Download 3 1 2013 Farmer Hugh Bowman Use of

May 13, 2013 - Washington Post
U.S. Supreme Court Rules for Monsanto in Case of Genetically Modified Soybeans
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/supreme-court-rules-for-monsanto-in-genetically-modifiedsoybean-case/2013/05/13/c84d7710-bbdb-11e2-97d4-a479289a31f9_story.html?tid=pm_politics_pop
U.S. Supreme Court Decision - May 13, 2013
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
Syllabus
BOWMAN v. MONSANTO CO. ET AL.
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FEDERAL CIRCUIT
No. 11–796. Argued February 19, 2013—Decided May 13, 2013
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/11-796_c07d.pdf
May 13, 2013 - Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/supreme-court-rules-for-monsanto-in-genetically-modifiedsoybean-case/2013/05/13/c84d7710-bbdb-11e2-97d4-a479289a31f9_story.html?tid=pm_politics_pop
U.S. Supreme Court rules for Monsanto, says farmer violated genetically modified soybeans’ patent
J. Scott Applewhite/AP - Vernon Hugh Bowman, a 75-year-old Indiana farmer, speaks with reporters outside the Supreme
Court Feb. 19, 2013. The Supreme Court said Monday that an Indiana farmer violated Monsanto Co.'s patents on
soybean seeds resistant to its weed-killer.
1
By Robert Barnes,
May 13, 2013 10:27 PM EDT
The Washington Post
Farmers must pay Monsanto each time they plant the company’s genetically modified
soybeans, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, rejecting an Indiana farmer’s argument that his
unorthodox techniques did not violate the company’s patent.
Farmer Vernon Hugh Bowman asserted that because the company’s herbicide-resistent
Roundup Ready soybeans replicate themselves, he was not violating the company’s patent by
planting progeny seeds he bought elsewhere. But the justices unanimously rejected that
claim, with Justice Elena Kagan writing there is no such “seeds-are-special” exception to the
law.
“Bowman devised and executed a novel way to harvest crops from Roundup Ready seeds without
paying the usual premium,” Kagan wrote for the court, rejecting what she called Bowman’s “blamethe-bean defense.”
“Bowman was not a passive observer of his soybeans’ multiplication; or put another way, the seeds
he purchased (miraculous though they might be in other respects) did not spontaneously create eight
successive soybean crops,” Kagan wrote.
While the case was about soybeans, the broader issue of patent protection is important to
makers of vaccines, cell lines, software and other products that might be considered selfreplicating.
Corporations worried that their investments would be threatened if patents were honored only
on the first sale of self-replicating products, a legal doctrine called patent exhaustion. It
means companies have no control over their products once they have been sold.
But Kagan warned that the Monsanto decision was a limited one and did not address every issue
involving a self-replicating product.
“We recognize that such inventions are becoming ever more prevalent, complex, and diverse,” Kagan
wrote. “In another case, the article’s self-replication might occur outside the purchaser’s control. Or it
might be a necessary but incidental step in using the item for another purpose.”
But Kagan said the court concluded: “We need not address here whether or how the doctrine of
patent exhaustion would apply in such circumstances.”
Kagan’s sprightly written opinion aside, the court’s reluctance to address those broader issues raised
questions about why it accepted the case, since lower courts had also ruled for Monsanto.
2
As the justices had indicated at oral arguments in the case in February, they believed Bowman’s
practices threatened the incentive for invention that is at the heart of patent law.
If someone is able to copy a patented product simply by planting it and collecting its progeny, “a
patent would plummet in value after the first sale of the first item containing the invention,” Kagan
wrote. “And that would result in less incentive for innovation than Congress wanted.”
Bowman acknowledged that his techniques were unusual.
The farmer purchased Roundup Ready soybeans for his first planting of the year on the 300 acres he
farms in southern Indiana. They are so named because they are resistent to Roundup, Monsanto’s
omnipresent weed killer, which has revolutionized farming.
At the time of the purchase, Bowman agreed to the company’s demands that he not save seeds from
the crop for future planting.
But for a second planting, which Bowman said is riskier because of the weather, he said it would not
be cost-effective to pay Monsanto’s premium.
So instead he bought commodity soybeans, which are usually used for feed, from the local grain
elevator. He believed those beans would also be Roundup Ready because about 90 percent of
soybeans grown in the country are. Bowman acknowledged that he did save seed from those crops
and bought more commodity beans for subsequent plantings.
Monsanto said Bowman’s plantings violated the company’s patent. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the
Federal Circuit agreed and told Bowman to pay nearly $85,000 in damages.
Kagan noted that Bowman conceded that the exhaustion doctrine does not allow him to “make” a new
product based on Monsanto’s invention.
“But it was Bowman, and not the bean, who controlled the reproduction (unto the eighth generation)
of Monsanto’s patented invention,” Kagan wrote.
The case is Bowman v. Monsanto.
End
]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]
Brief History of Action February 19, 2013 - Washington Post
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-02-09/politics/37008186_1_soybean-seeds-monsanto-legal-battle
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-02-19/politics/37180102_1_patent-roundup-ready-soybeans-federal-circuit
3
Supreme Court considers ‘progeny’ of a patented seed
By Robert Barnes, February 19, 2013

Indiana soybean farmer Vernon Hugh Bowman, center, and his lawyer Mark… (Jason Reed/Reuters )
The Supreme Court on Tuesday seemed ready to protect Monsanto’s patent rights in a dispute
with an Indiana farmer over his planting of the company’s genetically modified soybeans.
The case involves the restrictions that Monsanto places on farmers’ use of a soybean it developed
that is resistent to the herbicide Roundup. But the broader issue of patent protection is also important
to the makers of vaccines, software and other products.
Questions from the justices during oral arguments indicated that they agreed with the contention of
Monsanto and other companies that research and development would dry up if the companies’
patents were easily circumvented.
“Why in the world would anybody spend any money to try to improve the seed if as soon as they sold
the first one anybody could grow more and have as many of those seeds as they want?” Chief Justice
John G. Roberts Jr. asked.
The rest of the argument wasn’t much easier for Mark P. Walters, the attorney representing farmer
Vernon Hugh Bowman.
Bowman’s case raises questions about whether the right to patent living things extends to
their progeny. And it points out both the utility and ubiquity of Monsanto’s product, which its
attorney, Seth Waxman, called “probably the most rapidly adopted technological advance in
history.”
The farmer purchased Roundup Ready soybeans for his first planting of the year on the 300 acres he
farms in southern Indiana. At the time of the purchase, he agreed he would not save seeds from the
crop for future planting.
But he did buy commodity soybeans, which are usually used for feed, from the local grain elevator for
a second planting. As he hoped, those beans were mostly Roundup Ready, because that’s what most
4
of his neighbors grow. Monsanto said Bowman’s planting violated the company’s patent, and the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit agreed.
Walters said Monsanto’s right to control Bowman’s use of the seed ended when Bowman bought it, a
legal concept called patent exhaustion.
“It is available to be used by the purchaser to practice the invention,” Walters said. “Now, the only
way to practice that invention is to plant the seed and to grow more seeds.”
But several justices said that Bowman wasn’t just growing crops, he was manufacturing replicas of
Monsanto’s patented seed.
“The exhaustion doctrine permits you to use the good that you buy,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor told
Walters. “It never permits you to make another item from that item you bought. . . . You can use the
seed, you can plant it, but what you can’t do is use its progeny unless you are licensed to, because its
progeny is a new item.”
Walters replied that this was a new topic for the court — it has never considered applying
the exhaustion doctrine to self-replicating technologies — and the court should not take it
upon itself to create an exception. “You’re modifying this court’s case law substantially, and
that’s something that ought to be done in Congress,” he said.
The Obama administration sided with Monsanto in the case and said Bowman’s position
would “eviscerate” research.
“In order to encourage investment, the Patent Act provides 20 years of exclusivity,” said Assistant
Solicitor General Melissa Arbus Sherry. “This would be reducing the 20-year term to essentially one
and only sale. It would be near impossible to recoup your investments with that first sale and so the
more likely consequence is that research dollars would be put elsewhere.”
The case is Bowman v. Monsanto . End
]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-02-09/politics/37008186_1_soybean-seeds-monsanto-legal-battle
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-02-09/politics/37008186_1_soybean-seeds-monsanto-legal-battle/2
Farmer Hugh Bowman Use of Genetically Modified Soybeans Grows Into U.S. Supreme Court
Case February 9, 2013 Washington Post
5
By Robert Barnes, February 09, 2013

Farmer Hugh Bowman poses for a portrait on his Sandborn, Ind. farm, Wednesday,… (AJ Mast/For
the Washington…)
Farmer Hugh Bowman hardly looks the part of a revolutionary who stands in the way of promising
new biotech discoveries and threatens Monsanto’s pursuit of new products it says will “feed the
world.”
“Hell’s fire,” said the 75-year-old self-described “eccentric old bachelor,” who farms 300 acres of land
passed down from his father. Bowman rested in a recliner, boots off, the tag that once held his Foster
Grant reading glasses to a drugstore rack still attached, a Monsanto gimme cap perched ironically on
his balding head.
“I am less than a drop in the bucket.”
Yet Bowman’s unorthodox soybean farming techniques have landed him at the center of a national
battle over genetically modified crops. His legal battle, now at the Supreme Court, raises questions
about whether the right to patent living things extends to their progeny, and how companies that
engage in cutting-edge research can recoup their investments.
What Bowman did was to take commodity grain from the local elevator, which is usually used for
feed, and plant it. But that grain was mostly progeny of Monsanto’s Roundup Ready beans because
that’s what most Indiana soybean farmers grow. Those soybeans are genetically modified to survive
the weedkiller Roundup, and Monsanto claims that Bowman’s planting violated the company’s
restrictions.
Those supporting Bowman hope the court uses the case, which is scheduled for oral arguments later
this month, to hit the reset button on corporate domination of agribusiness and what they call
Monsanto’s “legal assault” on farmers who don’t toe the line. Monsanto’s supporters say advances in
health and environmental research are endangered.
And the case raises questions about the traditional role of farmers.
6
For instance: When a farmer grows Monsanto’s genetically modified soybean seeds, has he simply
“used” the seed to create a crop to sell, or has he “made” untold replicas of Monsanto’s invention that
remain subject to the company’s restrictions?
An adverse ruling, Monsanto warned the court in its brief, “would devastate innovation in
biotechnology,” which involves “notoriously high research and development costs.”
“Inventors are unlikely to make such investments if they cannot prevent purchasers of living
organisms containing their invention from using them to produce unlimited copies,” Monsanto states.
Bowman said Monsanto’s claim that its patent protection would be eviscerated should he win is
“ridiculous.”
“Monsanto should not be able, just because they’ve got millions and millions of dollars to spend on
legal fees, to try to terrify farmers into making them obey their agreements by massive force and
threats,” Bowman said.
His squat white farmhouse on the outskirts of his down-at-the-heels home town is now filled with
stacks of documents. There are legal procedure books under the living room end table and a copier in
the bedroom that regularly churns out Bowman’s six-page statement of events.
The journey from Sandborn to the Supreme Court is a trip through modern American agribusiness
and patent law, an increasing part of the court’s docket but a complex area of law that even the
justices approach with some trepidation.
At issue is Monsanto’s ubiquitous weedkiller, Roundup, which has revolutionized American farming.
“Weeds are the most significant economic challenge to global food production,” says a brief by the
American Soybean Association, which supports Monsanto in the case.
They compete with crops for water, nutrients and light, and Roundup has been especially effective in
combating them. The herbicide’s active ingredient, glyphosate, kills almost everything — including
conventional soybeans.
So Monsanto in 1996 offered a genetically modified soybean that was resistent to glyphosate, and
despite alarm from some who oppose such engineering, it has been wildly successful. Through
Monsanto’s own seeds and by its licensing of the technology to other seed producers, a little more
than a decade later more than 90 percent of the soybeans grown in the United States were Roundup
Ready.
Farmers who buy seeds with the Roundup Ready trait sign an agreement that says they may be used
for one planting only. Even though the gene exists in the new beans they grow, farmers cannot save
them for a second planting, nor sell them to others for that purpose.
But they are allowed to sell the beans to giant grain elevators, like those that are the most prominent
feature on the flat landscape in Bowman’s corner of southern Indiana.
7
From 1999 to 2007, Bowman purchased Roundup Ready seeds for his first planting of soybeans and
abided by Monsanto’s restrictions. But like some farmers, he also plants a second crop later in the
growing season; such crops are highly dependent on the weather, which makes them more hit-ormiss.
It is too risky to pay the high price of Monsanto’s Roundup-resistant seeds for the second crop of the
season, Bowman said, so instead he purchased cheaper commodity grain from the local elevator,
which is usually used for feed. He planted it, and when he sprayed the crop with the herbicide, almost
all survived. That wasn’t surprising, because 94 percent of Indiana soybean farmers grow Roundup
Ready beans.
Bowman told Monsanto exactly what he was doing, and Monsanto told him to stop.
The farmer was in effect “soybean laundering,” according to some of the companies supporting
Monsanto at the Supreme Court — selling Roundup Ready progeny beans to the grain elevator and
hoping other farmers were too, then buying them back and planting them.
The company sued when Bowman ignored its warnings, winning a judgment of nearly $85,000.
Bowman argued that under long-standing legal precedent, Monsanto’s patent claims ended — were
“exhausted” is the legal term — once Bowman purchased the Roundup Ready seed.
But the specialized court that hears patent cases, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit,
disagreed and said Monsanto could put restrictions on farmers’ use of progeny beans.
Moreover, the judges said that even if Monsanto’s patent was exhausted by the original sale,
Bowman was creating copies of the company’s technology.
“While farmers, like Bowman, may have the right to use commodity seeds as feed . . . they cannot
‘replicate’ Monsanto’s patented technology by planting it in the ground to create newly infringing
genetic material, seeds, and plants,” the court ruled.
It was one in a string of victories for Monsanto at the Federal Circuit. But the Supreme Court in recent
years has taken a much more aggressive stance in reviewing the lower court’s patent rulings. Even
though the Obama administration, at the justices’ invitation, said the ruling should be affirmed, the
court accepted Bowman’s appeal.
Those worried about genetically modified crops — now dominant in corn, sugar beet and canola
production as well as soybeans — say Bowman’s case presents a “microcosm” of the state of
American agribusiness, where corporations dominate and bully farmers through lawsuits.
“The current intellectual property environment of transgenic crops has spurred the privatization and
concentration of the world’s seed supply,” said a brief filed by the Center for Food Safety and Save
Our Seeds, groups that have been highly critical of Monsanto and genetically modified crops. “Market
concentration has resulted in 10 multinational corporations holding approximately two-thirds (65%) of
8
commercial seed for major crops, reducing choice and innovation, and increasing prices for the
American farmer.”
The brief asks the court to end the practice of allowing corporations to place conditions on the sale of
its seed and to reject an “end-run around patent exhaustion” for regeneration. “Farming is using
seeds, not constructing or manufacturing seeds,” the brief states.
Monsanto, alarmed at the possibilities of what the Supreme Court might do, has circled the wagons.
The Biotechnology Industry Organization warns that advancements in agricultural, medical and
environmental research “depend critically on a strong, stable and nationally uniform system of patent
rights and protections.”
Universities, economists, intellectual property experts and seed companies have weighed in on
Monsanto’s behalf.
Bowman originally represented himself, with the help of a local attorney, in the legal proceedings. But
now Seattle lawyer Mark P. Walters and his intellectual property law firm are working pro bono on
Bowman’s behalf.
Walters calls Monsanto’s dire claims “really such an exaggeration.” Monsanto can protect itself
through contracts, for instance, requiring grain elevators to impose restrictions against planting
commodity seed. The company could even ensure that its Roundup resistance does not pass on to
the next generation of soybeans, ensuring that farmers would have to buy, rather than save, seed.
Monsanto rejects those alternatives as unworkable.
Bowman, meanwhile, denies that he has found an ingenious loophole around Monsanto’s restriction.
“I see no threat in what I’ve done,” he said. “If there was, there’d surely be a hell of a lot of other
farmers doing it.” Instead, he said, “as far as I know, I’m the only damn dumb farmer around” that
tried.
The case is Vernon Hugh Bowman v. Monsanto .
End
]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]
9
Washington Post – March 23, 2011
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2011-03-23/politics/35207371_1_conventional-farmers-organicgrowers-organic-products
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2011-03-23/politics/35207371_1_conventional-farmers-organicgrowers-organic-products/2
Genetically Modified Crops Get Boost Over Organics With Recent USDA Rulings
By Lyndsey Layton, March 23, 2011

A youth tends to organic
KARUMBA/AFP/GETTY…)
tomatoes
in
a
greenhouse
in
Kibera,
Kenya.
(TONY
At the supermarket, most shoppers are oblivious to a battle raging within U.S. agriculture and
the Obama administration’s role in it. Two thriving but opposing sectors — organics and
genetically engineered crops — have been warring on the farm, in the courts and in
Washington.
Organic growers say that, without safeguards, their foods will be contaminated by genetically
modified crops growing nearby. The genetic engineering industry argues that its way of
farming is safe and should not be restricted in order to protect organic competitors.
Into that conflict comes Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who for two years has been promising
something revolutionary: finding a way for organic farms to coexist alongside the modified plants.
But in recent weeks, the administration has announced a trio of decisions that have clouded
the future of organics and boosted the position of genetically engineered (GE) crops. Vilsack
approved genetically modified alfalfa and a modified corn to be made into ethanol, and he
gave limited approval to GE sugar beets.
The announcements were applauded by GE industry executives, who describe their
genetically modified organisms as the farming of the future. But organics supporters were
furious, saying their hopes that the Obama administration would protect their interests were
dashed.
10
“It was boom, boom boom,” said Walter Robb, co-chief executive of Whole Foods Markets, a
major player in organics. “These were deeply disappointing. They were such one-sided
decisions.”
To a growing cadre of consumers who pay attention to how their food is produced, the agriculture
wars are nothing short of operatic, pitting technology against tradition in a struggle underscored by
politics and profits.
“Each side is so passionate,” Vilsack said in a recent interview. “And each side is convinced that it’s
right.”
The two sides are not clashing over the ethics or safety of genetic engineering, in which plants are
modified in the laboratory with genes from another organism to make them more pest-resistant or to
produce other traits. Instead, the argument is over the potential for contamination: pollen and seeds
from GE crops can drift across fields to nearby organic plants. That has triggered fears that organic
crops could be overtaken by modified crops. Contamination can cost organic growers — some
overseas markets, for example, have rejected organic products when tests showed they
carried even trace amounts of GE material.
Organics supporters also say that, as the number of genetically engineered crops grows, so does the
risk. And some conventional farmers who don’t use GE seeds are also concerned about their crops.
USDA has approved 81 GE crops — it has never denied a proposal — and 22 applications are
pending.
“It’s really about the right to farm and the right to choose,” Robb said. “You shouldn’t farm in a way
that affects the way others farm.”
But the GE industry counters that farmers should be free to grow the crops because they do not harm
other plants. GE boosters say it is the best way to feed a growing global population because farmers
can raise more food and use fewer pesticides and less fertilizer.
“Biotechnology can help crops thrive in drought-prone areas, improve the nutrition content of foods,
grow alternative energy sources and improve the lives of farmers and rural communities around the
globe,” Jim Greenwood, head of Biotechnology Industry Organization, said this year.
Some recent studies, however, suggest that the proliferation of GE crops and the pesticide
used on them has led to the development of “super weeds” resistant to that pesticide.
Since GE crops debuted in 1992, they have been embraced by many U.S. farmers. The vast majority
of soy, corn, cotton and canola seed is genetically engineered. Although GE sugar beets were
temporarily taken out of production by a court ruling, they had captured 95 percent of the
market.
11
Foods made from GE crops are not labeled, but the typical American consumes them
regularly because most processed products contain ingredients made from modified soy,
corn, canola and sugar beets.
Organic agriculture, meanwhile, has also been expanding. Although organics represent just 3.7
percent of the food sold in this country, sales of food and personal care products reached $26.6
billion in 2009, according to the Organic Trade Association.
To meet the legal definition of organic, crops must be raised without chemical pesticides and
fertilizers, irradiation or genetic modification.
Vilsack has said organics can help struggling small farms stay afloat. But he has also long supported
genetic engineering — the industry named him “Governor of the Year” when he was Iowa’s chief
executive. “I see both sides,” he said.
Vilsack arrived at the USDA to find the regulations on genetically modified foods outdated and the
issue tangled in litigation.
In December, he called an unusual summit between the sides. He said the USDA had finished
a court-ordered study of the environmental impact of GE alfalfa and faced a choice: granting
unconditional approval to the crop, or approving it with restrictions, such as buffer zones
between farms. The GE companies and farming groups argued against limitations, saying that
the USDA was overstepping its authority.
Vilsack’s effort was slammed by Republican lawmakers and conservative publications. On
Jan. 19, congressional Republicans told Vilsack that the idea of restricting GE alfalfa was
“troubling.” And on Jan. 20, Vilsack heard more of the same from the House agriculture
committee.
During the three weeks that followed, Vilsack announced approval of GE alfalfa, sugar beets
and corn.
Organics supporters were shocked. They had fully expected Vilsack to require some
limitations on GE alfalfa.
“Vilsack was very serious about the [coexistence] option, and people involved thought it was a done
deal,” said Andrew Kimbrell of the Center for Food Safety. “Then Vilsack is called to the White House
for questioning.”
Vilsack confirmed that he attended White House meetings. But, he said, ultimately regulations
prevented him from restricting GE crops. Under the 24-year-old rules, the USDA can set limits
only if the GE plant harms other plants. The agency has little authority to consider, for
example, whether a GE crop poses economic harm to an organic crop.
12
If Vilsack had been hoping to restrict GE crops, the timing could not have been worse. Republicans
had just won control of the House, and several farm-state members were adamantly opposed to any
restrictions on GE crops. Obama was trying to bolster his credentials as being business-friendly
and promising to reduce unnecessary regulation. The administration already had been
pushing trade partners for greater acceptance of GE seeds.
The GE industry is declaring victory for the time being, but the wars have not dissipated.
Monsanto has sued the government for not fully deregulating GE sugar beets. The Center for
Food Safety is again suing the USDA to stop the planting of GE alfalfa and sugar beets.
Critics of genetic engineering refer to a 2000 incident in which a GE corn meant for animal feed
infiltrated tortillas, corn chips and other foods. More than 300 foods were recalled, and farmers were
awarded a $110 million settlement for lost income.
Syngenta, maker of the GE corn to be used for ethanol, has said it will reduce risk of contamination
by requiring farmers to grow the crop near ethanol plants and sell only to those plants, among other
measures.
Sharon Bomer, an executive vice president at Biotechnology Industry Organization, said “there is
deep appreciation” in the GE industry for the need to minimize the spread of the crops. She said
organic farmers must protect their crops. “The burden is on them,” she said.
But GE critics are not satisfied. “To say ‘just trust me’ is rather absurd when we’re talking about profitrelated companies,” said George Siemon, chief executive of Organic Valley, a major organic farmers’
cooperative.
Vilsack said “co-existence” is not dead, and he intends to push on.
“I had no expectation that the dialogue was going to end in some grand understanding or a kumbaya
moment,” he said. “This is going to require a lot of work by reasonable, smart people to get this done.
It’s in the interest of the country for these folks to stop fighting and get together and figure out how to
live in the same neighborhood.” End
]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]
Washington Post May 13, 2008
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2008-05-13/news/36819585_1_gene-patents-biotech-crops-climate-change
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2008-05-13/news/36819585_1_gene-patents-biotech-crops-climate-change/2
Firms Seek Patents on 'Climate Ready' Altered Crops
By Rick Weiss,May 13, 2008
13
A handful of the world's largest agricultural biotechnology companies are seeking hundreds of patents
on gene-altered crops designed to withstand drought and other environmental stresses, part of a race
for dominance in the potentially lucrative market for crops that can handle global warming, according
to a report being released today.
Three companies -- BASF of Germany, Syngenta of Switzerland and Monsanto of St. Louis -- have
filed applications to control nearly two-thirds of the climate-related gene families submitted to patent
offices worldwide, according to the report by the Ottawa-based ETC Group, an activist organization
that advocates for subsistence farmers.
The applications say that the new "climate ready" genes will help crops survive drought, flooding,
saltwater incursions, high temperatures and increased ultraviolet radiation -- all of which are predicted
to undermine food security in coming decades.
Company officials dismissed the report's contention that the applications amount to an intellectualproperty "grab," countering that gene-altered plants will be crucial to solving world hunger but will
never be developed without patent protections.
The report highlights the economic opportunities facing the biotechnology industry at a time of
growing food insecurity, as well as the risks to its public image.
Many of the world's poorest countries, destined to be hit hardest by climate change, have rejected
biotech crops, citing environmental and economic concerns. Importantly, gene patents generally
preclude the age-old practice of saving seeds from a harvest for replanting, requiring instead that
farmers purchase the high-tech seeds each year.
The ETC report concludes that biotech giants are hoping to leverage climate change as a way to get
into resistant markets, and it warns that the move could undermine public-sector plant-breeding
institutions such as those coordinated by the United Nations and the World Bank, which have long
made their improved varieties freely available.
"When a market is dominated by a handful of large multinational companies, the research agenda
gets biased toward proprietary products," said Hope Shand, ETC's research director. "Monopoly
control of plant genes is a bad idea under any circumstance. During a global food crisis, it is
unacceptable and has to be challenged."
Ranjana Smetacek, a spokeswoman for Monsanto, said companies deserve praise for developing
crop varieties that will survive climate change.
"I think everyone recognizes that the old traditional ways just aren't able to address these new
challenges. The problems in Africa are pretty severe," she said, noting that Monsanto and BASF are
participating in a project, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to develop droughtresistant corn that would be made available to farmers in four southern African countries royalty-free.
14
"We aim to be at once generous and also cognizant of our obligation to shareholders who have paid
for our research," Smetacek said.
Gene patents allow companies to limit others from marketing those genes. The 35-page ETC report,
"Patenting the 'Climate Genes' . . . and Capturing the Climate Agenda," documents about 530
applications for climate-related plant genes filed at patent offices in the past five years. A few dozen
patents have been issued; hundreds of others are pending.
Of the 55 major gene families at the heart of those applications, BASF filed 21, the report says. Other
major players include Syngenta, seven; Monsanto, six; and Bayer of Germany, five.
Among the report's concerns is the breadth of many applications. Protective genes are usually
discovered in one variety of plant, and after minimal testing they are presumed to be useful in others,
Shand said. In one typical case, a BASF patent claim for a gene to tolerate "environmental stress"
seeks to preclude competitors from using that gene in "maize, wheat, rye, oat, triticale, rice, barley,
soybean, peanut, cotton, rapeseed, canola, manihot, pepper, sunflower, tagetes, solanaceous plants,
potato, tobacco, eggplant, tomato, Vicia species, pea, alfalfa, coffee, cacao, tea, Salix species, oil
palm, coconut, perennial grass and a forage crop plant."
Publicly funded developers of freely accessible plant varieties could succumb to biotech's market
dominance, the report warns. One of the biggest is the Consultative Group on International
Agricultural Research, which runs 15 research centers worldwide and is funded by several
international aid organizations. CGIAR has long emphasized non-biotech breeding to develop
varieties ideal for subsistence farmers and their local conditions.
Facing big budget cuts from its traditional funders, CGIAR is now a central player in the Gates-funded
collaboration with Monsanto and BASF -- a project that a CGIAR spokesman defended as a "global
public good."
Other experts said that both sides have oversimplified the pros and cons of biotech crop patents.
"I don't mind Monsanto developing these tools. I mind that we don't have an economic ecology that
lets other companies compete with them," said Richard Jefferson, founder and chief executive of
Cambia, a nonprofit institute based in Australia that helps companies worldwide sort through patent
holdings so they can build on one another's work instead of stymieing one another.
Under the current system for patenting genes, he said, "the little guys shake out and the big guys end
up in a place a lot like a cartel."
Jefferson characterized the ETC report as extreme in its anti-corporate views but praised it for
drawing attention to what he said is a real problem of corporate consolidation in the seed industry.
Happily, he said, patent offices are "getting a lot better" about not allowing overly broad gene patents.
15
Jonathan Bryant, managing director of BASF's U.S. division, said plants have tens of thousands of
genes, most of them unexplored. "I think there's still plenty of opportunity for many companies and
institutions," he said. "We're all looking to bring our technology together for a common good."
End
]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]
Washington Post – February 14, 2008
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2008-02-14/news/36789108_1_biotech-crops-agri-biotechapplications-isaaa
2 Reports At Odds On Biotech Crops
By Rick Weiss,February 14, 2008
CORRECTION: This article about the environmental impact of agricultural biotechnology misstates a
figure from a report released by the group Friends of the Earth. According to the report, use of the
herbicide Roundup on soybeans, cotton and corn increased 15-fold, not 15 percent, from 1994 to
2005.
Take your pick:
The widening adoption of genetically engineered crops by farmers around the world is reducing global
pesticide use, increasing agricultural yields and bringing unprecedented prosperity and food security
to millions of the world's poorest citizens.
Or, it is fueling greater use of pesticides, putting crop yields at risk, driving small farmers out of
business and decreasing global food security by giving a single company control over much of the
world's seed supply.
Dueling reports released yesterday -- one by a consortium largely funded by the biotech industry and
the other by a pair of environmental and consumer groups -- came to those diametrically different
conclusions.
The assessments highlight the controversy that still envelops agricultural biotechnology 12 years after
the first gene-altered crops debuted commercially.
16
Both sides agree that genetically modified crops are gaining ground. More than 280 million acres of
them were planted in 23 countries last year, a 12 percent growth in acreage and an increase of two
countries compared with 2006.
Most are endowed with a bacterial gene that protects plants against a leading weed killer, Monsanto's
Roundup, allowing farmers to spray that herbicide without worrying that it will kill their crops along
with the weeds. Most of the others have a gene that helps plants make their own insecticide, and a
growing percentage have more than one engineered trait.
But the implications of those statistics are open to interpretation.
To the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications, which gets its funding
from foundations and the biotech industry, the numbers represent a virtual tidal wave of acceptance.
"Once farmers have got used to this technology, they recognize the significant benefits," said Clive
James, chairman of ISAAA's board of directors and author of the new "Global Status of
Commercialized Biotech/GM Crops: 2007." In a teleconference call, James said more than 90 percent
of farmers in China and India who planted engineered varieties in 2006 did so again last year -evidence, he said, of their enthusiasm.
"Already those farmers who began adopting biotech crops a few years ago are beginning to see
socioeconomic advantages compared to their peers," including better access to health care and
higher school enrollment for their children, James said. Biotech crops will be essential, he added, if
the world is to achieve the U.N. Millennium Development Goal of cutting poverty and hunger in half by
2015.
Not so fast, said Bill Freese, a science policy analyst with the Center for Food Safety, a District-based
consumer organization that, with the environmental group Friends of the Earth, produced its own
report, "Who Benefits from GM Crops?: The Rise in Pesticide Use."
Countries worldwide are largely shunning biotech crops, Freese said in an interview, with virtually all
the increased acreage in a handful countries such as Argentina and Brazil that are growing
"Roundup-ready" soybeans on huge corporate farms -- not for poor people but for export to rich
countries and as animal feed.
Meanwhile, Freese said, studies such as a recent one in the journal Nature Biotechnology have found
that insecticide-exuding Bt cotton is increasingly failing to control insects, so farmers "end up having
to buy pesticides anyway, after paying roughly threefold more for the bt cotton seeds."
Each camp accused the other of using data selectively.
James said that farmers reaped $7 billion in benefits from biotech crops in 2006. He said that
because of those crops, 289,000 fewer metric tons of the active ingredient in pesticides were applied
to fields between 1996 and 2006, resulting in a 15 percent reduction in negative environmental
17
effects. Huge amounts of fuel were saved by not having to spray those pesticides, shrinking carbon
dioxide emissions by 2.6 billion pounds in 2006, equivalent to taking half a million cars off the road,
he said.
The Friends of the Earth report says that the growing use of Roundup-resistant crops has brought a
15 percent increase in the use of that herbicide on soybeans, cotton and corn from 1994 to 2005, with
a 28 percent jump in 2006 alone.
Meanwhile, the resistance gene has spread to several weed species, making them immune to the
herbicide. And some biotech genes have contaminated conventional crops, forcing major recalls and
losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars, Freese and others noted.
"Significantly, biotechnology companies have not commercially introduced a single GM crop with
increased yield, enhanced nutrition, drought tolerance or salt tolerance," the report finds.
Hope Shand of the ETC Group, a civil society organization based in Montreal, said that as the
number of biotech acres has swelled, the seed industry has shrunk.
"In 2006, Monsanto's biotech seeds and traits accounted for 88 percent of the total world area
devoted to genetically modified crops," she said. "This is a staggering level of corporate control over
the world's seed supply."
End
]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]
18