Posted
December 2, 2005

Terminator Technology and Seed Industry Consolidation

Farmers around the world are increasingly forced to use GMO seeds.

What’s all the fuss about Terminator seeds (a.k.a. genetic use restriction technology or genetic seed sterilization)? The biotech industry argues that farmers can always say “no” to Terminator seeds. If farmers don’t like the product and it doesn’t offer benefits – farmers won’t buy it. But history shows that farmers aren’t always free to decide:

  • Some years ago the government of Zimbabwe decreed that subsistence corn farmers had to abandon their traditional open-pollinated varieties and adopt maize hybrids.
  • The Indonesian government once insisted that the major rice growing regions of that country plant high-yielding varieties from IRRI (International Rice Research Institute) or its national counterparts.
  • During the Masagana 99 program in the Philippines, credit schemes and extension pressure forced many farming communities to surrender their traditional seeds in favour of government-certified varieties.
  • Credit and extension programmes in Chile have sometimes implicitly obliged poor farmers to accept plant varieties they did not want.
  • In Brazil, farmers were previously forced to select from a restricted government-maintained list of varieties in order to obtain commercial credit.

With funding for public plant breeding in a free-fall, it’s not far-fetched to imagine that, in the future, public breeders wanting access to patented genes and traits controlled by the Gene Giants could be forced to adopt Terminator genes as a licensing requirement.

Market choices must also be examined in the context of privatization of plant breeding and rapid consolidation in the global seed industry. Today, the top 10 seed companies control 49% of the commercial seed trade, a total worldwide market of approximately US$21 billion per annum. (Go here to see the details.)

Thirty years ago, most seed companies were small, family-owned businesses. (I recently read about Nebraska’s last surviving independent seed corn company – literally a dying breed.) Today, a fistful of transnational firms dominate global seed sales. Monsanto, Dupont, Syngenta – all among the world’s top-ranking pesticide firms – lead the pack.

Corporate control and ownership of seeds – the first link in the food chain – has far-reaching implications for global food security. With control of seeds and agricultural research held in fewer hands, the world’s food supply is increasingly vulnerable to the whims of market maneuvers. Corporations exist to support the bottom line and increase shareholder returns – not to insure food security. Over the past 25 years, the re-interpretation of intellectual property law has allowed monopoly patents on all biological products and processes – including plants, seeds, genes, traits, etc. And with the re-writing of national seed laws designed to favor corporate breeders – farmers are losing the right to use and develop their own seeds. The most egregious example, by far, was the US government’s June 2004 imposition of plant breeder’s rights in post-invasion Iraq – laws that are designed to protect corporate seeds and marginalize farmer-based breeding and innovation. (Go here to read more about the US-imposed Order 81.)

Ultimately, seed industry oligopoly means fewer choices for farmers. A new study by the US Department of Agriculture examines the impact of seed industry concentration on ag-biotech research. The study concludes that reduced competition is associated with reduced R&D. Despite seed industry claims to the contrary, concentration in the seed industry is resulting in less innovation – not more.

Seed industry concentration is high on the agenda of civil society and farmers’ organizations that are working to support and maintain peasant and farmer-controlled seed systems and against policies and technologies that seek to further privatize seeds.

In light of seed industry oligopoly and technologies like Terminator, farmers are increasingly vulnerable and have far fewer options in the marketplace. The central question becomes not will farmers buy Terminator seed technology, but will they have a choice?