Is BASF helping farmers or opening new seed and herbicide markets?
The problems with StrigAway begin with the claims over intellectual property (IP). BASF owns patents over the Clearfield technology that it guards ruthlessly in all the countries where Clearfield crops are commercialised. BASF is one of the world’s largest agricultural biotechnology corporations and it hopes that its Clearfield crops will secure its competitiveness in the lucrative market for herbicide-tolerant crop systems. [2] The company’s strategy is to form licensing agreements with breeding centres and seed companies, and it expects royalties from its Clearfield technology shortly to bring in US$300 million a year. [3] Farmers who purchase Clearfield seeds have to sign a contract called a “stewardship agreement”, which BASF enforces aggressively. [4] In the US state of Arkansas, the company, responding to tips from other farmers, sued 25 farmers for the US$2.5 million by which, it said, they economised in 2005 by planting saved seeds. Early in 2006, BASF successfully sued a fathe
