64 



dental sales are. I don't offer that suggestion of what that should 

 be. Certainly an incidental sale for a lettuce seed grower in Califor- 

 nia would be different than an incidental sale for a soybean farmer 

 in Madison County, Nebraska. Somewhere, there has to be some 

 definition made of what that incidental sale is or should be. 



Dr. Clayton. Mr. Chairman, I would just observe that I am not 

 sure that the UPOV Convention gives us much flexibility on this 

 point. I think it speaks very clearly that farmers can, in fact, save 

 seed, but farmers or no one else will be in a position to sell saved 

 seed. 



I suppose the one concern that we would have on the issue of in- 

 cidental sales is, at some point, how does one distinguish between 

 an incidental sale and a sale of saved seed? If one incidentally has 

 2 crop years' worth of seed left and chooses to sell it, that sounds 

 like a sale of saved seed, I would think. 



I would wonder too, I guess, on the issue of — it probably would be 

 very different for celery versus some other crop. I am just thinking 

 from a drafting and administrative point of view how one would 

 ever define every situation anyway. 



But I think ultimately it comes back to the fact that the UPOV 

 Convention is quite clear and inflexible on that point. 



Senator Kerrey. Mr. Svik. 



Mr. Svik. I wanted to bring up a point. It seems like sometimes 

 we get a large seed company versus a small farmer situation going, 

 and there are a lot of people involved in sales of protected varieties 

 that are small seed operators, small farmers under the certification 

 program in various States. 



Being a State regulator, those are the kinds of calls I get, from 

 the 300 or so growers in Nebraska that are part of the certification 

 program that are selling protected varieties of seed through Title 

 V. So I get calls from both sides of the fence. 



I get them from the grower that is unhappy because he has just 

 sold the certified seed to someone and the following year that gen- 

 tleman is selling brown-bag seed, the very product he sold him 

 prior, and selling it at $3 or $4 less and he is very unhappy with 

 that. Then I get the same call from the guy that I just sent the 

 letter to and he is very unhappy because he has been turned in. 



I think when I point that out to people that did get in trouble, 

 that they realize that it is not a big company they are hurting, 

 they are hurting their neighbor, their neighbor who goes through 

 the certification program and does it the right way. 



Dr. Watson mentioned 25 percent of their acres are down and I 

 think that is probably a reason why acres are down a little bit in 

 Nebraska. I have a feeling that if people are allowed to continue to 

 have this type of philosophy, that people will drop out of these cer- 

 tification programs simply for the very reason that it will be diffi- 

 cult for them to compete. 



Senator Kerrey. I am going to conclude this hearing by suggest- 

 ing that much remains to done. 



One of the problems with this particular issue is a tendency to 

 sort of say, well, it is not terribly important. I believe it is a very 

 important economic issue, a very important environmental issue, 

 and a very important world issue, and I intend to work with all of 



