Zimbabwe should reject new plans by the African Regional Intellectual Property Organisation (ARIPO) on seed production and control because of the potential dangerous impacts on food security, particularly at a time of climate change, experts say.
News
The Zambia Alliance for Agro-Ecology and Biodiversity Conservation has called on government not to sign the African Region Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO) draft protocol on the protection of new plant varieties as it criminalizes small scale farmers’ rights to seed and threatens local food security.
The alliance made the call today during a media breakfast held at Chrisma Hotel in Lusaka.The alliance says the protocol if signed will also undermine the national seed and food sovereignty.
Ghanaian citizens have so far prevented the passage of the Plant Breeders Bill, a UPOV-91-compliant law that would strip Ghanaian farmers of their rights to their own seeds. But there is worse coming from the African Regional Intellectual Property Association (ARIPO). To Ghana's great credit, and despite determination and pressure from the G7, USAID and its contractors, despite the willing and enthusiastic cooperation of Ghana's Ministers, Attorney General, and both major political parties, Ghana has refused to pass a farmer destroying, sovereignty busting, UPOV law.
A new draft legal framework for the protection of new plant varieties under consideration by the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO) has generated significant criticism and controversy.
Nineteen sub-Saharan African nations, members of the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO) will be meeting in Tanzania on the 29th June-1st July to consider the adoption of a new regional Protocol on the Protection of New Varieties of Plant (Draft Protocol).
Seeds are the most important inputs in agricultural production. Plant genetic resources are the raw materials indispensable for crop improvement, whether by means of farmers’ selection, conventional breeding or modern biotechnologies. Crop genetic diversity is also essential in adapting crops to unpredictable environmental changes and future human needs.
The Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA), a Pan African platform comprising civil society networks and farmer organisations working towards food sovereignty in Africa, and representing millions of small-scale farmers, has been shunned by the African Regional Intellectual Property Organisation (ARIPO).
Sharing and saving seed is a crucial part of traditional farming all over Africa, writes Heidi Chow. Maybe that's why governments, backed by multinational seed companies, are imposing oppressive seed laws that attack the continent's main food producers and open the way to industrial agribusiness. But Ghana's women farmers are having none of it.
Susanne Gura, APBREBES (May 2015) Working Paper: Global, Profitable, Secret? DNA Fingerprints for Enforcement of UPOV’s Plant Variety Protection
According to the UPOV Conventions, it is up to member states to provide for appropriate legal remedies for the effective enforcement of the Conventions. But UPOV member states are being expected to play a crucial role in providing expensive technical and administrative infrastructure, as well as legally questionable confidentiality arrangements, in order to enable already powerful seed companies to enforce royalty income on the basis of evidence from DNA fingerprints of suspected seeds or plant material.