Globalists use trade agreements to criminalize farmers' seeds

(NaturalNews) Increasingly, the elitist masterminds who work tirelessly to remake the world in their own image are using their own globalist agreements to persecute the masses and force them into conformity, whether or not such conformity is in their best interests.

This is especially true when it comes to governing agriculture; food production, like the control and delivery of health care, touches every human on the planet so naturally the globalists seek to control every aspect of it.

Globalists want to transform agricultural tradition into criminal offense

As reported by the website Grain.org, the practice of a farmer saving seeds from year to year, from one harvest to the next, is as old as organized agriculture itself. However, globalists are attempting to use sweeping regional trade agreements to transform that practice into a criminal offense, so that a very small number of mega-multinational agribusiness giants like Monsanto "can turn seeds into private property and make money from them."

The site reported that as hard as the globalists are pushing their largely GMO seed agenda, anti-GMO forces in a number of countries have mobilized popular resistance, forcing governments to put the brakes on plans to privatize seeds.

Grain.org noted that trade agreements have pretty much become the economic weapon of choice for governments; such agreements are heavily influenced by globalist corporations who spend hundreds of millions on lobbyists. The provisions favored by the corporations tend to restrict farmers' rights to utilize trademarked seeds as they see fit.

International trade agreements aid globalists seeking intellectual property rights over seeds

In recent years one of the most cited agreements was the World Trade Organization's pact on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, or TRIPS. Enacted in 1994 during the Clinton administration, the far-reaching agreement was (and remains) the first global treaty which created standards for "intellectual property rights" over seeds.

"The goal is to ensure that companies like Monsanto or Syngenta, which spend money on plant breeding and genetic engineering, can control what happens to the seeds they produce by preventing farmers from reusing them - in much the same way as Hollywood or Microsoft try to stop people from copying and sharing films or software by putting legal and technological locks on them," Grain.org reported.

Opponents of the agreement argue that agricultural seeds are not "intellectual property" on the level of, say, computer software, a book or a song. The idea that global trade agreements can patent what is essentially "life" has remained immensely controversial and contested.

For those reasons, Grain.org reports, the WTO agreement was a sort of compromise between governments:

It says that countries may exclude plants and animals (other than microorganisms) from their patent laws, but they must provide some form of intellectual property protection over plant varieties, without specifying how to do that.

One of the earliest agreements to push seed privatization (among other issues) was the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which was signed by the United States, Canada and Mexico, about the time TRIPS was enacted. NAFTA obligated Mexico to join other countries in granting agri-giants exclusive rights to stop farmers from harvesting and reusing their seeds.

Only 10 companies control 55 percent of commercial seed market globally

That agreement set a precedent for follow-on agreements for the U.S., the European Union, the European Free Trade Association and Japan, Grain.org noted, adding:

A nonstop process of diplomatic and financial pressure to get countries to privatize seeds "through the back door" (these trade deals are negotiated in secret) has been going on since then. The stakes are high for the seed industry. Globally, just 10 companies control 55% of the commercial seed market.

Still, for the few agri-giants involved, the massive market share they have already obtained is not enough; they want more. In Asia, Africa and Latin America, 70-80 percent of seeds used by farmers are saved by farmers each year, either from their own operations or from neighbors nearby. The agri-giants want to gain control over this vast untapped territory, to replace saving of seeds with patented seed markets in which the corporations control the patents and would thus force farmers to buy seeds annually rather than reuse them.

"This is where free trade agreements come in as a perfect vehicle to force countries to change their laws," Grain.org reported.

Sources:

http://www.grain.org

http://www.grain.org [PDF]

http://www.naturalnews.com