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So-called suicide or terminator seeds, which germinate only once forcing farmers to buy new seeds each harvest, appeared in the marketplace in 2004 and since then no less than 450 NGOs around the world have expressed opposition to their use.
Those NGOs have just released a report based on data from the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), ministries of Agriculture around the world, research and academic centers, and farmer associations which shows the exact cost, in losses to family farmers, of the use of terminator technology. Maria José Guazzelli, of the Brazilian NGO, "Centro Ecológico," says: "Just the soy farmers in Brazil will lose US$ 401 million annually." That number is calculated by considering that out of the 22 million hectares used for soy cropland, 70% is family farmland. "Family farmers always save seeds for the next planting season. With terminator technology seeds that will not be possible and they will be forced to buy new seeds," she explains. Guazzelli goes on to say that in Argentina, with a smaller area of soy cropland (around 14 million hectares), but the same percentage of family farms (70%), the losses would reach US$ 272 million. ABr
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- Because even if 70 % of soy farmers are family farmers, the minority landowners OF THE VERY LARGE FARMS agribusinesses control well over 70 % of TOTAL SOY PRODUCTION !
THE SAD REALITY (NOT ONLY INVOLVING SOY ARMERS ALONE)IS THAT YOUR 37 largest landowners have more land than the 2.5 millions smallest family farms !
Furthermore, Brazil, like Argentina, are always opposed to pay Intelectual Rights to those who invested billions of US$ in R&D.
But without these billions of $ in R&D there is no innovation and no development. And those who invested these billions must at the end make profit on their investment just as you do ! And if there is no profit why should they have invested in R&D ??????
Brazil already did the same with the first generation of GM soy seeds.
They were illegal in your country but you did not stop the smuggling of the seeds from Argentina, and the harvest and the sale of it !
BUT YOU DID NOT AND STILL DONT WANT TO PAY a royalty fee !!!!!!
You simply are cheaters, smugglers, robbers of inventions by others.
IT IS LIKE IF WE, THE DEVELOPED COUNTRIES, BUYERS OF YOUR AGRICULTURE, WOULD REFUSE TO PAY THE PRODUCTS WE BUY FROM YOU, USING THE SAME ARGUMENTS AS YOU DO in having no desire to pay your investments you did for the production of these agricultural goods !!!!!!
That is the sad and shameful reality !!!