Seed Treaty: La Via Campesina Declaration
Submitted to the members of the Governing Body of the International Treaty on Genetic Plant Resources for Food and Agriculture on the occasion of the Third Session of the Governing Body, held June 1-5, 2009, in Tunis. The multiplication and the aggravation of the food, economic, energy and climate crises are forcing peasants all over the world to adapt their farming systems to the acceleration of changes to their environment. The dynamic conservation and sustainable use of cultivated biodiversity, agro-systems, social systems and related peasant knowledge are at the heart of this adaptation; the food of future generations depends on it. Biodiversity cannot be preserved and renewed without recognizing the farmers’ rights defined by the ITPGR (International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources), particularly those rights defined in Article 9 to preserve, use, exchange and sell their seeds, to participate in national decision-making, and to protect their traditional knowledge. However, in spite of many political and scientific declarations on the need to develop on-farm conservation, the majority of the signatory countries of the Treaty prohibit the exercise of these collective rights. They have replaced them with private intellectual property laws on seeds, which make it possible for a handful of multinational seed companies to proclaim their ownership of all existing biodiversity. Deprived of their rights, the peasants can no longer preserve the hundreds of thousands of varieties, which they so patiently selected to adapt them to their agro-systems. The multinational companies replace these varieties with a few dozen industrial crops intended to feed the richest populations, their animals or their cars.