Despite industry's disgust, Third World governments and citizen's groups got moving and the issue was put on the table at the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) at the turn of the 1980s. Since then, the momentum of action, the depth of NGO analysis of the problem and the scope of participation in what became a worldwide campaign has grown tremendously. To trace this history for Seedling's anniversary -- the evolution of the issues and of the people and institutions involved -- we decided to take Pat Mooney's second major publication, "The Law of the Seed", as a benchmark reference. "The Law of the Seed" was published as the 1983 issue of the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation's journal Development Dialogue, for the FAO Conference that year. Since it was printed exactly ten years ago, we can take the main issues point by point and see how things have changed over the decade behind us -- and what is left to be done.

* The erosion

Back in 1983, NGOs -- as well as the scientific community -- did not have all that much hard data on the pace and extent of genetic erosion in world agriculture. Right now, we still don't. Obviously, clearing forests, building dams and constructing roads or airports has and continues to have devastating effects on biological diversity. In the farmers' fields, though, the evidence back then was hard to come by, but appeared serious enough. As reported in 1983, "Over the last half century, India has probably grown over 30, 000 different landraces of rice. The situation has altered drastically over the past 15 years, however, and Dr. H.K lain of the Indian Agricultural Research Institute in New Delhi predicts that in another 15 years this enormous rice diversity will be reduced to no more than 50 varieties, with the top ten accounting for over three-quarters of the subcontinent's rice acreage." Jain's pessimism in the early 1980s is turning into reality. In 1983, high-yielding varieties covered 54% of India's ricelands. In 1987, 69% of India's harvested rice area was grown to the uniform HYVs. Were the displaced varieties collected and conserved? Again, it's hard to say. The National Genebank in Delhi has the capacity to hold 600,000 accessions, but currently less than 7,000 rices are in tong term storage there. Over in Sri Lanka, farmers were growing 2,000 traditional varieties of rice in 1959. Today they grow essentially five.

There is no reason to believe that genetic erosion is not equally advancing in other cereals, fruits, vegetables and root crops throughout the world. Most of South Africa's sorghum landraces have been replaced by Texas hybrids, while the enormous diversity of traditional tall wheats in countries like Portugal, Greece and Pakistan has disappeared from farmers' fields, where mainly uniform semi-dwarfs are now grown. Turkeys heritage of beet varieties has been sold off to the Detroit Globe, introduced from the German industry. In Latin America, home of maize, nearly half of the region's crop is sown to modern or hybrid varieties. Czechostovakia, gearing up for the market economy, has ripped up its apple orchards of hundreds of traditional stocks and now three modern varieties cover two-thirds of the apple area.

Clearly, the process of genetic erosion has not declined over the past decade(s). But frankly, the only information we have is anecdotal and unsystematic. No serious surveys -- be it by crop, by country, by region or other -- have been carried out, despite the growing evidence that genetic uniformity is a direct threat to food and farmer security.

* The politics

The politics of conservation was the issue that spurred the Third World diptomats at FAO into action at the beginning of the 1980s. Of major importance there were the NGO analyses and figures on what was happening with the seeds collected from their countries: how they were being transferred to the North and stored there in genebanks, how they were being privatised by legislation there, and how all this was done under the banner of "free exchange" and the coordination of the International Board for Plant Genetic Resources (IBPGR). Exact figures on the size of this "gene drain" were -- and still are -- impossible

to get hold of, as nobody really bothered to count. However, if we compare estimates from the beginning of the 1980s with more recent ones, the bulk of the world's collected genetic resources continue to be stored under the control of the North. Yes, the total numbers of seeds stored in the banks have increased, and a tot more genebanks have been built in the South. But some two-thirds of the genes in the bank are still under control of the North, either directly through their national genebanks, or indirectly through the seed stores of the International Agricultural Research (''entree (lARCs), which are largely funded and managed by the industrialised countries (see graph).

But then, raising the question of who controls or owns which seed collection -- and the discussions and mechanisms on how to redress the current bias towards the interests of the North -- is only part of the headway made over the last decade. Perhaps more importantly, a fundamental question was put on the table in the process: what form of conservation do we want? Apart from alarming reports on seeds dying in genebanks; no one really questioned the genebank system as such back in the early 1980s. Ten years later, everybody seems to agree that the exclusive focus on genebanks as a way to conserve genetic diversity in not only politically wrong, but also technically risky. In one decade, NGOs managed to obtain international recognition that a parallel, on-farm, seed saving system is desperately needed. A tot of that recognition is still merely in the form of documents of UN bodies and papers of enlightened scientists, and little of it has trickled down to the local realities. But still, the foundation is there to build a more reliable, more equitable and better controlled conservation system.

* The industry

Ten years ago, NGOs were alarmed that the once family-operated seed industry was falling prey to large multinationals -- and those which had a vested interest in increasing their market for chemical and food trade sales. In 1983, the count was 500 companies bought out and another 300 under contractual relations with large transnationals since the early 1970s. According to "The Law of the Seed", the top 17 seed companies controlled 21)% of the world's $13 billion market in 1983. Ten years later, the market has risen to $15-17 billion, with the top 15 firms accounting for nearly a third of it. The concentration has numerically increased.

More significant than the dollar figures, though, is a took at the configuration of the industry. Back in the early 1980s, food traders and petroleum companies were among the main players on the market. Even a car manufacturer joined in at some point. Many of these companies pulled out, though, in the course of the 1980s to diversify and strike better profits elsewhere. Who took their place? The chemical, drug and big seed companies which were starting to invest in biotechnology. Companies like ICI were foreign to the seed industry ten years ago. Today, ICI and its top competitors from Sandoz, Ciba-Geigy and Upjohn are putting huge resources to work not only in conventional plant breeding hut also in devetoping molecular innovations to insert into crops: individual genes that code for herbicide tolerance or insect resistance, change the composition of seed oils or proteins, or stow down the ripening process of fruits and vegetables so they last longer on the shelves. The graph below gives an overview of the evolution of seed sales of some of the major companies.

ON THE DIPLOMATIC FRONT

What started as outrage over the politics of conservation in the beginning of the 1980s, resulted in a set of international agreements negotiated throughout that decade or into the early 1990s The originally proposed legally-binding FAO "Convention. on Plant Genetic Resources ended up as a voluntary "Undertaking., coupled with an Intergovernmental Commission to monitor and implement it. As such, this is not a minor achievement. The Commission was, and still is, the only platform in which governments worldwide can discuss the politics and praxis of conservation of plant genetic resources. A tot has been achieved in the process. We have an environment for discussion in which the desire to reach consensus and move forward has taken over from mere controversy and polemics. We have formal recognition that genetic resources come from the countries of South, and that it should be them to benefit from it. And we have "Farmers Rights" to balance the rights of breeders. Although many of these achievements still exist only on paper, a decade of discussions in FAO served to lay the groundwork for concerted action

Of a more recent vintage is the global Biodiversity Convention, signed at the Earth Summit last year. After five years of negotiations, the Convention crystallizes a commitment to new action, but also an impressive list of shortcomings. The obvious achievements are that it forms a legally binding instrument and that it brings together -- for the first time -- a whole series of concerns related to biodiversity in a North-South context. The obvious shortcomings are that it leaves out an important pan of biodiversity (all that stored in genebanks), it opens the way for the patenting of genetic resources, and the text is at times confusing and highly watered down. How useful the Convention will be depends to a large extent on what will happen at the upcoming intergovernmental meetings where diplomats will have to further define and clarify many of the outstanding issues.

If the 1980s witnessed the boom in biotechnology investments, it also witnessed the increased privatisation of agricultural research. Until the 1970s, a tot of plant breeding work in the North was carried out in the public sector. By the early 1980s, multinationals were not only buying up small seed houses as a conduit for increased control over agriculture, they also started buying up university research teams and public breeding programmes. Much of it was to get a fast entry into biotechnology and have the university researchers do the work for the multinationals. This trend introduced a whole new culture of corporate secrecy and privacy at public institutes created for the very purpose of sharing information. In some cases m Europe, whole public breeding sectors were sold off, as governments figured the private sector would be more efficient. In 1987, the British government sold its prestigious Plant Breeding Institute to the Angto-Dutch congtomerate Unilever. In 1990, the French almost sold off the National Institute of Agronomic Research (INRA), their equivalent of PBI, to the chemical giant Rhône-Poulenc.

Numerically, participation in the plant breeding effort to supply farmers with decent seed has grown more concentrated and is increasingly driven by the private, rather than the public, sector. Most important though is questioning whether the new seedsmen are offering farmers more or less diversity in their crops. With the concentration of breeding programmes, the little use breeders make of genebank collections, and the current focus on single super-genes rather than broad genetic complexes, the answer to that question seems obvious.

* The technology

When writing about genetic resources and agriculture ten years ago, NGOs tended to mention biotechnology with trepidation. Now they are writing entire books about it. One important reason for the restructuring of the seed industry was the emergence of new technologies that altow for a much more deterministic approach to modifying crops and animals and ultimately the food we eat. Rather than messing around with complicated crossing and back-crossing breeding programmes, hopes within the industry were set high to develop a technology that isolates and inserts specific genes into crops and microbes to do just about anything you want. Before anything of such a nature was even technically (let atone commercially) possible, company officials went around promising a chemical-free agriculture and a world without hungry people. Still, apart from the initial hype about its possibilities and promises, the new biotechnologies are profoundly restructuring not only the industry, but also the way agricultural science is being done. It basically altows scientists to took for solutions at the molecular/cellular level, rather than at the level of plants in their environments.

There might be no other issue taken up so quickly by NGOs than the prospects of the biorevolution. Initial concerns were limited to the environmental implications of the release of genetically engineered organisms, but quickly the concern broadened to the socio-economic impact of the new biotechnologies on food, farming and health. In the past few years, NGO reports were put together on the corporate quest for engineering crops that provide for tolerance against herbicides, or crops that rely for their resistance against pests and diseases on one or very few genes. Campaigns were organised against the use of biotech-manufactured growth hormones in cattle. NGOs were quick in drawing attention to the control of the new biotechnologies in the hands of the same few companies that took control of the seeds sector a decade ago. And discussions were forced into international fore and national policy institutions on the implications of all of this for the developing countries.

To a large extent the new biotechnologies still have to find their way to the farmers' fields, but the decisions on what they will bring and whom they will benefit are being taken right now. The struggle which we have commenced to ensure that people benefit from biotechnology rather than see it used as another tool to concentrate political and economic control is a vital one.

* The rights

The push to patent life goes back several decades when plant breeders began calling out for a means to get a return on their investment in crop improvement. The European lobby started among fruit tree breeders in the 1920s, and the US breeders got a limited "Plant Patent Act" in 1930. After decades of debate, it became clear that the patent system was not adequate to cover biological "inventions". Plants were not like typewriters. They reproduce themselves, they are part of nature, they are the basis of the food supply. For these reasons and others, a specialised system of protection for new plant varieties was set up in 1961 at the signing of the UPOV Convention (Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants). "Plant Breeders' Rights" (PBR) were intended to be a soft form of intellectual property right. The monopoly was limited to the commercial use of the variety without covering the germplasm of the plant itself. Thus, plant breeders could freely use protected varieties as sources of initial variation for new varieties, and farmers were free to re-use seed from their harvest grown from PBR-covered varieties.

In the early days of the ICDA Seeds Campaign, putting a halt to the spread of Plant Breeders' Rights legislation -- both in the North and the South -- was a major focus of energy. In the early 1980s, countries like Canada, Austria, Australia were heavily debating whether to adopt PBR legislation. NGOs played an important role in these debates, and managed to have parliamentary decisions postponed over and over again. Around the same time, UPOV officials were very actively pushing Third World governments to go for the PBR system. Without too much success, though. For those countries were at that moment fighting at FAO about control over genetic resources and denouncing the privatisation of them through PBR.

A decade later, much of the debate on PBR has been overshadowed by public concern over a much stronger form of intellectual property rights: the industrial patent system. Again, NGOs played -- and continue to play -- a strong role in the fight against its extension to plants and animals. For many of us in the early 1980s, the patenting of life forms sounded like nightmarish science-fiction. Today, we now find ourselves in the middle of heated policy discussions, aggressive tobby activities and unprecedented legal battles to prevent this from becoming reality. The push for patents on life initially focused entirely on the OECD countries, with the US patent office granting its first plant patent in 1985 and its first animal patent in 1988, and the EC Commission proposing a biotech patent "directive" in 1988. However, soon the patent question showed its North-South dimensions when Third World countries pushed the debate into FAO and onto the negotiations for the Biodiversity Convention. At the same time, the North managed to introduce the issue into the GATT negotiations, and if the agreement is signed it would oblige the South to accept some form of intellectual property rights on life forms.

A tot can change in a decade. While ten years ago the fight over the privatisation of genetic resources focused on a limited system and involved few actors (a few NGOs, the UPOV crew and some ministries of agriculture), now we are facing an issue with tremendous implications for the future of agriculture, a growing number of negotiators around the table in a growing number of fore, and a whole tot more NGOs who have taken up the issue and are campaigning on it. The huge interests involved and the industrial lobby behind it, make intellectual property rights an issue on which NGOs are fighting with their backs against the wall. But, compared to ten years ago, the fact that so many more people's organisations are realising the profound implications and are joining the fight against it is truly encouraging.

What should not go unnoticed in reviewing a decade of action against the privatisation of life forms is that NGOs managed to introduce a new element in the discussions: the push for the rights of those who until now have gone completely unrecognised, that is the rights of farmers and indigenous peoples who conserve and keep available genetic resources worldwide. We have moved the concept of "Farmers Rights" through discussions and endorsement by the international community at FAO. We have an "Agenda 21" and a Biodiversity Convention stressing the contributions of indigenous peoples to the conservation of biodiversity, and ruling on "the equitable sharing of the benefits" arising from the use of their knowledge. It remains to be seen whether these new concepts and recognitions will make a difference and stand up against the demolishing effect of the ongoing privatisation biological resources and technologies through the industrial patent system. But the point is that ten years ago we were mostly fighting against, while now we're also fighting for.

* The people

Surprisingly enough, it took quite some time before "the people" found their place in the NGO agenda on genetic resources. As Pat Mooney admits in the interview further on in this Seedling, in the beginning, the seeds campaign was hardly cognizant of the role and contribution of millions of farmers, and thousands of NGOs, in safeguarding the planet's genetic resource base. Over recent years, however, there has been a "rediscovery" of the role of small-scale agriculture as a cornerstone of Development and the importance of local people in managing their genetic heritage and the local knowledge linked to it. It is now increasingly recognised that indigenous farming systems based on mixed cropping, soil and water conservation, and biological pest management not only conserve and utilise a tremendous mosaic of genetic diversity, but can produce more output and a wider range of harvested products, particularly in marginal environments. The recognition that farmers can and do play a crucial role in the conservation and management of genetic and other natural resources has largely coincided with a call for environmentally sustainable Development which conventional, western-based, models of capital-intensive agriculture are increasingly being seen as unable to provide. After decades of neglect by official circles, the knowledge of farmers, herbalists, herdspeople and fisherfolk and their unique innovative capacity is beginning to be seen by policy makers as the key to sustainable agriculture, not only in the South but also in the North.

While these are positive trends, major obstacles obviously remain. International policies on trade, aid and finance tend to ignore their impacts on genetic diversity and on the role of small-scale farmers in conservation and Development. And most of the responses of the formal plant breeding and agricultural research system are still limited to mere policy statements while the overall tendency in most countries is to continue to promote systems based on monoculture. Also, there are many new and dangerous trends. In particular, the new challenges from biotechnology, which coupled with the continuing privatisation of genetic resources through patenting, threatens to scupper the meagre advances achieved to date. Still, the increasing convergence of and cooperation between peoples organisations working at the local level and NGOs working on these issues at national and international levels, is probably one of the most encouraging Developments that took place over the past decade.

INDIANS FIGHT FOR THEIR SHEDS

Indian farmers have begun a massive action to save their inalienable rights as breeders and users of seeds. Protesting against the entry of large multinationals in India's seed sector and denouncing the GATT proposals on intellectual property, some one thousand farmers stormed the office of Cargill Seeds in southern India late December. Cargill is the world's top grain trader and sixth largest seed company in the world. It set foot to import and sell seeds in India in 1988, when the government opened the market to foreign companies. Farmers belonging to the Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha (KRRS) thronged the Cargill building, entered the office on the third ftoor, and threw all the documents and seeds they could find in the bureau onto the street, where they were burned in a mid-morning bonfire. The farmer-activists on the street voiced their protest and handed out leaflets stating that their action is to protect the rights of farmers to produce, modify and sell seeds. "Seed freedom is freedom of the Nation", they hailed. Their appeal urged that genetic resources are national property and farmers have the right to produce, reproduce and innovate on seeds -- a right the multinational seeds companies want to restrict, through intellectual property rights (IPR). KRRS plans to broaden and strengthen the protest movement with other farmers" organisation and sensitive scientists throughout the country.

For a set of press clippings and a commentary on what the farmers call the "Seed Satyagraha", please contact: or. Vandana Shiva, Third World Network, 105 Rajpur Road, Dehra Dun 248 001, India.

* The future

Weve come a tong way in transforming the issue from a concern of a few into the worry of many. Which, obviously, does not mean that we can sit back and relax. In many ways the problems related to genetic resources are worse now than they were ten years ago. Many, if not all, the issues NGOs warned about in the past have happened or are happening right now: genetic erosion continues at an alarming rate, seed companies have not only been bought up by larger transnational congtomerates but the whole seed sector is being submerged into much wider industrial interests including those related to biotechnology. As predicted with alarm, we now have companies breeding for tolerance to agrochemicals, we now see others working to replace export commodities from the South with substitutes from the North, and we have tots of institutions churning out yet more genetic uniformity. On top of it, we have an enormously powerful legislation invading all of this and giving the pseudo-public and private sectors monopoly rights over the very basis of life.

The challenges ahead are tremendous. First of all, we need to continue to explain the problem. We need to document what is going on -- be it with genetic erosion, political power plays, industry control or North-South inequities. And we need to continue to popularise our information, to reach an ever wider audience and empower people through an understanding of these complex issues.

Secondly, we need to increase our efforts to promote popular control over genetic resources. The current diplomatic talk and international agreements have to be urgently and creatively translated into concrete action. We cannot leave discussions on this to diplomats and bureaucrats atone. "Farmers Rights" must not only be recognised but also aggressively implemented. Indigenous knowledge must not only be seen as important, but be taken as the basis for peoples Development strategies.

Thirdly, we need to upgrade our fight for an agricultural research system meaningful to all of us -- be it public or private -- and geared towards sustaining the resource base rather than destroying it. We need to continue critically assessing the technology that is being developed "for us" and fight for a technology that is developed "with us". And we need to prevent the worst: that genetic resources and the technologies based on them became the exclusive monopoly of a few.

Finally and perhaps most importantly, we need to continue creating and fostering the alternatives. At the local level, we need to increase our expertise, our technical competence, to really move ahead in popular management of genetic resources for the benefit of farmers and local Development. At the international level we need to better understand what are the real problems and needs of the peasant sector, and update our activities and campaigns accordingly. All of us working at different levels -- be it local, national or international -- need to continue to talk to each other and build stronger alliances, more than ever.

Henk: Is this because the issues changed, the companies changed, or we changed?

Pat Undoubtedly all of us have changed to some degree. What we always want to say is no, we haven't changed, we're exactly as we were and the rest of the world has changed. That would be exaggerating. But I don't think it's that far off from that. Again, when you took at who it is we're talking to, the companies have changed. Dramatically. There's a whole new generation almost; We're not dealing with the patriarchs who ran small family seed companies, we're dealing with multinationals, we're dealing with the corporate reality. Second, they've been dealing with the issues now for a dozen years -- ten years through Seedling -- and they're used to the idea, in fad they understand now that there are political implications to germplasm control and germplasm flows, that patents are contentious and all these things have been manifested very clearly to them now. And I think without exception they would say "Yes, we've changed, we understand these implications." They would also want to say the we have changed and we've become more reasonable and all that kind of stuff. But I can't think of any position that we took before which has moderated. I don't think there is one. I think we use language perhaps more carefully now, but I don't think our positions have changed and I don't think they're perceived to have changed.

Henk: Could we say that the world around us has changed so much that our "punchiness", our criticism, doesn't harm that much any more and thus makes it less relevant and less harmful to the guys we want to hit?

Pat No. I think you could even put it the other way around: that our punchiness and our criticism ten years ago were pretty harmless. The most it did was worry a few small seed companies; it didn't particularly worry the governments, it just sort of irritated them. But I don't think we've been particularly effective. What we've been doing is building an educational base so that people understand the issues. On the other side, the issues have moved along. Biotechnology has been born in the minds of people and the practical grassroots work has surfaced. The companies have done all the things we feared they would. If you took back at the early Seedlings or Seeds of the Earth" and the fears that were there about the future, they either have happened already or are imminently likely to happen, almost indisputably. Genetic erosion has accelerated, corporate consolidation is there as well as the new technologies, and much tougher, much more dangerous intellectual property systems are spreading in the world. On the other side, the world knows these issues are there, things are happening. And there is some remote possibility both at the level of the community and at the level of the international governments -- the global governments -- that something might happen, the course of things might become constructive at some stage. That's the best you can say now. I mean Seedling is not a full-grown plant; it's still got a tong way to go.

The growth of Seedling

Henk: But then, what do you think if you took at Seedling in the old days, 1983-1986.

Pat: Boring and unreadable.

Renée: Do you read Seedling?

Pat: Yes! But not all the time. I don't read anything all the time. I haven't even read my own book "Shattering" yet.

Henk: That's because you wrote it.

Pat: Perhaps, but in general. I don't read anything systematically, except for maybe biotechnology journals. But I'd say the scope of Seedling is obviously much, much wider than it was then. If it wasn't wider, you should be ashamed of yourselves. And it's certainly better written vastly more attractive, and most importantly, it's actually being read. What's the mailing list of Seedling now?

Henk: 1,2001 think.

Pat: And it goes to how many countries? Renée: 95.

Pat: Well that's an incredible difference. In 1982 there were probably about a hundred people, two hundred people, on the planet who knew something about plant genetic resources. And that includes the scientific community. And everybody at FAO. And now there are 1,200 people in nearly 100 countries who subscribe to Seedling. And it gets quoted endlessly -- everybody refers to Seedling, it comes up constantly in conversation. I don't mean constantly in everyone's conversation but in agriculture it's well-known. And that's a sign of increasing sophistication. The issue which was once "the seeds issuer, which is now the biodiversity or the biodiversity-biotech issue, is at least in its 20s. It's past its teenage years but it's not exactly a fully mature operation. But it certainly is as sophisticated, I would think, as any campaign the NGO community has ever put together. In some ways much more sophisticated, I would argue. And that is manifested in Seedling. Some of the other NGO campaigns have tended to be very rifle-shot campaigns. But this issue has succeeded in addressing such a sphere of elements, from IPRs to biotechnology to seed conservation at the community level to looking at the implications from seeds to the wider agricultural biodiversity. This is a much wider range than has been covered by any other campaign. The fact that it has managed to expand to that scope and still be comprehensible -- still have specific targets and strategies -- is impressive. And I think Seedling has played probably the major role in taming and building that support. It certainly hasn't been the books that any of us have written, frankly. Short things like Seedling get read -- and used.

COTTON HAS BEEN PATENTED

NGOs have been warning the scientific and political community all along. Opening the doors to the patenting of life forms will result in a dangerous expansion of corporate control over crops, animals, basic breeding techniques and perhaps one day even human beings. Nov., in the midst of the wrangling over whether the human or rice genomes can be someone's exclusive property, cotton - as a crop - has fallen victim to corporate greed. The USbiotech compay Agracetus, fully owned by WR Grace, has been granted a patent on all genetically engineered transformations of the cotton plant. According to Agracetus' vice president of finance, Russell Smestad, "We were the first to devetop a transgenic cotton plant by any method.. In his reasoning, this gives Agracetus the legal and togical right to claim ownership of any and all transgenic cotton. The news has thrown scientists and NGOs into a fury. Cotton, which originated in Asia, is an important crop for the Third World, both in terms of export and domestic use as a source of fibre and oil. In total, cotton represents a market of $13.6 billion for Third World farmers. Agracetus' patent constitutes an enormous disincentive against transgenic cotton research to ameliorate production conditions in the South.

Although Agracetus says it is prepared to license out segments of the transgenic cotton market, nobody knows under what conditions. The first transgenic cotton to hit the market expected sometime in 1994 - will be marketed by Calgene, under license to Agracetus. It is resistant to Rhône-Poulenc'e bromaxynil herbidde, which inhibits photosynthesis. Armed with Calgene'e patented Bromotol gene, the transgenic cottons can be "safely" sprayed with the lethal chemical. Thus the new cotton will carry at least two patents, which farmers will have to pay royalties on when buying the seed. How all this may help foster sustainable agriculture in the Third World is pretty much a mystery.

See "AgBiotechnology News", December 1992.

Henk: Give me two or three points of how you would improve Seedling.

Pat: I personally think it could be bigger. I would like to see more on biotech in it, more updated sort of stuff. So I'd like more detail in Seedling, rather than less. I know that it can't be a tot more but I'd like to see more briefs on what's happening on the biotech side especially. And perhaps here or there more additional articles on specific areas or adventuring into one thing in every issue of Seedling that goes into the wider climate of the issue, one step beyond. A guest editorial or a guest essay from some related aspect. Also I think what we're all missing is something that gets out fast and breaks news. The thing about the earlier Seedlings was, and I remember this rule well, was not to take more than a day to produce it: it should be started in the morning and in the mail at the end of the day. But it serves a very good purpose the way it is and it would be dangerous to play with it too much. So I would be cautious about my advice if I were you.

Henk: What we don't find in the earlier Seedlings, and what is increasingly important in our activities, is information about what's going on at the grassroots level. That's completely absent, I think, in our earlier works.

Pat: Absolutely. We had no idea what was going on at the grassroots level. Not the remotest idea. And the thing is, there were things going on at the grassroots level then, of course. It's just that no one had a name for it and, by and large, no one thought it was important. At the same time, to be fair, because of things like Seedling a tot more is going on. A tot more has been stimulated. I mean there has been a major explosion of knowledge about the issue -- that is certainly true. And it's certainly also true that if it hadn't been for NGOs, there would not have been that explosion of knowledge. There would still be Trevor Williams directing IBPGR, nothing happening at FAO, very little activity by Third World governments, no knowledge about NGOs and probably many more genebanks in deterioration. So it's not a bad record, after ten years.

It really isn't.

EC BATTLES RAGE ON

In October 1992, the European Parliament voted a set of amendments to the European Commission's 1988 draft directive on patenting biotechnological inventions. Without delay, the Commission has now issued a revised proposal of the directive, taking into account some of the amendments of the Parliament, and plenty of amendments from Europe's biotech industry. The biggest points of controversy in the three years of the Parliament's debate were the ethics of patenting life forms, especially animals and humans, and the need to protect the rights of farmers to reuse patented seed. The Commission is not ready to cede too much on these points. Yes, they argue, pans of the human body per se should not be patentable, but research on animals -- even if they suffer -- is important to humanity. As to the introduction of a "farmers" privilege' in the provisions of the directive, the Commission is against it but leaves the point open for discussion at higher political levels. The amended directive has to go to the Council of Ministers so that they come to a "common positions". In the meantime, on 12 February, the Parliament overwhlemingly voted an urgent resolution calling upon the European Patent Office to revoke the first European animal patent on the so-called "oncomouse". The landslide vote (178 for and 19 against, with 27 abstentions) came two days before expiration of the deadline for filing legal oppositions to the onco-mouse patent. Nearly 200 NGOs have filed collective oppositions from various European countries, as well as Brazil and India, against this animal patent. The Parliament's energetic move is a sign that positions against patenting life are firming up.

Copies of the amended directive (Document COM(92) 589), accompanied by a 7-page "outline", are available in the EC languages from: Mr. Dominique Vandergheynst, Commission of the European Communities, DG-lll/F-3, avenue des Nerviens 9, B-1040 Brussels, Belgium. Tel: (32-2) 295.69.23. Fax: (32-2) 295.02.81.

For those interested in the genetic resources of the SADCC region (southern Africa), the proceedings of the first national workshop on plant genetic resources in Namibia has just been published. The meeting took place in late 1991 and brought together national scientists, SADCC Regional Genebank representatives and international agencies to discuss the state of Namibia's genetic resources conservation and the activities of other institutions: the SADCC genebank, the International Board for Plant Genetic Resources Regional, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation.

"Dinteria", Number 23, October 1992, Windhoek, Namibia. Available from Namibia Scientific Society, P.O. Box 67, Windhoek, Namibia.

Barbara Dinham from the UK-based Pesticides Trust has compiled an environmental audit on hazardous pesticide use in the Third World, reviewing corporate activities, government regulations and the situation at the grassroots level. The Pesticide Hazard is a collective effort of many activists and researchers involved in or collaborating with the Pesticides Action Network. It provides statistics and reports from the local level on pesticides sales and use, the effects on human health, the environment and agricultural production, and case studies from a number of developing countries.

"The Pesticide Hazard: A Global Health and Environmental Audit", compiled by Barbara Dinham, Zed Books, London, 1993, 228 pp., ISBN 1-85649-202-8. Available from Zed Books, 57 Caledonian Road, London N1 9BU, UK, or via Humanities Press International, 165 First Avenue, Atlantic Highlands, NJ 07716, USA. Priced at £19.95.

The use of biotechnology for research on tropical crops in Africa is the subject of a new book put out by the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA). It present the papers delivered to a conference on the subject held in 1990 at the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA), in Ibadan, Nigeria. The book gives an overview of the potential and use of biotechnology in various fields of research: the need for biotechnology research in Africa, enhancing the genetic base of African agriculture, ceil and tissue culture, genetic engineering and molecular markers, other applications, and the policy issues.

"Biotechnology: Enhancing Research on Tropical Crops in Africa ", G. Thottappilly et al. (ed), CTA/IITA, 1992, 364 pp., ISBN 978-131-090-1. Available from CTA, P.O. Box 380, NL-6700 AJ Wageningen, The Netherlands.

Indigenous Knowledge and Development Monitor is the name of a new international newsletter meant to foster networking among researchers and Development practitioners on indigenous knowledge (IK). Produced by the Centre for International Research and Advisory Networks in the Netherlands, in cooperation with a range of burgeoning Indigenous Knowledge Resource Centres, the Monitor will be published three times a year and is available free of charge. Largely a magazine for researchers, by researchers, it should interest NGOs and people's organisations who are curious as to how the formal sector is struggling with genuine attempts to take IK as a starting point for what the editors repeatedly call "the Development process". The first issue presents reports on studies of IK in agriculture, crafts, soil and water management and veterinary medicine in different countries and informs of a range of research initiatives.

To get on the mailing list contact CIRAN, P.O. Box 90734, NL-2509 LS The Hague, Netherlands, Fax: (31-70) 351.05.13.