Reflections on the Human Condition - Api-fellowships.org

294 SESSION IV
of RRCanola but he grew that plant without paying
the fee to the company. Although he argued that he
did not plant the RR Canola, since his plot of land was
contaminated with the RR Canola, the Supreme Court
of Canada last year ruled that Schmeiser had infringed
the patent of the company over RR Canola and
ordered him to pay licensing fee to Monsanto US$15
per acre that cost him US$15,450 for his 1,030 acre
of land. Moreover, as he lost the case, Schmeiser had
to shoulder the Monsanto court cost which was about
US$153,000.
Some might argue that even before the era of GMOs,
farmers ccould not save the seeds for second harvesting
season because the quality of hybrid seeds (the products
of the Green Revolution) would automatically drop
due to technical reasons. Lutfiyah Hanim of Insitute
for Global Justice (IGJ), a local NGO works on the
fields related to WTO and its agreements, TRIPs and
Agreement on Agriculture are in particular, has her
argument.
“[With the Green Revolution] at least farmers had rights
to collect the seeds. As for the GM revolution, even the
right to save the seeds, the basic activity of farming that
farmers throughout the world have done for centuries,
is being deprived,” she says.
According to Hanim, since the gate of Indonesian
agricultural sector opened for liberalization, many
communities of small-scale farmers in the central Java
tried to survive from the sky-high price of all inputs,
including seeds, fertilizers and pesticides, by switching
to organic farming.
“They developed new varieties by using the hybrid
seeds 17 until they succeeded in developing new varieties
that could perform well without using chemicals. For
GM seeds, they can not do this and new varieties can
not be produced by hands of farmers.”
CONCLUSION
Lessons from farmers in Indonesia and the Philippines
give a clear perspective that GM crops are not produced
for the sake of the farmers, but for the seeds and
agrichemical companies. GM seed is no longer a seed
that once was the life of farmers. GM seed is not only
a seed, but a commodity and a legal tool for seed
corporations to control the world.
Seed companies just used their GM seed to turn farmers
to be their farm laborer. To grow GM crops, farmers
lose their rights to select seed type and chemical they
Ref lections on the Human Condition: Change, Conflict and Modernity
The Work of the 2004/2005 API Fellows
want to use in their farm, they can not determine the
quantity of seeds they want to grow in their farm.
Farmers have to follow the regulation and the contract
of the seed companies. Seeds companies use seeds to
control farmers, this means they can control farming
sector. To control farming sector means to control the
food of the world which eventually means to control
the world.
Although farmer produced thousands of plant varieties
some of which are parent materials of GM crops, they
can not collect the seeds if they are the GM crop and
from the second harvesting because of the IPR system
that attached in every single seed of GM crops. Profit
and benefit generated from GM seeds belong to the
companies, but risk and loss belong to the farmers.
The lessons of both countries are a warning to farmers
in other countries not to believe in economic figure
created by seed companies. Since GM seeds are not
ordinary seeds, to see the exact and long-term impacts
of scientific seeds—political, social, and legal aspect—
have to be considered in analysis process of the issue.
Although in the Philippines, situation is not clear yet,
signs depict the picture of monopoly by using marketing
system to favor GM seeds whose price is very high.
Moreover, with the IPR regime being already rooted
in both countries, rights of plant breeders, mostly the
companies themselves, are already protected while
rights of farmers are neglected.
Farmers and government in all developing countries
have to go beyond the illusion of economic figure which
is claimed as a beautiful output of planting GM crops.
APPENDIX
GMO—Genetically Modified Organism, created by
scientists by inserting a gene extracted from one species
into another species to create specific character of
living form that nature can not create for the world.
For agricultural sector, scientists created three major
types of GM crops, which sometimes are referred as
“transgenic” or GE- genetically engineered crops, for
farmers across the world.
The first one is so-called herbicide-tolerant crops that
are designed to tolerate certain herbicide. This GM
crops are usually known by the herbicide that the
crops are engineered to resist. For instance, Roundup
Ready crops of Monsanto which are designed to survive
Roundup chemical herbicide of the Monsanto itself.