Trying to appropriate the seeds

1998/06/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Nekazaritza

Once again, the application of genetic engineering has provoked conflicts in the rural world. In fact, the newly developed technology is not fit for joke. According to the agreement signed between the U.S. Department of Agriculture and a large cereal seed company, the company has obtained in a few years a patent to sell sterile seeds.

Farmers will be handed over to large multinationals. And in this way they will not be able to do what they have always done, that is, to receive every year part of the harvest for the next. The efforts of large seed companies have focused on producing viable or sterile seeds. Several cases are already known, but the technique developed now is valid for most crops.

The protein resulting from the activation of a gene sequence called LEA (Late Embryogenesis Abundant) sterilizes the seeds of the adult plant. There have been great controversies about this issue, according to the administration technicians, that making their seeds fertilize again can be a theft and, according to them, with this technique a kind of copyright applies to the seeds.

The peasants and their unions have been angry at the decision and claim they are stealing genetic information from crops that have been improving over the centuries.