Note: To find organic products and organic ingredient suppliers in India, buy the Organic Directory 

The ‘Declaration on Seeds and Farmers’ Rights, 2023’, was released on September 9, 2023, by the Bharat Beej Swaraj Manch (BBSM) or India Seed Sovereignty Alliance, a nationwide network of  Indian seed savers and farmers for conserving and regenerating crop/plant biodiversity and self-reliance in seeds.

DECLARATION ON SEEDS AND FARMERS’ RIGHTS 2023

We unitedly affirm:

1) Seeds and plant propagation materials, embodying life and memory, are vital links in the food chain. Like the earth and the sky, the wondrous diversity of seeds, plants and life forms – evolved over millennia – is our collective heritage. Gifted by nature, and the cumulative adaptations and selections of farming and indigenous communities, our seeds are sacred. They belong to all as a birthright, essential for survival and well-being; and it is our duty to preserve them for future generations.

2) India has an enormous wealth of plant diversity. It is a global centre of origin and diversity of many food crops, including rice. India’s ‘National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (NBPGR) has over 4,00,000 accessions of 1,586 species. ICRISAT (The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics) holds 25,000 Indian varieties of dry-land crops. Many thousands of our crop seeds have ended up in distant gene banks: IRRI (International Rice Research Institute) in Philippines, CIMMYT in Mexico, or Fort Collins in USA. All such varieties from India, rightly belong to our farming and indigenous communities.

3) International treaties and national laws have failed to effectively safeguard our rich heritage of plant varieties; and the registration of heritage crop varieties in private names under ‘Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act’ – violates our traditional collective rights.

4) We assert our sovereign rights to freely plant, use, reproduce, select, adapt, save, share, exchange or sell our seeds, without restriction, as we have done for past millennia; and we resolve to work for the decentralised conservation, regeneration and sharing of our biodiversity by farmers, gardeners and indigenous communities.

5) We reject attempts to privatise/usurp India’s genetic commons and bio-cultural heritage; and we refuse to accept the entire patent and ‘Intellectual Property Right’ regime on life forms and plant varieties.

6) We believe the state must safeguard the natural rights of farming and indigenous communities over their heritage seeds and plant varieties; and prevent any theft or bio-piracy of our genetic wealth.

7) We are concerned about the digitising of the genetic sequence information of our seed/plant varieties. This Digital Sequence Information (DSI) is being used by corporations for selective manipulation to claim patents/Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). We urge the state to firmly resist such bio-piracy.

8] We reject the narrow definition of “access and benefit” as a monetisation tool to gain exclusive intellectual property rights over plant varieties. Instead, we uphold the world view of indigenous/local communities that stand for continued community access and community benefit.

9) We call upon our government and international agencies to facilitate farmers’ access to heritage seeds from institutional collections for decentralised conservation in the croplands/regions of origin.

10) We advocate the urgent need for many decentralised living Seed Banks of locally adapted and ecologically appropriate traditional plant varieties in farmers’ fields and forests; and we urge every farmer/gardener to pledge to conserve and share at least one such variety.

11) Collective efforts are needed to spread awareness of the unique qualities of our diverse traditional seeds, breeds, crops and plant varieties, including many nutritious/medicinal plants that grow well without any external/chemical inputs. The increased demand for them will encourage the conservation and strengthening of diverse types of cultivars.

12) We call upon all concerned citizens to join in a people’s movement to document, publish, propagate and share our collective wealth of biodiversity, knowledge and bio-culture wherever possible!

13) We request our governments to partner with our people and public institutions to systematically and transparently record in a freely accessible database, our crop/plant diversity and traditional knowledge.

14) We call upon the Indian government to create an open-source National Biodiversity Heritage Registry, protected from any private/corporate Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs); and to aid collaborative documentation and sharing of our biodiversity and related knowledge.

15) We urge appropriate national legislation to safeguard the rights of peasants and rural communities on seeds and propagation material, as enshrined in the United Nations Declaration on Rights of Peasants (UNDROP), 2018.

16) We call upon FAO, UN and other international organisations to adopt a treaty that protects the traditional rights of farmers and remedies any violations of such rights.

17) We urge the Government of India to firmly resist all international attempts to impose Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) on seeds and genetic resources.

18) Genetically Modified (GM) crops pose serious health hazards and threaten to contaminate our local varieties through cross-pollination. We thus demand a state ban on GM seeds and species, including ‘Genetically Edited’ (GE) varieties. Strict enforcement of corporate liability is needed for any contamination of seeds/plants, and any damage to environmental or public health from GM / GE seeds. A National Bio-safety law and mechanism for its effective implementation is essential to comprehensively guard against the threat of GMOs, GEOs, and technologies like CRISPR.

19) We assert our unconditional right and responsibility to pass on our collective bio-cultural heritage and the health of our croplands and eco-systems to future generations. We demand that our governments fulfil their responsibility in this regard by promoting and supporting bio-diverse and holistic ecological agriculture and forestry to meet our basic needs in a sustainable manner, prioritising locally appropriate and nutritive food crops over cash crops; and phasing out agro-chemicals, which destroy biodiversity.

20) We request our governments to support agricultural research and natural plant breeding methods that enhance local self-reliance in ecologically adapted, open-source and open-pollinated seeds.

21) We urge our governments to support local communities/organisations to create community seed banks and farmers’ markets, especially those led by women, to enhance the decentralised supply of locally adapted farmers’ seeds, breeds and agricultural produce. We further request our governments and financial institutions to support local small-scale processing facilities of farm produce.

22) Biodiversity thrives best in habitats safeguarded by local populations. We deplore the plunder of the ecological and cultural habitats of rural communities through economic expansionism, wreaking devastation on biodiversity, health and local, self-reliant livelihoods.

23) We assert our rights and duties to protect, sustainably use, and judiciously govern our biological diversity, natural wealth and ecological commons.

24) We pledge to protect Mother Earth, the source and sustenance of humanity and myriad other species; and we urge all to integrate stewardship in our education, culture and lifestyle.