When Saving Seed Becomes a Crime
In recent years, the plant breeding industry has moved from lobbying for stronger plant variety protection laws to pushing for their more aggressive enforcement, including under criminal laws. The increasing criminalization of farmers’ seed practices raises significant concerns for farmers’ rights and livelihoods, seed and food security, agrobiodiversity and the right to food.
This study aims to take stock of the criminalization of farmers’ rights to save, use, exchange, and sell seed under plant breeders’ rights (PBR) laws, an issue that is often discussed but not systematically studied. Criminalization, in this context, means that an act of a non-criminal nature is being handled as if it were a crime and is made liable to harsh sanctions such as heavy fines and imprisonment. More specifically, the study aims at documenting the modalities of criminalization and their impact on farmers based on selected case studies.