The notion of farmers saving seed from one harvest to plant for the next is deeply ingrained, especially in ideas about subsistence and sustainable farming. Indeed, that process is usually seen as the foundation of all agriculture, to be abandoned at our peril. In the early 1990s, we saw attempts to shift the discussion on intellectual property from the farmer’s right to save seed of a formally-protected variety to the farmer’s privilege to do the same. Much of the rhetoric that attempts to stick it to The Seed Man focuses on seed saving, and the impact that F1 hybrids, GMOs and other evils will have on farmers who want to save their own seeds.
It is not surprising, therefor, that there’s a lot of sound and fury around the subject. From which melée I offer two snippets.
Bifurcated carrots is keeping a close eye on the progress of the proposed new European seed laws through the labyrinthine corridors of power. He’s hopeful that the lack of progress is a good thing, because it will start the whole process again.
While the seed industry thinks the proposal can be fixed with a few small changes, this is not the position of most seed related NGOs around Europe. It is certainly not our position. The current proposal is not without some good aspects, but overall it’s seriously flawed and should be rewritten.
James Ming Chen, a lawyer, will have no truck with any silly emotional, nostalgic idiocy.
Seed-saving advocates protest that compelling farmers to buy seed every season effectively subjects them to a form of serfdom. So be it. Intellectual property law concerns the progress of science and the useful arts. Collateral economic and social damage, in the form of affronts to the agrarian ego, is of no valid legal concern.
But would he actually prevent seed saving?