Warning!

[wd9]

Our actions as farmers determine what the seed companies do. CDC Imagine is a clearfield wheat variety that allows 1 year of farm saved seed, you must sign a contract to get it, and abide by those rules.

So does it come 2 choices:

1. We all begin signing contracts for wheat and the private sector continues developing new varieties because we pay for the development.

2. All farmers say this is ridiculous not being able to save seed and NO-ONE signs the contract and the product ends right there and then with no new development - or the company is forced, regulations or not, to allow the farmer to save seed. Who signs the clearfield committment on 46A77? Nobody. Product stopped right there.

We as farmers have got to realize that we make or break these companies by our purchases and determine the future. Legislated or not, development follows the money.

The success of all corporations rely on having a product everyone wants and will pay for it and the development of new products be it Monsanto, Bayer, WalMart, Nintendo, Sony........

So it has a lot less to do with PBR, Patent Act, and contracts and a whole lot more to do with our buying preferences.

[jensend]

wd9 - or a third choice: the proprietary rights to that seed are for a more limited length of time. development costs are not infinite. do you think the tua on rr is still justified or is it a private tax made legal by legislation? after the development of the rr technology canola breeding went back to normal development processes and yet monsanto has paid off its development costs how many times?

[wd9]

Jensend, remember Acts like PBR cover thousands of species of horticulture, flowers, plants, trees,.... It is not just grains and oilseeds. It must cover the entire industry. The same with the Patent Act. Even if there is farmers privilege stated within the updated PBR in Bill C80, and following Canadian Biotechnology Advisory Committee's recommendation (which I agree with) of farmer's privilege within the Patent Act, signing a contract which says I won't grow the seed defines how badly I want the seed, it also in turn says the cost of farmer's privilege is higher than the cost of seed.

Appending the Patent Act to say the patent is over once the product R&D is payed for I don't think is workable. Besides, patents are predominantly international and must be viewed so, not just nationally. 95% of the patents in Canada do not originate in Canada. How much do we respect other countries innovation?

Patents are for allowing the publicizing of information on how the invention works to build new ideas upon while giving a time for the inventor to recoup costs. A system that has worked for over 400 years.

So, farmer's privilege, farmer's right to save seed at any cost including loosing accesssability to international innovation, or an environment which promotes innovation, or a combination of everything. I find this question extremely difficult to answer.

I do know one thing for sure, we can't legislate corporations to 'break even'.

[jensend]

but what you are really legislating is market power and if one party has overwhelming power (not through innovation or efficiency but through legislation) the system comes out of balance and ceases to work. in the shortterm the party being legislated against is weakened and endangered. that is what has been happening over the past 50 years or longer but over the last 25 the pace has picked up and now farmers who have the larges investment in the industry are finding themselves operating for the benefit of entities who have the market power to be price setters.

[tower]

I hope I haven't missed out on this discussion. I find it interesting that so many see it as an all or nothing proposition. 'Either you let the seed developers have what they want or you are forcing them to give it away.'

'Either you give the seed developers what they want or you go and get other seed.' If we don't give seed developers what they want we are forcing them to 'break even.' I'm willing to meet part way between what I paid for some canola seed a couple of years ago (about $1500) and about $15,000/tonne being asked now.

The international Plant Breeders Protection guarantees developers a reasonable rate of return. As mentioned above, I don't get anything like that as a farmer. But fine, let's give them a reasonable rate of return.

Let the companies open their books so that we can see what the costs of development are for successful varieties, and I'ld be happy to pay them a reasonable rate of return. We might differ on what is reasonable but I'm willing to negotiate if they are.