From the time people first began cultivating and
harvesting cereal grains - some ten to fifteen thousand years ago, plants and
their products have been a necessary component of the material foundations upon
which human societies were formed. As humans, we all need to eat, and what we
eat, whether it is a steak or tofu, pasta or chocolate cake, is originally
derived from basic plant material. Plants provide us not only with food, but
also with the raw materials required for the production of numerous goods from
cotton t-shirts, to automobile tires, to life-saving drugs. Since agriculture
began over lO,OOO years ago, humans have selectively bred plants and animals in
order to create stronger, healthier, higher yielding organisms.
Selective plant breeding is accomplished by
choosing seeds with the most desirable traits from each year's harvest in the
hope that the desired characteristics of the selected parent will surface in
its offspring. In doing so, over thousands of years the steady accumulation of
desirable genes has produced more and more highly productive plants.
In the last two decades, scientists have been able
to engage in a more specific form of crop selection by isolating the genetic
material of organisms and inducing specific modifications so that the plants
carry and reproduce desired genetic traits such as resistance to pesticides,
higher nutritional content, and improved appearance. These biotechnological
innovations pose large ramifications for agriculture - for farmers, small seed
companies and consumers. Seeds reproduce themselves almost indefinitely and
thus do not lend themselves to commodification.
So what exactly
is “commodification”. Well, it is difficult to own the seed as property because
its a biological organism that naturally wants to reproduce under all kinds of
different circumstances. So industry pursued two routes of commodification –
the social route, which has to do with legislation making the seed ownable, and
the technological route, which is hybridisation. In this way they have made
seeds patentable by the company that engineers them. They become a commodity of
the company.
Because seeds are not easily commodified, two
things have remained true until the latter part of this century:
- the genetics of most major crop plants have been regarded as common
heritage
- and little private investment has been made in plant and crop
improvement.
In the later part of last century there were
technological routes, such as hybridization, taken towards commodification of
the seed. Companies have also taken legalistic routes, such as the granting of
property rights to plant varieties and, more recently, utility patent
protection to certain "new" plant varieties.
The almost infinite reproduction of the seed,
however, has always posed a problem for its ultimate commodification: not all
plant varieties, especially crops, are able to be hybridized, and even patented
plants have numerous offspring.
In recent years, advances in bio-technology have
allowed for an increase in the commodification of seeds not only by relying on patent protection for bio-engineered varieties, but through taking a new route to
commodification - through bio-technical processes that, among other things, render
the seeds sterile or insert easily recognizable "marker" genes that
identify plants' DNA strains as being the intellectual property of various biotech
firms.
The introduction of these innovations into the
international realm of global trade and property protection has been an awkward
and at times highly controversial transition. Nevertheless, intellectual property law seems to be
the framework under which international protection and control of genetic
resources will be discussed and decided.
What used to belong to all on a grand scale is now finding its way into ownership and control by the few.
Interesting?!??
