On February 14, 2020, a heavy foreign fine fell on an ordinary Chinese fruit farmer, Gao Haoyu.
On this day, after the Trial of the New Zealand Court, the defendant Gao Haoyu and his wife were ordered to compensate the New Zealand Jiapei Company for 15 million New Zealand dollars, equivalent to 65.26 million yuan. And the source of all this actually has to start from a few fruit vines that Gao Haoyu privately brought back to China...
Gao Haoyu and Xue are a Chinese couple who once grew kiwifruit in New Zealand, which is known locally in New Zealand as kiwifruit. In the process of planting for many years, Gao Haoyu deeply felt that this kiwifruit variety was excellent. Therefore, when he returned to China, he decided to bring a few fruit vines back to China without permission. At that time, he only considered the unlimited business opportunities that a few small fruit vines would bring him, but he did not consider whether his behavior was legal and compliant.
After returning to China, he began to plant kiwifruit through a few fruit vines that he had smuggled back to China. Less than two years after planting, he was sued by a New Zealand company called Jiapei on suspicion of infringing independent intellectual property rights.
At first, he felt "wronged" and sought all sorts of evidence to get out of the charges. But to be wrong before the law is to be wrong. In the end, after a series of trials by New Zealand courts, it was determined that Gao Haoyu's act of privately taking Guo Teng back to China did indeed infringe jiapei's independent intellectual property rights. The case was also finally closed with Gao Haoyu compensating Jiapei Company for 65.26 million yuan.
The little fruit vine actually demanded a sky-high price! Is it too much of a fuss?
When we enter Gao Haoyu's perspective, we can't help but feel aggrieved, saying that the ignorant are not guilty, just a warning, the part of the profit can be handed over as a fine, why are foreigners so fussy?
In fact, it is not, the importance of seeds is beyond your imagination, and the "chip" that is known as agriculture is not in vain.
First of all, the research and development investment of a seed is huge, not only the time cost spent in technical research, but also the huge capital cost.
In today's world of seed industry competition, science and technology is the focus. Whoever masters advanced technology is mastering advanced productive forces. Multinational seed companies pay more attention to technical investment in seed research and development. They do not hesitate to invest about 10% of their sales revenue in scientific research and technology research and development, and even more as high as 10% to 20%.
Relevant survey reports show that in 2010, Monsanto's breeding research and development expenditure has reached 1.205 billion US dollars, of which breeding research and biotechnology are about 600 million US dollars each; Pioneer Company invests 1 billion US dollars in breeding research and development; and Syngenta breeding research and development investment is more than 400 million US dollars.
Monsanto
As seed companies that have occupied a dominant position in the world seed market, they still attach great importance to research and development, because if they do not do so, they will not be able to ensure their leading and monopoly position in the core technology of seed production.
Such an international seed industry giant, in the research and development of such a huge investment, not to mention many seeds industry development backward countries? The results of seed research and development are not easy to come by, and how willing to make wedding clothes for other countries.
Secondly, in the eyes of some seed industry powers, seeds are not a humane product related to the people's livelihood plan, but a "commodity".
As far as the current development of the world's seed industry is concerned, seed companies in developed countries have become the main body of the development of the seed industry, and they almost control most of the crop seed resources and the development direction of the seed industry market. Multinational seed companies have almost dominated the world seed market with their own technology, capital and mature operating system.
As early as 2011, a study released by ETC Group showed that the market share of the world's top ten seed companies in the monopoly seed market in 2009 had risen from 64.1% in 2006 to 73.2%;
The turnover of monsanto, DuPont Pioneer and Syngenta alone occupies 52.9% of the global market share. Conservatively estimated, the three seed companies account for almost 65 percent of the world's corn market share and 50 percent of the soybean market share.
What is even more surprising is that a small number of large seed companies have formed a monopoly pattern of monopolizing the international seed market. According to the ISF (Import Safety Declaration), in 2010, multinational seed companies in the United States controlled almost 50% of the global seed market, 70% of gene patents and 40% of commercial resources.
It sounds unbelievable that the seeds of soybeans, corn and other food crops that we do not think about on a normal day need to cross the ocean to various seed scarce countries. Obviously, many seeds are monopolized as commodities by a few countries, and seed-scarce countries can only rely on people's sniffles and rely too much on seed imports to maintain agricultural development.
Therefore, seeds naturally become a rare and scarce resource. Since it is scarce, how can it be easily handed over to people?
It can be seen that New Zealand is not making a fuss, but is worried that after the patent is stolen, the hard-won research results of its own country will be "white-boiled" by other countries, and it is more worried about being copied by other countries to the confidential technology developed by seeds, so that the hard-won results will be wasted.
As for this "fruit farmer case", he could only admit that he was unlucky and left in accordance with legal procedures.
What happens if a country doesn't have seed security?
Seed security is related to food security, and food security is related to national security. Academician Yuan Longping once said: "At critical times, a small seed can trip up a huge country. This is precisely to say that seeds are related to the survival plan of a country.
Recently, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine has intensified, in which NATO countries led by the United States stand against Russia, impose various sanctions on it, and even want to launch a "seed war" against Russia.
The implication is that if Russia continues to attack Ukraine, it will cut off the supply of seeds to Russia. Probably most people will think, isn't it the seed supply cut off? It is not a big deal to develop it yourself, not to mention that Russia is a big agricultural country, how can it be constrained by small seeds?
Although Russia is a well-known exporter of grain, grain and oil in the world, it has not broken through the bottleneck of seed research and development technology, and relies heavily on imports in seeds.
Take, for example, two important agricultural production areas in Russia. In the Belgorod region, the proportion of seeds for grain, legumes and oil crops has remained basically at 43% to 50%, while the share of sugar beet seeds imported has reached 91%,; the Irkutsk region is notoriously dependent on imports, and basically more than 90% of crop seeds are foreign seeds.
More seriously, the German company Bayer, which has cut off seed supply to Russia this time, is the main supplier of seeds imported from Russia. With this supply cut, what will the economy of these regions rely on to support it, and how will national food security be guaranteed? It can be seen from this that this wave of Seed Sanctions by the West has firmly choked Russia's lifeline.
From these cases, it is not difficult for us to find that the breeding path of a big country still has a long way to go in the breeding path of a big country, even if the "individual" of The Chinese fruit farmer and the "big country" are in a big country at the same time. There are also many people who are starting to worry...
If China also suffers from food sanctions, can we successfully "take over"?
Such worries are not superfluous at all. Although China is one of the world's top "agricultural powers", it is still a certain distance from the "agricultural powers".
In 2010, when a reporter interviewed Shouguang, Shandong, the largest vegetable base in the country, he found that the vegetable base had become a "fair" for foreign seeds! Even maize and potato seeds, which are quasi-staple foods, are considerably dependent on imports.
However, as a traditional agricultural country, Although China started late in the field of seed-making, after decades of efforts by generations of agricultural researchers, the mainland has achieved the independence of rice and wheat.
As a result, the import dependence of many other agricultural products, such as tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers, does not seem to be so difficult to accept.
At present, the mainland is already making second-hand preparations for breaking through dependence, and strives to let the seeds other than the mainland's staple food gain autonomy with Chinese science and technology. At present, the mainland is gradually forming a full set of production chains for the utilization of germplasm resources, gene mining, and variety research and development, and has increased its efforts to protect the new varieties that have been bred in the policy, and also imposed severe punishment on foreign countries who steal our research results.
Whether it is New Zealand's sanctions on fruit growers, Western sanctions on Russia, or China's own personal experience, they are all warning us that innovation and technology are the primary productive forces, and seed safety is related to national security and must not be delivered to others.
But we don't need to worry too much. On the road to the rise of great powers, the mainland has always attached great importance to seed research and development. Agricultural researchers on the mainland have been studying hard, and the experiments on self-developed high-yield crop varieties have also been carried out in an orderly manner. I believe that in the future development, one day, China will be able to achieve the Chinese bowl is full of Chinese grain!