'Threat to farmers’ rights': New seeds Bill sparks fears of rising corporate control

By Bharat Dogra 

As debate intensifies over a new seeds bill, groups working on farmers’ seed rights, seed sovereignty and rural self-reliance have raised serious concerns about the proposed legislation. To understand these anxieties, it is important to recognise a global trend: growing control of the seed sector by a handful of multinational companies. This trend risks extending corporate dominance across food and farming systems, jeopardising the livelihoods and rights of small farmers and raising serious ecological and health concerns. The pending bill must be assessed within this broader context.

Over centuries, farmers—including many women cultivators—developed and preserved an extraordinary diversity of seeds suited to local conditions. These seeds were saved for personal use, shared freely with neighbours, and exchanged across communities. This sustained diversity ensured farmers access to planting material without economic burden and created a foundation of self-reliance at the heart of agriculture.

In recent decades, however, the situation has changed drastically. Corporate control over seeds has increased, led by multinational companies leveraging patents over life forms once considered part of the commons. This trend threatens the model of small-scale farmers producing safe food using ecologically protective and sustainable methods. The history of corporate consolidation—from regional firms to transnational giants with global ambitions—shows a consistent pattern: the drive for ever-greater control to secure long-term profits. Patents and technologies such as genetic modification have become tools enabling this control. Yet this model is fundamentally incompatible with protecting small farmers’ livelihoods, safeguarding the environment and ensuring healthy food.

Seed multinationals often promote production systems that raise input costs—including seeds, herbicides and linked chemicals—while encouraging monocultures over diversified and resilient farming practices. In regions where multinational companies are dominant, farming communities have experienced ecological harm, indebtedness, greater economic vulnerability and loss of control over seed. There are also numerous reports of such companies accessing genetic resources in the Global South in unfair and ethically questionable ways.

Given these realities, strong oversight of seed regulation is essential to protect farmers’ rights and limit undue corporate influence. In this context, an appeal issued by ASHA Kisan Swaraj (Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture) regarding the draft Seeds Bill 2025 deserves wide public attention. The appeal highlights concerns including expanded corporate influence, threats to farmer rights and excessive centralisation of power. It argues that these issues must be addressed so that farmer rights remain protected and state governments retain their constitutional authority over agriculture.

The appeal notes that several provisions of the draft bill weaken state authority, even though agriculture is constitutionally a state subject. Provisions relating to accreditation, price regulation, rule-making and dispute resolution place primary authority in the hands of the Union Government, reducing the role of states. It further argues that farmers’ rights—clearly stated in the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act, 2001—are presented merely as exemptions in the new bill. The legal wording risks restricting these protections only to registered varieties, which could criminalise long-standing seed saving and sharing practices that have sustained Indian agriculture. Community seed systems, including seed banks, are neither recognised nor protected, leaving them exposed to potential legal vulnerabilities.

A major shortcoming identified in the bill is the absence of a compensation mechanism for farmers who suffer losses due to spurious, substandard or mislabelled seeds. Such a provision was accepted in amendments to earlier drafts but is missing in this version. The appeal further argues that the bill is structured in a way that favours large companies, including multinationals, by introducing accreditation rather than robust regulation. Provisions enabling self-evaluation and self-certification, acceptance of foreign trials and certification, and the use of “ease of doing business” as legislative logic collectively dilute public-interest oversight.

Concerns are also raised about biosafety, as the bill could facilitate easier entry of imported seeds without clearly requiring adherence to environmental or food safety laws. Elements of the draft suggest that regulation of gene technologies, including GM seeds, may shift into the agriculture ministry rather than specialised agencies, raising a conflict of interest. On pricing, the bill proposes regulation only in emergency situations, despite sustained increases in seed costs and long-standing demands for systematic price control. Broader regulation could also protect farmers engaged in seed multiplication.

Finally, the appeal notes structural weaknesses such as regulatory bodies empowered to hear appeals against their own decisions, which risks conflict of interest and undermines basic principles of transparent governance. In view of these concerns, ASHA Kisan Swaraj argues that the draft must undergo important reforms and should, at the very least, be referred to the Standing Committee on Agriculture for wider parliamentary scrutiny and public consultation.

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The writer is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include Saving Earth for Children, Planet in Peril, A Day in 2071, and India’s Quest for Sustainable Farming and Healthy Food