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Tuesday, Mar 08, 2005

Opinion

Opinion - Leader Page Articles

Seeds of trouble

By S. Bala Ravi

The new Seeds Bill now before Parliament has several farmer-unfriendly provisions and could also lead to theft of the country's biodiversity.

THE NEW Seeds Bill, which is set to repeal the old Seeds Act of 1966, makes an attempt to regulate the Indian seed trade in tune with current realities. It is already mired in controversy. This Bill is notable for the following major differences with the old Seeds Act. The Bill stipulates compulsory registration of all seeds traded in India; this is not required under the old Act, which allows sale of Government notified and `truthfully labelled' varieties with voluntary seed certification. Truthfully labelled means the seed is guaranteed by the seller for the prescribed minimum standards. The Bill requires compulsory State level registration of seed producer, processing unit and trader; the old Act insists only on a license for trading. The Bill will introduce compulsory registration of nurseries selling horticultural plants. The duration of registration is 15 or 18 years, with provision to double this term. Under the old Act it is 15 years for notified varieties and open-ended for `truthfully labelled' varieties.

Only the Central and State seed testing laboratories could offer seed certification under the old Act; accredited individuals or institutions will be allowed to under the new Bill. Seed certification is mandatory in the new Bill and it allows self-certification. It also introduces a National Register of Seeds and seeks to centralise registration by abrogating the authority of States to approve regional varieties. Enforcement is largely left to the old administrative set-up, which earned notoriety for inefficiency and corruption.

Indian agriculture is notable for low productivity and low replacement rate with quality seeds. About 75 per cent of seeds are replaced by farmers saving, re-sowing, sharing, exchanging, and selling. Seed quality alone may increase yield by 20 per cent. The new Bill aims at setting seed standards and regulation of seed quality during production, supply, sale, import and export. The need for such a seed law to enhance competitiveness of Indian agriculture is indisputable. Its effectiveness will depend on its compatibility with other existing national laws on the subject — namely, the Protection of Plant Variety and Farmers Rights Act (PPVFR), the Biological Diversity Act, The Plants, Fruits and Seeds (Regulation of Import into India) Order, and the Environment Protection Act.

A major omission in the Seeds Bill is its lack of harmony with farmers' rights and plant breeders' rights on varieties provided under the PPVFR. Plant breeder rights are established by registration under the PPVFR by those who develop the variety. Such rights allow exclusive commercialisation of the registered variety for 15 or 18 years depending on the crop. Farmers' rights include those over the traditional varieties that they conserve. The Seeds Bill will also grant registration to these varieties for commercialisation.

The word `registration' being used by both these laws for granting commercialisation rights creates confusion. Whereas registration is voluntary under the PPVFR, it is compulsory under the Seeds Bill. The Bill maintains studied ambiguity on the linkage with the plants breeder rights and farmers' rights offered by the PPVFR. This raises a major issue of public interest.

In the absence of clarity in the Bill, two possibilities arise for a variety not registered for plant breeder rights. First, registration under the Bill is restricted to the party who has developed it. This means an exclusive marketing right. It also means a de facto plant breeder right without registration under the PPVFR. Here the Seeds Bill transgresses its scope and usurps an important objective of the PPVFR. Secondly, registration of a variety is allowed for multiple parties, irrespective of who developed it. This means non-exclusive marketing right. This option allows de jure free-for-all seed trade on any variety, including farmers' varieties. But in the case of hybrid varieties, whose pedigree is not disclosed and seeds of parental lines are not accessible to others, the Seeds Bill will allow a unique monopolistic commercial advantage without acquiring plant breeder rights and without attracting the public interest liabilities attached to them.

Four most important public interest liabilities are mentioned here. One, the liability for benefit-sharing with tribal and farming communities the profit from seed trade, if their traditional varieties were used in the pedigree of the new seed. Two, the liability for compulsorily licensing of variety on failure to supply seed commensurate with demand and at reasonable price. Three, the liability to truthfully declare the origin of the variety and its pedigree, which are important for benefit sharing. Four, the liability to give up the exclusive marketing rights on completion of non-extendable 15 and 18 years, respectively for annual and perennial crop varieties. The Seeds Bill will nullify all these farmer-friendly provisions of the PPVFR.

Unlike the transparent process of registration under the PPVFR, the Seeds Bill registration is secretive. Multi-location test data on agronomic performance is compulsory for variety registration under the Seeds Bill. But the Bill does not establish a competent independent institutional framework for organising and overseeing this test. Public and private research and development institutions that develop the varieties will be allowed to conduct these tests themselves. These tests involve costs. Farmers have neither institutional support nor cost exemption to commercialise their varieties. Under the Seeds Bill, farmers registering varieties shall not be dealt as farmers, but as seed industrialists! In contrast, the PPVFR recognises the farmer as conserver, cultivator and breeder of plant varieties and protects him or her in all these roles. The Seeds Bill will be abridging or abrogating some of the farmers' rights provided in the PPVFR.

Another major concern is the lack of any mechanism in the Bill to regulate seed supply or price. The PPVFR, on the other hand, provides a compulsory licensing mechanism to ensure seed supply and regulate prices. Besides, the penalty provided for offences is mild compared with that under the PPVFR.

A common provision in the PPVFR and the Seeds Bill is eligibility of farmers for compensation when the agronomic performance claimed by the seed provider on a variety is not realised under cultivation. However, it will not be easy for farmers, particularly small or medium farmers, to successfully establish a compensation claim. The District Consumer Forums and State Consumer Councils, which are designed for the urban consumers, are not easily accessible to farmers in far-flung villages. Simplified and farmer-friendly seed insurance is required. Mandating registration of horticultural nurseries and enforcing seed standards on traded horti-crop propagules are the need of the hour. The Bill seems to have missed out the tissue cultured propagules.

Another major concern arising from the Seeds Bill is the gateway it will legitimise for piracy of Indian agro-biodiversity. The Biological Diversity Act excludes use of plant varieties for conventional breeding from the purview of commercialisation. All normally traded agricultural commodities are also excluded from its purview. The PPVFR allows free access to all plant varieties for breeding new varieties. With the Seeds Bill promoting seeds export without enforcing plant breeder rights and stringent identity, the piracy of agro-biodiversity gets legitimised. At exit ports, there is no effective mechanism to regulate the seeds that actually move out. This outflow of Indian biodiversity is gaining momentum with the increasing plant breeding in the country by multinational seed companies. For them the Seeds Bill is the right legislation at the right time.

The Seeds Bill is bending over backward to accommodate the interests of transgenic plant varieties by allowing their provisional registration for two years, obviously ahead of official approval under the Environment Protection Act. The questions are: how does provisional registration not violate environmental and human safety, and how can transgenic material released in the environment be called back.

The PPVFR was passed by Parliament in August 2001. Much legislation passed since then, including Biological Diversity Act 2002, have been implemented, but not the PPVFR. In the mean time, efforts are afoot to take India to the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) club, which denies many of the farmers' rights provided in the PPVFR. Astounding that the very Ministry of Agriculture that piloted the PPVFR has now authored the Seeds Bill in which many of the farmer friendly provisions of the PPVFR are re-written. The present seeds law regime allows a foolproof patent-like monopoly on hybrid seeds and transgenic hybrids and farmer unfriendly practices in the trade of low volume-high value seeds. Hence the Indian private seed sector is gravitating to these seeds sectors. The contradictions between the Seeds Bill and other domain legislation create loopholes for establishing monopoly on seeds, pirating national bioresources, denying farmers' rights, and evading public accountability. Public interest demands that its legal incongruities and farmer-unfriendly provisions are corrected before the Seeds Bill is passed by Parliament.

(S. Bala Ravi is Advisor (Biodiversity) at the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai and former Assistant Director General (IPR) of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research.)

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