Biopiracy, TRIPS and the Patenting of Asia's Rice Bowl: A collective NGO situationer on IPRs on rice

Nearly all Asian countries are committed to the WTO TRIPs treaty. This means that by the year 2000, Asian governments have to make intellectual property titles on seeds completely legal. This will favor transnational corporations who want to control agriculture and the world's food system through genetic engineering. Despite the current economic crisis in the region, TNCs are hot to penetrate Asian agriculture even more, especially the newly opened Chinese market. Patents will make crop research lucrative for them and give them market control over biotechnology. But what does this mean for the more than one billion small farmers in Asia? Will TRIPs promote sustainable development or will it entrench foreign domination as the road to 'development'? This paper situates the implications of TRIPs primarily in terms of Asia's most important plant: rice. [author]