 Hello and welcome to Real News Network and NewsClick. Today we are in conversation with Dr. Suman Sahai, the chairperson of Gene Campaign, a group that works on issues such as sustainable agriculture, genetic diversity, and intellectual property rights and seeds. And today we are in conversation with her on the planned mega mergers of six agribusiness corporations. Dr. Sahai, welcome to the program. So this current merger that is afoot globally, where six mega agriculture corporations are merging, Dow with DuPont, Monsanto with Bayer, ChemChina with Sinjenta. The concern is that this will lead to a dominance in market share. Can you give us a sense of why is this merger happening simultaneously and what are the likely sort of impacts? See simultaneously it has to happen because if two of them get together they become too big for the rest. So everybody has to sort of keep a pace in order to compete on size now. Why is it happening? I think it is of a piece with the kind of developments that you have seen over the last years of consolidation of all interests in agriculture particularly globally. So first we had this phase of the industrialization of the food chain. Then you had the integration of food with inputs into agriculture. So you saw all these life science corporations which were actually chemicals. These are all people who moved from chemicals, not moved from but added on to their chemical base, the seed component so that in the agriculture sector you are covering all bases. So this is a sort of a consolidation of the agriculture sector. The intention is of course global dominance of this field, of the field of agriculture, of the field of food production and of the field of value chains in agriculture. At the bottom of this somewhere is the understanding that as we enter into climate change and the era of climate change and as we move towards a global population that is certainly rising we are looking at food as a very strategic resource and it is not looked as a strategic resource only today. Now go back to the famous words of Henry Kissinger who said words to the effect that if you control a nation's food you control the nation. So the understanding that food has been a very important resource has been around but it has not become mainstream like now. There is this understanding that whoever has the food has a huge advantage and I don't think that this is unconnected or disconnected with the fact that the big food giants are now coming together and becoming bigger. So one of the concerns is that if this plan merger of these six companies into three go through they will control some 70 percent of the agrochemicals market and some 60 percent of the commercial seeds market and there's already been a lot of opposition from farmers, from unions, from researchers to sort of reject this merger. Can you give us a sense of what would be the impacts on farmers and consumers and on the environment with these companies? See this is a very basic thing the greater the choice on the market the better off the consumer is. In this case the consumer is the farmer essentially the farmer and later on then the consumer of the food. So the moment you start to restrict the supply and restrict the choices the person or the category of people who are going to suffer the most are the consumers of those products which are the farmers in this case. The large giants are getting larger and they will be able to control the product which means they can control the flow and availability of the product and this amounts to blackmail. You can use this it's a very effective tool. They'll certainly control the price as you've seen in the pharmaceutical sector the fewer the number of agencies that are producing a drug the higher the patent protection the higher the prices. I mean everybody who's been working on the intellectual property rights area has seen that it's a very direct linear correlation. You'll anticipate the same thing in the seed sector. Having said this I'd like to point out that there are many choices and if something is happening at the global level say Monsanto and Bayer or Kampchai and Shingenta it need not necessarily affect us. Let us remember at the end of the day this we must always remember national legislation will always trump international developments. In most cases of this kind quasi-commercial economic related to to vulnerable sectors you do have a choice if your national capacity is strong then you can count to this. I mean say for example any one of these giants or all three of these giants when they happen will control your pesticides and seed will you manufacture your own pesticides and seeds. A country the size of India need not really have worries on that score. I wish to underline this to try and counter the kind of it hasn't begun to be hysterical yet but there is a strong hysteria developing on good heavens you know there is this all of this merger taking place. So what if Dow and DuPont are merging. You don't have to buy their products. To link to that for instance there are regulatory challenges happening in the European Competition Commission in the US courts in Brazil in India the Competition Commission is examining the deal. So do you see a legal sort of challenge possible. See yes of course I mean if you want to have Dow and DuPont here you will have to have regulatory oversight regulatory mechanisms but what I'm saying is that if these are not things that you're able to control then you don't have to have a partnership with these agencies. The point that I'm making is that India is large enough has a huge domestic market. It has scientific and research capacity and in the area of seed God knows we have very diffuse and very capable competence in the form of farmers who produce seed. But the way that the farmers ability to counter these big trans nationals are being diluted is through trade agreements that India is signing. For instance you have I mean the TPP tried to bring in sort of the up into those 12 countries that were part of it. TPP was very bad news. But now you have Trump exiting from the TPP and you have the regional comprehensive economic partnership in which Japan and South Korea are trying to push. I mean so you of course need to challenge the corporations but you also need to challenge the trade agreements. I want to get your sense of the international movement for progressive sort of agriculture. We have a very good track record as far as to learn from as far as our experience with the WTA was concerned. You know we went from a stage of near paralysis because our government agencies are completely incapable of comprehending and therefore responding to what the Uruguay round had demanded. First of all the patenting of seeds that it had demanded. But from there we've come a long way and we've learned a lot. Even agencies in government have learned a lot and those lessons will come in very handy now. And I think more than that the level of confidence that we have that you can take these guys on. So what's the big deal? India has after all given itself a farmer's rights legislation and gene campaign has been a very big part of that process which is the only legislation in the world that gives rights to farmers. So we've done that. Now then comes the question of political will. If you have a government that simply refuses to listen to any sense and does not consult with anybody and goes its own happy way and gets into a ditch that's a terrible thing to happen. It's a sad thing to happen. And again something like that it's very difficult to take a stand. But I think as a process yes if you want to deal with doubt you have to get into the competition commission's recommendations. You'll have to have regulatory oversight. If you can swing a deal that's advantages for you. After all all of these mergers are also facing great big caveats. That's why they're not happening overnight. That's right. They have to exit certain businesses. They have all sorts of conditionalities. So you can also pose conditionalities and say that we will allow so and so to function here with these under these conditions. And if we can control the Indian state of affairs through enlightened assertive national action and national policy then I don't think that we need to be in a flap. It's when we are weak domestically and given to pressures and given to even invariants and blandishments and I'm afraid we're very vulnerable to blandishments in all forms and you know exactly what I'm talking about. Then what can any regulatory oversight do also link to the fact that agriculture is a state subject and since your since gene campaign works across the country engaging with state governments do you see a sort of possible progressive laws that state governments can put in place being challenged or is that a good way to go because agriculture is a state subject as well. This agriculture is a state subject thing works only up to a point and it works more domestically at all international levels and international decisions. We've gone through this process during the WTO also. The executive has the right to take a decision. Its implementation may run into conflict with the states. Some states may come around and say okay fine you've done a deal your business we're not letting it happen here in XY state. But that's a tough one you know and I think the best course of action for us is for the central government for the executive to realize and I think it's our job to try and educate them. It will depend on how receptive they are or not whether they open up channels for discourse and dialogue or not. But I think civil society must play its role in bringing together I would say the informed citizen with educational materials. You know a lot of people would like to know a little bit more but they don't know where to get that information. So very succinct information you know hand-built type things that that spell out the dangers. The consolidation of seed means somebody else will control the seed its availability and its price and the implications for your average Delhi middle-class consumer is more expensive food. I don't think a lot of people give a hoot about what happens to the farmer but they will give a hoot about what happens to their own food prices their monthly budget etc. So that's how we have to tailor it. I mean all of us who've been involved in campaigns for these last several years should put our heads together and mount a challenge really for the government. Thank you very much for sharing your insights with us. We will come back to you because these mergers are still sort of work in progress and we hope to get you back to the studio for other issues as well. Thank you very much. Thank you.