Farmers' Reports: Status of Farmers' Rights Realization
Organized by the Community Biodiversity Development Conservation (CBDC) Network to highlight the status of Farmers' Rights based on the perspectives and understanding of farmers through farmers' reporting and translate farmers' reports as a means of assessment of International Treaty implementation to assist and inform in the realization of Farmers' Rights, farmers from the Philippines, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Venezuela, Cuba, and Brazil shared the results of various processes that lead to their reports on the status of the realization of Farmers' Rights in their respective countries. The farmers also shared their experiences on their work on conservation and sustainable use, as well as their perspectives and understanding of what farmers' rights is based on the reality that they live in.
The first presentation was by Mrs. Estela Calamba and Mr. Candido Baldapan, both from the Farmers' Consultative Council in Bohol, Philippines which is comprised of six people's organizations involved in conservation work and in-situ development of seeds in their communities in Bohol. They emphasized their experiences and contribution in maintaining crop diversity through their work on conservation and sustainable use of plant genetic resources, in particular, on their work in rice breeding, seed banking, seed exchanges, varietal evaluation, regeneration of traditional varieties, soil and pest management and organic farming. Likewise, experiences in exchanges between farmers, with students, and other institutions, as well as successes by their people's organizations in directing policy direction in their province on its commitment to be free from genetically modified organisms and their municipality's support and recognition on farmers' community registry systems as a means of recognizing and protecting farmers' seeds.
The next presentations focused on the farmers' reports in the Philippines, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Venezuela, Cuba, and Brazil, where it was significantly pointed out that the concept of Farmers' Rights for farmers exceeds the issue of seeds. Farmers' Rights is a bundle of rights that include farmers' rights to seeds, to land, to water, to culture, to information, to technology, to support services and policies, to participation and decision-making, to market, among others. A detailed account of their presentations can be found here.
The results of the national process enabled the CBDC Network to view Farmers' Rights in a more holistic and expansive perspective that includes the rights of farmers to seeds. In particular, the CBDC Network emphasized the following points:
The CBDC Network undertook a number of consultative processes in Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia in an endeavor to determine the conceptual understanding and perspectives of various stakeholders, initiatives directed towards domesticating and realization of Farmers' Rights. The consultative processes were undertaken in seven representative countries which include Brazil, Cuba, Chile, Lao PDR, Philippines, Venezuela, Malawi and Zimbabwe. The interactive and participatory consultative processes were carried out from June to October 2007.
The primary objective of the consultative processes was to have an inclusive definition and interpretation of Farmers' Rights by farmers themselves, farmers' organizations and civil society organizations. The following are the farmers' perspectives and demands for the realization of Farmers' Rights:
1. Farmers' Rights are understood in a broader context that includes their rights to land, water, seed, technology, biodiversity, and culture and gender equity among others. These rights are considered collective and inalienable towards providing mechanisms for facilitating livelihoods in terms of realizing food security, food sovereignty, poverty alleviation and enhancing farmers' rights to food as a fundamental human right. Farmers consider and exercise their right to seed security as a means of determining their own means of production without outside influence and as a prerequisite to national food security.
In this regard, farmers require policy, legislative and technical support to strengthen their rights. Such policy and legislative measures need to strategically protect traditional knowledge, innovations, technologies, social and cultural practices related to the sustainable conservation and utilization of genetic resources for food and agriculture.
2. We note with concern that the International Treaty merely recognizes the contribution of farmers to agro-biodiversity without putting in place concrete measures for protecting, promoting or actualizing the fruits of these contributions. On the other hand, the Treaty is replete with measures for allowing governments, research institutions and industry users of PGRFA to access these resources and mechanisms for sharing benefits arising therefrom. This imbalance negates the Treaty's own recognition of farmers' contribution to PGRFA in the Preamble and makes the rights in Article 9 illusory. It is for these reasons that we call upon the Governing Body to put in place specific guidelines that enables Contracting Parties to formalize and successfully implement farmers' rights with tangible reporting mechanisms.
3. The International Treaty calls upon Contracting Parties to implement Farmers' Rights but national governments are much more committed to the adoption of commercial agricultural models which promote IPR, GMOs, chemical and increased pesticide pesticide and herbicide use that enhance monoculture and restrict diversity and sustainable cropping systems and practices. The enormous support provided to emerging technologies including GMOs is a major threat to Farmers' Rights as they necessarily lead towards genetic contamination, biodiversity loss, and increased cost of production and farmer dependence on the seed industry.
We therefore call upon national governments to review and revise national policies and legislation so as to remove any restrictions on the exercise of Farmers' Rights that relate to community seed banks, seed fairs, right to save, sell and exchange seeds, re-use and select seeds of their choice, carry-out on-farm crop improvement practices designed to enhance food security and sustainability of agriculture.
4. We note with amazement, shock and dismay that the International Treaty, having facilitated the exchange of PGRFA from the CGIAR (collected freely from farmers' fields) in favor of the multinational corporations and research institutions, has now been reduced to merely a medium of legitimized mechanism of gross biopiracy. We note that this is a result of lack of a transparent and committed and legally binding funding mechanism. We recall that this was never the intended objective of the International Treaty. If the Contracting Parties are unable to redeem the International Treaty from this malaise then it is prudent to suspend its operations forthwith until such funds are availed to facilitate its effective implementation. In our considered view, the International Treaty cannot be used as a means of legitimizing global fraud of farmers' materials.
No comments:
Post a Comment