La Via Campesina Mexico issues letter in defense of seeds and peasant and indigenous agriculture

WE, LA VIA CAMPESINA MEXICO, CLAIM OUR RIGHT, AS PEASANT AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLE, TO CONSERVE, USE, EXCHANGE AND SELLING SEEDS AND OTHER PROPAGATION PRESERVED IN THE PRODUCTION UNITS PEASANT AND INDIGENOUS PRODUCTION UNITS.

We peasants and indigenous people, our families, our villages and communities, are important and necessary for this our country. With our practices and productive work, with our culture, we rescue and we value the knowledge and practices of our ancestors, of relationship with nature and food production. With the generation of experiences and our accumulation of experiences and memories and our individual practices are recreated and enrich the life of our communities and villages and keep a rural world alive. As rural men and women, we have the capacity to produce food healthy and sufficient to strengthen health, care for the earth, preserve the waters and the whole of nature. But we need another political environment and another deal that will enhance and facilitate our role to society and to nature.

And this will only be possible if we take agriculture and all the common goods out of trade agreements (of the trans-Pacific TTP II; of the European Union-Mexico and the T-MEC, among others).

The treaties and the T-MEC establish that the country must ratify or incorporate several international treaties on intellectual property, including the Treaty on European Union International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV-91). UPOV-91 is controlled by eight transnational corporations and its imposition in Mexico is an attack on our existence as small food producers and a threat to the collective ownership of traditional knowledge.

Whoever controls the seeds, controls the food. These transnational corporations, with their industrial agricultural model, are not interested in healthy food. By privatizing and hoarding our seeds and our medicinal plants, they are only interested in business and profit.

By privatizing and hoarding our seeds and medicinal plants, all the production and reproductive chain of the plant in question, including production, reproduction, sale, export and import.

Thus, plants, genes, microorganisms, etc. can be patented in the same way that industrial inventions are patented.

Therefore:

• We demand that agriculture and the commons be removed from the TMEC and other trade agreements
• We refuse and do not accept to enter the UPOV-91 system
• We express our total rejection of the reform of the law of plant varieties.
• We reject the federal law for the promotion and protection of the native corn and demand its repeal.

Thousands of peasant farmers are suffocated by high seed prices and exposed to the growing monopoly of certified and intellectual property over hybrid seed.

Many of these varieties were created by peasants in articulation with the breeding programs of public research centres such as INIFAP, CINVESTAV and some Public Universities.

We demand:

• Public policy and resources be allocated so that, in alliance with mexican producers and public, there are seeds for national production, aimed at achieving food sovereignty, strengthening sustainable agriculture without agrotoxins.
• Banning experimental pilot and commercial planting of public policy and resources be allocated so that, in alliance with mexican producers and public, there are seeds for national production, aimed at achieving food sovereignty, strengthening sustainable agriculture without agrotoxins.
• Banning experimental pilot and commercial planting of maize genetically modified, its transfer and marketing.

We reclaim:

• The right to participate in decision making on issues relating to the conservation and sustainable use of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture.
• The right to save, use, exchange and sell the seeds or planting stock retained after harvesting.
• The rights of peasants and others working in rural areas to maintain, control, protect and develop their own seeds and traditional knowledge.
• That the State adopts measures to respect, protect and fulfil the right to the seeds of peasants and other people working in rural areas.
• That the State recognizes the rights of peasants to use their own seeds or other local seeds of their choice, and to decide on the varieties and species they want to produce.

WE DEMAND THAT THE MEXICAN STATE ADOPT AND ASSUME THE DECLARATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS ON THE RIGHTS OF PEASANTS AND OTHERS WORKING IN RURAL AREAS, ADOPTED AT THE UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 17 DECEMBER 2018.

In the absence of any other particular and pending response to the present, we the undersigned assume the legal implications of signing this letter.

Mexico, July 9, 2020

SIGNATURES

If you agree with the letter, please write down your name and organization/collective and send it to

email: laviacampesinamexico@gmail.com