horticulture by focusing on the needs of ordinary people and the benefits that urban agriculture brings to them. “I can say to someone, ‘A rooftop garden will help the environment’, and they’ll say, ‘No, thank you – I just want to feed my family’. So I must identify and communicate benefits that are of interest to that person.”

Metwallly added that in Egypt the numerous benefits of rooftop gardens include decreasing air pollution which has been a huge concerns for many living in the highly polluted city. Cairo along with other Middle Eastern cities such as Tehran, are known for their dangerously high air pollution. In fact, it was recently reported that 27 people die every day in Tehran due to air pollution-related disease and the Egyptian capital’s air pollution is aggravated by the annual rice burning season which turns the city dark with black smoke.

Building Resilient Cities

Rooftop gardens can also help absorb heat and act as insulators, reducing the energy needed for cooling or heating; provide low-cost food and also a refuge for bird, bees and insects. These benefits are clearly transferable across the Middle East region and urban agriculture can play an important role in strengthening the resilience of cities and their populations against the impacts of climate change. According to the UN Population Fund, about half the world population already lives in urban areas with the number expected to reach some five billion by 2030.

Being able to supply their own fruit and vegetables is clearly an advantage in a time of food scarcity and rising prices. And it’s also not impossible. Hong Kong and Singapore, for example, both produce more than 20% of their meat and vegetables within the city limits. As well as the environmental and economic benefits, rooftop gardens also bring a much needed splash of colour to our rather grey concrete jungles so lets get gardening!

:: IRIN Report

:: Image via Argenberg on flickr.

In this 2005 file photo, Zimbabwe peasant farmer Loyce Nkala stands amid her drought-devastated maize crop in Filabusi, southwest Zimbabwe. REUTERS/Howard Burditt

By Madalitso Mwando

ESIGODINI, Zimbabwe – Whether rotating her crops, sowing seed from previous harvests or gathering rainwater, Susan Gama is pulling out all the stops in an attempt to keep her livelihood going.

Subsistence farmers like Gama in this southern African nation are reverting to traditional farming knowledge and local experimentation to cope with the challenges of poor and unpredictable rainfall, which experts believe is linked to climate change.  

That is producing mixed results – and considerable frustration for government agricultural experts, who believe traditional knowledge alone will not be sufficient to protect farmers against changing rainfall conditions.

"We have always known that our grandparents kept seed from the previous harvest for planting in the new season, but… some people were instead advising us to buy what they termed drought-resistant varieties," Gama said from the small plot of land where she grows maize and groundnuts in Esigodini, 43 km (27 miles) from Bulawayo.

But Gama said that the newer varieties have not consistently produced a good crop on her community’s land, apparently because of very poor rains. So she and other local farmers are conducting their own experiments on what seed works best in poor rain conditions.

“What we do is mix our planting and combine the harvested seed from the previous year and what we buy from the shops and compare outcomes," she said.  

According to villagers, this mixing of seeds has helped improve the harvests.

Where Gama’s plot previously produced 50 bags of maize at 90 kg each, last season she harvested 70 bags, spurring others in this small farming community to experiment with her method.

REJECTION OF NEW METHODS

Government officials say that although rural women farmers are being advised about new farming methods to deal with climate change challenges, many still prefer to use their own traditional knowledge systems.

"There is still a lot of convincing to be done in some parts of the country," said Thelma Ruvimbo, an officer from the Lands and Agriculture Ministry.

"If farmers try something on their own and it works, how they do you convince them about the effectiveness of new technologies?" Ruvimbo asked. 

Government agricultural extension officers have encouraged farmers to practise conservation farming, for example, by using hoes instead of oxen to work the land in order to conserve both soil and water.

But farmers have in some instances opted to explore other options. While crop rotation has been practised for years, the new challenges posed by changing weather patterns have driven farmers such as Thandekile Sibanda, also from Esigodini, to do it with greater frequency, and with a wider variety of crops.

Now, each planting season, she ensures that she plants a different crop – maize, groundnuts, watermelon or pumpkin – in each area of her field, to help ensure something survives the dryer conditions to produce a harvest.

Sibanda believes her program is producing more consistent harvests as rainfall reduces. But Ruvimbo says wider crop experimentation has sometimes led to further losses when the farmers are unaware which crops are best suited for their regions.

"The frustration of the rural women is understandable as climate change is essentially volatile," Ruvimbo said.

Zimbabwe’s Meteorological Services Department had predicted that this season’s rains would peak in late December 2011. But while heavy rains came in December and January to the provinces of Midlands, Harare, Manicaland and the three Mashonaland provinces, areas such as Matebeleland, where Gama lives, are threatened with drought.

While the government's Civil Protection Unit announced in early January that it was placing some parts of the country on a flood alert, the continued absence of rain in other areas serves to highlight the climate-linked problems that are impoverishing rural communities.

RAINWATER HARVESTING

One consolation for Gama and her colleagues is that when the rains do come, they will be able to harvest the water.

The hard red earth of Gama’s land does not retain much water, and she has built furrows along her plot to control run-off. At the same time she uses tanks donated by a non-governmental organisation to harvest water from her rooftop.

Here, each drop counts.

"A nongovernmental organisation donated some plastic drums and water harvesting equipment (such as) pipes connecting from our roofs, and we have been able to use this for our plots," Gama said.

But this is not enough to allow her to fully irrigate her crops, she added.

According to the Plan International, an international children’s charity that works with subsistence farmers in Matebeleland, rainwater harvesting is a good option for millions of poor farmers across Africa and has helped improve yields despite persistently low rainfall.

"We only hope something can be done to make the rains come," Gama said, recalling the times when the government carried out cloud seeding programmes as the rainy season approached.

But Zimbabwe’s government suspended this and other agricultural programmes, citing a lack of resources, when the country’s agricultural production began to plunge a decade ago following a government land redistribution effort.

Madalitso Mwando is a journalist based in Harare, Zimbabwe. This story is part of a series supported by the Climate and Development Knowledge Network.

Industry’s wish list for the next revision of UPOV

GRAIN

The big players in the world seed industry are grumbling about loopholes in the plant variety protection system, which was the alternative to patenting that they set up in the 1960s. The Europeans want to get rid of farmers’ limited entitlement to save seed. The Americans want to restrict the exemption by which breeders have the free use of each other’s commercial varieties for research purposes. In both cases, the point is to reduce competition and boost profits. In the short term, the victims will be farmers, who will probably end up paying the seed giants an additional US$7 billion each year. But in the long run, we will all lose from the growing corporate stranglehold over our food systems. This briefing traces the recent discussions within the seed industry and explores what will happen if a plant variety right becomes virtually indistinguishable from a patent.

Introduction

No more farm-saved seed and no more free access to protected varieties for breeding. In other words, remove the two main differences between plant variety protection and industrial patents. That’s the beginning of the seed industry’s wish list for a new revision of the UPOV convention. [1]

When plant variety protection (PVP) was first standardised by the UPOV convention in the 1960s, it was a mostly copyright-like form of intellectual property. The variety owner had a monopoly on the commercial propagation and marketing of the variety, but little control over other uses. Farmers were free to multiply seed for their own use for as long as they wished. Other breeders could freely use protected varieties to develop their own material.

This changed dramatically with the 1991 revision of UPOV. Based on successful lobbying from the global seed industry, the revision turned PVP into something very close to a patent. Farm-saved seed was allowed only as an optional exception, restrictions were put on further breeding, and monopoly rights were extended all the way to harvest products. This is the version of UPOV which is now being rapidly rolled out across developing countries as a result of the WTO TRIPS [2] agreement.

The industry, however, is still not content. Over the past few years, it has started gearing up its lobby machine for a final attack on the remaining “loopholes” in the PVP system. If it succeeds, it will certainly spell the end of farm-saved seed, probably the end of free access to PVP-protected material for plant breeding, and a general tightening of the ropes with longer terms, stricter enforcement and wider scope of monopoly rights.

This GRAIN briefing traces the recent internal discussions of the seed industry and tries to visualise what will happen if a plant variety right becomes a patent. Will UPOV become superfluous and slowly disappear? Not necessarily. The seed industry is promiscuous in its use of intellectual property rights (IPR). It likes to have many options. Judging from developments in the USA, the future lies not in opting for one form of IPR over another, but in combining two, three or more layers of legal monopoly on top of each other.

The History

When the global seed industry starts again to sing its familiar lobby tune about strengthening IPRs, it is useful to know some history. No matter how often lobbyists repeat that strong IPRs are necessary as an incentive for plant breeding, the fact is that for most of its existence, the seed industry managed to develop and thrive without any IPRs at all. IPRs on seeds and other propagating material are a very recent phenomenon. They played no part in the establishment and rapid expansion of the seed industry during the first half of the 20th century.

With a few insignificant national exceptions, no forms of IPRs were available for plant breeders until just over 30 years ago. For all practical purposes, the original version of the UPOV treaty was the beginning of plant IPRs. And although adopted in 1961, it did not come into practical use before the 1970s. By that time, commercial seed had all but eliminated traditional farmer-bred varieties in developed countries, and was making inroads into the developing world.

So it was not until the seed industry had already become dominant that it was able to secure IPR protection, first with UPOV PVP, and soon after with industrial patents as well. This is not a coincidence. As a large and well consolidated industry it now had considerable lobbying power over governments, much more than it had when it was newly established in the first decades of the 20th century.

Had they been more powerful, plant breeders would have secured monopoly rights at a much earlier stage. There is evidence of lobbying at least from the 1920s, and while unsuccessful regarding specific IPRs on the seed itself, the industry was able to use several other mechanisms to reduce competition from traditional farmers’ seeds. [3]

Seed laws were the most important factor in many countries. By making seed certification mandatory and trade in uncertified seeds illegal, governments indirectly supported commercial seeds against traditional seed-exchange systems.

Trademarks could be used to protect the variety name. Even if the seed as such could be freely multiplied and traded, only the breeder had the right to use the trademarked name.

Farm credit policies and support schemes have long been deployed to oblige farmers to use certified seeds. This means that as a farmer you may be locked out from low-interest loans, crop insurance or direct support payments unless you use a government-approved commercial variety.

Patents on plants were not explicitly excluded by the Paris Convention, and were used to some extent by a handful of European countries, particularly Germany for a period around 1930.

Hybrids became a means to force farmers to buy new seed every year. Hybrid seed cannot be reproduced on-farm, because it requires two different parent lines, which are kept secret and closely guarded by the seed company. Between 1930 and 1960, the whole of the US main crop – maize – was gradually converted to hybrid seed. While officially this was done to secure the heterosis effect (yield increase), in reality the main reason was the monopoly effect. [4]

UPOV 1961

During the 1930s and 1940s, a few countries experimented with specific IPR systems for plants. In the US, the Plant Patent Act (PPA) was passed in 1930. [5] Still in force today, it allows for monopoly rights on the multiplication of asexually propagated plants (those multiplied by tubers, cuttings, grafts or other vegetative material, not by seed). The system was mostly geared to breeders of ornamental plants, has not been much used and was never copied in any other part of the world. In both Germany and the Netherlands, however, national PVP systems were set up which became forerunners of UPOV.

But when the serious lobbying for an international plant IPR system started after the Second World War, the seed industry was not asking for specific PVP systems, but for ordinary industrial patents on plants. The initiative came primarily from the European breeders, who were already developing a sizeable trade across their borders, and saw the need for international regulation. The newly formed international breeders’ association, ASSINSEL, [6] became the main voice of the industry, and it adopted the pre-war German patent practice as its model.

The idea of industrial patents on plants met with double resistance, however. Several European governments thought that it threatened the farm economy by giving industry too much power over the seed supply. A West German minister of agriculture is quoted as fearing that the rural population would be “reduced to begging”.[7] Patent experts, represented by AIPPI,[8] saw another threat: to the credibility of patents. Plants are living and evolving organisms and therefore cannot be exhaustively described in the way required by a patent – well enough to allow someone else to “repeat the invention” exactly. Thus patents on plants would require far-reaching exemptions from normal patent criteria. ASSINSEL had to settle for a sui generic [9] IPR system, and jointly with the French government it initiated the negotiating process that was to result in the UPOV Convention of 1961.

This first version of UPOV PVP was more like a copyright than a patent. The scope of the monopoly was limited, but so were the criteria for protection.

• The owner had the right to control commercial propagation and marketing, but no other uses. Farmers were free to save seed for their own use for as long as they wished, and use the harvest without restriction.
• There were no rights over the genetic content of the variety. Other breeders could freely use a protected variety to develop their own material.
• There was no novelty requirement. As long as the variety was “distinct, uniform and stable” it could be protected.
• There was no requirement to prove invention. A pure discovery could also be protected.

UPOV 1991

Ironically, UPOV PVP had just barely come into practical use before it faced competition from the solution that the seed industry had wanted in the first place – patents on plants. In 1980, the US Supreme Court ruled that there was nothing to stop patents on any kind of living organisms. Europe and other developed countries rapidly followed suit. Why this sudden change of mind? The usual explanation is that genetic engineering and other biotechnologies had by then made it possible to meet the patent criteria with living organisms. But a gene transfer does not give much more predictable or repeatable results than a sexual crossing, and exhaustive description is still impossible. The description requirement is routinely replaced by the deposition of a sample of the organism in a gene bank. In reality, it was probably the much greater lobbying power of the industries behind genetic engineering – the same transnationals that dominate pharmaceuticals and chemicals – that made the difference. Not only were they many times larger than the conventional seed companies, but genetic engineering was also perceived by governments as a crucial technology for future international competitiveness.

The rapid entry into plant breeding of large corporations armed with both genetic engineering and patents caused near-panic among conventional seed companies. one of their coping strategies was to demand a radical strengthening of UPOV PVP, to make it more comparable and competitive with patents. The original 1961 Convention had been left substantially unchanged through two minor revisions in 1972 and 1978. With UPOV 1991, the conventional breeders got a dramatically expanded monopoly right which goes far beyond seed multiplication and in several respects is very close to a patent. [10]

• Farm-saved seed is no longer automatically allowed. only as an optional exception can a government legalise seed saving for the farmer’s own use – and even then the seed company has the right to a royalty payment.
• The monopoly also extends to the harvest, and optionally even to products made from the harvest. If a royalty has not been paid on the seed, the variety owner can demand payment from the final consumer of the harvest.
• Other breeders are still allowed to use protected varieties for breeding, but if a new variety is “essentially derived” from an existing one, it does not qualify for a PVP of its own. This rule was introduced specifically to block genetic engineering companies from getting new PVP protection on varieties just because they added a single gene.
• There is now a novelty requirement.
• Double protection (PVP plus patents) is now allowed.
• The minimum term of protection is increased to 20–25 years (previously 15–18).
• All plant species must be covered (previously only a minimum of any 24 species).

Another major development also started in the 1980s – the negotiation of the WTO TRIPS agreement, which would become the vehicle for expanding plant IPRs into the developing world. TRIPS made it mandatory for governments to provide some kind of IPR protection for plants – by patents or a sui generis system or both. Although neither PVP nor UPOV are explicitly mentioned in WTO texts, the TRIPS agreement has caused a large number of developing countries to adopt UPOV-like PVP systems over the past decade, for lack of a better alternative. Most want to avoid patents on plants. They could develop their own national sui generis systems from scratch, but that is a very resource-consuming task compared to adopting a ready-made solution off the shelf. Many of these countries have also become UPOV members, usually as a result of bilateral pressure from the USA, EU or other developed countries (see Box 3 on page 10). Before TRIPS, UPOV was a very small organisation with two dozen members, all of them developed countries except South Africa. Since 1994, the membership has more than doubled, and the great majority of the new additions are developing or transition-economy countries, which now make up close to half the membership. [11]

Next UPOV

With UPOV 1991 thus well on its way to becoming a global standard, rather than only a club for rich countries, the seed industry lobby is beginning to formulate its demands for the next UPOV revision. The contours are still very vague. So far this is only a more or less internal discussion in industry fora, with probably informal lobbying of selected governments. So a formal negotiation is still some time away, and a finished deal can at least not be expected before UPOV’s 50th anniversary in 2011. But there is no doubt about the general direction. This will be the final attack on the remaining “spaces” (as seen by farmers and researchers) or “loopholes” (as seen by the industry) in the PVP system, to make it virtually indistinguishable from a patent. If successful, it will certainly spell the end of farm-saved seed, probably the end of free access to PVP-protected material for plant breeding, and a general tightening of the ropes with longer terms, stricter enforcement and wider scope of monopoly rights.

To understand the current discussion, it is important to realise how drastically the industry structure has changed since the 1980s. The discussions which led up to UPOV 1991 were characterised by polarisation. on one side stood the large pharmaceutical and chemicals corporations, mostly US-based, which were newcomers to plant breeding, heavily into genetic engineering and completely focused on patents. on the other side stood the conventional seed industry, strongest in Europe and organised in much smaller companies, which saw itself as defending conventional breeding against the onslaught of both genetic engineering and patents.

Today, polarisation has given way to consolidation. Much of the conventional seed industry has been bought up by the transnationals or has entered into cooperation agreements with them. Typically, nationally or regionally based conventional seed companies are now taking on a role as distribution channels for the large transnational players, who need the market know-how and goodwill that the old names in the business can provide. Likewise, their portfolios of regionally adapted varieties are highly attractive as carriers for the engineered genes developed by the transnationals.

In other words, this time a strengthening of UPOV is a common interest of the whole seed industry, large and small, conventional or not. on the surface, there are still cultural differences between the European tradition, defending the PVP system as a “balanced solution”, and the North American one which regards the choice of IPR system as a purely pragmatic issue and sees no need for “balance”. In practice, however, it is difficult to see anything substantially different in the way European companies use IPRs. They too take out patents whenever they can, and they are sometimes the most eager to remove the “balancing” factors built into the PVP system.

Nevertheless, it is illustrative that the discussion about the next UPOV was kicked off by Pioneer Hi-Bred. Pioneer is the largest conventional seed company in the world, and has dominated the US maize seed market since the 1930s. It is now a subsidiary of the chemicals and genetic engineering giant DuPont – a prime example of the consolidation process. In 2004, Pioneer ex-president Richard McConnell bluntly told an international seed industry audience that it was time to create a “level playing field” and give plant varieties under PVP “parity protection … with biotech inventions covered by utility patents”. He was also clear about the road to that goal: “industry leadership should identify and implement the steps to achieve that desired state.” [12]

For the US industry, this was not very controversial. The American Seed Trade Association promptly adopted most of the Pioneer proposal as its own. [13] But many of the Europeans were initially shocked, mainly because McConnell openly questioned what conventional breeders regard as the very core of the UPOV system: free access to protected varieties for further breeding. He specifically proposed that breeders should not be allowed to use any PVP-protected variety in their research programmes until it had been on the market for 10 years. on the other hand, Europeans have been the most eager of all to undermine yet further the other key characteristic of UPOV PVP: the right to use farm-saved seed. Representatives of the European Seed Association have gradually stepped up their attacks on the current rules, and now call for the farm-saved seed exemption to be eliminated altogether. [14] (See Table 1.)

Table 1: UPOV’s gradual encroachment

After a couple of years of fairly intense discussions, an industry consensus appears to be emerging. There are still differences of detail, especially regarding access for breeding, but in return for getting rid of farm-saved seed, the Europeans are probably willing to go quite far in restricting breeding access. [15] And apart from the two main issues, there is already agreement on a number of other changes to be proposed. What follows here is the picture GRAIN has been able to piece together of what the next UPOV would look like, if and when industry succeeds in achieving its “desired state”.

• Farm-saved seed. Saving seed of protected varieties is likely to be prohibited altogether. Just like a patent, a PVP will give the owner an unlimited right to control all uses of the variety. The current option for governments to allow farm-saved seed as a national exception will disappear. In theory, there will still be an option for farmers to make licensing agreements with variety owners, just as there is under patent law. In practice it is very unlikely that seed companies will give up their acquired right to control all seed growing and thus maximise their profits. (See also Box 1, about the total value of farm-saved seed, on page 5.)

If the industry does not succeed in persuading governments to ban seed saving altogether, the fallback alternative is to make governments responsible for royalty collection and make non-payment a criminal offence. Especially in Europe, seed companies are already pressuring governments to strengthen national legislation for enforcement of licence payments (see Box 2 on page 8).

• Access for breeding. The current right to access PVP-protected material for breeding will probably disappear. First, there will be a period of at least 10 years when no breeding use at all is allowed, just as with a patent. Then there will be a limited right to access, comparable to what in patent law is called a compulsory licence. Each access will have to be registered and a licence fee paid to the variety owner. Today, a breeder can simply buy commercial seed of a protected variety for use in a breeding programme without even informing the variety owner. This will no longer be possible.
• Seed deposit system. In order to implement the restrictions on access, a seed deposit system will be created where samples are made available by variety owners, just as in the patent system. only seed which is accessed from a depository according to a formal procedure and with a licence agreement will be legal to use for further breeding.
• All products covered. The rights on the plant variety will be extended to cover all products made from the variety, so that a variety owner will be able to collect royalties from the end user – such as the brewing or baking industry – if they have not been paid by the grower. This is currently an option that can be implemented in national PVP legislations.
• International application system. An international system will be created for filing a single PVP application valid in all UPOV member states. A similar system already exists for patent applications – the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), administered by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO). [16]
• Longer terms of protection. An increase to at least 25–30 years is probable. These are the terms now used for the EU Community PVP. Industry is already complaining that they are too short for certain crops. [17]
• Stricter criteria for essentially derived varieties (EDVs). Industry is asking in general terms for stronger rights over EDVs and more effective enforcement, and in specific terms for a reversal of the burden of proof, meaning that the alleged EDV breeder would have to prove his innocence, rather than the accuser having to prove guilt. [18]

Any future for plant variety protection?

If UPOV PVP is revised to the point of being almost impossible to distinguish from an industrial patent, what is the point of having a separate system at all? Will it simply disappear or merge into the patent system? Some apparently think – or wish – so.

A recent paper by two leading US experts in plant IPRs argues that PVP is already an obsolete system and should be laid to rest, or at least completely redesigned from the bottom up. [19] Much of their argument rests on the idea that plant varieties are no longer a relevant category in the era of genetic engineering, that they will increasingly be reduced to a kind of distribution package for genetically engineered traits, which will be the only thing valuable enough to warrant IPR protection. That is a ridiculous exaggeration of the value of adding a single gene or two to a variety with an evolutionary history of hundreds or thousands of years, and like many other predictions from the genetech industry it is bound to be proved wrong. Plant varieties are a problematic concept for other reasons – in particular because they artificially arrest evolution at an arbitrary point of “stability” – but there are no serious reasons to think they are about to go extinct.

There is one very simple reason why the seed industry will almost certainly want to keep the PVP system, and that is its character of “objective” rather than “prospective” protection [20] – in ordinary language, you can always get a PVP on a variety, whether it is an improvement or not. All you need to show is that it is sufficiently new, distinct, uniform and stable. There is no requirement to prove any “inventive step” or future “utility”, as there is with patents. In fact, it is still possible under UPOV 1991 to register pure discoveries for PVP, provided some minimal development has taken place. Most plants registered for PVP would be unlikely to meet the criteria for patent protection. So given that the next UPOV will offer very nearly the same level of monopoly rights as patents, but without the tougher criteria, the industry would have to be crazy to turn it down.

Another compelling reason for the industry to hang on to UPOV is that many developing countries are likely to continue rejecting the patenting of plants, even though bilateral pressure is applied in free trade agreements to force them to adopt it. In those cases, a patent-look-alike PVP might be a monopoly saver for the seed industry.

But above all, it is wrong thinking altogether to assume that there is an either/or situation between PVP and patents. Even though some parts of the seed industry still try to hard-sell UPOV as the “good cop” compared to “bad cop” patents, it should be obvious by now that, just like in the movies, the two cops are actually working as a team. PVP and patents are complementary, not mutually exclusive. In the US – as well as in Japan, Korea, Australia, and a few developing countries – a plant variety can even be protected simultaneously by PVP and patent. In Europe it is not possible to patent a variety, but the ban is easily and routinely circumvented by applying PVP to the variety and a patent to, for example, “a plant of species x with the gene y”.

And it does not stop at double protection either. A very knowledgeable source claims – with great pride – that under US law it is now theoretically possible to have up to seven different forms of legal protection for the same plant variety: under federal law a PVP, a utility patent, a plant patent under PPA (if it’s an asexually reproduced plant), plus a design patent; and, under various state laws, protection for contractual monopoly claims (seed wrap contracts), trade secret protection, and protection against unfair competition. [21] While this may not yet be true in many other countries, the trend is no doubt global. It is difficult to discern any principle for the legal strategies of the seed industry other than “whatever we can get away with” – an attitude well-known for decades from the operations of the big pharmaceutical and chemicals corporations. As illustrated by a handful of recent examples (see Box 3 on page 10), the innovativeness is as striking as the ruthlessness. Any sense of “balance” between the rights of breeders and the rights of farmers – or of society at large – is utterly lacking.

Robbing farmers and stifling innovation

What would be the consequences if seed companies succeeded once again in imposing their IPR agenda on UPOV member governments? The immediate effects are obvious. Banning farm-saved seed means an enormous value transfer from farmers to corporations. It would be especially destructive because for the first time a change in PVP rules would have a direct effect on large numbers of farmers in developing countries and poor transition economies. This is about outlawing an important part of a farmer’s livelihood and culture, not only in Europe and the USA but also in places like Bolivia, Moldova, Uzbekistan and Vietnam, for no better reason than to increase the profits of Du Pont, Bayer, Syngenta, and Monsanto.

Maybe poorer countries will have some “balancing” influence at UPOV as their membership grows, but we can be sure that the seed industry will do whatever they can to prevent it. In a telling episode during the IPR seminar at the June 2006 congress of the International Seed Federation, one of the very few developing country delegates, representing the Seed Trade Association of Kenya, took the floor in an open discussion. He did so to argue the importance of farm-saved seed for developing countries, and to demand that ISF acknowledge and support this. He was brusquely called to order by the ISF Secretary-General, who snapped that this was completely out of the question.

The long-term consequences are equally serious but more insidious. The history of the seed industry provides an instructive example of how increasing IPR protection creates not an incentive but a barrier to innovation and development. The big strides in yield and resistance improvement during the 20th century were made before IPR protection was available to plant breeders, and while much of the variety development was done in the public sector. And in any case, these big strides were mainly due to the one-off effect of selecting and combining the best traits from thousands of farmer varieties, locally selected over centuries – it was more a windfall than a product of patient and systematic research.

Since then scientific plant breeding has delivered nothing comparable. We have seen that in many cases individual farmers can match – or beat – the performance of present commercial varieties by simple on-farm selection. The seed industry has every reason to fear competition from farm-saved seed, not as they claim because it threatens innovation, but because it exposes their lack of it. Commercial breeding is increasingly making itself irrelevant to the real-world concerns of farming. Its current focus on unsustainable single-gene traits in the best cases, and outright dangerous genetic experiments in the worst, threatens to leave agriculture very badly prepared for the great challenges of the near future, such as climate change and the need to wean ourselves off our dependence on fossil fuels.

Constantly strengthened IPRs have become, as for so many other stagnant industries, the seed industry’s primary defence against competition. [22] This process has now gone so far that even very conventional analysts are starting to notice how the consolidation of the seed industry is reducing research and development. [23] Both the attack on farm-saved seed and the proposed near-elimination of free access to varieties for plant breeding exemplify the same trend. Unable to produce value through innovation, the industry is trying instead both to grab the last remaining segment of the seed market from farmers, and to increase its earnings on existing varieties by blocking research access and thereby intentionally obstructing progress in breeding.

[1] UPOV means the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants; the acronym is from the French name. Website at http://www.upov.int

[2] TRIPS, the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, was one of the package of agreements which entered into force when the World Trade Organisation (WTO) was established in 1994. Website at http://www.wto.org

[3] For this and in general for a more detailed  account of the lobbying and political games leading up to the UPOV convention 1961, see Robin Pistorius and Jeroen van Wijk, The Exploitation of Plant Genetic Information, University of Amsterdam, 1999, especially pp. 44–51 and 77–85.

[4] It has never been proved that hybrids have inherently higher yield. Many independent scholars question the whole idea, and seed industry sources sometimes admit that the “built-in plant variety protection” is the real attraction. See GRAIN, “Hybrid rice in China – A great yield forward?”, Seedling, January 2007. Available at http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=455

[5] For more on the PPA and in general for the history of plant IPRs in the US, see Cary Fowler, Unnatural Selection. Technology, Politics, Law and the Rationalisation of Plant Evolution, Uppsala University, 1993.

[6] ASSINSEL is the International Association of Plant Breeders (acronym from the French name). The organisation merged in 2002 with the International Seed Trade Federation (FIS) to create what is now called the International Seed Federation, ISF. Website athttp://www.worldseed.org

[7] Stephen A. Bent, “History and Portents for Intellectual Property Rights in Agricultural Innovation”, Patent Protection of Plant-Related Innovations: Facts and Issues, ISF Seminar, Copenhagen, 1–2 June 2006. A CD with the seminar papers can be ordered from the International Seed Federation secretariat at isf@worldseed.org

[8] AIPPI, the International Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property (acronym from the French name), http://www.aippi.org

[9] An IPR system is called sui generis (Latin for “of its own kind”) when it is designed for a specific type of product, rather than general in scope like patents or copyright.

[10] The different versions of the UPOV convention can be found under Publications athttp://www.upov.int

[11] Membership figures at http://www.upov.int under About UPOV

[12] Richard L. McConnell, “Developing Genetic Resources for the Future – the Long Look”, Protection of Intellectual Property and Access to Plant Genetic Resources, ISF International Seminar, Berlin 27–28 May 2004. A CD with the seminar papers can be ordered from the International Seed Federation secretariat at isf@worldseed.org McConnell’s Pioneer colleague, Germplasm Security Coordinator Stephen Smith, had already delivered a very similar message at a UPOV meeting the previous year: Stephen Smith, “Dissemination of Biotechnology into Agriculture”, WIPO–UPOV Symposium on Intellectual Property Rights in Plant Biotechnology, WIPO–UPOV/SYM/03/3, Geneva, 24 October 2003. Available athttp://tinyurl.com/253bp2

[13] American Seed Trade Association, Position Statement on Intellectual Property Rights for the Seed Industry, 15 July 2004. Available at http://www.amseed.com/newsDetail.asp?id=97

[14] See for example Claude Grand, “Does the enforcement system meet the needs of the breeders?”, Enforcement of Plant Variety Rights in the Community, Seminar of the Community Plant Variety Office, Brussels, 4–5 October 2005. Available at http://tinyurl.com/ytn5d9 or Judith Blokland, “Do the legal tools meet the needs of the breeders”, Regional Seminar on Enforcement of Plant Variety Rights, Community Plant Variety Office, Warsaw, 11–12 May 2006. Available at http://tinyurl.com/28bvcg Both call for elimination of all rights to save seed on-farm in Europe.

[15] For the views of the Intellectual Property Manager of Limagrain, the largest Europe-based seed company, see Pierre Roger, “A Professional European View on Intellectual Property for Plant-Related Innovations”, Patent Protection of Plant-Related Innovations: Facts and Issues, ISF Seminar, Copenhagen, 1–2 June 2006. A CD with the seminar papers can be ordered from the International Seed Federation secretariat at isf@worldseed.org

[16] For information about the PCT, see http://www.wipo.int/pct/en/index.html

[17] See for example Grand (2005) and Blokland (2006); details given in footnote 14

[18] See for example Essential Derivation. Information and Guidance to Breeders, International Seed Federation, June 2005. Available at http://tinyurl.com/2fsvs8 American Seed Trade Association (2004), details given in footnote 13 on page 6; and McConnell (2004), details given in footnote 12

[19] Mark D. Janis and Stephen Smith, Obsolescence in Intellectual Property Regimes, University of Iowa Legal Studies Research Paper 05-48, Iowa City, April 2006. Available atssrn.com/abstract=897728 (free registration necessary for download).

[20] Bent (2006); details given in footnote 7.

[21] Edmund J. Sease, “Protections Available For Plants Under United States Laws, Both Federal and State”, Patent Protection of Plant-Related Innovations: Facts and Issues, ISF Seminar, Copenhagen, 1–2 June 2006. A CD with the seminar papers can be ordered from the International Seed Federation secretariat at isf@worldseed.org Edmund Sease was the main legal counsel for Pioneer Hi-Bred in the recent Supreme Court case which reconfirmed and considerably strengthened the legal basis for patenting plants and other living organisms in the USA (JEM Ag Supply vs Pioneer Hi-Bred). Regarding design patents, he admits that there is as yet no legal precedent showing that they could be used for plants, but notes that as the JEM decision qualified a plant as “an article of manufacture” for the purpose of utility patents, why would it be different for the purpose of design patents?

[22] For a general background on IPRs as an anti-competitive tool, with examples mainly from the pharmaceutical and entertainment industries, see Peter Drahos and John Braithwaite, Information Feudalism. Who Owns the Knowledge Economy?, Earthscan, London, 2002.

[23] David E. Schimmelpfennig et al., The impact of seed industry concentration on innovation: a study of U.S. biotech market leaders, Economic Research Service, US Department of Agriculture, Washington, 2004. Available at ssrn.com/abstract=365600 (free registration required for download). Schimmelpfennig and colleagues have primarily documented how industry consolidation leads to a decrease in genetech research, which may be a good thing, but nevertheless illustrates the point.

http://www.grain.org/article/entries/58-the-end-of-farm-saved-seed-industry-s-wish-list-for-the-next-revision-of-upov

According to scientist and co-chair of the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science & Technology (IAASTD) report Dr. Hans Herren, the world must consciously shift from producing cheap commodities with large ecological, social and economic footprints to quality food. Investment in eco-efficient agricultural practices that will be resilient in the face of climate change, resource scarcity and growing demand is key if we want to feed a growing global population, says Dr. Herren. What we need least is another “Green Revolution.”

By Ken Roseboro

Organic & Non-GMO Report

December 27, 2011

Hans Herren, Ph.D. is an internationally recognized scientist specializing in sustainable agriculture. He is president of the Millennium Institute, a non-profitdevelopment research and service organization dedicated to sustainable development. Dr. Herren co-chaired the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science & Technology (IAASTD), an initiative sponsored by the World Bank and United Nations in partnership with the World Health Organization that assessed global agriculture and recommended agroecological solutions to world hunger.

Dr. Herren has earned numerous awards that recognize his research achievements. These include the 2002 Brandenberger Preis for improving the living standards of Africa's rural population, the 2003 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, and the 1995 World Food Prize for his work developing a successful biological control program that saved the African cassava crop, and averted Africa’s worst-ever food crisis.

Dr. Herren’s work in agroecology in Africa has been credited with saving millions of lives by enabling African people to produce the food they need. He developed the “push-pull” system that uses simple but powerful bio-control strategies to effectively manage corn pests, resulting in large increases in yields.

There is much discussion today about the need to “feed the world” because of the growing global population. What do you think needs to be done in order to ensure there is adequate food for everyone in the world?

HH: The issue is less on how to feed the world than how to nourish the poor and hungry. Today we produce 4600 calories per person per day, so there is enough food to feed twice the present population. The problem is that we produce mostly cheap commodities rather than quality food. These cheap products, in addition to being of low nutritional value, are based on a few crops that carry a large ecological, social, and economic footprint. What is needed is to support farmers in developing countries to grow their own healthy food by providing information, know-how, financial support for inputs, and support for them to access markets, among others.

Food security is achieved when availability, access, stability, and utilization are assured equally for all. There is also a need for new and participatory research into sustainable agricultural practices, based on the principles of agroecology and organic farming, which would free farmers from dependence on external inputs such as chemical pesticides and fertilizers.

Some agricultural “experts” are calling for another Green Revolution. What are your thoughts on this?

HH: What we need least is another Green Revolution. What is needed now is to move forward with the lessons learned from the Green Revolution, taking forward what has worked and leave behind most of it, since the Green Revolution has left agriculture dependent on external inputs that are non-sustainable and becoming more and more expensive since they are based on oil, a finite resource, and also synthetic fertilizers, also based on finite natural resources.

The way forward is to understand and work with the system in a holistic and integrated manner. Silver bullets, reductionism as often promoted by the agri-chemical industry are not solutions.

The IAASTD report recommends, as you do, the need for a holistic approach to agricultural production. What do you mean by this?

HH: By this we mean to always consider agriculture multi-functionality, the fact that it is realized in the overlapping areas of the environment, society, and economy. Agriculture is not simply the production of food as seen under the Green Revolution: agriculture produces a number of essential eco-social system services, which we need to consider when making any decision about the food system, from production to consumption. This is also the reason that we have been promoting a payment to farmers for these ecosystem services, providing additional income to farmers that take the route of sustainable production.

The IAASTD report received very little press in the United States. Prince Charles said at a conference in Washington, DC last year that the findings from the report seem to have “vanished.” Any thoughts on this?

HH: The report was not well received by the US, Canada, and Australia, where major commodity exporters, major producers of agriculture inputs, such as seeds and fertilizers, and the largest food processors are based.

However, the report received a good response from UN agencies such as UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development), UNEP (United Nations Environment Program), and also the natural resources department at FAO (UN Food and Agriculture Organization), some governments and in particular civil society groups and foundations. For example, the African Union has adopted ecological/organic farming as one of the agricultural practices that need to be promoted across Africa to help achieve food security sustainably in the face of the climate change challenges.

Do you think that organic/agroecological methods can help feed the world?

HH: Agroecological, eco-efficient, and organic agriculture, which are among the several good agricultural practices under the label “sustainable agriculture,” cannot only nourish a world population of some 9 to 10 billion people, but are the only approaches that will be able to do it in the face of climate change, natural resource scarcity, and growing demand challenges. Unless we have the resilience provided by these systems at the basis of our multi-functional production systems, we will face major problems.

So the solutions are at hand, there is evidence from the field for now over three decades that sustainable agriculture cannot only nourish the world, but can do so for the long haul.

Are organic and agroecological methods one and the same?

HH: Not exactly, for the reason that organic is a simplified form of agroecological farming practices, which does include also social elements, that are not yet part of organic. Also agroecology is the science that underlies agroecological practices, including the social and economic sciences, in addition to the natural sciences.

There are no certification needs in agroecological practices, contrary to organic, which follow a strict set of rules that vary from country to country.

What is your opinion of genetically modified crops?

HH: This is a technology that addresses symptoms rather than cause, so it’s of little use in sustainable systems. Also, GM crops create dependencies that are not in the interest of the farmers or consumers in the medium and long term.

We have now already seen the problems that arise from resistance build-up of weeds as well as insects, which are no longer affected by the killer chemicals that accompany the herbicide tolerant crops and also the insect resistant ones.

GMOs are a reductionist approach used in a complex system; no wonder they already fail just as the pesticides failed. Furthermore, GMOs promote the wrong type of production system: few different crops in the rotation and monocrop practices that go against the wisdom of sustainable agriculture which uses a large number of different crops to increase diversity and so resilience.

In brief, GMOs do not provide any substantial medium or long term benefit, either for the farmer or the consumers.

There is a push now to grow GM crops in Africa. The Gates Foundation is funding research on GM crops in Africa and other nations. What are your thoughts on this?

HH: We do not need GMOs in Africa nor anywhere else. To promote GMOs in Africa is wrongheaded, will make farmers dependent on input suppliers in the medium and long term and contribute to the loss of important local landraces (plant species).

What we need are resilient cropping systems where we have fertile soils loaded with organic matter, humus, which will not only absorb lots of carbon, but will also store water and nutrients to be released at the pace plants can pick up. Such soil also increases many of the nutrients needed by the plants, making the use of fertilizers unnecessary, except in isolated situations, such as when phosphate may be totally lacking.

We have shown in experiments and on some 50,000 farms that farm productivity can be raised easily by a factor of two to four, when applying agroecological methods.

Proponents of GMOs like to claim they will help feed the world. What do you think?

HH: We already produce more food than needed; despite this we have 950 million people hungry. In India food is rotting in warehouses, yet India has the highest childhood malnutrition rate in the world.

The proof that this system does not work is confirmed by the fact that after 20 years of GMOs the global situation has not improved. Why continue and emphasize further a system that is failing to change food security?

Not to say that the traditional agriculture in developing countries is all okay. To the contrary, there is a need to change the paradigm and move on with new participatory research, extension and farmer training into new sustainable agricultural methods.

You’ve said that agricultural research should be in the public sector. Why do you think this is important?

HH: The public sector, government, needs to take the responsibility to assure food security for all again. The devolution of this responsibility to the private sector was wrongheaded and needs to be rectified as soon as possible.

Food is a human right, and there should be no patents on seeds (as we have now by private companies). Seeds belong to the global public good or public domain.

There are opportunities for the private sector to be involved in the many aspects of food storage, processing, and marketing, very much at the local level with farmer participation in these businesses.