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Hyderabad: Bharat Beej Swaraj Manch (BBSM) in a statement issued here on Thursday, has argued that seeds and plants are life forms and has sought to declare the seeds and germplasm as part of national collective bio-cultural heritage. Seeds and plants cannot be treated as property of individuals, which means nobody including entities can claim ownership or rights over them.
A statement to this was issued at the end of a two-day National Workshop on Farmers Rights on Collective Bio-Cultural Heritage, organized by Bharat Beej Swaraj Manch in Hyderabad which concluded on July 2.
In key messages to the Government of India and to various state governments of India, the BBSM stated that the farmers are primary producers of food, who nurture seeds, and have been the key actors in shaping up the collective bio-cultural heritage. It’s the knowledge about the seeds which farmer communities share amongst themselves and pass on from generation to generation that sustains the bio-cultural heritage.
Third, profit-oriented private sector takeover of the seeds, breeding programmes, and release of proprietary seeds, has been alienating this bio-cultural heritage from natural and agricultural biomes and eroding seed-knowledge embedded among farmer communities, leading to its deterioration.
This will in turn affect food security and sustainable agriculture, as seeds that can tolerate all kinds of biotic and abiotic stress are becoming rare. Knowledge generated in laboratories and research centres, while useful, cannot be substituted for community wide knowledge systems and traditions. Seeds and Knowledge about seeds from lab settings are umbilically linked to intellectual property rights, in the form of patents or plant variety certificates.
Holders of such rights often prevent or create barriers to farmers from saving seeds from their lands, reuse or exchange, disturbing the centuries of bio-cultural practices. With this understanding, BBSM rejects the private seed sector and its seed related solutions.
Fourth, various seed related international regimes such as WTO, TRIPS, UPOV and ITPGRFA have been setting standards and influencing India’s national policy and legal measures, even though India has taken a sui generis stance that rejects patents on all life forms. Many of these regimes are themselves undergoing the change initiated by interest lobbies, for example, ITPGRFA, and Free Trade Agreements introduce additional standards and force our government to join Treaties like UPOV, while it is not in our interests.
These regimes promote a techno-legal atmosphere, where Farmers Rights are undermined in the name of promoting science, research and innovation. However, the science and knowledge promoted by these regimes are not inclusive and participatory in nature, and many times, the scientific process often takes place in a manner excluding farmers and information from these processes are not shared with farmers. BBSM does not think international regimes have a mandate to ensure farmers rights per se.
Earlier, BBSM has flagged the concern about lack of proper and appropriate consultation with farmers groups on ITGPRFA content and provisions.
Fifth, the disconnect between openly shared farmers’ knowledge systems, and commoditized knowledge of agricultural institutions and seed companies raise significant threats of contamination of farmers’ crops and seed systems. Public sector, through seed corporations and research institutes, has a role in regulating and ensuring that seed remains a public resource and remains uncontaminated from chemicals, genetic modification and gene editing. Conservation of seeds, seed conserving farmers, farmer-centric knowledge systems is the responsibility of the government as well.
Sixth, the PPV&FR Act is claimed as the legal recognition of Farmers Rights. PPVFRA in India is an Intellectual Property law Framework and Farmers Rights are weak. Using a proviso under this Act, farmers have been sued by a company claiming damages. There are many other issues of registering local varieties in individual farmers’ names and sometimes many in a single person’s name or his institution.
All these create rights which work against collective rights of farming communities and collective Bio-cultural Heritage. Another major concern is of the Plant Authority collecting Seeds of local communities while awarding them for seed conservation work without a proper mandate or plan of action or a register.
BBSM demands a performance review of PVPFRA in terms of protecting farmer’s rights and conserving native varieties, in the last 20 years. A complete revamp of legal framework towards seed systems is needed primarily to prioritise farmer’s rights. BBSM demands creation of a register of Plant Varieties of India held and stored at NBPGR and various ICAR crop research centres and ICRISAT which is in India’sdomain is not being heard or even discussed by the Authority or in the ICAR system. BBSM also demands repatriation/ re-matriation of seed collections back to India and to regions and communities for in-situ conservation and sustainable use and development.
Seventh, gene editing is essentially a genetic engineering technology and we call for withdrawal of gene-edited rice varieties released by the Government of India in May 2025. BBSM strongly believes that gene editing and all other new genomic techniques (NGTs) are not required for Indian agricultural context, and in fact these NGTs are being used as tools for violating farmer’s rights, and community rights on traditional varieties and contaminating natural seed germplasm.
In this context, Bharat Beej Swaraj Manch (BBSM), proposes the following actions:
1. To continue protesting against violation of farmers rights, in all formal seed systems, including international agreements
2. To campaign for integration of farmer’s rights and agroecological practices in transformative agricultural systems, which are in pipeline and/or established.
3. To continue participation of BBSM in policy making at various levels, i.e. local, state, national and international level, through coordination, information sharing and cooperation with members organisations and individuals.
4. To promote traditional seed conservation practices and explore their
adaptability to current socio-economic and environmental scenarios.
5. To continue to organize traditional seed festivals which become platforms for our policy advocacy, education, knowledge sharing, skill development, and networking.
For more details contact: Jacob Nellithanam at Ph.88260-27520, Email – farmersrights@gmail.com; D. Narasimha Reddy Ph.9010205742, Email – nreddy.donthi22@gmail.com
