Development

OAU Seeks to Defend Small-holder Farmers with Model Legislation

Join the campaign to support small holder farmers in Africa

2001-12-20, Issue 47

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/development/4857

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Globalization usually brings to mind images of busy cities and modern technology. The following article explains how small-holder farmers in Africa are impacted by globalized trade regulations. It also describes the Organization of African Unity's (OAU) model legislation which seeks to protect the intellectual property rights of African farmers and breeders.

OAU Seeks to Defend Small-holder Farmers with Model Legislation

Subtitle: Join the campaign to support small holder farmers in Africa


A typical farmer in East Africa is a woman who cultivates on five acres
of land. She grows enough food staples to feed her family throughout the
year. She might also join a number of her neighbors in growing some
fruit and vegetables on a communal plot. Her livestock, if she has it,
consists of chickens, some goats and perhaps a few cattle. The family
income might come from the sale of coffee from a small stand of trees
which her husband tends, and a few of her crops or chickens sold in the
local market. Her earnings pay for her children's school, medicine,
salt, clothing, hoes, a machete, and perhaps a bicycle. Her family
depends on rain for her crops, an absence of pests in her field and
seeds from her harvest for the next planting season. She does not earn
much income according to formal standards, but she is largely
self-sufficient in terms of food.

Longer text for website:

Globalization usually brings to mind images of busy cities and modern
technology. The following article explains how small-holder farmers in
Africa are impacted by globalized trade regulations. It also describes
the Organization of African Unity's (OAU) model legislation which seeks
to protect the intellectual property rights of African farmers and
breeders.

A typical farmer in East Africa is a woman who cultivates on five acres
of land. She grows enough food staples to feed her family throughout the
year. She might also join a number of her neighbors in growing some
fruit and vegetables on a communal plot. Her livestock, if she has it,
consists of chickens, some goats and perhaps a few cattle. The family
income might come from the sale of coffee from a small stand of trees
which her husband tends, and a few of her crops or chickens sold in the
local market. Her earnings pay for her children's school, medicine,
salt, clothing, hoes, a machete, and perhaps a bicycle. Her family
depends on rain for her crops, an absence of pests in her field and
seeds from her harvest for the next planting season. She does not earn
much income according to formal standards, but she is largely
self-sufficient in terms of food.

The World Trade Organization (WTO), through its agreement on Trade
Related Intellectual Property Rights (also known as TRIPS), requires all
member states to grant and enforce intellectual property rights on life
forms. Specifically, TRIPS recognizes that while plants and animals may
be excluded from patent laws, all member countries must allow for
patents on microorganisms and either provide patents or an effective sui
generis (unique) type of intellectual property rights on plant
varieties.

In Africa some individuals and corporations have already claimed rights
over a number of African life forms as the TRIPS measure permits. But in
some cases these items were developed and used by indigenous African
farmers for generations. For example, the U.S. Plant Variety Protection
office (PVP) issued a certificate on a variety of teff, the grain used
to make injera bread, which is a staple of the Ethiopian diet. Patents
and certificates were also issued on varieties of African sweet
potatoes, millet, rice, melons, sorghum and cassava.

The direct impact on the African woman described above, is that suddenly
she may be asked to pay royalties (to someone she may have never met)
for the seeds she has saved for her next planting. She will be required
to pay that royalty to the patent holder whenever she plants the same
seeds she thought were her own. When she cultivates pineapples on the
community plot, she and her friends think of their harvest as community
property and not the exclusive intellectual property of anyone person.
Thus, patents are not solicited. This reality exposes the gap between
global trade rules on intellectual property, and African traditional
methods of communal farming.

In grappling with the question of their agricultural and biological
heritage, the African group of trade ministers at the 1999 WTO Third
Ministerial meeting in Seattle took the lead in opposing the patenting
of life in any of its forms (See NewsNotes January/February 2000). They
continue to push this position as the WTO prepares for its Fourth
Ministerial in November 2001 in Qatar.

Consistent with the position taken by the African trade ministers at the
WTO, and inclusive of the need to protect communities' rights over their
resources, the OAU has drafted "The African Model Legislation for the
Protection of the Rights of Local Communities, Farmers and Breeders, and
for the Regulation of Access to Biological Resources." The OAU is urging
individual African governments to enact this legislation as national
law. Its aim is to ensure the conservation and sustainable use of
biological and agricultural genetic resources plus traditional knowledge
systems and technologies, and to maintain public and communal control
and rights over these resources.

The model legislation involves fundamental ethical and practical
questions about food security, development, social and economic justice,
communal and farmers' rights, environment, conservation and
biodiversity. It boils down to the principle of public versus private
control of humanity's basic life-support systems like food, air and,
water. It also directly challenges the WTO to recognize that people have
the right to protect community intellectual property rights and farmers'
rights according to customary practices and laws.

Action:

For background information on the Africa Model legislation, go to the
Africa Faith and Justice Network web site: http://afjn.cua.edu/
Join the campaign in support of the OAU's model legislation. Sign the
Declaration of Support developed by the Africa Trade Policy Working
Group. For details on how to sign on your organization or church
community, contact Africa Faith and Justice Network at 202-832-3412
or see: http://afjn.cua.edu/

Website address:
http://www.maryknoll.org/GLOBAL/NEWSNOTES/xNEWSNOTES/newsnote11_01/oau_sept0
1.htm

Contact Email: Kneels@igc.org or the addresses listed in the above
action

Your name: Kathleen McNeely

Your e-mail address: Kneels@igc.org


--
Kathleen McNeely
Program Associate - Africa Issues
Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns
P.O. Box 29132
Washington DC 20017
Tel: 202-832-1780 / Fax: 202-832-5195

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