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The Green Guide

Gene Giants Criticized at World Ag Forum

Updated: Tue, May 22 1:37 PM EDT
By Carey Gillam

ST. LOUIS (Reuters) - Too much power in the hands of just a few biotech
giants is undermining the ability of farmers to fight hunger and poverty in
developing countries, an agricultural research expert said on Tuesday.

"A steadily shrinking number of companies are gaining unprecedented control
over all aspects of commercial food, farming and health," said Rural
Advancement Foundation International research director Hope Shand, referring
to companies including St. Louis, Missouri-based Monsanto Co., which she
said dominated the genetically modified (GM) seed market.

Monsanto GM seeds account for 94 percent of the total area planted in
commercial transgenic crops, or crops that have been genetically modified,
worldwide, she said.

Rounding out Shand's list of so-called gene giants are DuPont Co., Syngenta
Crop Protection Inc., Aventis CropScience and Dow AgroSciences LLC .

Shand spoke to agricultural leaders on the third day of the World
Agricultural Forum's World Congress in St. Louis.

She said a push by the big biotech agricultural firms for greater control of
their GM seed creations must be combated if world hunger and poverty
problems are to be addressed.

Many of the companies have argued they are reluctant to share their
crop-enhancing technologies with poor countries because lax enforcement of
patents can lead to exploitation of the companies' intellectual property.

Shand, however, disputed that notion.

"There is little or no empirical evidence to support these claims," she
said.

Shand said the companies' control of patented genes, traits and research
tools was creating significant legal barriers that hurt public-sector and
small-company efforts to advance accessible and affordable technologies to
the countries that most need them.

In her presentation Tuesday, Shand called on biotech companies to become
more "people-centered," and less "profit-centered."

"Neglect of the public good is inevitable if the research agenda is based on
pursuit of corporate profits instead of meeting human needs."

Monsanto said last August it would provide royalty-free licenses for all of
its gene technologies to help further develop "golden rice," genetically
engineered to provide nutritional benefits to those suffering from vitamin A
deficiency-related diseases, including irreversible blindness in children.

Shand took issue with programs in which biotech firms require farmers using
GM seeds to buy new seed every year, prohibiting them from saving seed from
the crops they harvest, a traditional practice in world farming communities.

"Over 1.4 billion people, primarily poor farmers, depend on farm-saved seed
as their primary seed source," she said. "Farmers have been selecting seeds
and adapting them for local use for over 200 generations. It is the key to
maintaining and improving the world's food supply."

"The issue is control," she said. "The gene giants are using patented GM
seeds to dictate how farmers will farm and under what conditions."

Many developing nations are under pressure to adopt intellectual property
rights. Indeed, the U.S. government proposed stronger patent protection in
the proposed Free Trade Agreement of the Americas.

The issue will take center stage next month when the Food and Agricultural
Organization of the United Nations holds a negotiating session on plant
genetic resources in Rome, to try to insure that genetic crop resources are
accessible through a benefit-sharing plan.