It has become crucial to defend seeds. In the past 20 or 30 years, what was once seen as normal – peasant farmers growing, selecting, saving and exchanging seeds – has come under attack from corporations seeking to control and commodify the very basis of agriculture. This was the subject of the session at the World Social Forum in Tunis on Peasant Seeds jointly organized on March 28, 2013 by La VÃa Campesina, GRAIN and the ETC Group.
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by Tanzanian farmers’ organizations and civil society organizations
Farmers’ and civil society organizations in Tanzania are concerned about the rush for Zanzibar to adopt its Plant Breeders’ Rights Bill. It would hasten Tanzania’s entry into the UPOV intellectual property legal framework with grave consequences for farmers.
For the statement and list of signatories:
by Catherine Monagle
Foreword by the Editors
The Association for Plant Breeding for the Benefit of Society (APBREBES) was granted
observer status to UPOV in October 2010. At the same time, UPOV established a working
group to look at rules concerning observers. In such a discussion, we believe the
overview provided in this report on the rules concerning observers in UPOV and in
other international fora of relevance to UPOV will be useful.