There’s an open letter floating around that is addressed to Members of the European Parliament and to a variety of EU Commissioners for this that and the other. The intent is to advocate for opening up the EU legislation on the Marketing of Seed and Plant Propagating Material, in order to:
[M]ake it more respectful towards the environment, consumers’ expectations and the needs of small actors in the seed chain.
No argument from us on that score. Indeed, we’ve always found the one-size-fits-all approach of the EU suitable only for the largest. Why varieties must be certified, when simple consumer-protection laws are enough to protect against sharp practice, remains a mystery. The letter appeals to everything, from freedom of choice via reduced use of pesticides to an improved environment, better conservation, and more rural jobs.
It’s a good effort, and most welcome, even if it is probably doomed to failure. The sad part is that the list of signatories is completely dominated by the usual suspects. It’s almost as if the heavy hitters who are so keen on agricultural biodiversity for developing countries (and we all know who they are) see no common cause with what’s happening in their own back garden.
Organizations and individuals have until 2 May to sign up.
A badly written letter relying on an ETC Group report: 10 multinationals control 74% of the global seed market. So what? How many companies control the manufacture of big jetplanes or cars? And how many peasant farmers (or gardeners in Europe) actually buy seed from multinationals? This is a re-run of the RAFI/ICDA `Seeds of the Earth’ book of 1979. The nub of this, in Mooney’s text: “THE OLD CENTRES OF CROP DIVERSITY IN THE THIRD WORLD ARE VANISHING … WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS FOR THE ‘GENE-POOR NATIONS OF THE FIRST WORLD'”. In my text: `a long campaign to get peasant farmers to be unpaid museum curators for obsolete varieties’.
There is the usual about `locally-adapted varieties’: it is now normal for bean seed for a crop in Europe to be produced in Tanzania – almost on the equator. Local adaptation is mainly a fantasy of seed activists derived from the bad parts of the now-defunct discipline of `genecology’.
You can’t have it both ways. If peasant farmers and gardeners are not buying seeds from multinationals, what does it matter that bean seeds are grown in Tanzania?
The point is that those self same multinationals also supply the “amateur” market in Europe and elsewhere. How many “seed” companies with pretty catalogues do you think grow and process their own seeds?