Farmers’ groups and activists are raising serious concerns about proposed changes to the International Seed Treaty. They fear these changes could favour big companies over small farmers, threatening global food security and traditional farming methods. The treaty, officially known as the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) or the “Plant Treaty,” aims to protect and share seeds and plant materials worldwide. This helps improve food security by giving countries access to diverse crop varieties for research.
A key part of the treaty is a system called the Multilateral System (MLS). This system allows countries and researchers to share genetic resources for 64 important food and forage crops. In return, they should share the benefits from their research, both financially and non-financially. However, the Bharat Beej Swaraj Manch (India Seed Sovereignty Alliance) and other organisations argue that the current MLS lacks transparency and accountability. Once seeds leave their country of origin, it’s hard for the original farmers and national authorities to know who received them or what the research outcomes are.
Now, there are proposals to expand the MLS to include seeds from all plants, not just the current 64 crops. Critics worry this expansion, without fixing the existing problems of transparency and accountability, will further weaken oversight. They believe the proposals are designed to benefit seed companies rather than protect farmers’ rights.
Farmers’ rights, which are supposed to be protected under the treaty, have so far remained largely symbolic. There are no strong safeguards proposed to ensure that expanding the MLS won’t limit these rights. Without information about seed exchanges, farmers cannot monitor how their resources are being used. Increasingly, information from these seeds is being shared online anonymously, bypassing national laws and farmers’ rights.
The new proposals aim to make this practice legal. The MLS was originally intended as a limited exception to other international rules, but its expansion could undermine national control over plant genetic resources. The system proposed creates an imbalance, asking countries to share more resources while offering little in return.
“We have preserved these seeds for generations. They are not commodities to be traded without our consent,” stated one farmer. “The corporate takeover of our genetic heritage must be stopped. Our seeds, our sovereignty.”
The Bharat Beej Swaraj Manch has sent a letter to world leaders, including the Director-General of the FAO and the Secretary of the ITPGRFA. They are demanding that the current draft package of measures be rejected because both the content and the process used to create it are biased.
Their demands include:
* Publishing details about all past seed transfers under the MLS.
* Consulting with farmers’ organisations worldwide.
* Rejecting the current biased draft and starting a new process that prioritizes farmers’ rights and improves MLS governance.
* Protecting farmers’ rights at all stages and preventing biopiracy (the appropriation of traditional knowledge or biological resources for commercial gain without fair compensation).
* Ensuring fair benefit sharing from the use of plant genetic resources.
* Stopping pressure on developing countries to accept proposals that harm their national seed sovereignty.
The organisations highlight that despite access being granted to millions of plant genetic resources, benefits have not reached the countries or farmers who provided them. They argue that the claim that ‘access itself is the benefit’ ignores the treaty’s core purpose. Furthermore, new seed varieties developed using shared resources are being patented without proper disclosure, leading to potential harassment of farmers.
The lack of a tracking mechanism for shared resources is a major concern. Expanding the MLS to all plants without fixing these fundamental issues is seen as a significant threat to farmers’ rights and ecological balance. The treaty’s original purpose of promoting food security through limited exceptions is being undermined.
Critically, the proposals fail to include safeguards for farmers’ rights, such as the right to save, use, exchange, and sell farm-saved seeds, and the protection of traditional knowledge. The process has been criticised for not properly recording concerns from farmers’ organisations, making the promise of farmers’ rights seem hollow.
“All the promises of ensuring farmers rights became mere rhetoric and the entire process that did not include the discussion on safeguards rendered the declared and accepted rights framework infructuous, null and void,” the letter states. There are no proposals to ensure farmers give prior informed consent or to develop ways for them to defend against intellectual property claims on their seeds. The current system risks displacing traditional seed systems and causing ecological and health concerns. The letter urges leaders to take these concerns seriously and act immediately.