[iDC] seed patents, Indian farmer suicides, and the future of Iraq

[Ryan Griffis]

On Sep 24, 2007, at 5:16 PM, idc-request at mailman.thing.net wrote:

> (Regis, as far as Monsanto's presence in India is concerned, what  
> I've found
> is that the company was able to overcome the government's  
> resistance to
> their presence in 2005; more on that here --
> http://www.hindu.com/2005/05/21/stories/2005052103121300.htm, for  
> example. I
> certainly don't know enough about Indian politics to make sense of  
> why that
> happened.)

Related to Monsanto's overcoming of the resistance in India, their  
tactics in South America might be of use/interest.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/argentina/story/0,,1715330,00.html
Then the update
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/business/stories.nsf/story/ 
37A9C44860430D668625735A00092F38?OpenDocument
While earlier stories about Monsanto's business in Argentina and  
Brazil pointed to their problems collecting the technology fee for  
the use of Round Up Soy, for many, it seemed pretty obvious that  
they'd reap the benefits in the not-so-long run, with or without  
terminator seeds. They benefit from their IP pollinating, even if  
they don't collect the fees up front. A few people even suggested  
that Monsanto encouraged the "smuggling" of illegal RR soy from  
Argentina into Brazil (which did, after all, lift its ban),  
especially since they've proven in North America that they can win  
legal cases of IP infringement even when the evidence suggests that  
it is their product that is "contaminating" someone else's. The  
"illegal" use of the RR soy in Brazil just created another future  
dependent market.
i don't know much about the Indian context much, but according to  
what i've read, the government has been promoting various forms of  
GMO ag for a while
for example: http://www.biotech.wisc.edu/SEEbiotech/seemail/ 
september2004/090704.html#283
Shiva's past writing, if i remember it partially correctly, was more  
directly addressing the issues of new patents (Biopiracy, surrounding  
Neem for example) than it was about the allowance of GMO ag by the  
state... it was more about popular resistance than state-directed.
http://www.gene.ch/genet/2000/May/msg00009.html
This discussion doesn't need to be all about Monsanto, but it is hard  
to discuss GMO and trade matters without them dominating.
best,
ryan