Saliem Fakir
The United States government recently granted a patent to a company called Delta and Pine Land, giving it the rights to test and market new cotton seeds dubbed the “terminator seeds”.
These are seeds that can genetically switch off plants’ ability to reproduce, by rendering subsequent seeds sterile. While the technology may be applicable only to cotton and tobacco at the moment, there is no doubt other seed companies will catch on to the idea and will extend its application to staple crops such as maize, rice and beans.
Delta and Pine Land is part-owned by the multinational seed company Monsanto, which has a local subsidiary in South Africa.
From ancient times farmers have had the tradition, especially in Third World countries, of saving and sharing seed. Seed variability and availability are critical to small farmers dependent on the natural resource base for survival.
Large multinational companies have tried using plant breeders’ rights and even private policing mechanisms to prevent farmers from re-using seed as they lose profits from royalties if seed is produced by farmers in subsequent seasons.
The new technology will certainly enable big seed companies to exercise greater control over seed use. It is the seed companies’ profit-making dream come true, as there is no better way to do this than controlling what farmers can and cannot do with seed.
The farmers will be rendered powerless to act against the seed companies as they are reliant on seed as their main source of supply.
It may be that the technology can be absorbed by farmers in the northern hemisphere. International NGOs point out, however, that once the technology becomes widespread, smaller and poorer nations will become increasingly dependent not only on the multinational companies but also on the richer countries.
While the application of the technology is still in its infancy, its ramifications could be more far-reaching than is apparent.
It needs to be asked whether the seed companies have food security at heart, and whether their profits are not being mixed up with their politics. The latest technological trends convey the impression that the seed industry is trying to gain more control over food production.
According to the Rural Advancement Foundation International, 10 companies control about 40% of the commercial seed market. Seed production is governed by elaborate intellectual property rights, which are reinforced by international agreements to ensure that the commercial interests of private companies are further entrenched in both the First and Third worlds. Technological change is a further component of this process of international control and consolidation.
Given that the boundaries between multinational and state interests are often shared, control over food production could in the future become an important foreign- policy instrument for a country such as the US. It has already been applied by the US against countries such as Cuba and Iraq mainly through sanctions and food embargoes.
Will South Africa be immune? The South African agricultural market is dominated by the commercial seed industry, and companies here have extensive networks with multinational seed companies based in the US and Europe.
While agricultural policy in the past was geared to support white commercial farming, seed companies focused only on this constituency. The current trend is for seed companies to expand their sales in the small and subsistence farming sector, which is predominantly black.
With better market penetration of the black farming sector, commercial seed products will soon replace traditional varieties, which anyway are already poorly conserved.
Given that most seed production by South African companies is reliant on germ-plasm sources based overseas, local subsidiaries are subject to the same intellectual property rights and conditions under which multinational companies register their seed products.
There is no doubt that as the new technology becomes more prevalent, South Africa will be affected by similar trends. Perhaps the divide between white and black farmers in terms of economic well-being and self- sufficiency will widen.
However, with growing international lobbying and awareness of the potential impact of the technology, there is still room to shape its introduction and impacts.
But so far the South African government seems oblivious of this new threat to the food security of the poorer components of the agricultural sector.
Saliem Fakir is country programme co- ordinator of the IUCN-World Conservation Union