search a customer’s farmland for signs of saved seeds, and, to nab offenders, the company can track purchase records and check with seed dealers. Among other things, the company has hired Pinkerton detectives — the same private police force hired by the Rockefellers to murderously bust unions in the 1920s — to investigate tips on seed saving. In addition, the company created and advertised the existence of hotlines for neighbors to report farmers who save seeds. “Dial 1–800–ROUNDUP,” said a Monsanto ad. “Tell the rep that you want to report some potential seed law violations or other information. It is important to use ‘land lines’ rather than cellular phones due to the number of people who scan cellular calls.”[5]
Monsanto also developed a kit that determines whether or not a plant was derived from patented seeds by using a principle similar to a pregnancy test, but applied to leaves. Scott Good was one of the many farmers who dealt with the wrath of Monsanto when he saved his seeds and replanted the company’s intellectual property. “They showed up at my door at six o’clock in the morning. They flipped a badge,” said Scott of Monsanto’s agents. “They acted like the FBI. I was scared.” Farmers who infringe on Monsanto’s patents have been fined hundreds of thousands of dollars, and some face bankruptcy. Much like other large seed companies, Monsanto offers incentives for seed distributors to carry their patented seeds rather than public-domain seeds.
A farmer’s choice to plant public-domain seeds becomes increasingly difficult or impossible when near- monopolies exist within the agribusiness industries. Factory farming has flooded the market with low-priced crops, which forces farmers to purchase the patented, high-yield seeds or go out of business. University of Indiana seed geneticist Martha Crouch commented to Science magazine, “Free choice is a nice idea, but it doesn’t seem to operate in the real world.” Although critics have blasted the existence of these so-called Frankenfoods, we should keep in mind that farmers throughout history have manipulated the genetic makeup of crops by selecting for certain favorable traits. Also, these genetically modified crops often grow in more abundant quantities, need less labor, and sometimes require fewer chemical pesticides or herbicides. In other words, there are reasons why North American farmers plant these seeds.
One of the trade-offs, however, is that these patented crops are also uniform in their genetic makeup. This is a problem because when we rely on fewer varieties of food, we increase our chances of exposing ourselves to major food shortages. For instance, the biological cause of the Irish Potato Famine in the mid-1800s was rooted in a reliance on two major varieties of potatoes. the
The spread of uniform, patented seeds has accelerated the loss of thousands of varieties of crops. Today, 97 percent of the vegetable varieties sold by commercial seed houses in the United States at the beginning of the century are now extinct, and 86 percent of the fruit varieties have been lost. These numbers are actually quite conservative because there were surely more varieties that weren’t collected in the nineteenth century. Over the twentieth century the varieties of cabbage dropped from 544 to 20; carrots from 287 to 21; cauliflower from 158 to 9; apples from 7,089 to 878. The list goes on. In sum, roughly 75 percent of the genetic diversity of the world’s twenty most important food crops has been lost forever. Because biodiversity is a key factor in the ability of plants to adapt to changing conditions, and humans’ ability to do the same, reduced biodiversity seriously threatens ecological support systems.[7]
Despite skepticism from Europe, the planting of altered (and patented) soybeans, corn, potatoes, and canola in the United States and Canada has exploded, and the market for such crops is expected to grow to as much as $500 billion in the next few decades. The dramatic rise in the growing of patented crops in North America will likely be followed by the same expansion in other countries throughout the world — one way or the other. It’s a biological fact that, once the pollen from genetically modified crops travels through the air, it can pollinate nongenetically modified crops. This invasive pollination has happened to many organic farmers, such as Laura Krouse, based in Iowa. Because of the presence of the Bt gene in her corn, Krouse’s crop can no longer be certified as organic, and she lost half her business in the process.
Why can’t these farmers prevent this contamination? The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind. “I don’t know if there’s room for a business like mine anymore,” said Krouse. “Biologically, it doesn’t seem like it’s going to be possible because of this sea of genetically engineered pollen that I live in, over which I have no control.”[8] In 1998 Monsanto sued Canadian farmer Percy Schmeiser after the company discovered its patented canola plants growing on his property. The seventy-three-year-old Schmeiser argued that he shouldn’t have to pay Monsanto a licensing fee because the pollen had blown onto his property from neighboring farms. Although Monsanto said this might be the case — in fact, the company acknowledged that Schmeiser never placed an order for its Roundup Ready canola — he was still infringing on their patent.
In a narrow 5-4 decision, Canada’s Supreme Court ruled in favor of Monsanto in 2004, stating that it wasn’t concerned with “blow by” dissemination of patented plants. It simply determined that the farmer “actively cultivated” Monsanto’s property. These patented seeds have also traveled south because the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) allows five million tons of corn to be sold in Mexico. Many residents of the country, and the Mexican government itself, are up in arms over what they see as an unwelcome invasion of their farmlands. But Dr. Michael Phillips, an executive director at the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), isn’t very sympathetic. “If you’re the government of Mexico, hopefully you’ve learned a lesson here,” he bluntly told NOW with Bill Moyers. The lesson? “It’s very difficult to keep a new technology from, you know, entering your borders — particularly in a biological system.”
Much of the developing world — primarily rain-forest countries — is loaded with what some gene hunters refer to as “green gold.” This refers to medically useful plant materials that can yield massive profits. However, identifying a valuable DNA sequence is a very difficult task, like finding a needle in a mountainous biological haystack. Scientists working for Western companies get around this problem by relying on tribal shamans and medicine men to point them to plants that are medically useful. Using the knowledge developed by indigenous people in developing countries increases by 400-fold a scientist’s ability to locate the plants that have specific medicinal uses. In another estimate, by consulting with the local communities, bioprospectors can increase the success ratio from one in ten thousand samples to one in two in their quest to find active ingredients that can be used in medicines.
For instance, using an active ingredient extracted from an indigenous plant in northeastern Brazil, the U.S.–based MGI Pharma developed a drug to treat symptoms of xerostomia, or “dry-mouth syndrome.” The drug’s development capitalized on the local knowledge about the properties of the jaborandi plant, which literally means — I love this -“slobber-mouth plant.” Knowledge about the plant’s properties had been passed down for generations, but the company did not compensate the native Brazilians in any way. Nor did MGI Pharma have to, even though it was the local knowledge that led the U.S. researchers to the drug discovery in the first place.[9]
Over the centuries, indigenous communities have significantly contributed to the diversity and cultivation of our most basic and important crops. The reason why we can purchase blue corn tortilla chips in stores is because of the centuries of care Mexican farmers gave to cultivating varieties of blue corn (as well as yellow, white, red, speckled, and hundreds of other varieties). This cultivation is a form of labor; that this corn still exists is no mere accident. However, only the knowledge developed in scientific laboratories is protected as patented “property” while the traditional systems are open to plundering because they are communally maintained. This illustrates the double-edged nature of “the commons,” a reason why this concept shouldn’t be blindly celebrated in all situations.
Under the global patent system, intellectual property can only be produced by people in white lab coats employed by companies with huge amounts of capital at their disposal. The time and labor and collective achievements of indigenous farmers are rendered worthless, devalued as being merely “nature.” These kinds of bioprospecting patents — or, as globalization critic Vandana Shiva calls them,
It would be as if someone came along and copyrighted the stories in the Bible. The Old Testament’s
