In several occasions it requires countries to respect existing IPRs on plant materials, and existing IPR agreements. It is an aberration that genetic materials which peasants and indigenous people have kept alive, cared for and protected for more than 10,000 years could now be the property of corporate business. And that we have to pay royalties for those seeds which were gathered from our lands and homogenized or modified abroad. There should be free flow of crop germplasm, free from monopoly rights, to promote conservation and improvement by all actors. The mere application of patents is meant to concentrate benefits in the hands of the patent holder.
Patents are the ultimate instrument to put control and benefits in the wrong hands.
It is one of the instruments to institutionalise practises of biopiracy. Therefore they can never be accepted as a tool to share benefits equally among all stakeholders in the North and in the South. Via Campesina asks the full recognition of Farmers' Rights. These rights go beyond the legal frameworks for intellectual property. International Labour Organization Convention 169, Clause 8-J of the Biodiversity Convention, and Point 14.60 of Agenda 21, signed by the heads of state of almost all the countries of the world.