Agence France Presse / September 23, 2000 / By Jay Shankar
BANGALORE, India, Sept 23 (AFP) - More than 25 Indian peasants groups and foreign delegates will join a "Seed Tribunal" conference here Sunday to launch a fight against the globalisation of the seed industry, organisers said Saturday.
The stars of the meet are Jose Bove, France's anti-globalisation hero and Percy Schmeiser, a Canadian farmer who is fighting an alleged patent rights violation case against a local subsidiary of Monsanto, the US-based agro-chemical and seed firm.
The two-day event will culminate in a rally scheduled to be attended by more than 100,000 farmers from this southern Indian state of Karnataka, of which Bangalore is the capital, the organisers said.
"The World Bank, the foreign corporations and the World Trade Organisation have wiped out the Indian public sector firms and allowed multinational companies to operate in the Indian seed industry," said Vandana Shiva, an Indian ecologist who is heading the conference.
"The liberalisation of the seeds industry and the arrival of the gene giant Monsanto, has resulted in frequent crop failures, huge expenses for pesticides and high level of debts for the farmers," Shiva said.
"Genetic engineering of seeds is failing in industrialised nations. In Europe it is not commerical to sell them. So they are targetting Asia and India. Monsanto will collapse if it does not grab Indian market," she said.
"We cannot afford the Monsanto technology for India as most of the farmers will be wiped out. The seed exchanges among farmers has been a topic of discussion in the government but the government has been hijacked by corporations," Shiva argued.
Monsanto has been in the thick of controversy in India after the government cleared a plan for trials of genetically-engineered cotton seeds despite opposition from non-governmental forums.
Globally, the world's top 10 seed companies control one-third of the 23-billion-dollar commercial seed trade and account for 44 percent of sales.
India has referred two laws -- the Patent Bill and the Protection of Plant Varities and the Farmers Rights Bill -- to a parliamentary panel, under its World Trade Organization commitments.
Shiva said the bill will promote piracy of India's genetic wealth.
The conference coincided with an Asian Seeds conference planned in Bangalore and the organisers of the "Seed Tribunal" have said they might try to disrupt the proceedings.
Bove, who shot to global fame in August after his verbal and physical attacks on the McDonalds restaurant in his hometown of Millau, said more than 80 percent of Europe's population had rejected genetically modified seeds.
"Monsanto is trying to sell out of Europe in Asia and mostly in India. If this goes on farming community is going to be out. Only big companies will decide what is going to be good for farmers.
"All over the world farmers must fight it out," he said.
A public hearing on the impact of corporate control of seeds will take place during the conference with farmers and experts giving evidence of crop failures, mounting suicides and risks of genetic engineering, organizers said.
"The tribunal, which is an ancient Indian system of dispute settlement ... provides an alternative to the WTO rules and dispute settlement systems," Shiva said.
At the conclusion of the conference the associations will also call for an action plan to fight the multinational companies, the organizers said.
