TITLE: Monsanto's royalty grab in Argentina
AUTHOR: GRAIN
PUBLICATION: Against the grain
DATE: October 2004
URL: http://www.grain.org/articles/?id=4
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Monsanto's Royalty Grab In Argentina
Or: How corporations get their way with a little help from their
friends in government
A dramatic comedy in three acts (with more to come)
GRAIN
October 2004
Behind many big promises of technology transfer and feeding the
world lies a brutal truth: biotechnology corporations like Monsanto
only care about profits. They are not offering genetically modified
(GM) seeds to the South out of charity. They want to take over seed
markets and squeeze farmers for as much as they can get - which, even
in poor countries, can be a lot. The formula seems to be this: focus
on the major cash crops (cotton, soybeans, maize, etc), find an entry
point, contaminate the seed supply and then step in to take control.
Argentina, the first country outside of North America to start
planting GM crops, is a case in point. But the same pattern is being
reproduced around the world, as with GM cotton in India and West
Africa. The story of what has happened in Argentina should serve as a
stark warning of what occurs when GM agriculture takes root.
ACT ONE: THE INFECTION
1996 - The government of Argentina approves the commercial planting
of Monsanto's genetically modified Roundup Ready (RR) soybeans.
Farmers save, multiply and sell the seeds to other farmers, as they
always have, and the area planted to RR soybeans grows exponentially
- from less than a million hectares in 1996 to 14 million hectares in
the 2003-2004 growing season. RR soybeans also start to cross
Argentina's borders, with people smuggling them into neighbouring
Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia, where cultivating GM crops is banned.
Monsanto's patents on RR soybeans are not recognised in Argentina.
The company's rights over the GM seeds are limited to the country's
Seed Law - a plant breeders' rights regime that allows farmers to
save seeds for their own use but not to sell them over the fence
[1]. Still, Monsanto does nothing to stop the large-scale
brown-bagging taking place. It sits back and watches its GM seeds
and the use of its RoundUp herbicide expand over the Southern Cone,
as the large landholders of the Pampas and surrounding areas adopt
the industrial no-till farming system of RR soy on a massive scale.
For many, the absence of any complaints from the company during these
early years confirms what they suspected from the start: the spread
of GM crops through contamination and the violation of national laws
is a conscious and intentional strategy of the transnational seed
corporations.
ACT TWO: THE THREATS
2001 - With GM soy agriculture entrenched in Argentina and spreading
fast throughout the region, Monsanto begins to threaten farmers over
their illegal use of RR seeds and demand that the Argentine
government enforce the law. Some police raids are carried out, but
the selling of farmer-saved seeds goes on. Soybean plantations also
continue to spread, moving beyond the farming frontier into the last
remaining forests of the Chaco region and other fragile ecosystems in
Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil. By now the Maradona soybeans, as
the GM seeds smuggled from Argentina have come to be called, are
famous in Brazil.
Meanwhile, Monsanto, under pressure from US soybean farmers
complaining about unfair competition, starts to put in place its own
measures. In 1999, it begins selling its seeds through contracts that
require extended royalties. Under this system, Argentine farmers
are required to pay US$2.00 plus tax for each 50-kilo bag of seeds
that they save from their harvests for their own use [2]. While the
contract violates the country's Seed Law, which allows farmers to use
their own seeds with no strings attached, the government of Argentina
does not object.
Monsanto defends the extended royalty scheme as a way to recover
its investments in research and development. The company says the
royalties are merely minimal fees, applied on a broader and fairer
base, together with the royalties charged for seed certification.
But this is not where the story ends...
ACT THREE: THE TAKEOVER
2004 - Monsanto begins the year with a dramatic mise-en-scne. In
January, it announces, We are suspending our soybean business [in
Argentina] because it's simply not profitable for us. The company
points its finger at brown-bagging farmers as the culprits of its
misfortune [3]. It threatens to limit its activities in Argentina to
its maize and sorghum seed businesses, while vigorously denying that
its decision has anything to do with pressuring the government.
A few days later, National Agriculture Secretary Miguel Campos
happens to announce that the government is studying a draft global
royalties law that would be built around a new technology
