Briefings.

GRAIN produces several briefings each year. They are substantial research reports, providing indepth background information and analysis on a give topic. GRAIN briefings are usually written by GRAIN staff, often in collaboration with other organisations or individuals.

Latin America’s Free Trade Agreements with the European Union - An agenda for domination ( 2.2 MB)
Author: GRAIN Date: July 2008

The European Union is promoting “association agreements” or “cooperation agreements” with Latin American countries. These agreements appear weaker and more flexible than the equivalent agreements that the USA is signing with countries in the region. But behind this affable facade the EU is tough: it is insisting that the countries agree to extend periodically what has been agreed and to undertake an undefined number of legal, administrative, economic, technical and social reforms, the objective of which is to grant European countries ever more favourable conditions in all aspects of national life.

This amounts to a new Conquest (as the 1492 European “discovery” of the Americas is often referred to). It will lead to transantional corporations taking control over communications, water, the banking system, oil, biodiversity, all kinds of raw materials and fishing, as well as being able to use Latin American countries as bases for exports. Eventually European companies will take the place of state companies and be responsible for establishing norms, certification and patents. Tariff barriers, taxes, phytosanitary standards, quality controls and any other regulation seen as a barrier to the expansion of Euopean companies and their trade will be swept away.
If these agreements are negotiated in secret and their implementation becomes the responsibility of the executive branch of government, civil society and the parliaments of the countries involved will not be allowed to protest or to investigate properly what is going on.

It is hoped that this briefing will promote disucssion about what is happening and help Latin American society to stand up to the new European invasion.

Whose harvest? The politics of organic seed certification (239 kb)
Author: GRAIN Date: January 2008

Millions of farmers around the world practice organic agriculture and over a billion people get most of their food from these farms. Currently only a small portion of what they produce is labeled as certified organic, but the global market for such foods is growing. While some believe that certification is needed to create market opportunities for small farmers others fear that existing systems are doing the reverse -- setting the stage for agribusiness to take over. Now these tensions are coming to a head with seeds. Today, new regulations governing seeds in organic farming, more attuned to the needs of seed corporations than seed savers, are popping up everywhere, with potentially devastating consequences for farmer seed systems. This Briefing provides the first global overview of regulations concerning seeds in organic farming and assesses what such regulations mean to the future of organic farming and the millions of farmers who sustain it.

A new Green Revolution for Africa? (153 kb)
Author: GRAIN Date: December 2007

For some time now, there's been talk of a new Green Revolution for Africa – because "Africa missed the first Green Revolution" or because "the first Green Revolution missed Africa". Now a new project, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), is trying to put the concept into operation. This paper aims to describe what a Green Revolution really signifies, why such projects haven't worked before and why AGRA won't work either, in order to help people trying to take positions at the local, national and regional levels.

The end of farm-saved seed? Industry’s wish list for the next revision of UPOV (434 kb)
(95 kb)
Author: GRAIN Date: February 2007

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.

Bilateral biosafety bullies (272 kb)
Author: GRAIN and and the African Centre for Biosafety Date: October 2006

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.