77 



grounds for creating the U.S. Plant Variety Protection Act in 1970 and strengthen- 

 ing the act in 1981, in eleventh-hour votes. 



Corporate lobbying has always played a role in plant variety protection. Campbell 

 Soup Company successfully lobbied to have certain varieties exempted from the 

 original PVPA. 



Who does the PVPA benefit? 



Proponents of plant variety protection say that further legislation is necessary to 

 provide financial incentives for the private sector to recover research and develop- 

 ment costs. According to representatives of the seed industry, such incentives will 

 lure more funds into research. Because these incentives will eliminate alleged sales 

 losses, they should help seed companies to become more efficient in developing 

 higher yielding and improved varieties. Farmers also will become more efficient 

 through the use of these new varieties which will be offered at more competitive 

 prices, the seed industry claims. 



On the surface, the previous argument seems to make sense. However, pricing 

 data from USDA and the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that prices for seed have 

 not gone down with companies' past seed improvements under PVPA: Cumulative 

 Price Increases 1975-1990 — Soybean Prices Paid to Farmers, 39 percent; Consumer 

 Price Index (all goods), 92 percent; Soybean Seed Prices, 104 percent. 



Obviously, increasing the number of certified varieties and strengthening PVPA 

 regulations in 1981 hasn't benefited farmers as the American Seed Trade Associa- 

 tion suggests. Strengthening plant variety protection laws has only resulted in in- 

 creasing input costs for an increasingly invaluable crop. 



Additionally, many plant breeders admit that a major portion of seed companies' 

 basic research in the United States was done by land-grant universities and USDA 

 facilities at taxpayers' expense. According to University of Massachusetts biologist 

 Garrison Wilkes, prebreeding is rarely done in the private sector because of the 

 time and resource investment required. Additionally, the lineages of several of 

 today's varieties can be traced back to varieties developed by farmers themselves. 



Such research and development arrangements are very generous when compared 

 with those of other industries operating within the United States. Given this, why 

 should additional market restraints be issued to further the profits of already profit- 

 able multinational chemical and pharmaceutical corporations such as Ciba-Geigy, 

 ICI, Sandoz (Northrup King) and Upjohn (Asgrow)? This is not a situation similar to 

 that of Chrysler Corporation, in which there was a growing market and competition 

 was necessary to maintain consumer price levels. The U.S. market for seed is be- 

 coming saturated, and there are hundreds of seed companies. 



Further restrictions would benefit the largest of seed companies, the former mul- 

 tinational corporations along with U.S.-based Cargill, DeKalb and Pioneer Hi-Bred 

 International, and French-based Limagrain via U.S.-based Shissler — at the expense 

 of smaller seed companies. These restrictions would exacerbate an already lopsided 

 competition where prices are not set on the basis of fair market value, but on what 

 the frontrunner is charging — a practice which borders on collusion. 



In past decades, the United States has been reluctant to grant monopolistic 

 powers to any industry. As evidenced by the telecommunications industry, such 

 powers do not benefit consumers. This is also evidenced by the price of medicines 

 under patent which are manufactured by some of these same companies — compa- 

 nies which before the current furor over health care costs used pharmaceutical 

 analogies to justify their plant protection practices. If patents for life-saving drugs 

 do not enable them to be sold at reasonable prices, how can we assume that similar 

 protection for seed will allow it to be sold at a reasonable price? 



Similar arguments are echoed by those within the seed industry. The following is 

 a letter by Brad Biddick, head of Trelay Farms Inc. of Livingston, Wisconsin, a 

 small seed production firm. Biddick currently serves as president of the Independent 

 Professional Seedsmen Association. This letter was written on Sept. 14, 1992, in re- 

 sponse to an article in "Farm Futures" about Pioneer being awarded a multimillion 

 dollar settlement against Holden Foundation Seeds: 



The following perspectives are mine alone, but I have been in this business 

 all my life having been educated at the University of Wisconsin and by my 

 grandfather and father. 



There is a collision occurring between the reality of farming and the reality 

 of biotech labs. Seed companies are in the middle. With the CRP acres 

 shrinking the overall market for seed corn, reality for seed companies has 

 been an escalation of competition. Give-aways, discounts, pricing gimmicks, 

 financing schemes, you name it. The seed business has resorted to buying 



