Ban Terminator Briefing Terminator Technology and Farmers' Rights (Click here for the pdf)

Cost of Terminator (March 22, 2006) Financial calculations indicate that Terminator seeds will impose a burden of billions of extra dollars in seed costs on some of the world's poorest nations.

The calculations, prepared by civil society organisation ETC Group in cooperation with farm organisations, show that if Terminator were commercialised, the extra seed costs for farmers in just seven countries could easily exceed $1.2 billion per year (3 times the amount spent on public agricultural research in the green revolution centres of the CGIAR or about half the yearly Canadian aid budget). Yet this amounts to just a fraction of the full financial windfall the seed industry could hope to extract from farmers if they were to apply Terminator technology to all their seed lines worldwide. This figure is thought likely to run to billions of extra dollars per year. In Brazil, host country to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, soybean farmers could face US$407 million dollars (Brazilian Real $866 million) of extra seed costs if they were unable to re-use harvested seed. Even Canadian wheat farmers, whose government is one of the leading proponents of Terminator at the CBD, could be stung with an annual bill of US$85 million dollars.

Further details: The Potential Economic Impact of Terminator Seed Technology - Estimates for Selected Crops and Countries

Appeal for Information from Farmers - If you had to buy seed every growing season, what would it cost you?

Farmers’ Appeal to United Nations SBSTTA10 meeting on GURTs [Terminator] (February 2005)

United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, Ad-Hoc Technical Expert Working Group report on GURTs

Links:

Via Campesina www.viacampesina.org
National Farmers Union, Canada www.nfu.ca
Pesticide Action Network – Asia and the Pacific www.panap.org
Deccan Development Society www.ddsindia.com
SEARICE South East Asia Regional Initiatives for Community Empowerment www.searice.org.ph