smirk won't let Iraqi farmers use their own seeds

http://mindfully.org/Food/2004/Iraq-World-Food-Day15oct04.htm

Press Release / GRAIN 15oct04


When the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) celebrates biodiversity on World Food Day on October 16, Iraqi farmers will be mourning its loss.

A new report <1> by GRAIN and Focus on the Global South has found that new legislation in Iraq has been carefully put in place by the US that prevents farmers from saving their seeds and effectively hands over the seed market to transnational corporations. This is a disastrous turn of events for Iraqi farmers, biodiversity and the country's food security. While political sovereignty remains an illusion, food sovereignty for the Iraqi people has been made near impossible by these new regulations.

"The US has been imposing patents on life around the world through trade deals. In this case, they invaded the country first, then imposed their patents. This is both immoral and unacceptable", said Shalini Bhutani, one of the report's authors.

The new law in question <2> heralds the entry into Iraqi law of patents on life forms - this first one affecting plants and seeds. This law fits in neatly into the US vision of Iraqi agriculture in the future - that of an industrial agricultural system dependent on large corporations providing inputs and seeds.
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watch out world - see how the bloody hands bushgang will rape your country

That's the way to win hearts & minds, you betcha....

Hitler had plans to starve much of Eastern Europe in order to move Germans into the depopulated areas to colonize them.

here either. Shit. We will drive everyone who wants to plant seeds away unless you are an Agri Business. Farmers are not happy here but they voted for Bush** apparently. :shrug: Maybe this will help direct their anger. Who knows.

Since we haven't got control of the cities, do we have to use troops to enforce farming?

I see an enterprise opportunity in seed smuggling.

It's a growing threat though there have been some victories, though they are constantly being re-challenged. RiceTek tried to patent Basmati rice, a group of strains of rice grown in India and Pakistan that has been cultivated for thousands of years. India fought back and won though the last I've been able to determine efforts are still underway to re-challenge their victory.

Very sick.

particulary if the only distribute hybrid seeds which cannot produce a crop.

what the US corporations will give them, qualitywise... and they're right. Thanks to evidence discounting *, this invasion was wrong and now they're doing this.

Sovereignty is either total or non-existent.

And I wonder how much the Iraqis get to pay for this "freedom"...

They're controlling everything.

Next thing you know, gardening in the U.S. will be a revolutionary act.

Wait, I think it already is.

"Though I am an old man, I am a young gardner." Thomas Jefferson