Publication: Inter Press Service
Date: Friday, September 14, 2001

NAIROBI - A Canadian farmer who was sued by the giant biotech firm Monsanto has come to Kenya to campaign against the use of genetically modified crops.

Percy Schmeiser travelled to Nairobi this week to warn his Kenyan counterparts against growing GM crops, which he claims would take away their rights over their indigenous seeds, and impoverish them further.

``Some of the best seeds are developed by farmers,`` he told a seminar organized by the Green Belt movement, a non-governmental organization (NGO) in the Kenyan capital. ``I don`t want to see that freedom ever taken away from farmers anywhere in the world.``

The Federal Court of Canada in May ordered Schmeiser to pay $20,000 in damages to Monsanto, for infringing on the patent rights of the biotech company by growing a brand of its genetically engineered canola (cabbage seed).

Monsanto sued Schmeiser in June 2000, for illegally acquiring and growing its ``Round Up Ready`` canola seed, an offense tantamount to seed piracy.

The farmer claims Monsanto`s canola gene found its way to his field through cross-pollination with his conventional crop, by accident from a passing pick-up truck.

He says the judgement against him adversely affects the longstanding rights of farmers to save their own seed for use in other crops.

``The judge was saying that although farmers have their own rights, the patent law goes over and above farmers` rights,`` he said. ``(The judge) said, although I never used the Monsanto patent, it didn`t matter because there were some plants in my field. It didn`t matter how they got there.``

The Monsanto GM canola, he further claims, has now turned into a super-weed, which not only is resistant to herbicides, but also has invaded many open places, including wheat fields, roads and parks.

But for Monsanto, the judgement gives companies that spend billions of dollars in research the confidence to continue investing in the future of the world agriculture.

Monsanto insists that the percentages of the Round Up Ready Canola, estimated at between 95 and 98 percent, were too high to be in the farmer`s fields by accident. Of 30,000 farmers contacted by the firm, Monsanto says, only Schmeiser has complained about GM seed.

About 80 percent of western Canadian farmers are now growing some form of transgenic canola, which not only has increased their yields, but also reduced their fuel and chemical costs.

In 2000 alone, the firm says, 55 percent of the 12 million acres planted were transgenic varieties of Canola, saving $31.2 million in fuel costs, according to Monsanto. ``If there is anything Africans should be angry about, (it) is the inability to get enough,`` says Monsanto`s Kinyua M`Mbijewe.

``GM seeds are simply like hybrid seeds with improved traits. They can be considered smarter seeds with added `software.` Africa should not be denied this opportunity,`` he adds.

Of the 800 million hungry people in the world, 80 percent are in sub-Saharan Africa, according to U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Only South Africa has fully adopted large-scale production of transgenic crops such as cotton and soybeans on the continent.

Kenya, which has embraced a pro-biotech policy, has developed several disease-free crops like bananas through simpler technologies like tissue culture and gene marking.

The East African country is currently in the field trial stage for its first transgenic sweet potato. The Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) also is carrying out tests for a new insect-resistant GM maize variety.

In a recent report, the U.N. Development Program (UNDP) said that transgenics offer the hope of developing crops of higher yields, resistance to pests, disease and droughts and have superior nutritional qualities.

The U.N. body is concerned that the contentious debate over potential health and environmental risks of transgenic crops ignores the needs and concerns of developing countries of Africa, where food on the table is a daily struggle for their growing populations.

``Biotechnology offers the only or the best tool of choice for marginal ecological zones such as sub-Saharan Africa. These zones are home to the more than half of the world`s poorest people and they are dependent on agriculture and livestock,`` the report says.

Some groups like the British charity ActionAid are taking on food insecurity in Africa as an international political and economic policy issue.

When Ethiopia, for example, went through its worst food crisis in 1984, according to ActionAid`s Gichinga Ndirangu, the country continued to export large amounts of coffee, vegetables and even beef to Europe.

``At the end of the day, if you talk about increasing production, the question is more the structural causes of food insecurity,`` he says.