Patents on life - a threat to food security
Who owns rice, wheat, maize? The granting of patents on lifeforms, and especially on seeds, constitutes a serious threat to food security worldwide. When patented seeds have been used, the traditional practice of sowing seeds from parts of the previous harvest becomes illegal or entails further costs. This poses an existential threat to small-scale and subsistence farmers in the South; they will become totally dependent on large multinational corporations which more and more control the seeds market. Access to lower-cost seeds that are not patented will become more and more difficult.
To avoid such further impoverishment, small farmers need the right to save, re-use, exchange and sell seeds free from any constraints.

Biopiracy
More and more transnational corporations are seeking to gain control over the "genetic pharmacy" of the tropical forests and seeds of farmers, practising "biopiracy" by appropriating indigenous peoples' knowledge of plants, seeds and races, and patenting them for their own economic gain. When having patented a plant - entirely or partially - the holder of the patent is entitled to lay claim to subsequent substances and products that contain the plant’s genes as well. The original users who have bred these plants and seeds generation after generation are often neither informed nor do they participate in the profits generated. This is biopiracy.

Sustainable land use: the way to food security
Sustainable agriculture integrates local conditions and experiences made by small-scale and subsistence farmers. Step by step, cultivation practices and soil fertility are optimised by adopting low-cost, traditional and site-appropriate methods. The seeds remain under control of the farmers.

MISEREOR’s double commitment
Together with other international agencies, MISEREOR has taken a firm stand concerning patents on life. MISEREOR thus collected more than 120,000 signatures against the legalisation of patents on life in Germany and the WTO TRIPS Agreement. In 2003, MISEREOR gained, together with Greenpeace and the Mexican government, the revocation of the European Patent No. 744888 for a variety of corn. This legal success has been of existential importance to Mexican farmers.

At the same time, MISEREOR is of course committed to development cooperation with the people concerned by supporting their projects and programmes: in the Philippines, for example, small-scale farmers together with scientists founded the organisation MASIPAG. Supported by MISEREOR, MASIPAG has been very successful in putting locally appropriate sustainable agriculture based on traditional knowledge into real practice. The farmers using MASIPAG-recommended farming methods are achieving very good yields, and their livelihoods are based on economic and environmental sustainability.