Kenyan court declares law banning seed sharing unconstitutional
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When you're making a seed that you want to make the best crop possible, the way to do that is to take two great lines of maize that share relatively little genetics, cross them at the last step, and enjoy the hybrid vigour that results. This is one of the most important practical advancements we have for getting good yields from crops: the yields are dramatically better for this seed then if you plant the seed kernels that are made by the hybrid. When you plant saved seed (which many poor people are forced to do through not being able to afford hybrid seeds) you get dramatically worse yields and often even doing things like using fertilizer doesn't make economic sense (https://www.hks.harvard.edu/publications/low-quality-low-ret... is frequently cited.)
However, to the naked eye, there's basically no distinction between a hybrid seed and stored seed. A lot of seed companies sell seeds that are coated to help protect the seeds from pests/blights, but seed counterfitters have learned how to copy this. To distinguish them, you either need to run genetic testing or plant them and wait a season. If you get scammed, the result can be devestating for a smallholder farmer's family.
I don't necessarily think community seed banks should be banned, but I think it's important context to know. There are people for whom they really need any seed, crops which are not served commercially well, and a whole bunch of other use cases I immediately understand for a community seed bank. But seed counterfitting is a real problem that is hurting some of the world's poorest people. (I'll also just say I'm not up to date on this law, the court case, or how it's been applied in the country.)
Disclaimer: I'm one of the founders of Apollo Agriculture and still serve on the board, which operates in Kenya and a few other countries trying to help smallholders get access to better agtech (which includes hybrid seeds and fertilizer and other high roi agricultural tools.)
Then you talked about the counterfeiting of seeds by imitating a coating, a concept completely unrelated to a law banning sharing seeds, and unlikely to be hindered by it at all.
Unless I am missing something.
I assumed that there was unwritten context where some seed vendor with genetically enhanced seeds was corrupting the legal process to try and protect their IP.
That is why this is a big deal and for more context on why interfering with agricultural sytems at this scale is a doomed excercise; The gates foundation tried this shit in Zambia, and it worked they produced more till covid hit, supply chains were cut and they are still dealing with a famine
Think about that for a second in a economy where approximately 40-50% is subsistence agriculture.
Basically a ploy to force the small farmers off the land and leave it to plantation and multicorps.
Its really sad but KE is in the grip of one of the worst neoliberal experiments since post Soviet in the early 90s. See recent news where all the country's healthdata has been auctioned off to the US big pharma for 25years for 1B.
I don’t know the answer, but the op’s answer does point to corruption. This reminds me of early 20th century reforms in the meat industry in the United States a hundred years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair
If seed counterfeiting is "a big problem", then banning seed sharing is "an even bigger, worse problem". What context justifies causing a bigger, worse problem to address a smaller problem?
Occam's razor suggests that the primary motivation was protecting corporate profits anyways, not addressing seed counterfeiting.
That's because if the true context in support was given, it would be: "because seed sharing reduces our rate of sales, and our resulting profits".
I'm guessing these hybrid seeds you are talking about are probably the reason for the counterfitting to begin with. I don't imagine them being sold at a reasonable price, but with this law maybe you have less competition?
Of course you have to pay for the seeds up front and get the reward at the end of the year. Investments are like that, a lot of poor farmers could spend 4x their current annual income on modern technology (seeds, fertilizer, tractors) and at the end of the year have more money left over than they had the previous year - but of course they need to get to harvest to get all the money. Worse there will be bad years where they lose money - it works out on average over 20 years but the individual years can be a killer if you start in the wrong year.
Everyone complains about farm subsidies/insurance in the US (well at least that's not a farmer), but this is the reason they exist. Farming is hard.
You have to maintain a separate "father" line and "mother" line. You must prevent the mother line from self-pollinating, which in some cases (like tomatoes) requires you to physically remove the anthers from every single flower, ever single day.
You must also prevent it from cross-pollinating with the wrong crop, which (for insect-pollinated crops) means you may need to grow it under insect-proof netting and then provide your own pollinators. That's easy enough if it's a honeybee-pollinated crop, but some crops are only pollinated by wild insects, so you need to hand-pollinate every flower.
In most cases, the father line needs to be grown intermixed with the mother line to ensure good pollination. These are usually two wildly different varieties (otherwise, why are you hybridizing them?) with different physical features, care requirements, planting times, etc. This means you typically can't use standard farming equipment (which is designed for monocropping at scale) and must plant and care for the crops using a lot more physical labor.
Once the mother line is pollinated, the father line must removed to ensure it doesn't produce seed that could get mixed up with the hybrid seed. While removing it, you have to be very careful to not the damage the mother line crop. In some crops, you must not even jostle the mother plants too much or they'll drop a lot of their seed.
For this reason, F1 hybrid seed is very expensive, especially for crops where hybridizing is particularly painstaking. For example, the tomato seed I hybridized sold for approximately $1 per seed. It was extremely worth it to or customers, though, because it meant they could grow several times the amount of fruit in the same space with the same inputs.
Also, what's the connection to the high yield ones? Is it because those get counterfeited the most?
/s
Imagine if 90% counterfeit electronics caused house fires, the harm is way beyond the purchase price. At that point customers start caring a great deal, but corruption is difficult to avoid.
Transportation infrastructure on this scale is a new thing, though famine essentially going away is a massive advantage for modern systems.
The first generation of Hybrid seeds are on average several times more productive than the second generation, yet they look the same. Further it’s much easier to gather a second generation of seeds than the first. Thus significantly worse product that’s cheaper to produce but looks identical barring genetic testing = counterfeit.
the first generation has a many sets of genes with "Highly Productive Dominant (HPD, my terms for this post) genes, Not so Productive Recessive Gene (NPR)". By inbreeding 2 lines for a while, one can end up with a strain that has both genes being one and thereby when you cross it with something else, you know the offspring will get its gene (as it really only has one). Therefore the first generation, will have many sets as what I described above and will 100% express the HPD of those pairs.
The 2nd generation though of seeds will have a randomized assortment of HPD/HPD, HPD/NPR, NPR/NPR genes. Therefore while 75% of the seeds expressed genes will be HPD on average, that's obviously less than 100% that one gets from first generation.
Further you’re likely looking at many such combinations not just a single one.
Edit: (I personally know basically nothing about the law or how it’s been implemented.)
The high yield seeds are created by cross pollinating certain varieties. When the high yield seeds are planted, the new seeds should be eaten -not re-planted- since they will give poor yield.
So a counterfeiter can just buy cheaper food-seeds and resell them as expensive high-yield seeds.
That is very hard to believe.
EDIT: I see now I was too quick to judge and that my knowledge on the topic was insufficient. Read the excellent comments below , they helped me understand how OP makes sense.
Such laws are in place to protect the IP of these special seed producers, to make their business model viable. That does have merit to a degree, you do want such companies to exist, but they should also have to contend with competition from other, perhaps less effective but cheaper, sources of seed.
This doesn’t have much to do with protecting the farmers from being cheated into planting bad seed. And I am skeptical of the fact that even second generation seeds are that bad, or that these hybrids are really such a life-changing upgrade.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_seed
To state once again, I don’t know much about this law or how the government believes it’s preventing counterfeit seed, but bad seed is a huge problem for farmers. I personally want farmers to be able to do whatever they want to with their farms!
Would you care to answer the questions I posed? They were not rhetorical, I would like to be proven wrong and learn.
PS: I really admire what you are doing with your company, I don’t want to discount that.
> So you are saying that these special hybrid seeds that are the first generation of combining two strains are the only ones that can perform well?
For a lot of crop systems, yes! There are obviously crop systems where you can do clones and some exceptions are always present in biology, but basically yes. Yes for all the big staple crops except Canola.
> And that using any other seeds, even the second generation of that same strain, is so bad and so easy to confuse that it should be outright illegal?
I probably wouldn’t make it illegal, I think farmers should be allowed to do whatever they want to! (My completely out of the loop guess is the government is trying to help small holder farmers who are reporting that they’re being scammed by these groups and that they lack the resources to do genetic testing to prosecute them for the fraud.)
> That is very hard to believe. Such laws are in place to protect the IP of these special seed producers, to make their business model viable. That does have merit to a degree, you do want such companies to exist, but they should also have to contend with competition from other, perhaps less effective but cheaper, sources of seed.
It’s not really an IP protection thing, it’s an extremely difficult many year process to recover genetics on most hybrid crop systems. I don’t think most seed companies care about folks using saved seed, they know almost all farmers will buy good seed if they can.
> This doesn’t have much to do with protecting the farmers from being cheated into planting bad seed. And I am skeptical of the fact that even second generation seeds are that bad, or that these hybrids are really such a life-changing upgrade.
I think well answered by a parent comment, but the book The Wizard and The Prophet is pretty good reading on Borlaug and the green revolution. If you look at global food capacity vs population, it’s probably the single most important life upgrade for everyone of modernity.
(Small Edit: I should note that I’m not an agronomist, I’m just a guy who codes okay sometimes and that I’ve gotten to spend a lot of time talking to agronomists and smallholder farmers trying to make agriculture for small farmers work better.)
F1 and F2 are commonly accepted terms for first generation and second generation seeds from hybrid plants. Because these hybrids are created from two stable lines, they are themselves unstable and will produce, at best, seeds of varying quality and at worst entirely sterile plants.
https://www.parkseed.com/blogs/park-seed-blog/understanding-...
https://www.reddit.com/r/botany/comments/wq3heg/question_why...
https://www.google.com/search?q=difference+between+first+and...
If you're going to pay more for a hybrid seed, it should be only for a first generation, otherwise you don't know what you're going to get. For some crops, like tomatos, that's survivable. For others like corn, that could easily be devastating. It's like playing russian roulette the slow and expensive way.
Note that OP didn't say the seed banks themselves should be illegal, but when you can't identify by visual inspection, it's very high risk for fraud if they're selling what they claim are premium products but are really F2 seeds.
The F1 person might also want to buy your seeds because he has access to another landrace variety from far away and wants to cross them.
Absolutely. The first generation of a hybrid seed will produce several times more than either traditional seeds or the second generation. You can't reasonably grow your own hybrid seeds as you need to keep your fields to grow those seeds well separated from any other fields.
Now not all plants can be hybridized, and even of those that can I won't state with confidence that all of them have that property. However Maize (corn in US) which is a major world crop does act like this.
> Such laws are in place to protect the IP of these special seed producers, to make their business model viable
Not exactly. There is some of that for sure, but there is also that if you are a seed producer you want to ensure your customers get your good seed and not counterfeit that looks just like yours (if you cannot examine cell DNA you can't tell the difference between a first generation hybrid and any other seed).
However the law was written is clearly too broad. It should protect the hybrid seeds - nobody wants any seed claimed as hybrid that isn't a first generation hybrid. However it shouldn't affect any traditionally saved seeds (though where hybrid is available nobody wants them except museums)
From what I read getting grades 1-8 is common in Kenya, but the high school years of education drop off significantly with only around 40% of the population getting that education, and making an educated guess that would target city people more than those that would be farmers.
If anyone was taught this in highschool, it must have been established practice for decades at least.
Non-farmers really don't understand how human-engineered agriculture has been for the entire history of human civilization. For example, corn (maize) does not really exist in nature, it's a human-developed thing. Hybridized plants still carry the genetic code that allowed them to propagate through the ages before human agriculture, and these survival traits will very quickly express themselves in the offspring (seeds).
$$$.
The other reason these laws exist is a long history by Big Ag (Monsanto, Cargill) doing the following, and has been done in the states for a while:
1) gmo/patented seeds in field on the left, community non-big ag seeds on the right field.
2) Cross-pollination occurs because we’re talking crops. Variations on this.
3) Monsanto sues Farmer John and Jane into the ground next season for stealing tech via the crops he’s growing.
Add in a little bit of fear (encryption backdoors for the children, laws to prevent dangerous counterfeit seeds!), and you have monopoly on farming run by big corps.
Also, US corps have a long history of POC’ing underhanded approaches in Africa.
What could be going on here!?
Edit - Man, rereading, “forced to plant [dangerous] saved seeds,” guess it’s Big Ag + tech startups now pushing this. Maybe… those farmers just want to control their “IP” (saved seeds) so they don’t have to buy them from a cartel of seed providers? This is such a well known problem in the states, is this marketing really working in Africa?
Final edit on the soapbox - other reason why this matters is genetic diversity. Crop blight is a thing. There is no way the natural “herd immunity” of a basket of seed variants in a community is outstripped in effectiveness by a growing monoculture of owned hybrid seeds that stay in front of the blights each season. Coffee rust already jumped the Atlantic from Africa to SA. Often feels like I’ve read this sci-fi novel already (there is a good one - Windup Girl).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_legal_cases
Edit - Can’t reply again looks like but to the response below, yes many view this approach as effectively leading to enforcing what you state. Which is why it is so horribly underhanded to me, and seeing supporting narratives in hackernews was striking.
> We do not exercise our patent rights where trace amounts of our patented seeds or traits are present in a farmer’s fields as a result of inadvertent means.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20101023123618/http://www.monsan...
That sounds like a very hollow commitment to me. Who defines what "trace" is. Monsanto?
And what is the normal cross pollination rate from doing nothing. 1% 5%? It sounds like it just means we won't sue you the first year, we'll wait until the second year then sue you.
The practice needs to be banned. It's Monsanto seeds that are spreading their genetics in the wind. If they don't want that, then make crops that can't. If they're unable to, then tough.
Saying nobody within pollination range can grow their own crops anymore once someone nearby purchases Monsanto seeds is absurd.
That's all aside from the fact that patenting things that reproduce still is somewhat of a weak concept to begin with.
Putting an absurd tech spin on it. If you made a robot/machinr that could replicate itself sure patent it. If you made a robot that sent out radio waves and every machine within receiving distance could/would suddenly replicate, you can't sue those owners for "stealing your technology".
It has never made any sense for them to enforce it against cross contamination because farmers don't want the seeds if they're not already nuking everything with glyphosate. They either buy F1 seeds every year for the extra yield hybrid vigor gives them or they save seed that's somewhat optimized for their growing conditions.
> Saying nobody within pollination range can grow their own crops anymore once someone nearby purchases Monsanto seeds is absurd.
This is a fantasy you have concocted, not the reality.
Comment could be considered misleading…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowman_v._Monsanto_Co
1. Bowman buys Monsanto soybeans as seeds agreeing to not replant the soybean harvest.
2. Bowman sells the soybean harvest to a food wholesaler who sells to retailers who sells to consumers for consumption.
3. Bowman buys soybeans back from that same food wholesaler (who normally only sells for consumption) intending to replant those food soybeans (which is abnormal).
4. Bowman then tests the seeds he bought to verify which ones were the ones he sold which had the Monsanto modifications (or his neighbors who were also using Monsanto seeds with the same contract) and which he was not allowed to replant as per the contract in 1.
5. Bowman then only replants the ones with the modifications and uses Roundup in those fields.
6. Bowman then repeatedly saves and replants seeds from that crop to amplify their quantity of modified crop and purchases more seeds from the food wholesaler.
It was about as premeditated and intentional a contract violation as you can get.
Unconscionable to support such a law IMO.
That's like saying backhanding your kid is a human right. Every human on the planet practiced it forever.
Agriculture is absolutely critical to the survival of our species and civilization. Being able to edit and copy software code really isn't.
I do think we should protect the ability to run your own code, via the law, but again, not a human right.
Encourage you to look into this issue more.
That's not the same as human rights. I think it's a silly practice lately to start proclaiming all these things are human rights. Particularly (not this case) when those things have to be given to them by other humans.
What's actually a human right and what isn't will depend on who you ask, but just "Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others." seems to be applicable (UN Charter §17)? It doesn't feel like "random thing I think is important is a human right" at all?
That's in the US, not sure how it plays out around the world.
They just want to lock in the farmers, in an situation where they can't do it technologically. So they're doing it via the law. It's...basically what you'd expect of the world today. Sad, but I suppose they argue that they should have IP rights just like any industry.
And you'd think they'd just boycott on principle, but it puts them at a big disadvantage in many cases, as their yields go down while national harvest goes up, making sale prices lower. So it's not easy to see what to do about it from the farmer's perspective.
>The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
I just find it annoying when people declare [thing] is a right. Often they don't even understand what a right is, and haven't thought about where their rights are derived.
If they mean it should be a right, I probably agree in many cases.
How do you feel about companies developing GMOs and then saying farmers can't keep the seed? If we don't protect their products legally, will we continue to have GMO advances? Is enough of the research happening at a non-profit level? I don't know the answers, so I haven't decided myself.