How Patents on Plants Destroying Seeds, Farmers and Nutritional Sovereignty

What is sold as a progress in plant breeding turns out to be a large-scale expropriation machine. More and more useful plants are being placed under patent protection, and it has long been no longer just about genetically modified organisms, but rather usually bred varieties that have been in fields and gardens for generations. Patent logic affects areas that were earlier thancommon heritage of agriculture, and transforms what has emerged over centuries through farming knowledge into the exclusive property of a few corporations. Here, innovation is not protected, but nature itself is gradually transformed into a legal merchandise.

​How corporations undermined protection bans

Formally, plant varieties and at the core of biological breeding processes in Europe are excluded from patenting, but in practice these bans are systematically undermined. The European Patent Office grants patents on biological materials, characteristics, genes and resistance properties that originate from conventional breeding or even wild species. With such constructionsthe ban is avoided by monopolising not the variety, but its genetic characteristics. A legal protective wall turns into a holey fig leaf behind which aggressive access to plant ownership takes place, which puts massive pressure on breeder freedom and seed diversity.

​Expropriation of peasantry through licensing

For farmers and gardeners, this development means the loss of traditional rights. The free reproduction of seeds, the exchange between companies, the unbureaucratic transmission of local varieties – all of which are targeted by patent owners who enforce exclusive rights of use and dictate license obligations. Who uses seeds, which are patented by characteristic or gene selection,Risks warnings, obligation to contract or ruinous court proceedings. This transforms the field into a supervised legal area in which each seed acts as a potential evidence against the person who brings him into the ground.

​Seed companies as new feudal lords

The patent wave is not a technical side effect, but a power instrument. Exclusive rights to numerous varieties increase the market entry barriers and drive small breeders, traditional companies and gene banks on the defensive. Few global seed companies secure access to central crops, from vegetables to grain, and cement an oligopolist system thatRest of the market sentenced to the extra role. A new form of agricultural dependency emerges here, in which farmers no longer determine their own seed, but are degraded to licensees of a privatized heritage.

The systematic destruction of breeding freedom

Patents on characteristics, genes and processes have a deep impact on breeding. Breeders who want to develop new varieties are constantly in danger of using protected properties and thereby falling under license obligations or liability risks. The former freedom of breeding, i.e. the possibility of using existing varieties as starting material, becomes the legal mine, which at every crossingcan explode. In this way, innovation is not promoted, but selectively channeled: what is of use, what is used for large rights holders, is blocked, what is developed independently, locally or in a common good.

​License dependency as new operational risk

For agricultural practice, this development means a growing dependency on licensors. Farmers have to sign contracts that prohibit replica, tolerate controls in the fields and accept price-fixed controls that are far beyond fair market balancing. Every harvest planning becomes a legal risk assessment, every choice of variety becomes a question ofContract details, instead of agronomic reason. The cost structure of the companies is shifting because seed is no longer considered a reproducible resource, but as a recurring license obligation, which is due annually and systematically undermines agricultural independence.

​Attack on biodiversity and crop diversity

Patents are primarily aimed at attractive, standardized properties: yield, resistance, shelf life, trade standards. This directs research and supply towards less, highly profitable lines and displaces local, adapted, diverse varieties that are less likely to be patented. With each monopoly grade, genetic bandwidth in the field shrinks, which means thatAgriculture becomes more susceptible to diseases, pests and climate risks. Patent logic thus destroys precisely the diversity that would be vital in times of ecological crises.

​Criminalization of Peasant Practices

The traditional practice of seed saving, exchange among neighbors, the care of regional varieties is morally delegitimized and legally criminalized by the patent system. Actions that have been the basis of peasant independence for centuries suddenly appear as a breach of the law against abstract claims of distant corporations. Control instruments, laboratory analyzes and contract clausesCreate an atmosphere of distrust in which every farmer is under general suspicion of violating intellectual property as soon as he just does what agriculture has always identified: use and develop further.

​Deepening of social and economic inequality

Patenting conventionally grown varieties hits the weakest first. Small farms, eco farms, regional breeders and hobby gardeners have neither the means of paying for licenses generously nor the resources to legally defend themselves. At the same time, large corporations can accumulate patents in series, employ international law firms and thereby their market powerkeep expanding. This creates a double split: economically between large and small and politically between those who have genetic resources and those who depend on them. The question of who owns the basics of our diet is thus decided on the question of power in favor of fewer actors.

​Attack on food sovereignty and commons

In the end, it’s not just about variety protection, but about nutritional sovereignty. When genetic material, which has historically emerged from common breeding, public research and peasant practice, is privatized by patents, society loses control of its own food base. The Highness of what is on the plates migrates from fields and gardens inThe legal departments of multinational corporations. Any further patenting of conventional breeds shifts ownership into the core area of life and degrades seed from a common good to exclusive commodity.

​In this development lies an open attack on peasant freedom, biological diversity and democratic control over the food system – disguised as progress, legally packaged, politically tolerated.