The world according to Monsanto : pollution, corruption, and

312 the world according to monsantoshe has been fighting against a European and American patent held by Monsantoon a variety of wheat prized for the making of chapatis and cookies becauseof its low gluten content. 5 According to the terms of the patents,Monsanto holds a monopoly on the growing, crossbreeding, and processingof this variety, which originated in northern India.“The patenting of life is a continuation of the first colonization,” Shivasaid. “The word ‘patent’ itself comes from the age of conquest. ‘Letterspatent’ was the name given to an official public document—in Latin, patensmeans ‘open’ or ‘obvious’—bearing the seal of European sovereigns [and]granting to adventurers and pirates the exclusive right to conquer foreigncountries in their name. At the time Europe was colonizing the world, letterspatent were directed at territorial conquest, whereas today’s patents areaimed at economic conquest through the appropriation of living organismsby the new sovereigns, the multinational corporations like Monsanto. Thesame principle was operative in both cases, namely, the patents then andnow were based on a denial of the life that existed before the arrival of thewhite man. When the Europeans colonized America, the land of the NewWorld was declared terra nullius, ‘empty land,’ meaning devoid of whitemen. In the same way, the patenting of life and of the biosphere is based onan allegation of ‘empty life,’ because as long as the genes of living organismshave not been dissected in a laboratory, the organisms have no value. This isa denial of the labor and knowledge of millions of people who have maintainedthe biodiversity of life for millennia and who, moreover, live from it.”“What are the consequences of patents on life for the peoples of theSouth?” I asked, fascinated by the clarity of her thinking.“They are huge, because patents are playing the same role as enclosuresin sixteenth-century England. This movement, originating before the IndustrialRevolution, privatized by enclosing common land that had been usedcommunally, where the poorest villagers, for example, could graze their animals.The patent similarly encloses living things, such as plants that feedand heal people, and finally contributes to the exclusion of the poorest fromthe means of livelihood and even survival. As can be seen with food andmedicine, as soon as a patent is filed, it means royalties and consequently anincrease in price. This is why food, crop maintenance products, and medicinesare excluded from Indian patent law, so that they remain accessible toeveryone. The extension of the Western system of patents, as advocated by