http://truth-out.org/news/item/22780-chile-derails-monsanto-law-that-would-privatize-seeds
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Chile Derails "Monsanto Law" That Would Privatize Seeds
Sunday, 30 March 2014 14:10
By Asha DuMonthier, New America Media | Report
Santiago, Chile - This month, rural women, indigenous communities, and
farmers in Chile found themselves on the winning end of a long-fought
battle against a bill that had come to be known by many in this country
as simply, the “Monsanto Law.”
The bill, which would have given multinational agribusiness corporations
the right to patent seeds they discover, develop or modify, was
withdrawn by the Chilean government now controlled by newly elected
members of the center-left coalition known as the New Majority, amid
concerns that the law would bring harm to the country’s small and
mid-sized farmers.
In making the announcement on March 17, new Secretary General Ximena
Rincón pledged that the Chilean government will “analyze all that is
known in our country and internationally about this issue in order to
protect the rights of agricultural communities, small and medium-sized
farmers, and the heritage of seeds in our country.”
Rincón has been a leading voice of opposition to the bill in the Chilean
government, and part of a larger alliance of approximately fifteen
organizations and elected officials across the country who have been
lobbying and protesting its passage since the introduction of the bill
four years ago.
“We reject this law because it is a threat to family farms and to
biodiversity,” said Lucía Sepúlveda from the Alliance for a Better
Quality of Life/Pesticide Action Network of Chile (RAP-AL Chile). Last
August, her organization and thousands of other Chileans took to the
streets of cities across the country in mass protests against the law.
Sepúlveda explained that the Monsanto Law – derived from the
International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV)
1991 Act -- would allow companies to register patents for the vast
majority of seeds in Chile, and require small and medium producers to
pay those companies for the right to use similar seeds. This, said
Sepúlveda, would create a barrier for small and medium producers to use
strains of seeds that have been developed and used by farmers and
indigenous communities in Chile for generations. Producers would be
faced with renewing their seed rights every year for a high price, or
leaving agriculture all together.
“We’re left without farmers and without production,” said Sepúlveda.
The steady decline of small and medium–scale agriculture is a growing
problem for Chile. While the country is one of the world’s most prolific
fruit exporters, many Chileans complain that the main importers of their
agricultural goods such as Japan and the United States, have more access
to quality produce than Chileans do. Large multinational companies
generally produce solely for export, whereas small and medium producers
produce for the domestic market, selling their goods at local markets or
ferias.
Alicia Muñoz, co-director of the National Association of Rural and
Indigenous Women (Anamuri), visited parliament five times during the
last year to convince senators to reject the law. Anamuri mobilized
women across the country to take a stand for the sake of preserving
“food sovereignty.” She described the withdrawal of the bill as a great
achievement: “All of the resistance that rural organizations,
principally indigenous communities, led during these past years was a
success. We were able to convey to the parliament how harmful the law
would be for the indigenous communities and farmers who feed us all. Big
agriculture, or agro-business is just that, a business. It doesn’t feed
our country.”
Muñoz said that further privatization of seeds in Chile would harm the
autonomy of small and medium producers. She said that, currently, “they
(small farmers) don’t have to depend on a Monsanto, Bayer or a Syngenta
to get seeds,” referring to other agri-business giants. The inability of
smaller growers to use family-developed and shared strains of seeds, she
said, would not only be a financial blow, but would erode what the
non-profit organization GRAIN calls Chile’s “genetic heritage.”
“It would erase the history of our grandparents, our ancestors who
taught us how to care for and grow our seeds,” explained Muñoz.
Environmental groups joined the fight with organizations like Anamuri
because of the bill’s impact on biodiversity. Agri-business companies
insisted that the bill would not allow for genetically modified
organisms (GMO), or foods, to be produced for the domestic market in
Chile, but activists disagreed. “If the vast majority of seeds in Chile
are registered, the traditional species of seeds will fall into disuse,”
said Sepúlveda.
GMO’s are controversial around the world as environmental and consumer
protection groups say they harm biodiversity and violate consumer rights
because of their potential health effects. And the long controversy over
the Monsanto Law in Chile is just one example of the struggle across
Latin America between campesinos, small farmers, and the corporate
leaders of the global food industry. In Colombia, a national
agricultural strike rocked the countryside in 2013 as farmers protested
the effects of their own Monsanto Law that was included in a free trade
agreement with the United States in 2010. In Argentina, Venezuela and
Mexico, seed patenting bills have similarly generated public uproar.
The rejection of the law in Chile is being viewed as a triumph for rural
and indigenous communities, yet for Chilean social and environmental
activists, the struggle is not over.
“There are three possible scenarios that could occur now,” explains
Francisca Rodriguez of Anamuri and the Latin American Coordination of
Rural Organizations (CLOC-Via Campesina). “The best would be that the
president (Michelle Bachelet) agrees to permanently withdraw the bill.”
However, the government could also choose to set up a mixed commission
to investigate its impact, which would mean consulting social and
environmental organizations as well as corporate organizations. The
third and worst option in the eyes of peasant and indigenous rights
groups is that the bill could be rewritten and reintroduced by the
Agricultural Commission.
“The corporate lobby is large and powerful and they will try to
reintroduce the bill,” Rodriguez warns. Corporate stakeholders who seek
to privatize seeds and facilitate the spread of GMO crops around the
world face widespread resistance in Chile but continue to have the upper
hand in terms of political power and wealth.
If the seed patenting law does resurface in Chile, organized groups of
women, peasants, and indigenous communities appear ready to continue to
defend their rights to seeds and small-scale agriculture.
“We need to keep insisting publically that the president withdraw it for
good. We have to continue organizing,” concluded Rodriguez.
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