Ylva
  Thanks for sharing such a useful information. The issue of biopiracy is the campaign of the modern environmentalism. With the geopolitic of hunger in developing countries and the issues of biofuel I was thinking about the thematic issue of the piece. The demand for palm oil is causing environmental genocide in the island of borneo and sumatra- which one of the world's biological hotspots. I wander whether within years most of indigenious  crop varieties that adapted to the agro-ecologies of our various countries for many year will not vanish along with what evolutionist called the sixth extinction.

Ylva Hernlund <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
  ---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2007 14:07:13 -0500
From: [log in to unmask]
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Africa: Seed Sharing or Biopiracy


Africa: Seed Sharing or Biopiracy

AfricaFocus Bulletin
Dec 20, 2007 (071220)
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor's Note

"Sharing of seed is the essence of our planet's agricultural
biodiversity. Without the open palm offering seeds, we all lose.
Current policies, however, are closing the fist around seed,
evident in the strong drive for individual access and monopoly
ownership of genetic resources, as opposed to open access and
collective principles of communities." - Andrew Mushita and Carol
B. Thompson

In their new book, Biopiracy of Biodiversity: Global Exchange as
Enclosure, Andrew Mushita and Carol Thompson explore a wide range
of issues related to food security, biodiversity, and the conflict
between pressures for industrial agriculture and preservation of
the lives and livelihoods of small farmers, particularly in
Southern Africa. But the issues discussed go beyond one region, posing questions about the 
sustainability of agriculture and
the environment in both rich and poor countries.

This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains a small number of brief excerpts
from the book, touching on only a fraction of the issues raised by
the authors on the basis of extensive first-hand experience and research, with full credit given to the 
traditional wisdom and scientific ingenuity of African farmers themselves. The book is available from 
the publisher, Africa World Press
(http://www.africaworldpressbooks.com).

Among recent reports and website on related issues, see
particularly:

"A New Green Revolution for Africa?" December 2007
http://www.grain.org/briefings?id=205

"An African Call for a Moratorium on Agrofuel Development" November
2007
http://www.grain.org/agrofuels/?moratoriumen

Outcome of Meeting of African Farmers' Groups in Mali, December
2007
http://www.moreandbetter.org and
http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/44955

Updates and reports on trade and agriculture
http://www.agobservatory.org

For links to previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on agriculture and
related issues, see http://www.africafocus.org/agexp.php

++++++++++++++++++++++end editor's note+++++++++++++++++++++++

Biopiracy of Biodiversity: Global Exchange as Enclosure
by Andrew Mushita and Carol B. Thompson
Africa World Press, 2007

Selected Excerpts

From Acknowledgements

Biodiversity is a marvel of complexity, for many species are
situated in one place, unique to a site; yet biodiversity spreads
and grows only if the species are exchanged and travel across the
ecosystem to new sites, adapting slowly to new climes. ...

Sharing of seed is the essence of our planet's agricultural
biodiversity. Without the open palm offering seeds, we all lose.
Current policies, however, are closing the fist around seed,
evident in the strong drive for individual access and monopoly
ownership of genetic resources, as opposed to open access and
collective principles of communities. ...

This study comes to the conclusion, startling to most of those
outside the continent, that Africa has answers to its food deficits
and food insecurity. It is not one answer but rather, reflects the
vast diversity of soils, terrains, waters and species on the
continent. Plowing that diversity into monoculture for increased
yields or into privatization in the name of incentives perpetuates
general models that have failed. Other approaches, some very old
and some quite new, will sustain Africa'?s biodiversity, and
therefore, its food security.

The story extends much beyond Africa in that the alternative
policies offer lessons for other countries and other peoples,
especially those eating chemical foods. Africa demonstrates that
none of the dominant international policies - from food production
to patenting to trade - is inevitable. Viable and sustainable
alternatives are not only possible, but already exist. Resisting
biopiracy in order to harvest biodiversity, African alternative
approaches show how to sustain the open palms exchanging seeds.
...

From Chapter I

"If someone asks you for seed, you cannot refuse her." - Zimbabwean
farmer

The essence of seed exchange is sharing, for plants reproduce
themselves without human intervention. ... Because seeds are a
gift to each one of us, they are a gift to all. Ancient cultures
increased this wealth by sharing seed, by giving it away. Such an
action, reflecting nature's example, increased biodiversity across
the globe. ...

In this way, the maize seed has traveled from central Mexico across
the Great Plains to Canada. In less than 300 years from the 1500s,
it traveled around the globe and became established as a major food
crop?from the Mayans and Aztecs to the Shona and Lunga in Africa,
to Sikkim and Bhutan in the Himalayas to China, the Philippines,
and Indonesia.1 Maize has become the staple food, the center of
spiritual rituals, the seed of healing for highly diverse peoples.

Yet the terrible other side of this story is that all this
richness, beauty, and wealth - germinating from sharing - is now
threatened. It is being destroyed by refusal to share, by hoarding
for a false, ephemeral prosperity. It is being destroyed in the
name of science, of law, and "just reward," in the name of
innovation, power, and of profit.

The open palm offering seed to share is received by a clenched
fist, symbolizing enclosure of the global gene pool. ...

Maize in Southern Africa has often been cited an exception [to the
dominance of cash crops] because it is both a cash crop and a food
crop, eaten three times a day by many families while supplies
last. However, maize became more and more a cash crop, including
after independence from colonialism, for it entered the formal
market, was valued by governments for food security storage, and
for export to earn foreign exchange. Almost exclusively, the
amount of the maize harvest or storage defines "food surplus" or
"food shortage" in Southern Africa. This formal perspective
dominates any other; if there is not enough wheat, maize could
substitute. But if maize supplies are insufficient, it is
announced by international monitors that "famine" is pending. A
crop may feed millions, but if there are inaccurate international
figures about the tonnage exchanged informally ("illegal"
cross-border trade), it does not exist on official statistics. Yet
Africa devotes more hectares to sorghum and millet than to all
other food crops combined, and it remains a major food grain in
the Southern African region.

After more than a decade of clarion calls for emergency food aid
to save starving Southern Africans, followed by reduced
international responses, somehow the "millions" rarely starved.
Why? Was the international response so quick, so efficient in
getting to remote areas that the disaster was averted? Yes,
partially. International agencies do not imagine the drought
crisis, but report the conditions of cash crops accurately; the
agencies are vital to thousands and save lives every crisis year.

But the millions? They are saved by their own production of
alternative foods. They are saved by the biodiversity of food
sources; many of the 2000 indigenous food crops are still
preserved in the rural areas (not only sorghum and millets but
bambara nuts, many tuber and root crops, fruits - monkey orange,
water berry, marula, baobab). Traditional ecological knowledge
designates some highly drought- resistant plants to be eaten only
in times of dire need. Botswana alone has 250 plants that are used
specially as "famine food." The millions are also saved by urban
agriculture, where minuscule plots of spare land are planted, not
in flowering shrubs copying European gardens, but in food crops;
in Lesotho, Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, many an urban
family sustains themselves, not with less than below- poverty-level
wages, but with urban agriculture. ...

[Yet] In many areas of Southern Africa, government resources were
directed to develop maize and diverted from sorghum. ...In Southern
Africa, maize became overwhelmingly the commercial food staple.
Technology and marketing created its status as the commercial
monoculture, but fortunately, it never reached monoculture for
food production.

Small-scale farmers (women) continued to grow sorghum on small
plots for home consumption. As nutritious as maize for
carbohydrates, vitamin B6, and food energy, it is more nutritious
in protein, ash, pantothenic acid, calcium, copper, iron,
phosphorus, isoleucine, and leucine. One of the most versatile
foods in the world, one can boil it like rice, or crack it like
oats for porridge, or bake it like wheat into flatbreads, and pop
it like popcorn for snacks. ...

Sorghum is highly drought-resistant because strains have been bred
for flowering to occur, not when adequate rain has fallen, but
according to daylight length. Therefore, even if the rains are
late or inadequate, some plants will flower because of the change
in day length. Light, not water, gives the signal for blooming. In
spite of the fact that indigenous knowledge designated these
diverse and rich uses of sorghum, most scientists have ignored its
genetic wealth: "sorghum is a relatively undeveloped crop with a
truly remarkable array of grain types, plant types, and
adaptability. Most of its genetic wealth is so far untapped and
even unsorted. Indeed, sorghum probably has more undeveloped
genetic potential than any other major food crop in the world." ...

Today, extended families still keep each other alive during
droughts. They do need outside food assistance. ...However, sharing
what little there is keeps people alive. Sharing extends the grain
much beyond the donors' calculations; after each drought in
Southern Africa over the last decade (1992, 1998, 2002, 2003,
2004), the donors note how minimal food aid tonnage kept so many
alive. Estimates of those at risk at the beginning of a famine
season are not exaggerated, but minimal imports of food seem to
prevent starvation. [While] communities are too poor to prevent
malnutrition in a drought; they have time and again prevented
massive, widespread starvation.

An excellent farmer takes pride in her seed - and shares it with
the community. Part of the sharing is scientific; to see if these
few seeds that taste better can germinate well in a field with
worse soil, or drier terrain. Or perhaps the neighboring relative
is a better farmer and will be able to propagate more of the ?new?
seed. Part of the sharing will be commercial, exchanging
good-quality seed for some oxen power to plow a small plot. Those
with smaller plots often farm more intensively, and therefore,
carefully watch over seed. They may be poorer in money terms or
land, but richer in quality seed. Seeds are still a highly valued
gift, for each one propagates many hundreds more. ...

In many, not all, parts of urban Southern Africa, the fields are
brought to the city. In Dar es Salaam (a city of over 2 million),
almost every little patch of land (too little to be called a plot)
has some food crops planted - from delicate-leafed mchicha (a type
of spinach) to the broad-leafed, majestic banana trees. In Harare
and Chitungwiza, Zimbabwe, the small patch is so carefully and
intensively farmed that one maize expert estimates the yield would
be as high as the very best commercial farmer (about 10
tons/hectare, which is about 2.5 acres). But they don't have
hectares, or even quarter hectares, but patches measuring 5 x 3
meters. Urban agriculture is so extensive throughout Zimbabwe that
its yield is what keeps people alive in an economy with 60 percent
unemployed. Have you ever wondered how any mother could keep her
sanity if she lives in a country with rampant annual inflation
(especially for bread and cooking oil), and unemployment of 60
percent, with 80 percent living below the poverty line? Those
figures are lethal and describe more than one African economy. Too
many die every day. But most survive through their own traditions
of sharing their indigenous knowledge and recent innovations; they
grow their own food, save seed, and exchange it. They plant on
every open corner of earth. They share the harvests. ,,,.

Selection of seed is assigned to the most adept - male or female -
who has a good eye and knowledge to select the most robust. The
better farmers choose seed from the best plants in the field.
"Best" defines the strongest, the one yielding the most grain,
with the preferred color, pest resistance, and drought resistance.
Africans prefer not to select a plant simply because it has the
highest yield. Many more traits are equally valued, not the least
of which is the taste and texture of the grain. Selection chooses
vigor, taste, color, texture, and yield. A plant scientist from
Zimbabwe laughed as she said, when the U.S. Agency for
International Development (USAID) comes with advice, the agenda is
always "yield, yield, yield"? She said Zimbabweans are equally
interested in several other traits. ... A Tanzanian plant
geneticist stated that they refuse to breed only for yield for
that is "monoculture within monoculture" - preferring one trait of
hundreds within one crop of hundreds. He pointed out that American
seed breeders ignore taste because the industry manufactures taste
with additives of sugar and citric acid. ...

The struggle over control of seed is passionate: Corporate leaders
think they can make billions; many scientists aspire to
manufacturing "new" species; the promise of new cures tantalizes.
It is complicated: ...

At one time, over 3,000 species were used as human food. The
director of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization
(FAO) reminds us: "Today only 150 plant species are cultivated, 12
of which provide approximately 75 percent of our food and four of
which produce over half of the food we eat. This involution has
increased the vulnerability of agriculture and has impoverished
the human diet." Unless you are growing your own food and saving
heirloom seed, you are vulnerable.

Yet we can't each grow our own food. Many of us prefer other
professions. We can, however, listen to those who have endured for
centuries by sustaining biodiversity, and thereby, the health of
their environment, their families, their cultures. And we can all
debate the issues. The potential negatives are too dangerous to be
left to any one government, any one scientist or discipline, or
any one people. ...

"Biopiracy" refers to the ancient act of taking wealth, "looting,"
by force. Bioresources have been freely shared over the centuries,
as peoples exchange seed, plants, and animals for breeding; what
is very new (since 1985) is that seed, whether an offered gift or
a stolen cultural secret, is then patented, made into private
property. Biopiracy is removal of the organism, whether by
literally taking the plant or seed and claiming ownership, or by
destroying it. ...

Chapter 3 on the patenting of biodiversity begins by addressing
how the World Trade Organization (WTO) incorporated the first
international law to require intellectual property protection for
living forms (microorganisms). The goal within the WTO, dating
from 2000, is to extend patent laws over all plants and animals
(Article 27.3b). Countries that are the source of global
biodiversity, however, are resisting this approach ... extending
intellectual property rights (IPRs) over seeds and plants
challenges scientific logic and threatens biodiversity. ... [These]
plans to extend IPRs from microorganisms to plants and animals
have not succeeded, even though they have been vigorously pursued
by the most powerful countries and global corporations. ..

Chapter 9, "Choice Seed - Seed Choices," compares and contrasts
international protocols for seed exchange from agencies trying to
reconcile the demand for patenting, the respect for indigenous
knowledge, and the need to preserve biodiversity as a policy for
food security. The Africa Union Model Legislation fulfills the
intent of the WTO (TRIPs) without accepting patenting. ...
African agronomists are not simply stating that individual
ownership of seed eradicates its roots, removes its heritage - but
are demonstrating how to propagate diversity while sharing. ,,,

************************************************************

From Chapter 2

... today, seed or biotechnology corporations "take" knowledge
and resources from others in three different ways. First, as with
traditional botanical gardens, they often give no recognition to
the original cultivators, and second, if they change one gene, they
add the legal precept that the corporation now owns the whole
living organism as private property. ... Third, the piracy
becomes more fierce when the companies state that not only is the
modified wealth their own, but the original cultivators cannot use
the seed or plants without paying tribute (royalties) to the newly
declared owners. Through the patenting of plants and seeds,
corporations privatize traditional ecological knowledge as a
commodity to sell ... To those who oppose patenting of living
organisms, privatizing a plant with a heritage dating back
thousands of years, for one's own profit and prestige, is
tantamount to theft. ....

From Chapter 4

The creation of the Green Revolution research centers (e.g., the
International Rice Research Institute, the International Center
for the Improvement of Maize and Wheat) was the product not only
of an effort to introduce capitalism into the countryside but also
of the need to collect systematically the exotic germplasm
required by the breeding programs of the developed nations.
Western science not only made the seed the catalyst for the
dissolution and transformation of pre-capitalist agrarian social
formations, it also staffed an institutional network that has
served as a conduit for the extraction of plant germplasm from the
Third World.

Yet the end result is the same. Only a very few indigenous strains
are selected for international preservation. As farmers turn to
hybrids, the rich variety of indigenous strains are lost forever.
Since the initial thrust of the Green Revolution, plant breeders
and agronomists have begun to recognize the value of local,
open-pollinated varieties (OPVs) and many of the international
research centers, such as the Consultative Group on International
Agricultural Research (CGIAR), now pay almost as much attention to
those as to the hybrids. For example, in Southern Africa, the
International Crops Research Institute for Semi- Arid Tropics
(ICRISAT) center at Matopos, Zimbabwe, has developed new strains
of sorghum and millets, small grains used traditionally for
semi-arid, drought-prone areas. Many strains are OPVs. ...

The first principle of Southern African small-scale agricultural
policy is diversity, for crop diversity lowers risk, while
industrial agriculture increases it. ...

Southern Africa is probably too reliant on too few varieties of
maize. Some peasant farmers are returning to production of sweet
potatoes, which are more nutritious than maize, have lower growing
costs and tolerate variable rains. Drought-resistant sorghum can
be mixed with white maize to make mealie meal, adding nutrition.
The goal should not be a Green Revolution in white maize, too
dependent on ample rains, but rather a diversification of staple
crops. Monoculture failures in the 20th century point to
diversification for the 21st, to provide food security under
changing weather conditions as well as higher levels of nutrition
on the same hectarage. ...

A second principle in Southern Africa agricultural policy is to
value - not destroy -small-scale farmers and their indigenous
knowledge systems (IKS). Just as diversity can replace fabricated
seed monoculture, small-scale farmer innovation can also replace
industrial inputs. Zero tillage, for example, is now recommended
for many crops, for it disturbs the topsoil less. Annual plowing

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