FOREIGN SEED COMPANIES ARE KILLING LOCAL SEEDS
…. In opening and planting this bag of seed you are committing yourself NEVER to re use or replant the seed from this harvest….
URGENT and IMPORTANT for Action Today Sunday 28 April 2024 to all leaders in the Ekklesia
The Ultimate Agenda to Stop Farmers from Saving, Shairing and Reusing Seeds in Zambia
In the 2022/23 agric season, we accessed soya bean seed through the Kasanshi foundation for planting at our family farm. The seed was from SEEDCO. When I read what was written on the bag, I shared it with my brother in law who is an agronomist. We laughed it off and it ended there.
What was written on the bag of soya seed in my own words says something like ….”. In opening and planting this bag of seed you are committing yourself NEVER to re use or replant the seed from this harvest.”
This week I have been re awakened to realise that this is not a joke. The global seed companies are determined to strengthen laws in countries that will make it possible for them to prosecute farmers who replant the seed they have bought with their own money. It is already happening in some countries. They want to maximise profits at the expense lives and food security
The proposed Plant Variety Breeders Rights (PBR) Bill of 2024 to be tabled before parliament in the next two months in Zambia is an attempt to achieve the agenda as outlined above.
I don’t have the time to go into details but the proposed PBR Bill of 2024 which will repeal the 2007 one intends to make it easy for Zambia to be part of UPOV, an international union that discriminates against small scale farmers and criminalises farmers rights to save, share and re use seeds.
The PBR Bill of 2024 if passed in Zambia will among other things
- Increase control and commercial benefits for global seed companies at the expense of small scale farmers and food security
- Defy principles of good governance, national interest and farmers rights
In view of this, I encourage that we the Ekklesia ( the Spiritual Governing Council) in Zambia take the following steps
- Legislate from Mount Zion that PBR Bill of 2024 never happened in Zambia according to Matthew 18:18,19
- That our honourable MPs will be honourable enough to see through the deception of greedy global seed companies to achieve an evil agenda threatening our sovereinty and food security and further impoverishing small scale farmers who feed this nation by shooting down this bill.
- Our District Overseers and pastors will lobby their members of parliament and put it on record that as a church, we would like them to VOTE AGAINST the bill.
Yours in pursuit of destiny
Friday Mumbi
General Overseer
People of Destiny Church International