An Op Ed by Regina area farmer and NFU board
member Matt Gehl.
"Say NO to UPOV ’91!
Behind the noise of the Rob Ford and Senate scandal
cover ups, the Canadian government is angling to
legislate the removal of a right of farmers that should
be non-negotiable.
Ottawa is moving quickly to implement the UPOV ’91
plant breeders' rights convention with First Reading in
Parliament of the Agricultural Growth Act, an
agricultural omnibus bill. The proponents for this
move say that doing this will keep private plant
breeding money in Canada and stop us from
somehow immediately turning into Luddites.
What is never acknowledged by the supporters of
UPOV ’91 is what will be taken away from farmers. In
exchange for this increased level of patenting of seed
stocks, farmers will lose the right to save, store, sell
and re-use farm-saved seed.
Think about this for a second. In contrast to the
practice of thousands of years of open source plant
breeding – which incidentally has given us our
present bountiful harvests – a farmer will NOT be
allowed to save the seed they have grown to plant
again the following spring if it has Plant Breeders’
Rights attached to it. We currently have a similar
system in place for almost all canola grown in Canada
because as a GMO, the seed companies have been
able to patent canola gene sequences and force
farmers to pay royalties every year. The yearly cost of
buying new seed is always a sore point with canola
growers.
Staying out of UPOV ’91 will not diminish Canada’s
importance as a wheat-growing region. Research will
always be done here because of our strength in
growing wheat. More importantly, we do not need to
be hostage to private plant breeders - our public
plant breeding system has been doing a good job for
a century.
In fact, the canola boom started when an Ag Canada
scientist working in the public plant breeding system
changed the oil profile of what had been ****seed,
making it usable as a cooking oil. This work was then
turned over to private sector seed companies which
commercialized – and claimed plant breeders’ rights
on – varieties expressing the trait.
UPOV supporters point to the canola model to
support their call for giving the entire plant breeding
sector over to private interests. But are the so-called
‘amazing gains’ made by privately-bred canola better
than the gains in wheat yields and quality achieved by
the Canadian tradition of public plant breeding? Dr.
R.J. Graf, an eminent Canadian plant breeder, is one
among many researchers who points out that gains in
canola yield over the last 35 years have increased
marginally – just one-tenth of a bushel per acre more
per year – compared with increases in wheat yields.
What is more interesting is that the cost of improving
canola yields has been more than three times that of
the public plant breeding system’s efforts to improve
wheat. Wheat yield and baking quality have been
constantly improving for a century thanks to the work
of public plant breeders.
There can be no denying the benefits that farmers
and consumers have received from the work done at
Ag Canada research centres – work that was ongoing
until the Harper government set about cutting the
budgets of public-interest breeding programs to the
bone.
Even a hundred years of successful public-interest
plant breeding is nothing compared to the historical
importance of farm-saved seed. Since the origin of
agriculture, farmers have been selecting, saving and
replanting seed from one year to the next, and
sharing improved varieties with their neighbours.
Ottawa is about to sign an agreement and bring in a
law that would eliminate that right for many Canadian
farmers.
It is interesting that those who normally scream the
loudest about the need to protect property rights are
now championing UPOV ’91, a system that will
protect only the intellectual property of multinational
seed corporations at the expense of the intellectual
commons that has been developed, collected and
controlled by farmers over millennia.
Stop Harper and Ritz from favouring the rights of
plant breeders at the expense of the rights of farmers
and consumers to use grain varieties developed
impartially in the public interest.
Keep your right to use farm-saved seed. Say NO to
UPOV ’91!"
member Matt Gehl.
"Say NO to UPOV ’91!
Behind the noise of the Rob Ford and Senate scandal
cover ups, the Canadian government is angling to
legislate the removal of a right of farmers that should
be non-negotiable.
Ottawa is moving quickly to implement the UPOV ’91
plant breeders' rights convention with First Reading in
Parliament of the Agricultural Growth Act, an
agricultural omnibus bill. The proponents for this
move say that doing this will keep private plant
breeding money in Canada and stop us from
somehow immediately turning into Luddites.
What is never acknowledged by the supporters of
UPOV ’91 is what will be taken away from farmers. In
exchange for this increased level of patenting of seed
stocks, farmers will lose the right to save, store, sell
and re-use farm-saved seed.
Think about this for a second. In contrast to the
practice of thousands of years of open source plant
breeding – which incidentally has given us our
present bountiful harvests – a farmer will NOT be
allowed to save the seed they have grown to plant
again the following spring if it has Plant Breeders’
Rights attached to it. We currently have a similar
system in place for almost all canola grown in Canada
because as a GMO, the seed companies have been
able to patent canola gene sequences and force
farmers to pay royalties every year. The yearly cost of
buying new seed is always a sore point with canola
growers.
Staying out of UPOV ’91 will not diminish Canada’s
importance as a wheat-growing region. Research will
always be done here because of our strength in
growing wheat. More importantly, we do not need to
be hostage to private plant breeders - our public
plant breeding system has been doing a good job for
a century.
In fact, the canola boom started when an Ag Canada
scientist working in the public plant breeding system
changed the oil profile of what had been ****seed,
making it usable as a cooking oil. This work was then
turned over to private sector seed companies which
commercialized – and claimed plant breeders’ rights
on – varieties expressing the trait.
UPOV supporters point to the canola model to
support their call for giving the entire plant breeding
sector over to private interests. But are the so-called
‘amazing gains’ made by privately-bred canola better
than the gains in wheat yields and quality achieved by
the Canadian tradition of public plant breeding? Dr.
R.J. Graf, an eminent Canadian plant breeder, is one
among many researchers who points out that gains in
canola yield over the last 35 years have increased
marginally – just one-tenth of a bushel per acre more
per year – compared with increases in wheat yields.
What is more interesting is that the cost of improving
canola yields has been more than three times that of
the public plant breeding system’s efforts to improve
wheat. Wheat yield and baking quality have been
constantly improving for a century thanks to the work
of public plant breeders.
There can be no denying the benefits that farmers
and consumers have received from the work done at
Ag Canada research centres – work that was ongoing
until the Harper government set about cutting the
budgets of public-interest breeding programs to the
bone.
Even a hundred years of successful public-interest
plant breeding is nothing compared to the historical
importance of farm-saved seed. Since the origin of
agriculture, farmers have been selecting, saving and
replanting seed from one year to the next, and
sharing improved varieties with their neighbours.
Ottawa is about to sign an agreement and bring in a
law that would eliminate that right for many Canadian
farmers.
It is interesting that those who normally scream the
loudest about the need to protect property rights are
now championing UPOV ’91, a system that will
protect only the intellectual property of multinational
seed corporations at the expense of the intellectual
commons that has been developed, collected and
controlled by farmers over millennia.
Stop Harper and Ritz from favouring the rights of
plant breeders at the expense of the rights of farmers
and consumers to use grain varieties developed
impartially in the public interest.
Keep your right to use farm-saved seed. Say NO to
UPOV ’91!"
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