“We are selling off the Kumato Tomatoes AT COST because it has come to light that they are grown from patented seed. For ethical reasons we do not support patenting of seeds, therefore we will not be ordering Kumato Tomatoes again. If you are curious about this, put the words “kumato tomato syngenta” into a search engine or speak to [the managers].”
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Today I saw this on my shift at Great Oak Foods in Llanidloes, in Powys, in Mid-Wales. I am one of a community of people who give time working in the shop which we believe to be part of a local solution to many global-food conundrums. The shop, as a community enterprise, aims:
1. To be a retail outlet for organic fresh foods and associated products to provide the opportunity for customers to make sustainable lifestyle choices.
2. To create opportunities for a local market for organically grown produce and to provide the means for sustainable employment in the community, ecologically and economically.
3. To support the local economy through a local purchasing policy and to make available a wider range of products in the area, and to reduce dependency on importing products, with associated food miles.
4. To encourage social investment in sustainable enterprise and to empower members of the community to become actively involved in issues surrounding local food and ecological sustainability.
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My first feelings, reading the notice above about Kumato Tomatoes, were joy and pride to be living in community with people with similar commitments to social and ecological justice in the food system, and who act from a place of personal conscience . And yet I wanted to investigate the issues involved to be sure that I wasn’t forming a knee-jerk opinion. And to write about it on this blog as a document/ reflection of a kind of moment in time where local people (in this case, us) were asked by a situation to grapple with a wider social food issue, and how it might play out.
I spoke with the managers, and one shared with me his belief that patenting “discovery” was a different ethical issue to patenting an “invention”; he just couldn’t come to terms with the idea that something like a seed and varietal crossing could be patented– and he did note that this was not a case involving genetic modification, for which he could see a better case for patenting. Which is not to say, obviously, that we support GM in any way.
One could make the case that Syngenta has developed a variety of tomato — through careful, old-fashioned, year-to-year testing and experimenting — that consumers want and desire for the special eating qualities it offers. And that Syngenta deserves to profit from its innovation and investment, and profit is the engine of technological and agricultural “progress.” (Cringe.)
We learn from Wikipedia Kumato that “Syngenta maintains ownership of the variety throughout the entire value chain from breeding to marketing; selected growers must agree to follow specified cultivation protocols and pays fees for licenses per acre of greenhouse, costs of the seeds, and royalties based on the volume of tomatoes produced.” Is the word for this vertical market integration?
This manager wrote an enquiring email to our wholesale supplier (which deals in organic foods, operates regionally, and is a much much smaller player than supermarket level), who responded with many perfectly justifiable points including: that Syngenta’s business strategy represents the “club” approach which has gone on with the development of trees and shrubs and potatoes in a smaller business scale; this represents only a temporary market consolidation because it’s so difficult to monitor and police; that customers want “good quality”; growers need prolific and disease resistant varieties which can yield, for organic, a competitive price…
So what to believe? Maybe we should just relent on this issue– even though, and this did niggle, the tomatoes somehow posture themselves on a shelf as if they are heirlooms or a local variety, seed carefully nutured by seed savers and cottage gardeners, and usurp the aesthetics the new food movement has created/ recreated.
I looked to my gut instinct. We as a community around “The Veg Shop” (as it’s affectionately called) share a vision of a food system gone wrong — in terms of the concentration of power in agribusiness and supermarkets, the overuse of pesticides unhealthy for people and biodiversity, the climate impacts of food miles and unseasonal eating. We support organics, local food, local growers, the use of non-chemical pest management, small producers and fair-trade as a step towards justice for food workers far and wide. We see agriculture within ecological and political contexts and support a horticultural scale we believe can be a part of building a new and better system.
Syngenta is also a major player in pesticides, in a world in which bees and other insects are so perilously at risk and the Precautionary Principle is called for. Syngenta also promotes GM crops, which represent health and ecological worry to many as well as a dangerous privatisation of seed stock and concentration of power in the big players.
There is also the on-going battle in the EU to regulate seeds, plants and plant materials that can be sold; the big agriculture players punch hard, with their piles of money, and can pay the fees to register their own goods, while smaller breeders and gardeners are edged out. The Wales-based Real Seed Company does great campaigning work on this issue— am looking forward to ordering some seeds from them.
We support the enfranchisement of the small players, for so many reasons: ecological, social, anti-hunger, food security, and more. The Seed Freedom folks often operate from the point of view that we need a paradigm shift; Jose Luis Vivero Pol argues really eloquently for “a re-commonification” of food—or, in other words, a transition where we work toward considering food as a commons as ..essential … in light of our broken global food system.” Seeds are where food begin.
This article by Charles Eisenstein also delves into what’s wrong and how we can think about food differently in order to oppose hunger and food inequality and create a juster world, better ready for climate instability.
I’m not a Luddite really, nor particularly anti-innovation, and willing to keep an open mind towards different aspects of biotechnology– but I do have a different vision for the food system that needs to be developed to correct this one. This to me is the basis of why I support the managers at Great Oak Foods– it’s not whom we’re against, so much as it’s what we are for…
And I AM DEEPLY INTERESTED IN WHAT OTHER PEOPLE HAVE TO SAY ON ALL THIS. PLEASE COMMENT!!!!!!
Kitchen Counter Culture 
glad you trust your gut!
In this case, it didn’t feel difficult. The point was, not what we are against, but what we are for.
Ah yes Syngenta. Their tagline mentions “sustainable agriculture” and they do indeed do a lot of good work helping farmers improve yields and developing food plants that are able to grow in otherwise unusable land. I almost applied for a job with them several years ago and many of their projects were most appealing and quite green but I just couldn’t bring myself to work for a company so heavily involved in the pesticide industry.
As far as seed patents go…
Yes, ideally seeds should be available to anyone who wants to grow things and selling their produce and saving seed seems like it should be a given.
However developing a new plant and bringing it to market usually takes at least seven years of work and testing. For difficult-to-grow plants it can take twenty years and sometimes longer. Achieving plant breeders rights or gaining seed patents can take several years, as new varieties are rigorously tested for Distinctness, Uniformity, Stability and checked for Novelty. That’s a lot of time and money spent by the breeder. For a big player, like Syngenta, it is too simplistic to say it’s just about profit. Consider a small grower, or an individual, working to bring new plants to market – PBRs and seed patents are a way for them to recoup their R&D money, earn a basic living and fund future breeding work.
We don’t begrudge design patents for new inventions, or copyrights on written material, or royalties for composers and musicians. We can see/hear the work that they have put in to their product – it is a little harder to see that when a small seed is sitting in your hand.
I’d like to know more on your managers ethical reasons on why they don’t agree with seed patents. I feel like I might be missing something.
Vohn
x
I guess there’s a big conversation to be had, all about the context in which these big players operate–(and whether their sustainability is a kind of greenwash) and certainly have a very big voice in government, regulation and trade which effects the little guys pretty badly. So many people believe that true sustainability has to be biodiversity, a huge variety not consolidation of varieties, and many many small players free to save seed, to feed people locally, and ensure a future in which plants, in diversity, can respond to climate uncertainty. So maybe it’s not so much whether patent are or are not ethical, but whether we want to support the biggies who play unfairly and often contribute more to the problems than the solutions, as we see them.
I did ask that manager for a little more explanation, and his concern is basically that we should question the general presumption that seed development and disease resistance be private and profit driven at all — apparently Tthere were national facilities for these aims that were sold off in the Thatcher years — I need to investigate this– I know nothing about this.
Thanks for your interest and comments, Vohn! x
Someone asked me by email to comment for them. He said “Saying that the valuable research justifies the patenting is a sort of self-fulfilling argument. The research would not have to be so expensive if it was not required to make such a huge profit.”
It’s quite incredible looking at the shift in how we perceive this. Quoted from http://www.actionaid.org.uk/sites/default/files/doc_lib/ipr_agriculture.pdf
Here is a quote from page 29 –
“Ten out of eighteen research centres were closed under Maggie.
The 1979 election of a Conservative government deeply committed to a radical agenda of cutting-back the state and curtailing public support for R&D had significant impact of agriculture, as it did in most other aspects of social and economic sectors. Not only did the
ARC immediately experience a drastic cut in funds, but the its budget continued to decline till 1987-88 – a 23% reduction from £156Mn to £120Mn. With the reduced funding, the number of research centres under ARC reduced from 18 to 8. Other institutional and organisational changes led to the integration of agricultural and food research issues, leading to the ARC being renamed as the Agriculture and Food Research Council (AFRC). By 1988-89, 15%
of the AFRC’s budget was devoted to food safety issues – an issue that still remains a crucial political embarrassment in the UK.
The 1980s witnessed the most radical form of liberalisation with the outright sale and closure of a number of public institutions. A key privatisation with respect to agricultural research was the sale of the Plant Breeding Institute, Cambridge to Unileverin 1987 for £66Mn. Unilver managed to outbid other contenders like ICI Chemicals and Booker Seeds. There was much consternation at this sale:
Somewhat ironically, at the same time as it was being fragmented and privatised, US science policy-makers were advocating the establishment of research stations that would emulate the interdisciplinary approach of the PBI. The PBI
was regarded as a particularly successful establishment in terms of its breeding of cereal crops for the UK: over 87% of UK cereal crops grown in 1987 were PBI varieties (Webster, 1989: 225).
Even breeders at the Institute were alarmed at the privatisation of their institute and the breakdown of its interdisciplinary approach to crop development: It now seems likely that many of the specialist departments of which the [Public Breeding] Institute was formed may, for political or economic reasons, be dispersed or disbanded. … In this casual way one of the greatest successes for all time in crop research could be destroyed. Whether either of the separated
parts can long survive is unclear (Lupton, 1987: xi-xiv).
The general philosophy underlying the radical privatisation of the public sector was eventually articulated in an internal Cabinet document, the Barnes Review, of 1988. This document pioneered the view that research that is `near-market’ should be entirely
conducted by the private sector. In contrast to the earlier customer-contract principle, the new mantra within the government was that public R&D should be more contained and focussed on basic science. With respect to agricultural R&D, the Review recommended a cut amounting to £30Mn – about 30% of the research budget.”
Fascinating and informative as ever
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The question of ownership of seeds is an interesting one. Old school seed developers such as Thompson and Morgan just sold seeds they weren’t so fascistic as Sygenta – sounds like a Borg name… For me keeping seeds free from GMO contamination is vital. This is still Frankenstein we have seen how GMO crops infiltrate and affect negatively. It will eventually I am sure be a case of seed renegades secretly sharing free seeds. Big agri-pharm doesn’t want free food in the economy, it is all about who owns the land, water, seeds and market place. Food is highly political and gov will go where the big players lead.
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Tough one Annie. I am not a lawyer but seed patents seem inherently suspect to me. Plants reseeding themselves is a natural cycle, humans are only one vector that they use. Birds, wind, or a fruit simply falling from a bush are others. How many of these natural processes is one supposed to control?
On the other hand I do understand that profit-making companies need to protect their investment. I wish they could find other ways to do it.
In a practical sense…what is the social utility of spending years on cultivating a single genetic variation in, to use your example, a tomato? Why should society invest in it? I’m not asking rhetorically, I’m genuinely curious. it seems to me that the problem with modern food is too much specialization, not too little. Excellent, nutritious wild species abound. We don’t really need companies like Syngenta setting about ‘discovering’ them.
Yes, they can cultivate species that are super-easy to grow, or resistant to pests or wind or some other demon. Sure. But such ‘super-cultivatees’ are dangerously prone to become super-weeds when they escape. The whole thing stinks.
I am sure I will be called a food elitist because poor farmers can’t easily cultivate these wild species. But do poor farmers really need the terror of wondering if their plants might be reseeding themselves somewhere?
Thanks for this thoughtful comment, Aneela. Here’s an article that totally backs up your statement that less diversity in what we eat isn’t a good thing: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/02/26/1313490111.abstract
I agree about the Borg name:-)
I guess there’s nothing wrong with people wanting paid back lots of money for lots of work they’ve put into a ‘product’. But so many people will do it for love – and I’d rather be eating food made for the love of it (if I have the choice) than for the money. Most small producers just about break even – they grow food because they love it and believe in it – not to make a big buck – and the idea that they would attempt the level of ‘vertical market integration’ that Synergia does is just ridiculous!
Well done to the Veg Shop for it’s principles – I wish there were more of them.
Maybe patenting itself is OK, if it is done as a result of putting a lot of time and effort into developing a product. It’s not really any different to an iPad or countless other products. It costs a lot of money to develop, and the company needs to get that money back. I’m inclined to think it’s more the ethics of the company, rather than the patent itself, that’s the problem, and maybe why they shouldn’t sell it. If Real Seeds developed a new tomato, and patented it so they had a way to recover their development costs, maybe that would be OK, because we know they are doing it with good intentions. It might be the only way anyone can afford to develop the seeds we need for the type of climate where heading into.
I think the problem with patents and big business is well demonstrated by Monsanto, and the way they sue farmers whose crops are contaminated by their wind blown seeds and cross pollination. iPads don’t cross pollinate, but fakes are produced, and it’s only fair that action is taken by the producer to prevent that. But there has to be an acceptance that patented seed will get spread around, by nature, by amateur gardeners seed saving and sharing, and some of the crops produced will be sold at the local farmers market without the licence fees being paid. So ruthless protection of a patent isn’t appropriate, but some control over the commercial use of the seed could well be.
Are there actually many seeds available for sale that aren’t patented by the big companies though?
I’d never heard of Kumatos before reading this. It appears that it is a hybrid produced only in Europe. Sygenta doesn’t sell seeds to the general public and its growers are under contract to Sygenta. The tomatoes are hybrids so they wouldn’t produce true from seed anyway.
To me their attempt to pass these off as heirlooms is good enough reason to avoid them.
I don’t know if technically they do, it just felt tlike that kind of tomoto when i first saw it because of its unusual colour…
I see you have a local seed swap this weekend. This is the best way for us to continue to grow great plants without being beholden to the big players! Vohn x
Here’s an article on some of the work that is being done in Scotland to promote seed diversity and reduce reliance on big business.
http://www.fifediet.co.uk/seedtruck/the-seed-kist/
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