Seed Laws: You Will be Committing a Crime to Share Indigenous Seeds With Your Neighbour

Seed is the most important resource in the world. It is an important resource to humanity, animals and life. It is where life begins, food and the nutrients come from it. It is essential for the production of food, nutrition, the advancement of agriculture, livelihoods in rural areas, and agricultural biodiversity. For many years, farmers have been sharing the seeds which has been a culture and tradition rooted for sustaining farming communities and enhancing livelihood.

Data indicate smallholder farmers in Kenya account for 80% of the farming population and are endowed with the seed sharing system, but this practice is facing threats from state laws and policies. You might be asking yourself, "What are seed laws and regulations?"

One of the policy that actively discourage from farming by state is the Seed and Plant Varieties Act Cap 326 that seek to promote commercial seed provision and modernization of agriculture. It provides equal access to seeds to farmers irrespective of their economic status. 

You may ask yourself, “What is impact of the policy on our farming system?” or rather, “How many smallholder farmers are aware of Seed and Plant Varieties Act Cap 326?”

The law has remained unclear, with only a few Kenyans aware of its full punitive implications. Farmers have never been involved public participation prior to the passage of this legislation. Over 10 years down the line, it is news to them that the law has been in existence.

Formalizing seeds with punitive laws is at the core of crippling the food systems. It is giving a few companies the power to milk huge profits by selling ‘certified seeds’ to farmers, under the umbrella of agricultural industrialization, yet are characterized by monocultures. You will not be able to achieve crop diversification needs by constraining you as a farmer the ability to grow your desired, nutrient dense, locally available crops leading to a loss in the food diversity from farm to plate.

What the Seed and Plant Varieties Act Cap 326 2012 Says

The Kenyan government reviewed the  Seed and Plant Varieties Act Cap 326, an  Act of Parliament conferred with powers to regulate transactions in seeds to include Section 10 subsection. This makes it a crime to the sale or display seeds that do not match certification descriptions or fail to meet standards.

The Act defines “sell” to include barter, exchange, and offering which contradicts the culture of seed preservation and sharing. If you violate these provisions you will face fines of up to one million shillings, imprisonment for up to two years, or both. I find preventing the spread of plant disease by the sale of seeds as weak supporting reason for making you guilty and worthy being labelled a criminal.

“Preventing the sale of seeds which are deleterious, or which have not been produced in specified conditions, or which have not been tested for purity or germination, or which are of a plant variety of which the performance has not been subjected to trials,” read a section of the Act.

Criminalizing Seed Sharing

Despite the informal channels provide 80–90% of the materials farmers sow in their fields worldwide(Louise et.al, 2009) while the formal seed systems provide20% of the seeds are adopted for production.

According to the legal terms, it is an offence to share your indigenous seeds that are not are indexed. What impact does it have on you? The seed patent is doing away with indigenous knowledge and disbarring communities from owning what has been theirs for generations.

This is being done by making multinational seed companies go to communities, collect the seeds which have been there, ‘do some lab tests and trials’ after which the same seeds are declared certified under certain class. Mind you, even the name is changed. You will be guilty if you use another name other than the stipulated indexed or one closely similar, which deprives you self-sufficiency in your farming ventures.

Isn’t this against the Kenyan Constitution?  The Constitution of Kenya 2010 expressly recognizes culture as the foundation of the Kenyan nation and needs to promote the intellectual property rights of the people of Kenya which should acknowledge and protect the ownership of indigenous seeds and plant varieties, their genetic and diverse characteristics, and their use by the communities of Kenya. The parliament is obliged to enact legislation that would protect the ownership of such indigenous seeds.

The law on the other hand  counters this legitimacy. It states, “After a section of the Index has come into force, any person who, in selling seed of a plant variety for which a name is given in that section, uses some name not given in the Index for that plant variety, being a name which serves or is intended by him to serve to distinguish the seed from seed of other plant varieties within the class to which the section relates, shall be guilty of an offence.”

You cannot patent a natural seed. To have seed patented, it is taken to the lab, the gene extracted, some trials conducted to test viability, then proliferate the capacity to come and sell to the same place they were taken from but now propagate its adoption under the umbrella of such laws. Afterwards, you will be told to cease the seeds you have been using yet it is the same seed that was once yours.

Who Controls Seeds

Over time, you are being pushed to a corner where you cannot be able to produce food anymore because of the increased cost of production. First you have been introduced to leasehold land system where you are controlled on what to grow and how to grow then afterwards its the particular seeds that you will grow on such land. Leasehold land is timebound and when it elapses, you can no longer engage in farming.

These punitive laws are the epitome of corporate greed, emanating from the industrialization of Agriculture. Multinational seed companies, whose aim is to profit from the selling of certified and improved seed varieties, mainly monocultures, have been on the rise. This action is intended to impoverish smallholder farmers and force you to depart farming.

To achieve these massive growth rates, these companies require the support of governments in stifling the informal seed systems – local seed markets, farm harvests and sharing –  that encourage the use of indigenous seeds by smallholder farmers.  These formal seed systems supported by the large multinational companies can only be actualised by supportive policies that abolish the use of indigenous seeds.

Kenya has not been left behind in oppressing its smallholder farmers through such punitive seed laws. But this is not just about stopping farmers from using indigenous seeds, this is about corporate control on seeds and the food system in Kenya. Putting the farmers under a certain system where they are forced to obtain seeds from that system each farming season paving way to capitalistic culture that exploits you to thrive in farming. 

Now, most of the seeds are genetically modified with attributes of terminator seeds, which cannot be replanted again after harvesting them. You have to go again and buy from the supplier at the price they tag for you. This is not sustainable even if it is painted as the best option in the market or industry.

Criminalizing the use and sharing of the indigenous exposes farmers and consumers to food and nutrition insecurity alongside prolonged climate shocks. Indigenous seeds are critical for building viable and diverse crop populations that support the diversification of our diets and access to nutrient dense novel foods. Barring their use ushers in a decline in on-farm agricultural diversity that indigenous seeds make up in the ecosystem. It is no surprise when FAO estimates that since the 1900s, some 75 percent of plant genetic diversity has been lost as farmers worldwide have left their multiple local varieties and landraces for genetically uniform, high-yielding varieties.

Such laws have had significant contribution on the seed market thriving. The seeds market size has grown strongly in recent years. It will grow from $62.69 billion in 2023 to $66.94 billion in 2024 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.8%. This growth is due to high purchasing of the commercially produced seed compared to using informal farm harvest saved seeds.

Currently, the globe seed market is controlled by 10 key multinational companies. These are Bayer Crop Science, Corteva Agriscience, Syngenta AG,BASF SE, Limagrain, KWS SAAT SE & Co., Sakata Seed Corporation, AgReliant Genetics,  LLC and  DLF Seeds A/S. In Kenya we have some of the companies that are also a threat to local seed systems.

Why it Should be a Concern to You

The use of local seeds and culture are strongly linked. Indigenous seeds represent culture, a people’s way of life, a rich tradition that passes knowledge from generation to generation.  It means recognition of indigenous communities and knowledge that show who we are. Exterminating the use of indigenous  seeds implies the loss of these traditional farming knowledge and practices.

Having indigenous seeds is flexible and allows you to plant on time regardless of having money or not. In the food markets, you might have interacted with innovative products from indigenous foods. This is happening because of informal seed players and it is time for the government enact laws that protects them.

Criminalising seed exchange and sharing will deny farmers their livelihoods, encourage biopiracy and reduce plant genetic diversity which affect the resilience of our farming communities at a time when we are experiencing the impacts of the climate shocks. Instead what you need to see farmers getting support of water access through policy support to produce food whole year round than attack on the seeds.

You are likely to miss those traditional African Leafy Vegetables that are deemed as dense in nutrients. Sorghum, millet, cassava and pumpkin can be history in the coming years if you and I don’t make our voices count about the food sovereignity.

If 80% of the food you consume comes from informal seed system by smallholder farmers, why should the should policy support be directed towards formal seed systems rather protecting it? Why make it a crime to share seeds? Whose interests are laws such as the seed and plant varieties serving?

The government has failed in its role of enacting laws to protect the ownership of indigenous seeds and intellectual property rights in indigenous knowledge on seeds in Kenya. The laws are giving lee way for to companies to take away important local resources like seeds that have been in custody of Kenyan communities for the longest time.

It's high time for change. The Kenyan government should amend the punitive seed and plant varieties act CAP 326 to allow smallholders to use, save, and share their own seeds. Without access to seeds, you will see farmers down their tools, and a food crisis will escalate more than ever imagined.

References:

Seed and Plant Varieties Act Cap 326, 2012