THE RIGHT TO SAVE SEED

Came across a recommendation in the Net to look-up a a video titled " The Right to save seed"...

Good one.

"The Right To Save Seed is an animated movie which explains when farmers can resow their seed in Europe. With the help of Magnum, Agata, Dali and Mona Lisa — four varieties of potatoes that really exist — the movie covers different legal situations with humour and a lot of creativity!

Even though farmers have made their own seed over centuries, they are not able to resow all the seed they buy, or can only resow it if certain conditions are met. Resowing is sometimes prevented by the seed sale contract, sometimes by the contract that ties them to the buyer of their crop, and sometimes by intellectual property rights.

The Right To Save Seed is an animated movie which explains when farmers can resow their seed in Europe. With the help of Magnum, Agata, Dali and Mona Lisa — four varieties of potatoes that really exist — the movie covers different legal situations with humour and a lot of creativity!

Inspired by Grocery Store Wars, by Free Range Studios, Shabnam Anvar (PhD in Seed Regulation), Mathieu Eisinger (Producer), Jeanne Rouchel (Producer and Designer) and Olivia Zarcate (Legal Infography) used colourful creativity to translate a complex legal situation into a fun story for all. Their goal: help farmers and consumers choose their choice of seed and food knowing what the implications are."

The link is:

http://truththeory.com/2013/10/27/the-right-to-save-seed/

To me two bits of information came to mind:

1985: An article in the (then alive) "The Illustrated Weekly of India" by Tom Alwarez, captioned "The Great Gene Robbery". It highlighted how popular traditional Indian Rice varieties maintained in germplasms at MP and Orissa made its way to IRRI, Philippines.

1989: Asia Pacific Weed Science Society Conference in Seoul, (South) Korea: After my presentation of a Weed Science paper was over, I got into another session where a Thai Professor was listing out "local" varieties for herbicide resistance. One of the varieties had a funny sounding name and I waited for the visual. The variety's name was "Muttumanickam".

With IR-8, rice varieties ushered-in Taichung Native-1 gene pools into India. We got higher yields. More pests and diseases. We lost our gene pool and tracing back our "roots".