----- Original Message -----
From: "Merla Barberie" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "BD Now" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, June 11, 2003 10:23 PM
Subject: Farmer's Right to Save Seed Attacked from GRAIN
Hi Merla
Thanks for the post on seed patent rights - the situation in
Australia is as described -
any varieties released after the legislation came into being we have to pay
on - there are ways around this to a certain degree - we are still allowed
to increase these varieties on farm but must pay the royalty - so if a
farmer wants to buy seed from a neighbour he needs to have bought enough
patented seed on contract to cover his butt legally. The royalty on wheat
and barley is "end point" so is a low rate but charged on all grain
produced, we currently pay $1 per tonne on total production from licenced
varieties, doesnt sound much but 20 or 30 million per year into private
hands. The Agriculture department and university breeding programs are still
public (farmer funded) and they are all under strict instructions to let
NOTHING into the public domain that has a chance of being held under PVR, so
because they are either stupid or incredibly lazy (in a business sense) they
register the variety then sell off the rights to a private seed company, so
we end up with taxpayer and farmer levy funded reasearch being dumped in the
lap of the purveyors of poison so they can feather their comfy little nest
some more!
We also have the situation where the chemical companies have taken
high quality public domain varieties (Jantz wheat for one) put them into a
program where they sprayed them over several generations with increasing
doses of herbicide, starting from a low sub-lethal dose, and induced
resistance to the herbicide then registered as a new variety - the rats even
used the old name as part of the new name for "their" PVR protected variety.
We have been conned for many years, starting with the story
that established varieties would somehow " run out" or degenerate if we
continued to grow from our own seed, most farmers fell for this, and will
continue to be conned until they stop chasing rainbows and start to look at
proper non toxic nutrition for their crops.
Cheers
Lloyd Charles
_______________________________________________
BDNow mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
You can unsubscribe or change your options at:
http://lists.envirolink.org/mailman/listinfo/bdnow
