Iraqi Seeds

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<blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!><font size=1>quote:</font>

US Declares Iraqis Must
Destroy Their Own Seeds
Edited by Iman Khaduri
http://abutamam.blogspot.com
www.globalresearch.ca
2-1-5

For the record: "U.S. declares Iraqis can not save their own seeds"

"As part of sweeping "economic restructuring" implemented by the Bush Administration in Iraq, Iraqi farmers will no longer be permitted to save their seeds, which include seeds the Iraqis themselves have developed over hundreds of years. Instead, they will be forced to buy seeds from US corporations. That is because in recent years, transnational corporations have patented and now own many seed varieties originated or developed by indigenous peoples. In a short time, Iraq will be living under the new American credo:

Pay Monsanto, or starve ."

"The American Administrator of the Iraqi CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) government, Paul Bremer, updated Iraq's intellectual property law to 'meet current internationally-recognized standards of protection'. The updated law makes saving seeds for next year's harvest, practiced by 97% of Iraqi farmers in 2002, and is the standard farming practice for thousands of years across human civilizations, to be now illegal.. Instead, farmers will have to obtain a yearly license for genetically modified (GM) seeds from American corporations. These GM seeds have typically been modified from seeds developed over thousands of generations by indigenous farmers like the Iraqis, and shared freely like agricultural 'open source.'"

Iraq law Requires Seed Licenses November 13, 2004

"According to Order 81, paragraph 66 - , issued by L. Paul Bremer [CFR], the people in Iraq are now prohibited from saving seeds and may only plant seeds for their food from licensed, authorized U.S. distributors.

The paragraph states, "Farmers shall be prohibited from re-using seeds of protected varieties or any variety mentioned in items 1 and 2 of paragraph [C] of Article 14 of this chapter."

Written in massively intricate legalese, Order 81 directs the reader at Article 14, paragraph 2 [C] to paragraph of Article 4, which states any variety that is different from any other known variety may be registered in any country and become a protected variety of seed - thus defaulting it into the "protected class" of seeds and prohibiting the Iraqis from reusing them the following season. Every year, the Iraqis must destroy any seed they have, and repurchase seeds from an authorized supplier, or face fines, penalties and/or jail time."

As per an Iraqi proverb, the day will come, sooner rather than later, when the Iraqis will shred Bremer's Laws, soak them in water and offer the glass to Bremer to drink.

http://globalresearch.ca/articles/KHA501A.html


Iraqis Can't Save Seed

By Bud Landry
1-19-5

"U.S. Declares Iraqis Can't Save See," by David Deschesne

According to Order 81, paragraph 66 -, issued by L. Paul Bremer [CFR], the people in Iraq are now prohibited from saving seeds and may only plant seeds for their food from from licensed, authorized U.S. distributors.

The paragraph states, "Farmers shall be prohibited from re-using seeds of protected varieties or any variety mentioned in items 1 and 2 of paragraph [C] of Article 14 of this chapter."

Written in massively intricate legalese, Order 81 directs the reader at Article 14, paragraph 2 [C] to paragraph of Article 4, which states any variety that is different from any other known variety may be registered in any country and become a protected variety of seed - thus defaulting it into the "protected class" of seeds and prohibiting the Iraqis from reusing them the following season. Every year, the Iraqis must destroy any seed they have, and repurchase seeds from an authorized supplier, or face fines, penalties and/ or jail time.

This is the freedom that comes with the American form of democracy?

http://magic-city-news.com/article_2812.shtml<!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote><!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote>

Amazing. It was bad enough that our soldiers were dying for mobil/exxon. Now they're also dying for monsanto. No wonder the insurgency gets stronger by the day.

This is when we see the shift from terrorism to guerilla warfare: when you make an enemy of the people while attacking the system they are in you're a terrorist, when you have the support of the people while attacking their system you're a guerilla. Che's revolutions started in rural areas, not cities. Do we really have more than Bagdhad secure? There's a reason why - it's a large area and it's THEIR large area. And now they've got a bunch of suppliers of food that are pissed off at the same enemy - they may not like each other, but now they most defintely hate us together, possibly being enough to unite them. What happens when these people have really had enough?

(Message edited by taoistshredder on February 02, 2005)

[grave]

wow
im at a loss for words


i saw a show on I THINK the discovery channel,and it had interviews with iraqi natives and farmers. and they are really struggling, just trying to eat and feed their kids. they were dirt poor.

man i hope they can afford this somehow.
and i hope this hardship doesnt alienate them more from the idea of trying to make a change.

The thing is - it may be better seed. It could be super-seed that will grow perfectly in the region and it will just be great. But you don't legislate forcing all the dirt poor farmers in a country you've been bombing for fifteen years (trying to take out a dictator that liked to make wierd policy in the country...hmmm...) to go and destroy seeds that have been theirs for as long as they've been alive. I imagine for some, it's literally their life.

Here's a hypothetical, but not impossible scenario. The world eventually gets forced into using all genetically altered seeds, or enticed into using altered seeds for better yields. After a hundred generations, the genetically modified seeds begin to succumb to something akin to senescence. The natural seeds have long since rotted away. Does the world now starve?

i smell bullshit.
let's see the original documents.

I wondered that same thing Hippie.

<blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!><font size=1>quote:</font>

"U.S. Declares Iraqis Can Not Save Their Own Seeds"



"As part of sweeping "economic restructuring" implemented by the Bush

Administration in Iraq, Iraqi farmers will no longer be permitted to

save their seeds, which include seeds the Iraqis themselves have

developed over hundreds of years.



Instead, they will be forced to buy seeds from U.S. corporations.



That is because in recent years, transnational corporations have

patented and now own many seed varieties originated or developed by

indigenous peoples.



In a short time, Iraq will be living under the new American credo:



Pay Monsanto, or starve.



"The American Administrator of the Iraqi CPA (Coalition Provisional

Authority) government, Paul Bremer, updated Iraq's intellectual

property law to 'meet current internationally-recognized standards of

protection'.



The updated law makes saving seeds for next year's harvest, practiced

by 97% of Iraqi farmers in 2002, and is the standard farming practice

for thousands of years across human civilizations, to be now illegal..





Instead, farmers will have to obtain a yearly license for genetically

modified (GM) seeds from American corporations.



These GM seeds have typically been modified from seeds developed over

thousands of generations by indigenous farmers like the Iraqis, and

shared freely like agricultural 'open source.'" Iraq law Requires Seed

Licenses November 13, 2004



"According to Order 81, paragraph 66 - [B], issued by L. Paul Bremer

[CFR], the people in Iraq are now prohibited from saving seeds and may

only plant seeds for their food from licensed, authorized U.S.

distributors.



The paragraph states, "Farmers shall be prohibited from re-using seeds

of protected varieties or any variety mentioned in items 1 and 2 of

paragraph [C] of Article 14 of this chapter."



Written in massively intricate legalese, Order 81 directs the reader at

Article 14, paragraph 2 [C] to paragraph [B] of Article 4, which states

any variety that is different from any other known variety may be

registered in any country and become a protected variety of seed - thus

defaulting it into the "protected class" of seeds and prohibiting the

Iraqis from reusing them the following season.



Every year, the Iraqis must destroy any seed they have, repurchase

seeds from an authorized supplier, or face fines, penalties and/or jail

time. " Iraqis Can't Save Seed January 19, 2005"<!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote>

http://www.thoughtdynamics.com/Wylie/default.aspx

Then I was led to this

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New from GRAIN
15 October 2004

World Food Day: Iraqi farmers aren't celebrating

NEWS RELEASE For immediate release
http://www.grain.org/nfg/?id=253

When the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) celebrates biodiversity on World Food Day on October 16, Iraqi farmers will be mourning its loss.

A new report [1] by GRAIN and Focus on the Global South has found that new legislation in Iraq has been carefully put in place by the US that prevents farmers from saving their seeds and effectively hands over the seed market to transnational corporations. This is a disastrous turn of events for Iraqi farmers, biodiversity and the country's food security. While political sovereignty remains an illusion, food sovereignty for the Iraqi people has been made near impossible by these new regulations.

"The US has been imposing patents on life around the world through trade deals. In this case, they invaded the country first, then imposed their patents. This is both immoral and unacceptable", said Shalini Bhutani, one of the report's authors.

The new law in question [2] heralds the entry into Iraqi law of patents on life forms - this first one affecting plants and seeds. This law fits in neatly into the US vision of Iraqi agriculture in the future - that of an industrial agricultural system dependent on large corporations providing inputs and seeds.

In 2002, FAO estimated that 97 percent of Iraqi farmers used saved seed from their own stocks from last year's harvest or purchased from local markets. When the new law - on plant variety protection (PVP) - is put into effect, seed saving will be illegal and the market will only offer proprietary "PVP-protected" planting material "invented" by transnational agribusiness corporations. The new law totally ignores all the contributions Iraqi farmers have made to development of important crops like wheat, barley, date and pulses. Its consequences are the loss of farmers' freedoms and a grave threat to food sovereignty in Iraq. In this way, the US has declared a new war against the Iraqi farmer.

"If the FAO is celebrating 'Biodiversity for Food Security' this year, it needs to demonstrate some real commitment", says Henk Hobbelink of GRAIN, pointing out that the FAO has recently been cosying up with industry and offering support for genetic engineering [3]. "Most importantly, the FAO must recognise that biodiversity-rich farming and industry-led agriculture are worlds apart, and that industrial agriculture is one of the leading causes of the catastrophic decline in agricultural biodiversity that we have witnessed in recent decades. The FAO cannot hope to embrace biodiversity while holding industry's hand", he added.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:

From GRAIN Shalini Bhutani in India [Tel: +91 11 243 15 168 (work) or +91 98 104 33 076 (cell)] or Alexis Vaughan in United Kingdom [Tel: +44 79 74 39 34 87 (mobile)]

From Focus on the Global South Herbert Docena in Philippines [Tel:+63 2 972 382 3804]

NOTES [1] Visit
http://www.grain.org/articles/?id=6.
GRAIN and Focus' report is entitled "Iraq's new patent law: a declaration of war against farmers". Against the grain is a series of short opinion pieces on recent trends and developments in the issues that GRAIN works on. This one has been produced collaboratively with Focus on the Global South.

[2] Patent, Industrial Design, Undisclosed Information, Integrated Circuits and Plant Variety Law of 2004, CPA Order No. 81, 26 April 2004,
http://www.iraqcoalition.org/regulations/20040426_ CPAORD_81_Patents _Law.pdf

[3] GRAIN, "FAO declares war on farmers, not hunger", New from Grain, 16 June 2004,
http://www.grain.org/front/?id=24 <!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote>

http://www.grain.org/nfg/?id=253

and this

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"Iraq's new patent law: A declaration of war against farmers

by Focus on the Global South and GRAIN

October 2004

NEWS RELEASE

When former Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) administrator L. Paul Bremer III left Baghdad after the so-called "transfer of sovereignty" in June 2004, he left behind the 100 orders he enacted as chief of the occupation authority in Iraq. Among them is Order 81 on "Patent, Industrial Design, Undisclosed Information, Integrated Circuits and Plant Variety." [1] This order amends Iraq's original patent law of 1970 and unless and until it is revised or repealed by a new Iraqi government, it now has the status and force of a binding law. [2] With important implications for farmers and the future of agriculture in Iraq, this order is yet another important component in the United States' attempts to radically transform Iraq's economy.

WHO GAINS?

For generations, small farmers in Iraq operated in an essentially unregulated, informal seed supply system. Farm-saved seed and the free innovation with and exchange of planting materials among farming communities has long been the basis of agricultural practice. This has been made illegal under the new law. The seeds farmers are now allowed to plant - "protected" crop varieties brought into Iraq by transnational corporations in the name of agricultural reconstruction - will be the property of the corporations. While historically the Iraqi constitution prohibited private ownership of biological resources, the new US-imposed patent law introduces a system of monopoly rights over seeds. Inserted into Iraq's previous patent law is a whole new chapter on Plant Variety Protection (PVP) that provides for the "protection of new varieties of plants." PVP is an intellectual property right (IPR) or a kind of patent for plant varieties which gives an exclusive monopoly right on planting material to a plant breeder who claims to have discovered or developed a new variety. So the "protection" in PVP has nothing to do with conservation, but refers to safeguarding of the commercial interests of private breeders (usually large corporations) claiming to have created the new plants.

To qualify for PVP, plant varieties must comply with the standards of the UPOV [3] Convention, which requires them be new, distinct, uniform and stable. Farmers' seeds cannot meet these criteria, making PVP-protected seeds the exclusive domain of corporations. The rights granted to plant breeders in this scheme include the exclusive right to produce, reproduce, sell, export, import and store the protected varieties. These rights extend to harvested material, including whole plants and parts of plants obtained from the use of a protected variety. This kind of PVP system is often the first step towards allowing the full-fledged patenting of life forms. Indeed, in this case the rest of the law does not rule out the patenting of plants or animals.

The term of the monopoly is 20 years for crop varieties and 25 for trees and vines. During this time the protected variety de facto becomes the property of the breeder, and nobody can plant or otherwise use this variety without compensating the breeder. This new law means that Iraqi farmers can neither freely legally plant nor save for re-planting seeds of any plant variety registered under the plant variety provisions of the new patent law. [4] This deprives farmers what they and many others worldwide claim as their inherent right to save and replant seeds.

CORPORATE CONTROL

The new law is presented as being necessary to ensure the supply of good quality seeds in Iraq and to facilitate Iraq's accession to the WTO [5]. What it will actually do is facilitate the penetration of Iraqi agriculture by the likes of Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer and Dow Chemical - the corporate giants that control seed trade across the globe. Eliminating competition from farmers is a prerequisite for these companies to open up operations in Iraq, which the new law has achieved. Taking over the first step in the food chain is their next move.

The new patent law also explicitly promotes the commercialisation of genetically modified (GM) seeds in Iraq. Despite serious resistance from farmers and consumers around the world, these same companies are pushing GM crops on farmers around the world for their own profit. Contrary to what the industry is asserting, GM seeds do not reduce the use of pesticides, but they pose a threat to the environment and to people's health while they increase farmers dependency on agribusiness. In some countries like India, the 'accidental' release of GM crops is deliberately manipulated [6], since physical segregation of GM and GM-free crops is not feasible. Once introduced into the agro-ecological cycle there is no possible recall or cleanup from genetic pollution [7].

As to the WTO argument, Iraq legally has a number of options for complying with the organisation's rules on intellectual property but the US simply decided that Iraq should not enjoy or explore them.

RECONSTRUCTION FAÇADE

Iraq is one more arena in a global drive for the adoption of seed patent laws protecting the monopoly rights of multinational corporations at the expense of local farmers. Over the past decade, many countries of the South have been compelled [8] to adopt seed patent laws through bilateral treaties [9]. The US has pushed for UPOV-styled plant protection laws beyond the IPR standards of the WTO in bilateral trade through agreements for example with Sri Lanka [10] and Cambodia [11]. Likewise, post-conflict countries have been especially targeted. For instance, as part of its reconstruction package the US has recently signed a Trade and Investment Framework Agreement with Afghanistan [12], which would also include IPR-related issues.

Iraq is a special case in that the adoption of the patent law was not part of negotiations between sovereign countries. Nor did a sovereign law-making body enact it as reflecting the will of the Iraqi people. In Iraq, the patent law is just one more component in the comprehensive and radical transformation of the occupied country's economy along neo-liberal lines by the occupying powers. This transformation would entail not just the adoption of favoured laws but also the establishment of institutions that are most conducive to a free market regime.

Order 81 is just one of 100 Orders left behind by Bremer and among the more notable of these laws is the controversial Order 39 which effectively lays down the over-all legal framework for Iraq's economy by giving foreign investors rights equal to Iraqis in exploiting Iraq's domestic market. Taken together, all these laws, which cover virtually all aspects of the economy - including Iraq's trade regime, the mandate of the Central Bank, regulations on trade union activities, etc. - lay the bases for the US' bigger objective of building a neo-liberal regime in Iraq. Order 81 explicitly states that its provisions are consistent with Iraq's "transition from a non-transparent centrally planned economy to a free market economy characterised by sustainable economic growth through the establishment of a dynamic private sector, and the need to enact institutional and legal reforms to give it effect." Pushing for these "reforms" in Iraq has been the US Agency for International Development, which has been implementing an Agricultural Reconstruction and Development Program for Iraq (ARDI) since October 2003. To carry it out, a one-year US$5 million contract was granted to the US consulting firm Development Alternatives, Inc. [13] with the Texas A&amp;M University [14] as an implementing partner. Part of the work has been sub-contracted to Sagric International [15] of Australia. The goal of ARDI in the name of rebuilding the farming sector is to develop the agribusiness opportunities and thus provide markets for agricultural products and services from overseas.

Reconstruction work, thus, is not necessarily about rebuilding domestic economies and capacities, but about helping corporations approved by the occupying forces to capitalise on market opportunities in Iraq. The legal framework laid down by Bremer ensures that although US troops may leave Iraq in the conceivable future, US domination of Iraq's economy is here to stay.

FOOD SOVEREIGNTY

Food sovereignty is the right of people to define their own food and agriculture policies, to protect and regulate domestic agricultural production and trade, to decide the way food should be produced, what should be grown locally and what should be imported. The demand for food sovereignty and the opposition to the patenting of seeds has been central to the small farmers' struggle all over the world over the past decade. By fundamentally altering the IPR regime, the US has ensured that Iraq's agricultural system will remain under "occupation" in Iraq.

Iraq has the potential to feed itself. But instead of developing this capacity, the US has shaped the future of Iraq's food and farming to serve the interests of US corporations. The new IPR regime pays scant respect to Iraqi farmers' contributions to the development of important crops like wheat, barley, date and pulses. Samples of such farmers' varieties were starting to be saved in the 1970s in the country's national gene bank in Abu Ghraib outside Baghdad. It is feared that all these have been lost in the long years of conflict. However, the Syria-based Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) [17] centre - International Centre for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA) still holds accessions of several Iraqi varieties. These collections that are evidence of the Iraqi farmers' knowledge are supposed to be held in trust by the centre. These comprise the agricultural heritage of Iraq belonging to the Iraqi farmers that ought now to be repatriated. There have been situations where germplasm held by an international agricultural research centre has been "leaked out" for research and development to Northern scientists [18]. Such kind of "biopiracy" is fuelled by an IPR regime that ignores the prior art of the farmer and grants rights to a breeder who claims to have created something new from the material and knowledge of the very farmer.

While political sovereignty remains an illusion, food sovereignty for the Iraqi people has already been made near impossible by these new regulations. Iraq's freedom and sovereignty will remain questionable for as long as Iraqis do not have control over what they sow, grow, reap and eat.

REFERENCES

[1] Patent, Industrial Design, Undisclosed Information, Integrated Circuits and Plant Variety Law of 2004, CPA Order No. 81, 26 April 2004, http://www.iraqcoalition.org/ regulations/20040426_CPAORD_81 _Patents_Law.pdf

[2] The PVP provisions will be put into effect as soon as the Iraqi Minister of Agriculture passes the necessary executive orders of implementation in accordance with this law.

[3] UPOV stands for International Union for the Protection of New Plant Varieties. Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland it is an intergovernmental organisation with 53 members, mostly industrialised countries. The UPOV Convention is a set of standards for the protection of plant varieties, mainly geared toward industrial agriculture and corporate interests. See http://www.upov.org.

[4] Chapter Threequarter Article 15 B: Farmers shall be prohibited from re-using seeds of protected varieties or any variety mentioned.

[5] The World Trade Organisation, wherein the Iraqi Government has an observer status.

[6] http://www.grain.org/ research/contamination.cfm?agenda

[7] GRAIN, "Confronting contamination: 5 reasons to reject co-existence", Seedling, April 2004, p 1. http://www.grain.org/ seedling/?id=280

[8] GRAIN, PVP in the South: caving in to UPOV, http://www.grain.org/ rights/?id=64

[9] GRAIN, Bilateral agreements imposing TRIPS-plus intellectual property rights on biodiversity in developing countries, http://www.grain.org/ rights/?id=68

[10] http://www.grain.org/ brl/?typeid=15

[11] http://www.bilaterals.org/ article.php3?id_article=387

[12] http://www.ustr.gov/ Document_Library/ Press_Releases/2004/ September/United_States_Afghanistan _Sign_Trade_Investment_ Framework_Agreement.html

[13] http://www.dai.com

[14] The University's Agriculture Program "is a recognised world leader in using biotechnology" &amp; the University works closely with the USDA Agriculture Research Service.

[15] http://www.sagric.com.au

[16] http://www.export.gov/iraq/market_ops/

[17] Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) system, with its 16 International Agricultural Research Centres (IARCs) of which ICARDA is one, holds the world's largest collections of plant genetic resources outside their natural habitat, which includes both farmers' varieties and improved varieties.

[18] In 2001 it was discovered that a US plant geneticist had obtained the seeds of the original strain of the famed Thai Jasmine rice, Khao Dok Mali (KDM) 105, from the Philippines-based CGIAR centre - International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). But no Material Transfer Agreement (MTA) signed in the process, despite international obligations on IRRI to enforce this.

Against the Grain is a series of short opinion pieces on recent trends and developments in the areas of biodiversity management and control. It is published by GRAIN on an irregular basis, and is available from our website: www.grain.org. Print copies can be requested from GRAIN, Girona 25, E-08010 Barcelona, Spain. Email: grain(at)grain.org. This particular Against the GRAIN was produced in collaboration with Focus on the Global South (www.focusweb.org; email: admin(at)focusweb.org). "<!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote>

http://www.grain.org/articles/?id=6.

I also found this on Order 81

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"Date Published: 21/01/05
Author: Jeremy Smith

Under the guise of helping get Iraq back on its feet, the US is setting out to totally re-engineer the country's traditional farming systems into a US-style corporate agribusiness. They’ve even created a new law – Order 81 – to make sure it happens.
Coals to Newcastle. Ice to Eskimos. Tea to China. These are the acts of the ultimate salesmen, wily marketers able to sell even to people with no need to buy. To that list can now be added a new phrase – Wheat to Iraq.

Iraq is part of the ‘fertile crescent’ of Mesopotamia. It is here, in around 8,500 to 8,000BC, that mankind first domesticated wheat, here that agriculture was born. In recent years however, the birthplace of farming has been in trouble. Wheat production tumbled from 1,236,000 tons in 1995 to just 384,000 tons in 2000. Why this should have happened very much depends on whom you ask.

A press release from Headquarters United States Command reports that ‘Over the past 10 years, this region has not been able to keep up with Iraq’s wheat demand. During the Saddam Hussein regime, farmers were expected to continuously produce wheat, never leaving their fields fallow. This tactic degraded the soil, leaving few nutrients for the next year’s crop, increasing the chances for crop disease and fungus, and eventually resulting in fewer yields.’ For the US military, the blame clearly lies with the ‘tactics’ of ‘Saddam’s regime’.

However, in 1997 the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) found: ‘Crop yields... remain low due to poor land preparation as a result of lack of machinery, low use of inputs, deteriorating soil quality and irrigation facilities’ and ‘The animal population has declined steeply due to severe shortages of feed and vaccines during the embargo years’. Less interested in selling a war perhaps, the FAO sees Iraqi agriculture suffering due to a lack of necessary machinery and inputs, themselves absent as the result of deprivation ‘during the embargo years’.

Or it could have been simpler still. According to a 2003 USDA report, ‘Current total production of major grains is estimated to be down 50 percent from the 1990/91 level. Three years of drought from 1999-2001 significantly reduced production.’

Whoever you believe, Iraqi wheat production has collapsed in recent years. The next question then, is how to get it back on its feet.

Despite its recent troubles, Iraqi agriculture’s long history means that for the last 10,000 years Iraqi farmers have been naturally selecting wheat varieties that work best with their climate. Each year they have saved seeds from crops that prosper under certain conditions and replanted and cross-pollinated them with others with different strengths the following year, so that the crop continually improves. In 2002, the FAO estimated that 97 per cent of Iraqi farmers used their own saved seed or bought seed from local markets. That there are now over 200,000 known varieties of wheat in the world is down in no small part to the unrecognised work of farmers like these and their informal systems of knowledge sharing and trade. It would be more than reasonable to assume that somewhere amongst the many fields and grainstores of iraq there are samples of strong, indigenous wheat varieties that could be developed and distributed around the country in order to bolster production once more.

Likewise, long before Abu Ghraib became the world’s most infamous prison, it was known for housing not inmates, but seeds. In the early 1970s samples of the many varieties used by Iraqi farmers were starting to be saved in the country’s national gene bank, situated in the town of Abu Ghraib. Indeed one of Iraq’s most well known indigenous wheat varieties is called ‘Abu Ghraib’.

Unfortunately, this vital heritage and knowledge base is now believed lost, the victim of the current campaign and the many years of conflict that preceded it. But there is another viable source. At the International Centre for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA) in Syria there are still samples of several Iraqi varieties. As a revealing report by Focus on the Global South and GRAIN comments: ‘These comprise the agricultural heritage of Iraq belonging to the Iraqi farmers that ought now to be repatriated.’

If Iraq’s new adminstration truly wanted to re-establish Iraqi agriculture for the benefit of the Iraqi people it would seek out the fruits of their knowledge. It could scour the country for successful farms, and if it miraculously found none could bring over the seeds from ICARDA and use those as the basis of a programme designed to give Iraq back the agriculture it once gave the world.

The US, however, has decided that, despite 10,000 years practice, Iraqis don’t know what wheat works best in their own conditions, and would be better off with some new, imported American varieties. Under the guise, therefore, of helping get Iraq back on its feet, the US is setting out to totally reengineer the country’s traditional farming systems into a US-style corporate agribusiness. Or, as the aforementioned press release from Headquarters United States Command puts it: ‘Multi-National Forces are currently planting seeds for the future of agriculture in the Ninevah Province’

First, it is re-educating the farmers. An article in the Land and Livestock Post reveals that thanks to a project undertaken by Texas A&amp;M University’s International Agriculture Office there are now 800 acres of demonstration plots all across Iraq, teaching Iraqi farmers how to grow ‘high-yield seed varieties’ of crops that include barley, chick peas, lentils – and wheat.

The leaders of the $107 million project have a stated goal of doubling the production of 30,000 Iraqi farms within the first year. After one year, farmers will see soaring production levels. Many will be only too willing to abandon their old ways in favour of the new technologies. Out will go traditional methods. In will come imported American seeds (more than likely GM, as Texas A&amp;M's Agriculture Program considers itself ‘a recognised world leader in using biotechnology’). And with the new seeds will come new chemicals – pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, all sold to the Iraqis by corporations such as Monsanto, Cargill and Dow.

Another article, this time in The Business Journal of Phoenix, declares: ‘An Arizona agri-research firm is supplying wheat seeds to be used by farmers in Iraq looking to boost their country's homegrown food supplies.’ That firm is called the World Wide Wheat Company, and in partnership with three universities (including Texas A&amp;M again) it is to ‘provide 1,000 pounds of wheat seeds to be used by Iraqi farmers north of Baghdad.’

According to Seedquest (described as the ‘central information website for the global seed industry’) WWWC is one of the leaders in developing proprietary varieties of cereal seeds - ie varieties that are owned by a particular company. According to the firm’s website, any ‘client’ (or farmer as they were once known) wishing to grow one of their seeds, ‘pays a licensing fee for each variety’.

All of a sudden the donation doesn’t sound so altruistic. WWWC gives the Iraqis some seeds. They get taught how to grow them, shown how much ‘better’ they are than their seeds, and then told that if they want any more, they have to pay.

Another point in one of the articles casts further doubt on American intentions. According to the Business Journal, ‘six kinds of wheat seeds were developed for the Iraqi endeavour. Three will be used for farmers to grow wheat that is made into pasta; three seed strains will be for breadmaking.’

Pasta? According to the 2001 World Food Programme report on Iraq, ‘Dietary habits and preferences included consumption of large quantities and varieties of meat, as well as chicken, pulses, grains, vegetables, fruits and dairy products.’ No mention of lasagne. Likewise, a quick check of the Middle Eastern cookbook on my kitchen shelves, while not exclusively Iraqi, reveals a grand total of no pasta dishes listed within it.

There can be only two reasons why 50 per cent of the grains being developed are for pasta. One, the US intends to have so many American soldiers and businessmen in Iraq that it is orienting the country’s agriculture around feeding not ‘Starving Iraqis’ but ‘Overfed Americans’. Or, and more likely, because the food was never meant to be eaten inside Iraq at all.

Iraqi farmers are to be taught to grow crops for export. Then they can spend the money they earn (after they have paid for next year’s seeds and chemicals) buying food to feed their family. Under the guise of aid, the US has incorporated them into the global economy.


What the US is now doing in Iraq has a very significant precedent. The Green Revolution of the 1950s and 60s was to be the new dawn for farmers in the developing world. Just as now in Iraq, Western scientists and corporations arrived clutching new ‘wonder crops’, promising peasant farmers that if they planted these new seeds they would soon be rich.

The result was somewhat different. As Vandana Shiva writes in Biopiracy – the plunder of nature and knowledge: ‘The miracle varieties displaced the diversity of traditionally grown crops, and through the erosion of diversity the new seeds became a mechanism for introducing and fostering pests. Indigenous varieties are resistant to local pests and diseases. Even if certain diseases occur, some of the strains may be susceptible, but others will have resistance to survive.’

Worldwide, thousands of traditional varieties developed over millennia were forsaken in favour of a few new hybrids, all owned by even fewer giant multinationals. As a result, Mexico has lost 80 per cent of its corn varieties since 1930. At least 9,000 varieties of wheat grown in China have been lost since 1949. Then in 1970 in the US, genetic uniformity resulted in the loss of almost a billion dollars worth of maize because 80 per cent of the varieties grown were susceptible to a disease known as ‘southern leaf blight’.

Overall, the FAO estimates that about 75 per cent of genetic diversity in agricultural crops was lost in the last century. The impact on small farmers worldwide has been devastating. Demanding large sums of capital and high inputs of chemicals, such farming massively favours large scale, industrial farmers. The many millions of dispossessd people in Asia and elsewhere is in large part a result of this inequity. They can’t afford to farm anymore, are driven off their land, either into their cities’ slums or across the seas to come knocking at the doors of those who once offered them a poisoned chalice of false hope.

What separates the US’s current scheme from those of the Green Revolution is that the earlier ones were, at least in part, the decisions of the elected governments of the countries affected. The Iraqi plan is being imposed on the people of Iraq without them having any say in the matter. Having ousted Saddam, America is now behaving like a despot itself. It has decided what will happen in Iraq and it is doing it, regardless of whether it is what the Iraqi people want.


When former Coalition Provisional Authority administrator Paul Bremer departed Iraq in June 2004 he left behind a legacy of 100 ‘Orders’ for the restructuring of the Iraqi legal system. Of these orders, one is particularly pertinent to the issue of seeds. Order 81 covers the issues of ‘Patent, Industrial Design, Undisclosed Information, Integrated Circuits and Plant Variety’. It amends Iraq’s original law on patents, created in 1970, and is legally binding unless repealed by a future Iraqi government.

The most significant part of Order 81 is a new chapter that it inserts on ‘Plant Variety Protection’ (PVP). This concerns itself not with the protection of biodiversity, but rather with the protection of the commercial interests of large seed corporations.

To qualify for PVP, seeds have to meet the following criteria: they must be ‘new, distinct, uniform and stable’. Under the new regulations imposed by Order 81, therefore, the sort of seeds Iraqi farmers are now being encouraged to grow by corporations such as WWWC will be those registered under PVP.

On the other hand, it is impossible for the seeds developed by the people of Iraq to meet these criteria. Their seeds are not ‘new’ as they are the product of millennia of development. Nor are they ‘distinct’. The free exchange of seeds practiced for centuries ensures that characteristics are spread and shared across local varieties. And they are the opposite of ‘uniform’ and ‘stable’ by the very nature of their biodiversity. They cross-pollinate with other nearby varieties, ensuring they are always changing and always adapting.

Cross-pollination is an important issue for another reason. In recent years several farmers have been taken to court for illegally growing a corporation’s GM seeds. The farmers have argued they were doing so unknowingly, that the seeds must have carried on the wind from a neighbouring farm, for example. They have still been taken to court. This will now apply in Iraq. Under the new rules, if a farmer’s seed can be shown to have been contaminated with one of the PVP registered seeds, he could be fined. He may have been saving his seed for years, maybe even generations, but if it mixes with a seed owned by a corporation and maybe creates a new hybrid, he may face a day in court.

Remember that 97 per cent of Iraqi farmers save their seeds. Order 81 also puts paid to that. A new line has been added to the law which reads: ‘Farmers shall be prohibited from re-using seeds of protected varieties or any variety mentioned in items 1 and 2 of paragraph (C) of Article 14 of this Chapter.’

The other varieties referred to are those that show similar characteristics to the PVP varieties. If a corporation develops a variety resistant to a particular Iraqi pest, and somewhere in Iraq a farmer is growing another variety that does the same, it’s now illegal for him/her to save that seed. It sounds mad, but it’s happened before. A few years back a corporation called SunGene patented a sunflower variety with a very high oleic acid content. It didn’t just patent the genetic structure though, it patented the characteristic. Subsequently SunGene notified other sunflower breeders that should they develop a variety high in oleic acid with would be considered an infringement of the patent.

So the Iraqi farmer may have been wowed with the promise of a bumper yield at the end of this year. But unlike before he can’t save his seed for the next. A 10,000-year old tradition has been replaced at a stroke with a contract for hire.

Iraqi farmers have been made vassals to American corporations. That they were baking bread for 9,500 years before America existed has no weight when it comes to deciding who owns Iraq’s wheat. Yet for every farmer that stops growing his unique strain of saved seed the world loses another variety, one that might have been useful in times of disease or drought.

In short, what America has done is not restructure Iraq’s agriculture, but dismantle it. The people whose forefathers first mastered the domestication of wheat will now have to pay for the privilege of growing it for someone else. And with that the world’s oldest farming heritage will become just another subsidiary link in the vast American supply chain. <!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote>

http://www.theecologist.co.uk/archive_article.html ?article=487&amp;category=86

HA! Finally, the original document! Check out http://www.iraqcoalition.org/regulations/#Orders click Order 81 and scroll down until you get to number 66. Then take a big whiff. Nothing like banning plants; maybe next we can burn some books!

(Message edited by taoistshredder on February 02, 2005)

holy shit shredder-do you like doing stuff like that? I give you a lot of credit for wading through all of that just to get to the primary source. More on topic; I really hope all this GM stuff doesn't come back to bite us. Life has always been balanced on a knife's edge, and I can't see that playing god could help any. We have a price to pay for progress however, and if it means that more people get to eat, and prosper more becasue of GM wheat, than I'm sure the Iraqi people will adopt new farming practises and never look back. Biodiversity is important though. I hope someone over there recognizes that and makes sure there is a pile of seeds stashed somewhere for future generations just in case.

It'll be long after we withdraw troops or at least end the insurgency before this can ever be enforced.

Most Americans that aren't soldiers equipped with weapons and armor don't really dare to wonder around. Much less to go into rural areas and try to take away Iraqi seeds.

<blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!><font size=1>quote:</font>

holy shit shredder-do you like doing stuff like that? I give you a lot of credit for wading through all of that just to get to the primary source.<!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote>

Thanks. I actually love to research stuff and find information - I'm kind of a digger when it comes to a variety of things in life.

I_am_me makes a very good point about this, though - we can't enforce this now and by the time it would be enforcable the Iraqis are supposed to have their own government; once we're gone why would they even continue our policy about the seeds when it's obviously not beneficial to the country?

I'm a heirloom and open pollente seed bank at the farm..and this is all shocking but not a surprise. We grow alot of medicinal herbs which the gov. has been trying to control more each year..
its all the oil companies at work as they have purchased most of the major seed companies..
also many GM seeds are made to work best with the petro-chem. products..only..
bred for a "match" again the oil companies at work and they own most of the pharmacutical companies too..one way or another..they will try to control us all thru forced monopoly..
but hope there are those everywhere smart enough to be...........
"sittin' on that sack of seeds"

karl finn, keep on collectin'
I hope someone in their area gets them to ship some seeds across a border or two and sits on em for as long as it takes. If they ever become truly 'free' they can start over, and I'll even send over some spore prints
I'm sure being good at research and 'digging' as you put it has helped you a lot in college hasn't it shredder? Thats a skill area I'm gonna have to start enjoying if my life continues down the planned path [crosses fingers against armeggedon and prison]
Damn corporate monopolies and scheming rich bastards. Some things never change

omgosh......i have the perfect protest sign now.... another one for the books!

i love it.

curiousnerd

[wumpsdad]

No hippie it ain't bullshit. This patenting of life by agribusiness has been happening for decades. I am surprised you missed it.
Imposing it at gunpoint is a new twist though.
Its EXACTLY this kind of shit that makes people around the world hate the US and its Government.
There are loads more similar sickening tales in this topic if you care to look.

peace

Wumpsdad

[Hippie3]

i know about patenting lifeforms,
my sketicism is about the claim that
iraqis are being forced to buy it
and prosecuted for using anything else

[doodaa man]

I have been into organic gardening for many years. I have subscribed to organic gardening for over 10 yrs. Sorry about the plug . But it's a good mag !
I grow much of my greens and root crop. I preserve and dry or freeze. I use heirloom and hybrid seeds that i have saved crop after crop. The seeds i grow are adapted to my garden, grow strong and thrive. I use no chemicals and make my own compost. The only chemicals that i include is the environment that i cannot . We are messing with mother nature. The " new age agriculture " "Modified seed banks" Maybe the end of all of us. When we mess with the balance of nature, there are consequences we will have to deal with. The insects and diseases already are adapting to the chemicals we make. It is not the future but an end ! We must all speak our minds with this issue. It is a world issue. "A NEW WORLD ISSUE" It's just the start of the new world order agenda. "ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT" . We will never see it but our children or our grand children will. Bioengineering is a big money maker. And one corporation is leading it and they have the Key to the market. The UN.! It's one big conspiracy ! And that is the truth ! If you dig deep enough you will find the truth !

THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE !

[Hippie3]

[TVCasualty]

So if these frankenseeds require petrochemicals (as do all the trucks, tractors, processors, chem-fertilizers, etc.), what happens when we run out of oil? Not to worry, mark my words: It'll be fresh water availability, not oil, that begins the real ecohell crunch. I had lunch with the Vice President of BP's South American Extraction Division about 8 years ago (long story), and at a random moment I suddenly asked "So, how much oil is left?" and he didn't hesitate and replied "About 25 years or so at present rates of consumption." And he was no PR man (obviously).

I WISH I smelled Bullshit, that'd mean there are more organic farmers around...

TVC

[microscopyuseonly]

Ha! Try over 100 years. The reason he said 25 years is because that was giving the cost of exploration and new methods of extraction versus the current "price at the pump" as it were. A decade ago it was unprofitable to extract harder to get to resources from many key area's such as shale deposits under various oceans that contain the majority of the worlds reserves. Not to mention all the wells that are still full for the most part but were capped because at the time it just wasn't worth the effort digging so deep when elseware there's oil right on the surface ( I know because I was one of those doing the capping). That was when gasoline was in the $1 or less a gallon range (prices I've seen in my area until 5 years ago) and plastics production wasn't at it current levels. Hence the explosion in off-shore oil exploration in recent years. Taking into consideration that advances in transportation technologies will make gasoline almost completly obsolete (except for in third world countries) in two or three decades, we should have more than enough oil to suffice for 4-5 generations.

[microscopyuseonly]

A good question to ask yourself would be " If there were only 17 years of oil left ( less giving that were using 1/5 more than we were 8 years ago), why would it only cost $2.50 a gallon? Less than the price of the equivilent amount of bottled water. If we were within 20 years of running dry the price would be at least $10 a gallon (probably $20 -$30). Don't let the conservationist hype fool you.

[Hippie3]

hmm, i dunno
any nation/company that tried charging that much
would probably find a gun to their head
in very short order.

[Stenciler]

Originally Posted by Hippie3

hmm, i dunno
any nation/company that tried charging that much
would probably find a gun to their head
in very short order.

btw. this thread has totally been hijacked .

I know most Usa prices went up about a dollar or two toward the end of last year. Then "miraculously" dropped back to where they were before. No liberation of extra fields, no new Alaska pipelines (thank god), no "repair of Katrina damaged platforms". The only thing that happened was the idea of oil prices going up. So they did. But then BP announces over 4 mil in profit for one quarter and people begin scratching heads....

of course now that we have paid $5 + for a gallon of gas we are more amiable to it happening again (to the Limeys, yes I realize we are spoiled ). Pure unadulterated strategy.

[microscopyuseonly]

Um, Maybe I live in an isolated area but prices went up over 250% in the last 5 years here and have stayed that way. The swings in prices happen every year due to increased driving habits during summer months and the opposite in the winter. As for "no new liberation of fields", contrary to most peoples beiliefs, the majority of U.S. oil supplies are extracted from Mexico which is an area that has seen as much as four fold in exploration of new reserves and 90% of all off-shore oil rigs have been repaired and are running at full capacity as of early December. And as for Alaska, most if not all of the land that contains major deposits of oil were legally purchased and are owned by the U.S. government. The fact that some think that the land is pretty does not give them the right to say what someone else can do with land that they OWN. It wouldn't go over too well if I walked around town telling all my neighbors what they can and can't have in there yard and house. I'd get either laughed at or (most likely) get a free trip to the hospital.

[skullfarmer]

Originally Posted by grave

wow
im at a loss for words


i saw a show on I THINK the discovery channel,and it had interviews with iraqi natives and farmers. and they are really struggling, just trying to eat and feed their kids. they were dirt poor.

man i hope they can afford this somehow.
and i hope this hardship doesnt alienate them more from the idea of trying to make a change.

we as americans will suffer the same fate if we dont get rid of bush before the rest of the world pulls a "world war 3 " on our dumbass's.that dumb fuck has gotton us into so much shit since he's been in office.we should've cleaned up afganistan,found and killed osama and left it at that.

[Hippie3]

cleaned up afganistan,found and killed osama

easy to say
much harder to actually accomplish