August 31, 2006

 

Brazil may swap illegal GM soy seeds for legal ones

 

 

The Brazilian government is considering a measure to allow the country's farmers to swap illegal transgenic soy seeds for legalised transgenic soy seeds, said the country's National Commodities Supply Corp (Conab), on Wednesday (Aug 30).

 

Contraband GM soy seeds smuggled in through Argentina and other countries have been circulating through Brazil over the past decade.

 

"It's confirmed a trade like this could take place," said a Conab spokesman in a phone interview with Dow Jones Newswires.

 

If the Agricultural Ministry agrees, minister Luis Carlos Guedes Pinto may announce the new measure as early as Thursday at an international livestock show, Expointer, in Rio Grande do Sul, added the spokesman.

 

While contraband seeds account for a large percentage of Brazil's seed market, producers who use illegal seeds are not technically eligible for financing or rural insurance from state-owned banks such as Banco do Brasil, which offer credit lines with some of the country's lowest interest rates.

 

In the past two harvests, however, the government has approved temporary congressional measures to allow farmers to legally use non-legal GM soy seeds, due to intense lobbying from farm groups as well as fears that the country's legal seed market was not large enough to account for demand.

 

This year, however, the nation has abundant GM soy seed stocks, including varieties developed by the state-linked agricultural research firm Embrapa as well as US multi-national Monsanto's Roundup Ready variety, said Ywao Miyamoto, president of the country's National Association of Seeds (Abrasem).

 

On Tuesday, an Agricultural Ministry official said that the government was also studying the possibility of a presidential decree for the upcoming soy harvest that would allow farmers to legally use the non-legal seeds.

 

Local seed associations, however, are opposed to the idea, pointing out that the decree doesn't make sense this year, and arguing that the cost of legal seeds is near-equivalent to illegal seeds.

 

While the black market for seeds exists nationwide, the problem is worse in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, where 95 percent of the soy seed market is seed smuggled in from other countries or guarded from previous harvests, said Miyamoto.

 

Brazil is the world's second leading soy exporter after the US.