UK Parliament motion rejects aid initiatives enhancing corporate control such as “New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition”

In a motion tabled before the United Kingdom Parliament on 4 November 2014, MPs call on the Government, to support community-controlled initiatives to assist farmers to access sustainable, affordable and productive seed varieties instead of initiatives that increase corporate control of seed markets. The motion highlights that UK aid is currently supporting initiatives such as the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition that promote plant variety protection laws such as in Ghana that fail to protect poor and indigenous farmers and are likely to increase the market dominance of transnational seed corporations; adding also that the Department for International Development committed in 2005 to end policy conditionality for UK aid recipients, and yet seed policy reforms required from some recipient states as part of aid commitments under the New Alliance appear in practice to undermine this commitment.