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Ps Agreement would imply the establishment of monopolistic rights over plant genes and their characteristics by certain multinational enterprise. The consequences of such monopolies would therefore be borne by the farmers who would be removed the rights over seeds and promulgating materials having such genes and characteristics, for which they were owners for centuries. Certainly this would threaten the centuries old practice of saving, using, exchanging and selling farm-saved seed.

According to the Food Rights Campaign (an initiative of ActionAid which worked in sixteen countries across Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe) held in 2003, the establishment of patents for plants varieties and seeds would not allow competition for 20 years and thus enabling the patent holder to determine the market price for the product. According to the campaign, 6 multinationals controls around 70% of the patents held on staple food crops. These are Aventis, Dow, Du Pont, Mitsui, Monsanto and Syngenta – who are buying up the local seed markets in the developing world. They currently control:

98% of the global market for patented genetically modified (GM) crops

70% of the global pesticide market

30% of the global seed market

This shows that the dependency of the farmers on the multinational corporations who own the patents would be accentuated. This could lead to a dramatic transformation of the agricultural practices in developing nations as the growth of agri-business would be promoted to the detriment small farms and biodiversity. If the use of patented seeds became the rule, multinationals would dictate the world’s food supply. As seed is the first tie in the food chain, whoever controls seed controls the food supply.

Food Safety Threatened

Another consequence of the implementation of the TRIPs agreement in developing countries would be the threatening of Food Security.

Increased cost for small farmers

Seeds that are protected under intellectual property would have a higher cost than the traditional seeds. This would be because of the royalty payments, restrictive contracts and increased marketing of the patented seeds.

Farmers India have witnessed the impact related to the increased cost in relation to Monsanto’s (one of the 6 multinational that control patents held on staple food crops) Bt. cotton seeds. Farmers in Nalgonda district of Andhra Pradesh in India paid up to 1600 rupees for a 450- gram packet of Bt cotton seeds, (of which the royalty component was 1200 rupees), as against 450-500 rupees for normal varieties. For genetically modified seeds the cost are even higher due to complementary pesticides, herbicides or other agro-chemicals produced by the same multinational. The high costs of these inputs places additional burdens on small farmers and can lead to increased levels of indebtedness.

Reducing Biodiversity

Farmers in developing nations are used to cultivate wide range of plant varieties that would enable them to reduce the risk of total crop failure due to environmental changes. They used seeds with seeds with differing traits that would allow future generations to select and breed plants that are best adapted to changing environmental, economic and social pressures.

Intellectual property laws would however discourage this practice. By encou