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'Terminator' Seed and the Future of Farming New technology that genetically disables plants' ability to produce viable seeds could disadvantage many farmers and harm the natural gene pool, critics say. By Michael T. Seigel Start Date: 2/10/99 [This story is based upon a longer article by Michael T. Seigel, SVD, posted at http://www.sedos.org/Food/terminator.html. Seigel is affiliated with SEDOS, an organization of Catholic lay mission workers and priests based in Rome.] In March 1998, a patent was granted to U.S. cotton seed producer Delta and Pine Land Company, jointly with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), on a technique that genetically disables the capacity of plants to produce seeds that will germinate. Titled "Control of Plant Gene Expression," U.S. patent No. 5,723,765 reads in part as follows:
The patent broadly covers plants and seed, both transgenic and conventional, of all species for a system designed to allow control of progeny seed viability without harming the crop. The principal application of the technology will be to control unauthorized planting of seed of proprietary varieties... by making such practice non-economic since unauthorized saved seed will not germinate, and would be useless for planting. The patent has the prospect of opening significant worldwide seed markets to the sale of transgenic technology in varietal crops in which crop seed currently is saved and used in subsequent seasons as planting seed. Delta and Pine Land Company intends that licensing of this technology will be made widely available to other seed companies. Although Delta and Pine Land Company has been primarily a producer of cotton seed, the patent covers all kinds of plants, whether bio-engineered ("transgenic") or not. The clear intent of disabling a plant's ability to reproduce is to greatly increase the market for viable seed. Whereas many farmers, particularly those in poorer regions, always save seed from the best part of their crop each year for the next year's planting -- a practice that goes back to the very dawn of agriculture perhaps 8,000 years ago -- crops grown with reproductively disabled seed, or "terminator seed," would thwart this practice entirely and require that farmers, whether poor or not, buy new seed every year. The patent notes that Delta and Pine Land Company intends to make its technology widely available to competitors. The clear intent here is to penetrate the market as quickly as possible with terminator seed, across as many kinds of crops as possible. As long as non-terminator crops remain available, farmers will not buy seed they can produce themselves for free. In its most favorable light, the terminator technology is presumed to create a strong market incentive to develop more and better varieties of crops to maximize yields under diverse and changing agricultural conditions. It would, in effect, gradually force farmers to invest in crops that are guaranteed to be most productive. In effect, this has already taken place among corn farmers in America, who for decades have been planting highly hybridized, high-yield varieties of corn that do not produce viable seed. However, most other staple grains and food crops grown around the world have not been hybridized to the point of non-viability. Critics argue that, as this technology spreads, it will introduce into nature more and more varieties of plants that cannot reproduce. One fear is that cross fertilization between terminator crops and related wild varieties will result in reducing the natural viability of many non-cultivated plant species. It may also have the effect of greatly reducing the genetic diversity of staple food crops worldwide. Up to this time, it is diversity itself that has made possible the steady improvement of crop yields, resistance to disease, and adaptation to changing and marginal growing conditions. Terminator technology would displace all those considerations from the realm of nature into the hands of bio-technicians and marketeers. Pressure to use terminator seed might also gradually force poor farmers out of farming altogether, if they are unable or unwilling to buy new seed each year. This will have the effect of further consolidating agricultural production in fewer and richer hands throughout the developing world, as has already happened in the developed world. "This development comes at a time when groups monitoring biotechnology are expressing serious concern about the consolidation of the world seed industry in the hands of a few agrochemical companies," writes Michael T. Seigel in his paper, "The Terminator Seed and the Ethical Challenges of Biotechnology." An organization called Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI) has found that "ten companies control 40% of the world seed market, and that most of these are agrochemical corporations. In recent months, for example, agrochemical companies such as Novartis, Monsanto, AgroEvo, DuPont, and Dow Chemical (respectively the first, second, fourth, fifth and eighth ranking agrochemical companies in the world), have been moving aggressively into the seed industry by either buying whole companies or at least substantial shares in them. In fact, Monsanto has recently bought Delta and Pine Land Company, and with it, obviously, the patent for the 'terminator' technology," Seigel says. If the world is to find a way to feed its constantly growing population, there is no doubt that new agricultural breakthroughs are needed. But Terminator Seed technology may have more to do with corporate profits than improved productivity. Like the equally controverial subject of cloning, this trend in biotechnology raises numerous moral as well as scientific questions -- going right to the heart of humankind's relationship with nature -- that have yet to be adequately addressed.
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