and the mighty multinationals
have monopolized the oxygen
so it's as easy as breathing
for us all to participate
yes they're buying and selling
off shares of air
and you know it's all around you
but it's hard to point and say "there"
-Ani DiFranco
Sometimes, though, you get a very clear picture of where and what it is, and it is breathtaking to see the engines of the powers-that-be-- particularly when their machinations combine multiple forms of injustice that you didn't even know could be connected. At least, that's how I felt reading this 2005 article about Order 81.
The eighty-first of Paul Bremer's 100 Orders for Iraq- implemented unilaterally following the 2003 invasion, before a new or even interim government could be formed, and without the democratic consent of the Iraqi people- prohibits farmers from re-using seeds of certain plant varieties. Instead, they must respect the "patents" that multinational seed corporations hold for crops by buying the seeds directly from them, or pay heavy fines to the companies.
Order 81- an act of the United States occupying force in Iraq- could drastically alter ten thousand years of farming in Iraq. The country's diverse seed bank supply was destroyed as a result of the fighting. The rule regulating seed use was written not by the Iraqi government, but by the multinational seed corporation Monsanto.
A 2007 Alternet article takes a slightly different interpretation of the law, but predicts extremely dire consequences of Order 81. Unfortunately, author Nancy Scola's warning comes from a very real example: the thousands and thousands of Indian farmers who have committed suicide following crop failures brought on partly by their dependence upon seeds owned by corporations.
I'm not sure how to articulate how fundamentally wrong and disturbing I find this. That a person's ability to grow her own food with the natural resources available to her should be regulated by governments in such a way as to make it illegal for her to plant a seed from a crop she has grown before surely violates something sacred. Amartya Sen writes that no modern democracy has experienced famine. Good governance will prohibit famine even in instances of crop failure, and governments held to some kind of accountability will find it within their own interests to keep their people from starving. The indirect starvation caused by seed patents should force us- once again- to acknowledge the fundamentally undemocratic nature of global capitalism as it stands today.
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