Plant Patenting and Iraq’s Agriculture

[roberte]

Patenting Staple Foods (Bremer’s Order 81) Is Ruinous to Iraq’s Agriculture
by Adnan Al-Daini


In my early teens in Iraq, in the late fifties and early sixties, I used to accompany my father to farms to buy wheat grain for our own consumption, and a few sacks more to sell in the village to make some profit. I remember the discussions between my father and the small farmers regarding the quality of the grain, and whether the dough would stick (hounta khabbaza) to the walls of the clay oven (tennor) in which my mother baked the bread. This particular quality is essential to prevent it falling into the hot embers at the bottom of the oven. The farmers used to assure us of the quality, giving a little history of how the grain had been improved by knowledge sharing between farmers, with the best quality seed being adopted. The system had an inbuilt informal ability to improve the quality of the wheat grain. This method of sharing expertise, and the use of knowledge passed down through the generations were applied to every aspect of farming and fruit orchards to improve the quality and quantity of the produce.


An article on GRAIN website entitled “Iraq's new patent law: a declaration of war against farmers” gives the origin of this law and its detrimental effect on agriculture in Iraq thus:

“When former Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) administrator L. Paul Bremer III left Baghdad after the so-called "transfer of sovereignty" in June 2004, he left behind the 100 orders he enacted as chief of the occupation authority in Iraq. Among them was Order 81 on "Patent, Industrial Design, Undisclosed Information, Integrated Circuits and Plant Variety." This order amends Iraq's original patent law of 1970 and unless and until it is revised or repealed by a new Iraqi government, it now has the status and force of a binding law.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/06/24

[fugacity]

Seems a pretty regressive stance for a progressive publication.

[roberte]

Though it has the potential to wander into political theory rather than the actual topic:

Originally Posted by fugacity

Seems a pretty regressive stance for a progressive publication.

??????????????

[bunkie]

i think way back when Bremmer put his laws into effect, we had a discussion about this. to me, i've read so many stories of how it used to be for farmers in Iraq and how it is now. they had some really ancient grains that they saved seed from every year as the stories in this article tell. i read also that much was lost during our invasion of this beautiful country. i do believe that there was a network to save much of this seed, including alan bishop of homegrown goodness, to make sure it was not lost forever. similar efforts were being made at the time with the seed in Afghanistan during that war.

[fugacity]

Originally Posted by roberte

Though it has the potential to wander into political theory rather than the actual topic:





??????????????

Here's what I mean by that. Profit drives research. You can't dump money into scietific studies to develop plants without the ability to make your money back and make money for yourself. I think that allowing patents on novel cultivars necessarily will drive innovation, and that is actual progress.

I don't find the appeals to 'biopiracy' and common ownership to be anything except an anchor to the past. If nobody can take a public domain plant and hybridize or breed it for profit then the potential to move forward is hampered without benefiting anybody. Has anybody ever stopped to wonder who this supposed "biopiracy" hurts anyway?

I'm not sure why it would be considered progressive to stall out agriculture to a pre-modern era scenario.

[roberte]

Originally Posted by fugacity

Here's what I mean by that. Profit drives research. You can't dump money into scietific studies to develop plants without the ability to make your money back and make money for yourself. I think that allowing patents on novel cultivars necessarily will drive innovation, and that is actual progress.

I don't find the appeals to 'biopiracy' and common ownership to be anything except an anchor to the past. If nobody can take a public domain plant and hybridize or breed it for profit then the potential to move forward is hampered without benefiting anybody. Has anybody ever stopped to wonder who this supposed "biopiracy" hurts anyway?

I'm not sure why it would be considered progressive to stall out agriculture to a pre-modern era scenario.

Except that isn't what Order 81 is about......

[bunkie]

Originally Posted by fugacity

Here's what I mean by that. Profit drives research. You can't dump money into scietific studies to develop plants without the ability to make your money back and make money for yourself. I think that allowing patents on novel cultivars necessarily will drive innovation, and that is actual progress....

well it sure isn't working for the Iraq people.

I don't find the appeals to 'biopiracy' and common ownership to be anything except an anchor to the past.

the past has been very important to the farmers in Iraq. as the article mentioned, they have spent years saving the best seed and developing varieties that work for them. with bremmer's laws, it is no more...i would much rather have the varieties of wheat from the past, than those that our ag corps have now developed which we can barely digest in our systems...

"...This patenting law, in many instances, involves the pirating of knowledge gained by farmers sharing their knowledge and experience through millennia:

“Such kind of "biopiracy" is fueled by an Intellectual Property Right (IPR) regime that ignores the prior art of the farmer, and grants rights to a breeder who claims to have created something new from the material and knowledge of the very farmer.”..."

If nobody can take a public domain plant and hybridize or breed it for profit then the potential to move forward is hampered without benefiting anybody. Has anybody ever stopped to wonder who this supposed "biopiracy" hurts anyway?

perfect example, the farmers of Iraq and bremmer's rules.

I'm not sure why it would be considered progressive to stall out agriculture to a pre-modern era scenario.

like the wheat crops of today they're growing are not at all like the ancient varieties. people are being offered and purchasing many of the ancient varieties today, like Einkhorn (sp?) and such.

[fugacity]

Are you guys arguing that "bremmer's" law allows people to just go grab existing cultivars and patent them? If so that would be something akin to biopiracy. I think that is off base as to what IPR is and what most call biopiracy.

I don't get it, if they used to save seed and they stopped, whose to blame? If somebody wants to develp new seeds from old ones and sell them, why does that eliminate the ancient seed saving tradition?

Nobody is hurt unless they choose somehow as a culture to abandon their old practices.

http://www.grain.org/article/entries...gainst-farmers

It looks like Order 81 allows patents on NEW, not OLD seeds. So Roberte, what am I missing?

"with bremmer's laws, it is no more..."

This is not a true statement.

[roberte]

Originally Posted by fugacity

Are you guys arguing that "bremmer's" law allows people to just go grab existing cultivars and patent them?

No......

[fugacity]

Originally Posted by roberte

No......

Then enlighten me to how I am wrong about order 81.