Monsanto Loses $2 Billion Judgment to Brazilian Farmers
12 June 12
About 85 percent of Brazil's massive soyabean crop output is produced from genetically engineered seeds. (photo: Celsias.com)
ive
million Brazilian farmers have taken on US based biotech company
Monsanto through a lawsuit demanding return of about 6.2 billion euros
taken as royalties from them. The farmers are claiming that the powerful
company has unfairly extracted these royalties from poor farmers
because they were using seeds produced from crops grown from Monsanto’s
genetically engineered seeds, reports Merco Press.
In April this year, a judge in the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, ruled in favor of the farmers and ordered Monsanto to return royalties paid since 2004 or a minimum of $2 billion.
The ruling said that the business practices of seed multinational
Monsanto violate the rules of the Brazilian Cultivars Act (No.
9.456/97).
Monsanto has appealed against the order and a federal court ruling on the case is now expected by 2014.
About 85% of Brazil’s massive soyabean crop output is
produced from genetically engineered seeds. Brazil exports about $24.1
billion worth of soyabeans annually, more than a quarter of its total
agri-exports.
Farmers say that they are using seeds produced many
generations after the initial crops from the genetically modified
Monsanto seeds were grown. Farmers claim that Monsanto unfairly collects
exorbitant profits every year worldwide on royalties from “renewal”
seed harvests. Renewal crops are those that have been planted using seed
from the previous year’s harvest. Monsanto disagrees, demanding
royalties from any crop generation produced from its
genetically-engineered seed. Because the engineered seed is patented,
Monsanto not only charges an initial royalty on the sale of the crop
produced, but a continuing two per cent royalty on every subsequent
crop, even if the farmer is using a later generation of seed.
The first transgenic soy seeds were illegally smuggled
into Brazil from neighboring Argentina in 1998 and their use was banned
and subject to prosecution until the last decade, according to the
state-owned Brazilian Enterprise for Agricultural Research (EMBRAPA).The
ban has since been lifted and now 85 percent of the country’s soybean
crop (25 million hectares or 62 million acres) is genetically modified,
Alexandre Cattelan, an EMBRAPA researcher told Merco Press. Brazil is
the world’s second largest producer and exporter of soyabean. China is
one of its biggest buyers.
“Monsanto gets paid when it sell the seeds. The law
gives producers the right to multiply the seeds they buy and nowhere in
the world is there a requirement to pay (again). Producers are in effect
paying a private tax on production,” Jane Berwanger, lawyer for the
farmers told the media agencies.
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