Reports are substantial research reports, providing indepth background information and analysis on a given topic. GRAIN briefings are usually written by GRAIN staff, often in collaboration with other organisations or individuals.
The big players in the world seed industry are grumbling about loopholes in the plant variety protection system, which was the alternative to patenting that they set up in the 1960s. The Europeans want to get rid of farmers’ limited entitlement to save seed. The Americans want to restrict the exemption by which breeders have the free use of each other’s commercial varieties for research purposes. In both cases, the point is to reduce competition and boost profits. In the short term, the victims will be farmers, who will probably end up paying the seed giants an additional US$7 billion each year. But in the long run, we will all lose from the growing corporate stranglehold over our food systems. This briefing traces the recent discussions within the seed industry and explores what will happen if a plant variety right becomes virtually indistinguishable from a patent.
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Across the world, the use of bilateral trade instruments to prise open markets for genetically modified (GM) crops is escalating. To expand business overseas, the biotech industry needs stronger intellectual property rules and weaker biosafety standards. Bilateral trade deals are an effective way to get this. This report looks specifically at how the world’s grain and oilseed traders, who account for the bulk of the world’s GM crop production and trade today, use bilateral trade channels to prevent countries from building strong biosafety regulatory environments.
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Traditional knowledge is increasingly popping up in bilateral and regional free trade agreements. What's going on?
Traditional knowledge has come up in a dozen or so free trade agreements (FTAs) over the last couple of years. In numerous cases, specific provisions on traditional knowledge were signed. The pattern at play is simple. When facing the US, trade negotiators concerned about "biopiracy" try to put limits on when and how researchers and corporations can get patents on biodiversity or traditional knowledge in the United States. When the US is not involved, governments carve out space to define their own legal systems of "rights" to traditional knowledge. In all cases, however, FTAs are framing traditional knowledge as intellectual property – a commodity to be bought and sold on the global market.
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Backyard or free-range poultry are not fuelling the current wave of bird flu outbreaks stalking large parts of the world. The deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu is essentially a problem of industrial poultry practices. Its epicentre is the factory farms of China and Southeast Asia and -- while wild birds can carry the disease, at least for short distances -- its main vector is the highly self-regulated transnational poultry industry, which sends the products and waste of its farms around the world through a multitude of channels. Yet small poultry farmers and the poultry biodiversity and local food security that they sustain are suffering badly from the fall-out. To make matters worse, governments and international agencies, following mistaken assumptions about how the disease spreads and amplifies, are pursuing measures to force poultry indoors and further industrialise the poultry sector. In practice, this means the end of the small-scale poultry farming that provides food and livelihoods to hundreds of millions of families across the world. This paper presents a fresh perspective on the bird flu story that challenges current assumptions and puts the focus back where it should be: on the transnational poultry industry.
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This briefing examines how the US government uses USAID to actively promote GM agriculture. The focus is on USAID's major programmes for agricultural biotechnology and the regions where these programmes are most active in parts of Africa and Asia[1]. These USAID programmes are part of a multi-pronged strategy to advance US interests with GM crops. Increasingly the US government uses multilateral and bilateral free trade agreements and high-level diplomatic pressure to push countries towards the adoption of many key bits of corporate-friendly regulations related to GM crops. And this external pressure has been effectively complimented by lobbying and funding from national and regional USAID biotech networks.
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Hybrid rice, a new technology Asian governments are aggressively promoting to feed their population, is not wanted, not needed and will end up destroying rural areas. This report shows that hybrid rice is being rejected by farmers across Asia. Hybrid rice is expensive, heavily reliant on fertilisers and pesticides, and a very poor techno-fix to increase yield. The main countries turning to hybrid rice are China, Vietnam, Philippines, Bangladesh and India.
This is an independent update on a 2000 report
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This study was commissioned by GRAIN as an independent exploration into the implications of bilateral investment treaties, and free trade agreements with chapters on investment, in terms of international standards for the protection of intellectual property rights. GRAIN is making this study publicly available, through its website, as a resource for further research and analysis.
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This briefing is the result of research undertaken by GRAIN in collaboration with several national and regional partners in Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali and Senegal. GRAIN interviewed dozens of scientists, farmers and representatives of professional organisations from the cotton sector in each of these countries, and spent time with them reflecting on the significance of Bt cotton for their communities, their countries and West Africa in general. The briefing also draws heavily on the experiences of other countries where Bt cotton has already been introduced, such as India and South Africa. This briefing is designed to help farmers and local communities, researchers, NGOs, policy-makers and media people understand the implications of Bt cotton for West Africa.
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This briefing describes some of the myths about free trade negotiations and agreements plus outlines the texts that are being imposed by the US - the country which is most agressively pushing for these bilateral deals.
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With the illicit introduction of Bt Cotton into Mali, GRAIN exposes the effect this will have on West Africa.
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