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other propagating materials, development experts say.
“Debate on farmers’ rights legislation has gone for a long time without any laws being passed. It’s now more than 15 years and Zimbabwe needs to pass the laws in fulfilment of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA), which the country signed and ratified,” says Andrew Mushita, a veteran agronomist and director of the Community Technology Development Organisation (CTDO).
He adds: “National legislation is critical to protect and promote farmers rights in the wake of a fierce and ruthless campaign by large seed industries against farmers’ rights to freely save and exchange seed.”
Mushita says local crop diversity, especially traditional seed diversity, is fundamental for agricultural production and food security.
“There is a lot of pressure from UPOV to force Zimbabwe and other developing countries to adopt the revised 1991 UPOV Convention. “Government bureaucrats are being invited by UPOV because they have money and power. We fear that our Government will be pushed into ratifying a treaty that serves the interests of Europeans at the expense of our local farmers,” says Mushita.
“Efforts to come up with our own farmers rights, it seems, have been stalled by priority being given to UPOV which is dangling lots of dollars in return. It’s a shame; we must come up with our own legislation on farmers’ rights to avoid locking and choking these farmers.
“We must come up with a balanced legislation that covers the interests of smallholder farmers and plant breeders.”
Plant breeding and seed sales are now dominated by multinational agro-chemical and pharmaceutical corporations.
And, farmers’ rights proponents say these companies are working round the clock to block any policies and legal frameworks that will give smallholders farmers more rights to save, use and freely exchange their crop seed.
In addition, they say, these companies are lobbying aggressively to make it illegal for smallholder farmers to save and sell seeds from proprietary crop varieties without permission from breeders and the payment of a royalty.
“The proposed legal framework under UPOV is intent on handing over Zimbabwe’s food and seed sovereignty to foreign corporations, reducing the availability of local plant varieties and denying our farmers the right to breed and share crops needed to feed their families,” Mushita says.
Participants who attended a one-day workshop which was organised by CTDO recently warned that if no action was taken to speed up the crafting of farmers’ rights laws, the country will continue to lose its valuable traditional seed varieties which farmers have kept for ages.
The workshop was held under the theme: “Shaping the future of our local communities — Towards the domestication and realisation of Farmers’ Rights and Access Benefit Sharing legislation in Zimbabwe.”
“The rate at which the country is losing its crop genetic material is worrying.
“We need more support and protection to conserve our own traditional varieties in the wake of a sustained campaign by powerful seed companies to wipe out indigenous crop varieties,” said one participant
The ITPGRFA, known as the treaty provides that state parties are obliged to protect and promote farmers’ rights through the enactment of national legislation by government.
The process in Zimbabwe has taken more a decade-and-a-half with nothing concrete coming out.
“One of the major reasons why there has been a delay is that so many changes have happened in Government and it has been tough to push for this,” says Kudzai Kusena, an agriculturalist and curator of the Genetic Resources and Biotechnology Institute, formerly the National Genebank of Zimbabwe.
Adds Kusema: “There has not been much political will. Ministry of Agriculture and Attorney- General’s Office officials have met to discuss farmers’ rights issues but comments from the AG’s Office never gave us much ground to push it further. They argued that farmers’ rights are already covered in our existing statutes.
“If the AG’s Office comes up with a position, we can move this forward. All the gaps have been identified and these need to be incorporated and harmonised. It seems communication problems stalled the whole process.”
Proponents of farmers’ rights say farmers’ rights are a precondition for the maintenance of crop genetic diversity, which is the basis of all food and agriculture production in the world.
Basically, they argue that realising farmers’ rights creates an enabling environment that allows farmers to maintain and develop crop genetic resources as they have done since time immemorial.
They say farmers’ rights also allow for the recognition and rewarding of them for their role in the protection and safeguarding of crop genetic resources.
Farmers’ rights activists also believe that plant genetic diversity is probably more important for farming than any other environmental factor, simply because it is the factor that enables adaptation to changing environmental conditions such as plant diseases and climate change.
They further argue that farmers’ rights are crucial for ensuring present and future food security in general, and in the fight against rural poverty in particular.
Although there is no agreement over the definition of farmers’ rights, proponents say they generally consist of the customary rights of farmers to save, use, exchange and sell farm-saved seed and propagating material.
For ages, they say, smallholder farmers have contributed immensely to the global pool of genetic resources which have been exploited by large seed multinationals to develop commercial varieties of plants.
Fears among environmental and agricultural experts now abound that the relentless push by European countries for Zimbabwe to adopt and ratify the new UPOV Convention, as revised in 1991, will erode the country’s food sovereignty.
Food sovereignty provides people with the right access to nutritious and culturally compatible foods, which may include rare maize grains such as mutode, indigenous brown rice and a whole range of indigenous vegetables that include nyevhe, munyemba, chemberedzagumana, derere, mubovora and other wild crop and fruits.
Regis Mafuratidze, a CTDO legal expert, says policy and legal framework on Plant Variety Protection (PVP), based on the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) Convention of 1991, if adopted, will have significant adverse consequences for small-scale farmers that dominate the agricultural landscape in Zimbabwe.
“Our existing seed laws favour commercial plant breeders at the expense of smallholder farmers. And, if Zimbabwe ratifies the UPOV convention, the situation will be worse for our farmers who may face lawsuits and other threats from large and established breeders. Their right to save, use and exchange their own farm seed will be eroded,” he says.
But critics, think differently.
Etwell Gubunje, the director of Seed Services in the Ministry of Agriculture, refuted by farmers’ rights proponents that ratifying the UPOV Convention will have severe implications on the country’s food sovereignty and security.
“Ratifying UPOV will bring tremendous benefits to the country and I don’t think the rights of smallholder farmers will be undermined in any way. UPOV aims to safeguard the interest of plant breeders and their investment.
“Plant breeding is an expensive and costly investment and by protecting and safeguarding their rights, it gives them the confidence to invest more and do more,” he says.
The profit motive remains quite strong and as things stand, it seems there is no guarantee that seed trade will continue to allow space to provide a broad range of seed varieties which can be grown in abundance in the country.
The global influence of powerful seed companies is vicious and smallholder farmers will bear the brunt of legal and policy barriers which will increase their cost and dwindle their seed choices.
Online Reporter