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The Global War Over Seeds

Bharat Mansata

The earth is undergoing a critical transition—from an era of relentless extraction of fossil fuels and minerals to one that must regenerate our living biological wealth and foster a culture of nurture. Contentious issues around plant genetic resources stand at the heart of this change.

An estimated 80,000 plant species are edible to humans, according to the Gaia Atlas of Planet Management (edited by Norman Myers), setting aside the numerous varieties within each species. Despite strides in science and technology, human understanding remains a pale shadow of nature’s grandeur—yet some still imagine they can improve on nature’s creation. In today’s “advanced world,” just eight plant species of a few varieties provide 75 per cent of the entire global diet.

For a glimpse of the earth’s plant diversity, consider India alone. The Wealth of India encyclopaedia, published by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), comprises 11 volumes in its Raw Material Series (1948-1976), with two supplements. Altogether, over 10,000 pages cover more than 6,000 useful plant species, 52 animal species, and 74 minerals.

Rice (Oryza sativa), a single species and staple food for over a third of the world’s population, once had an estimated 2,00,000 distinct ecotype varieties, according to the late Dr R.H. Richharia, whom some called the “global grandfather of rice research,” in his book Rices of India (co-authored with S. Govindaswamy). Each variety possesses its own traits: flavour, aroma, medicinal qualities, tolerance to soil salinity, early or late maturation, and so on.

India’s National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (NBPGR) holds over 4,69,000 varietal plant accessions collected from farmers over decades. These contain an enormous range of plant traits and adaptability to diverse ecological conditions—resources vital to ensure food security and balanced nutrition.

Custodians of heritage

India’s Adivasi communities have been the most loyal custodians of this seed heritage. In February 2014, I attended a vibrant Adivasi Food Festival organised by Living Farms in the Niyamgiri foothills of Odisha. Over 600 Adivasis, about 80 per cent of them women, gathered from more than 200 tribal villages across eastern and central India to celebrate the rich diversity of their traditional foods. More than 1,500 food samples were on display—cultivated and uncultivated, raw and cooked. Over 900 were forest foods. Later that year, Living Farms organised a National Forest Foods Festival in New Delhi, displaying almost 2,000 varieties of forest foods.

Over its 10,000-year history, Indian agriculture has contributed enormously to the evolution of thousands of cultivated crop varieties, with farmers freely sharing their seeds. The conscious, careful selection of desired traits in these farm-bred varieties, and their repeated replanting over many generations in diverse ecological conditions, gave rise to fabulous wealth in almost every category: cereals, pulse-legumes, oilseeds, vegetables, tubers, fruits, herbs, and medicinal plants.

Agri-business multinationals dismiss the contributions of “illiterate peasants” while claiming credit for minuscule genomic alterations—chopping off or inserting a few genetic sequences, interventions that might pose ecological and health hazards. Their overriding aim: to market potentially profitable seed varieties on which they hold corporate control through patents or Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs).

Modern “plant-breeder” varieties differ starkly from natural-bred heritage varieties. The incremental evolution of plant varieties, traditionally bred in situ on farms, allowed for integral, holistic adaptation, posed no biosafety concerns, and yielded many more emergent qualities.

Traditional or heritage seed varieties are diverse, open-source, open-pollinated, and better adapted to local conditions. In the past, they rarely had to be purchased, as farmers could replant from their own harvest or from seeds shared by others. Most modern varieties, registered under IPRs and patents, must be repeatedly purchased each planting season at mounting prices. They also depend on chemical inputs and, because they come from a relatively narrow genetic base, are far more vulnerable to unseasonal weather, climate change, and supply disruptions.

The faulty logic of “incentivising innovation” through exclusive IPRs and patents is nonsense in actual historical experience. Plant diversity has vastly diminished in the post-IPR era compared to earlier years, particularly the years before the Green Revolution, which itself sharply reduced crop diversity.

The Global South remains rich in plant diversity. Its wealth of plant genetic resources is critically vital to regenerate a future of abundance and health for all. But powerful multinational corporations (MNCs) of the “developed” North and West are keen to prospect—indeed, privatise—this genetic treasure to expand their markets, profits, and geopolitical control. Over 54 per cent of global seed trade is now monopolised by just four giant agri-business multinationals that rake in billions from struggling farmers worldwide.

International treaty under strain

The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA), also known as the International Seed Treaty, was originally created for the conservation and sustainable use of plant genetic resources through multilateral sharing of seeds and germplasm, with reciprocal sharing of any consequent research benefits from such free, open access. The Treaty declined patents and IPR claims on shared genetic resources but included no penal provisions to deter violations.

To realise the objectives of inclusive sustainability, the world needs decentralised initiatives of in situ conservation and participatory breeding by farmers and local communities in their own fields and forests. These yield far better results and widen access for farmers. The conservation of plant varieties particularly needs to be done in their original ecological and bio-cultural habitats, which also need to be conserved; seeds cannot simply be held in distant gene banks or “smart” computerised laboratories that map their genomes as abstract Digital Sequence Information (DSI).

The governing body of the International Seed Treaty met in Lima, Peru, from November 24-29, 2025. The agenda was to adopt proposed amendments, primarily to expand its Multilateral System of open international access from the present 64 crops to all plant genetic resources.

The proposed amendments were geared to serve the seed industry and agri-business rather than common farmers. The functioning of the current Seed Treaty—with 64 crops in the open sharing pool—has lacked transparency and clear tracking mechanisms. There is no simple way to know who accessed what crop varieties, sourced from which nation, and for what purpose, and whether the outcomes of such access helped common farmers.

The Seed Treaty stipulates a Standard Material Transfer Agreement (SMTA) to be signed by recipients of plant genetic resources. But the proposed amendments include new confidentiality clauses that further cloud the process. As experience shows, the promise of benefit-sharing in return for free, open access to the seed diversity shared by the Global South has been fundamentally hollow.

Another glaring omission: the failure to regulate and explicitly prohibit the patenting of DSI relating to the genomic constitution of shared plant varieties. Such absence of safeguards indirectly facilitates continued digital bio-piracy while evading traceability and accountability.

As controversy raged around the Treaty and its amendments, Bharat Beej Swaraj Manch (BBSM), or India Seed Sovereignty Alliance—a nationwide network of seed-savers and farmers working for in situ conservation and farmers’ rights—wrote an Open Letter to national leaders and representatives of the Global South. The letter pointed out the failings and pitfalls in the Treaty’s functioning and the proposed amendments, declaring: “Why should nations of the Global South hand over on a platter our rich genetic treasures and genomic information to seed companies of the Global North that staunchly assert their own intellectual property rights, prioritising profits over people, while neglecting ecological health and sustainability?… We sadly forget that our rich plant genetic resources are far more precious for life than inert rare earths.”

There is an inherent contradiction in the stance of gene-prospecting seed corporations that rush to create IPRs and patents based on plant varieties and their DSI sourced from the Global South. They seem to claim: “What is mine is only mine; but what is yours is also mine. And when I register my patents and IPRs on them—with or without a little genetic tampering—they will be exclusively mine!”

Domestic loopholes

India’s Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act (PPV&FRA) left open a glaring loophole, at least in its implementation. While the Act recognises traditional Varieties of Common Knowledge (VCK), the PPV&FR Authority has not even begun a heritage registry or catalogue to list such “prior art” extant varieties. In consequence, it has wrongly registered thousands of heritage varieties in the names of private individuals, granting them exclusive plant-breeder IPRs. This fundamentally violates farmers’ traditional rights to such varieties, notwithstanding the deceptive nomenclature of the PPV&FR Act.

What prevents rich, powerful seed corporations from “legally” buying the private IPRs of such wrongly registered varieties that are actually collective heritage? The infringement of traditional seed sovereignty gravely endangers India’s self-reliant food security.

The Indian Constitution wisely prohibited patents on life forms. But following pressure from the Union for Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV), a predominantly Western body, and the World Trade Organization (WTO), India unfortunately began allowing private IPRs on plant varieties under the sui generis PPV&FR Act.

We now need to revisit the fundamental question: Can life forms and plant varieties be claimed as private intellectual property at all? The growing trend to arrogantly infringe nature’s rights and collective commons bodes ill for modern civilisation.

Compounding the PPV&FRA’s failings are proposed amendments lobbied by the seed industry—without consulting farmers’ organisations and civil society organisations—to comply with the proprietary UPOV regime, apparently under pressure from the US and the EU. All such amendments threaten to become permanently binding with grave consequences.

India’s newly proposed Seed Bill is a further cause for concern, as is the recent deregulation by the government of potentially hazardous genetically engineered or edited (GE) seeds. Once released, such GE seeds can progressively contaminate India’s heritage seeds without any means to stop the deleterious contamination. They also pose serious health, ecological, and socio-economic problems.

The IAASTD’s World Agriculture Report—prepared over four years by over 400 agricultural experts and 1,000 multi-disciplinary reviewers, with representatives of 58 nations including India, along with FAO, WHO, World Bank, UNEP, and UNDP—states that genetically modified or engineered crops are not the answer to hunger, poverty, or climate change. Instead, the Report strongly recommends agro-ecological methods, traditional knowledge, and small-scale farming.

A saner path

The issue of wisely sharing and using the earth’s seed heritage—free of direct or derivative IPR claims or deleterious contamination—remains critically important for the future of human civilisation. With India’s newly tabled Seed Bill and proposed amendments to PPV&FRA hanging fire, an alternative vision for the future is urgently needed. A semblance of it, found in earlier laws or the original objectives of the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) or even the International Seed Treaty, seems to have evaporated.

What can one now visualise as a new and more benign avatar for the International Seed Treaty? It perhaps needs to reinvent itself as a democratic, participatory forum with periodic discussions and voluntary sharing of resources, ideas, expertise, and financial support. Any IPRs or patents on shared plant varieties, components, derivatives, and related knowledge or information must be strictly prohibited with penal provisions. What is shared in good faith cannot be privatised.

At the national level, it would be foolish to forget that traditional heritage seeds can grow quite well even without external chemical or energy inputs. They significantly reduce agriculture’s vulnerability to supply chain disruptions of external farm inputs, particularly India’s 85 per cent dependence on crude oil imports—a basic raw material for manufacturing agrochemicals. Native seed varieties are also far more water-efficient and climate-resilient. Without safeguarding these varieties and seed sovereignty, the prospect of sustaining India’s self-reliant food security is dim.

When externally purchased farming inputs are reduced, there are significant cost savings and increased profitability for struggling farmers. According to the National Commission on Farmers, over 40 per cent of struggling farmers want to quit farming for city jobs, which are anyway hard to find.

Agro-ecology combined with traditional knowledge is the path ahead. Organic farmers who grow indigenous crop varieties safeguard soil, water, and biodiversity resources and use minimal external energy inputs. They thus deserve to be paid for their help to the ecosystem. This, with better Minimum Support Prices, could reincentivise farming and offer a way out for unemployed youth. Local economies would also be revitalised, especially if the government provides supportive socio-economic policies.

Decentralised and local initiatives for in situ conservation and participatory breeding are the solution. Community seed banks must be supported. The bureaucratic hurdles, as proposed in the recent Seed Bill, that hamper their collecting, sharing, and selling of traditional heritage seeds must be abandoned. Instead, such a strict regulatory framework for seed sales should be imposed only on commercial initiatives that exceed a minimum annual turnover.

Several small seed initiatives are needed rather than a few big ones. Community work in conservation and sharing should be recognised with awards and incentives. Every member of a community seed bank, indeed every farmer and gardener, could pledge to conserve and widely share at least one adopted plant variety.

There is great importance in enhancing wilderness zones, where maximum biodiversity flourishes with minimal external input, reducing vulnerability to climatic upheavals. India’s economic future cannot be protected without protecting and regenerating its biodiverse forests and seeds.

Appendix: Problems with the Seed Bill

• Benefits seed agri-business rather than farmers
• Unfairly burdens small heritage seed initiatives (community seed banks, self-help groups, and farmer producer organisations)
• Provides no protection of heritage seeds and their DSI or genetic makeup from private patents and IPRs
• Offers poor safeguards against bio-piracy and digital bio-piracy of heritage seeds
• Contains no biosafety regulation of genetically engineered or edited seeds
• Provides no price regulation or compensation by seed companies for farmers’ losses from poor-quality seeds
• Tramples the concurrent rights of States over agriculture
• Questionable acceptance of foreign trials and certification for domestic supply
• Capitulates to US and EU demands, compromising atmanirbharta in food security

[Bharat Mansata is a writer and environmental activist who has authored several books, including The Vision of Natural Farming, Organic Revolution, and The Great Agricultural Challenge. He is a founder-member of Vanvadi (www.vanvadi.in), a forest regeneration initiative in the Sahyadri foothills, and of Bharat Beej Swaraj Manch (www.beejswaraj.org), aka India Seed Sovereignty Alliance. Courtesy: Frontline magazine, a fortnightly English language magazine published by The Hindu Group of publications headquartered in Chennai, India.]

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Farmers in India Reject the Seeds Bill and the Corporate Enclosure of Seeds

The Critical Globalisation Research Collective

In India, the central government plans to replace the Seeds Act of 1966 with the Seeds Bill 2025, a comprehensive reform that it says will modernise India’s seed regulation system. The stated aims of the proposed new law are to ensure the availability of high-quality seeds, improve transparency and address farmers’ concerns over spurious and sub-standard seeds amid advances in technology and biotechnology.

A structured regulatory framework led by a Central Seed Committee is proposed, supported by state committees. The committee will set national standards for germination, genetic purity and seed health while maintaining a National Register of Seed Varieties. Only registered varieties, except exempted ones, can be sold commercially to ensure quality control and traceability.

While tightening rules for commercial players, the government argues farmers’ traditional rights will be protected. Farmers may save, use, exchange, share or sell seeds of registered varieties, provided they are not sold under a brand name. They are also exempt from penalties for selling seeds produced on their own land.

A three-tier penalty system is to be introduced: minor procedural lapses may attract warnings or fines up to Rs. 50,000; sale of sub-standard or misbranded seeds can lead to fines of Rs. 1–2 lakh; and major violations, such as selling spurious seeds or operating without registration, may result in fines of Rs. 10–30 lakh, cancellation of registration and up to three years’ imprisonment for repeat offenders.

In response, on 11 February 2026, Samyukt Kisan Morcha-SKM issued a press release for the attention of Shivraj Singh Chouhan, the Union Minister of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare. The SKM is a coalition of Indian farmers’ unions that acts as an umbrella body representing various farmer organisations across several states and was the principal coordinating body during the 2020–2021 farmers’ protests.

The coalition asked the minister 10 key questions, stating that if he does not have a convincing answer to them then the farmers across India strongly demand that he desists from enacting the Seed Bill 2025. This bill, according to the SKM, would surrender Indian agriculture and the people’s right to seed sovereignty to giant global corporations, finance capital and the World Trade Organization.

Questions for the minister

1. Why did you declare that the Seed Bill 2025 protects the farmers and Indian agriculture when farmers across India are protesting its heavy bias towards the interests of large multinational and domestic seed corporations?

2. Why did the union government enact the Seed Bill when agriculture is a state subject, that too without consulting the states? The Seed Bill 2025 creates a Central Seed Committee, which controls all aspects of seeds from production to testing without representation from all the states.

3. Why is the bill silent on providing good quality seeds on time and at affordable prices? This should be the first clause in any pro farmer seed bill.

4. Why are you putting farmers on par with corporate companies? Farmers have a right to produce, preserve, exchange and transfer seeds among themselves under current Indian law. Yet the Seed Bill 2025 violates this right by requiring small traditional seed producers to register on par with large seed corporate companies, placing them on the same playing field.

5. Why are you allowing foreign tested seeds in India? India has 15 agro-climatic zones with varied soils and monsoon patterns. Foreign-tested seeds, including GM seeds, can contaminate Indian seeds, endangering our seed sovereignty—our right over the genetic data of our seeds. Why no ban on GM seeds when there is no consensus on allowing GM seeds?

6. Why do you allow MNCs to dominate Indian farmers? The Seed Bill 2025 allows free entry of MNCs into Indian agriculture, bypassing GEAC (Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee) and other government regulatory bodies. Why have you overturned the Seed Bill 1966, which restricted imports as per Indian needs? Why disallow all imported seeds, plant and sapping varieties from first being tested and approved by Indian labs independently.

7. Why are you not regulating the exorbitant prices of seeds? Currently, the vegetable seeds as well as hybrid seeds are simply out of reach of farmers; even then, there is no provision in the Seed Bill 2025 to regulate prices. Why is there no policy to regularly determine seed prices? Why have the Seed Rules 1983, which banned black marketing of seeds, been upturned?

8. Why are you not promoting farmers cooperatives and public research? The ICAR, public research organisations and seed villages by farmers’ cooperatives can provide quality seeds at affordable prices to small farmers. Yet they are left unsupported by the Seed Bill 2025, whereas large corporate companies get ‘Ease of Doing Business’.

9. Why are you not providing accessible compensation to farmers for crop failure due to spurious seeds and stringent legal actions against the culprits? Many farmer suicides happen because of crop failure due to spurious seeds, especially in the cotton belt. Yet the Seed Bill 2025 does not mandate compensation to farmers for lost profit, cultivation expenses or the cost of fresh seed and seed insurance. Why disallow farmers to file complaints of crop loss and allow only seed inspectors?

10. Why does the new bill not ensure internet access when insisting on a QR code facility? Many small producers have limited internet access, yet the Seed Bill 2025 mandates them to use QR codes for each seed pack.

[The Critical Globalisation Research Collective specialises in food, agriculture and related issues. Courtesy: Countercurrents.org, an India-based news, views and analysis website, that describes itself as non-partisan and taking “the Side of the People!” It is edited by Binu Mathew.]