Seeds and Sovereignty By Manish Kushwaha & Gaia Organics
(Submitted to the Canada Gazette — August 2025)
Introduction
When trade grows uncertain, handing control of plant breeding to a small circle of private firms is a dangerous gamble.
Seed is not just another input — it is the foundation of life, food, and freedom. Whoever controls seed controls the farm, the food system, and the nation itself.
The federal proposal to amend the Plant Breeders’ Rights Regulations (PBR Regulations) claims to “strengthen innovation.” In truth, it extends monopoly control over the genetic building blocks of agriculture. These amendments — to narrow farmers’ privilege, extend protection terms, and redefine “sale” — risk locking farmers, gardeners, and public breeders out of the genetic commons that sustain us all.
As both farmers and seed stewards, Gaia Organics firmly opposes these changes. They will not create innovation; they will concentrate ownership, weaken food sovereignty, and erode Canada’s ability to adapt to climate change.
The Current Landscape
Canada already has one of the strongest intellectual-property regimes in agriculture. Since the country adopted UPOV ’91 in 2015, filings for Plant Breeders’ Rights have risen steadily.
According to the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (IP Canada Report 2024), there were 394 PBR applications in 2023, a 3 percent annual increase from the previous year.
Roughly 51 percent of those applications came from foreign entities. (1)
At the same time, public breeding programs have been shrinking. Government research stations have been privatized or absorbed into industry partnerships. The “innovation” now celebrated is largely driven by multinational input firms whose business models rely on patented seed–chemical packages.
Globally, four corporations — Bayer AG, Corteva Agriscience, Syngenta Group, and BASF SE — control between 55 and 60 percent of the commercial seed market. (2)
Extending monopoly rights within this landscape does not create a level playing field; it cements corporate dominance and pushes public breeders further to the margins.
1 – The Farmers’ Privilege: Foundation of Agricultural Freedom
Farmers’ privilege is not a loophole — it is a centuries-old principle allowing growers to save and reuse seed from their own harvest. It underpins food security, diversity, and local adaptation.
The government now proposes to exclude fruits, vegetables, ornamentals, vegetatively propagated plants, and hybrids from that exemption. Such a restriction would criminalize normal seed-saving practices on mixed farms and in community gardens across the country.
Even hybrid and vegetatively propagated crops are part of farmers’ adaptive work. Growers routinely select and stabilize lines suited to their soils and microclimates. Removing this right transfers power from communities to corporations and severs the cultural continuity of seed stewardship.
Canada’s small-farm landscape bears little resemblance to the large, highly mechanized farms of Europe that inspired the narrow UPOV ’91 interpretation. We should not copy legal frameworks designed for different economies and ecosystems. Farmers’ privilege must remain broad, flexible, and protected in law.
2 – The Five-Year Extension: A Monopoly in Disguise
The proposal to extend protection from 20 to 25 years for potatoes, asparagus, and woody plants is framed as an incentive for breeders. Yet the data show who truly benefits.
More than half of current Canadian PBR filings already come from foreign corporations, primarily from the EU and the U.S. (1) These firms enjoy long-term global revenue streams. A five-year extension effectively gifts them extra profit on varieties that are often already fully commercialized.
Meanwhile, farmers and public breeders face longer wait times before they can freely use those genetics to create new, open varieties. In practical terms, it means fewer locally adapted cultivars, slower innovation in public research, and higher input costs for farmers.
If Canada wants to encourage domestic breeding for perennials, the solution is public funding, not longer monopolies. Every dollar spent prolonging private exclusivity is a dollar diverted from public research capacity.
3 – Redefining “Sale”: Stretching Monopolies by Stealth
The government proposes to remove “advertising” from the definition of a “sale.”
In the global online market, this change could effectively prolong protection far beyond the statutory limit. Large firms already advertise new varieties worldwide before official release in Canada. Excluding “advertising” from “sale” would allow them to delay the start of the novelty period — and thus extend their exclusive rights — by months or even years.
Domestic breeders, who usually market within Canada, would have no such advantage. This asymmetry favors multinational corporations and undermines the principle of fair competition that PBR law is supposed to uphold.
4 – The Myth of “Free and Fair Competition”
The Regulatory Impact Statement claims these amendments will “support a business environment that attracts investment and innovation.” But competition already suffers under consolidation.
A 2020 study of the seed sector found that just a handful of corporations dominate global breeding, licensing, and distribution channels. (2) As concentration increases, licensing fees and seed prices rise, while farmers’ options decline. This is not a sign of market health; it is a symptom of enclosure.
Real competition flourishes when farmers can freely save, exchange, and adapt seed — not when they are charged royalties or bound by contracts for basic agricultural reproduction.
Innovation, too, is stifled when private IP walls prevent cross-breeding and experimentation by small breeders, public institutions, and farmers themselves. Extending exclusive rights merely rewards the largest players for practices that limit diversity.
5 – Food Security and Climate Resilience
Seed sovereignty is a climate-resilience strategy. Locally adapted, publicly available varieties are the foundation of ecological farming. They reduce dependence on imported seed and ensure that farmers can respond quickly to drought, flooding, and new pests.
Concentrating control over seed genetics undermines that resilience. When access depends on corporate approval or royalty payments, adaptation slows. Canada’s farmers — and its ecosystems — cannot afford to be hostage to private intellectual-property portfolios during an era of accelerating climate change.
The federal government’s duty is to strengthen, not restrict, the public seed commons. Investments should go toward farmer-breeder collaborations, community seed banks, and participatory breeding programs — not toward extending private monopolies.
6 – Representation and Democratic Process
CFIA’s consultation summary claims “overwhelming support” for the proposed amendments, yet the agency has not disclosed how many respondents were corporate breeders or industry associations versus farmers, gardeners, and public researchers.
The reality is that small producers, Indigenous seed keepers, and independent companies often lack the resources to follow or respond to these technical consultations. A democratic process must disclose stakeholder composition and weight responses accordingly. Without transparency, “stakeholder consensus” risks being little more than a corporate checklist.
7 – Ethical and Legal Dimensions
Intellectual-property rights must not contradict natural processes. Wind, insects, and wildlife do not respect legal boundaries. Holding farmers liable for genetic drift from patented fields violates basic fairness. Containment should be the legal responsibility of rights-holders, not of neighboring growers maintaining open systems.
Canada has endorsed the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP), which explicitly recognizes the right to save, use, exchange, and sell farm-saved seed. Narrowing farmers’ privilege conflicts with these international commitments.
8 – A Better Path Forward
Instead of expanding PBR monopolies, Canada should pursue genuine innovation through public investment and open collaboration. We recommend that the government:
- Withdraw the current amendments and open a transparent national review of PBR’s socio-economic impacts since 2015.
- Reinvest in public breeding, including AAFC and university programs for open-pollinated and regionally adapted crops.
- Protect the farmers’ privilege in full, ensuring it covers all crop kinds and propagation methods.
- Recognize farmer-led and Indigenous innovation, establishing pathways for non-corporate breeders to receive public support and recognition.
- Implement competition safeguards, preventing market dominance by any single corporate group.
- Adopt a “right-to-repair” principle for seed, allowing farmers to reproduce protected material for on-farm use once the protection term expires, without additional conditions.
Conclusion
Seed is not a private invention; it is a living inheritance.
The proposed amendments to Canada’s Plant Breeders’ Rights Regulations would privatize that inheritance further, limiting farmers’ autonomy, eroding biodiversity, and undermining the nation’s sovereignty.
Innovation will not come from lengthening monopolies but from strengthening the public capacity to breed, share, and adapt. Canada’s future depends on open systems, not closed ones.
We therefore call on the Government of Canada to withdraw the proposed amendments in full and begin a broad, transparent dialogue on how to secure Canada’s seed future — for farmers, for biodiversity, and for generations yet to come.
About Gaia Organics
Gaia Organics is a farmer-led seed company and ecological farm based in the Ottawa region.
Founded by Manish Kushwaha, Gaia Organics grows and selects open-pollinated and heritage varieties for Canada’s cold climate, emphasizing biodiversity, cultural connection, and seed sovereignty. The farm collaborates with local growers, researchers, and community organizations to build a resilient, transparent, and regionally adapted seed system for Eastern Canada.
References
- Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO), IP Canada Report 2024 – Plant Breeders’ Rights Statistics, Government of Canada.
- ETC Group (2022) and Land & Climate Review (2023): “How a Few Giant Companies Came to Dominate Global Food.”