Monsanto Persecuting Farmers Continues
Farm News from Cropchoice
An alternative news service for American farmers
http://www.cropchoice.com
2001.05.21
Monsanto still suing Nelsons, other growers
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By Robert Schubert
CropChoice.com editor

(May 21, 2001  CropChoice news) -- Monsanto continues its lawsuit against a North Dakota family farm, despite an independent body's ruling that it found no evidence of wrongdoing. Roger, Rodney and Greg Nelson grow soybeans, wheat and sugar beets on 8,000 acres outside of Amenia, ND, in the Red River Valley. (See February story about Nelson case –
http://www.cropchoice.com/leadstry.asp?recid=244)
"They (Monsanto) haven't got any evidence," says Mark Fraase, the attorney representing the Nelsons. "They can't gather any, yet they persist."
Monsanto would not comment on any aspect of this story.
The Nelsons are among the hundreds of farmers Monsanto is suing, usually on the grounds of patent infringement. However, growers have begun to fight back in the courts.
The St. Louis-based biotechnology-agriculture-chemical giant alleges that the Nelsons saved Roundup Ready soybean seed from their 1998 and 1999 crop, a violation of its patent. Monsanto engineered the transgenic soybeans to resist its Roundup herbicide.
The North Dakota State Seed Arbitration Board found no support for Monsanto's claims in its March 27 hearing on the matter.
"The evidence does not show, by the greater weight of the evidence, that Nelson Farm is infringing on any Monsanto patents for RR soybeans by planting, growing, and harvesting unlicensed saved RR soybean seed without authorization from Monsanto, or that Nelson Farm will continue to so infringe. Nelson Farm did not plant any saved RR soybean seed in 1998, 1999, or 2000," according to the non-binding Board ruling.
Representatives for Monsanto were absent.
"They said it was a patent infringement case and had nothing to do with the controversy involving seed," Fraase says. "But obviously it does involve seed. It involves the accusation that they (the Nelsons) used saved seed."
He is trying to change the venue for the trial, likely to begin in 10 months, from the federal district court in St. Louis to Fargo, ND.
"It doesn't belong in St. Louis," he says. "The law is clear that any patent infringement cases must be tried in the state or district where they occurred. Even Monsanto doesn't argue with that. But, the technology agreement says that must agree to a trial in St. Louis." One problem with this is that Monsanto has accused the Nelsons of saving seed from the 1998 season, yet they didn't sign a technology agreement until March 31, 1999.
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Dr. Vandana Shiva is a physicist, ecologist, activist, editor, and author of many books. In India she has established Navdanya, a movement for biodiversity conservation and farmers' rights. She directs the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy. Her most recent book is Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge. This interview with Dr. Vandana Shiva was conducted in St. Louis, Missouri at the First Grassroots Gathering on Biodevastation: Genetic Engineering, on July 18, 1998. Dr. Shiva was the keynote speaker at the conference. The interview was conducted by In Motion Magazine publisher Nic Paget-Clarke.
"......that we call biopiracy, where seeds such as the Basmati seed, the aromatic rice from India, which we have grown for centuries, right in my valley is being claimed as novel invention by RiceTec.
Neem, which we have used for millennia for pest control, for medicine, which is documented in every one of our texts, which my grandmother and mother have used for everyday functions in the home, for protecting grain, for protecting silks and woolens, for pest control, is treated as invention held by Grace, the chemical company.
This epidemic of piracy is very much like the epidemic of piracy which was named colonialism 500 years ago. I think we will soon need to name this round of piracy through patents as recolonialization as a new colonialization which differs from the old only in this - the old colonialization only took over land, the new colonialization is taking over life itself.
In Motion Magazine: Just a moment ago in your speech to the conference, you said you'd like to bring in a third world perspective. Can you bring that into this discussion?
Dr. Vandana Shiva: The third world is that part of the world which became the colonies in the last colonialization. It wasn't an impoverished world then, in fact the reason it was colonialized is because it had the wealth. Columbus set sail to get control of the spice trade from India, it's just that he landed on the wrong continent and named the original inhabitants of this land Indian thinking he had arrived in India. Latin America was colonialized because of the gold it had. None of these countries were impoverished. Today they are called the poorer part of the world because the wealth has been drained out.
People have survived in the third world because in spite of the wealth that has been taken from them, in spite of their gold and their land having been taken from them, they still have biodiversity. They still have that last resource in the form of seed, medicinal plants, fodder, which allowed them access to production It allowed them to meet their needs of health and nutrition. Now this last resource of the poor, who had been left deprived by the last round of colonialization is also being taken over through patenting. And seeds which peasants have freely saved, exchanged, used, are being treated as the property of corporations. 
New legal property formations are being shaped as intellectual property rights treaties, through the World Trade Organization, trying to prevent peasants of the third world from having free access to their own seed, to have free exchange of their own seed. So that all peasants, all farmers around the world would be buying seed every year thus creating a new market for the global seed industry.
80 percent of India takes care of its health needs through medicinal plants that grow around in back yards, that grow in the fields, in the forests, which people freely collect. No one has had to pay a price for the gifts of nature. Today everyone of those medicines has been patented and within five, ten years down the line we could easily have a situation in which the same pharmaceutical industry that has created such serious health damages and is now shifting to safe health products in the form of medicinal plant-based drugs, Chinese medicine, aromatic medicine from India, will prevent the use. They don't even have to come and make it illegal because long before they have to take that step, they take over the resource base, they take over the plants, they take over the supply, they take over the markets, and leave people absolutely deprived of access.
What we are seeing right now is a situation in which the third world, which has been the main supplier of biodiversity, the main producer of food in the world, where the majority of people are engaged in food production, is being attempted to be converted into a consumer society. But you can't have a consumer society with poor people and therefore what you will have is deprivation, destitution, disease, hunger, epidemics, hunger, malnutrition, famine and civil war. What is being sown is the greed of the corporations of stealing the last resources of the poor. It really is seeds of uncontrollable violence and decay of societies on a very large scale.
In Motion Magazine: You touched on it, but what seems key to this takeover is what the RAFI (Rural Advancement Foundation International) people call the "terminator technology". Can you talk about that?
Dr. Vandana Shiva: When we plant a seed there's a very simple prayer that every peasant in India says: "Let the seed be exhaustless, let it never get exhausted, let it bring forth seed next year." Farmers have such pride in saying "this is the tenth generation seeds that I'm planting," "this is the fifth generation seed that I'm planting." Just the other day I had a seed exchange fair in my valley and a farmer brought Basmati aromatic rice seed and he said "this is five generations we've been planting this in our family". So far human beings have treated it as their duty to save seed and ensure its continuity. But that prayer to let the seed be exhaustless seems to be changing into the prayer, "let this seed get terminated so that I can make profits every year" which is the prayer that Monsanto is speaking through the terminator technology -- a technology whose aim is merely to prevent seed from germinating so that they don't have to spend on policing.
............Part of our battle has been to give respect again to the innovation of farmers and the diversity that the earth has provided. What I often say is that through the seed saving of Navdanya we have managed to make the celebration of diversity our mode of resistance.
In Motion Magazine: How successful has it been?
Dr. Vandana Shiva: It has been very successful. We're in about seven zones now. We have the native seed supply taking over. I have just started two new seed banks in the heart of the "Green Revolution", one in western Uttar Pradesh, one in Punjab where about thirty farmers are giving up chemicals and getting off the chemical tread mill. They are starting to shift to use of native seeds and organic agricultural methods. The wonderful thing about seed is if you have even one, you have the potential of millions.
Published in In Motion Magazine - August 14, 1998
The British Government’s Clare Short is trying to persuade India to accept globalisation and all its many "advantages" in return for increased aid.
This smacks of nothing more than globalisation by blackmail.
Does anyone know how much taxpayers' money has ‘quietly’ been spent on GM trials since New Labour arrived?
Both these points worry me more than a little.
Greg Lance - Watkins

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