That's one input that farmers are fundamentally able to supply themselves. From time to time, they'll buy new varieties and multiply them on the farm. Unfortunately, it's also massively profitable on the input supply side, if you can generate control and force farmers into buying all their seeds every year. Currently, we have plant breeders’ rights legislation based on UPOV 78, which essentially is silent, but it allows farmers to save and reuse protected varieties of seed on their farms.
There's a push to move to UPOV 91. One of the great concerns we have with UPOV 91 is that it has a so-called farmers' privilege, which would allow farmers to save and reuse seed, but at the behest of the government. It wouldn't be the customary agricultural practice that farmers have engaged in for all of time.
Also, it would give the owner of that plant breeders' right exclusive rights to control both the conditioning of the seed and its stocking. Conditioning is the cleaning and treating of that seed, and stocking is the bagging and storing of that seed. If those rights holders exercise that exclusive right, farmers could be cut out of the game altogether because they aren't going to plant unclean seed on their farms. That control over the seed cleaning element is critical. If they can't store or stock seed without permission, they're stuck buying seed at a very high cost. We look at GM canola for example, and we're paying $10 or $11 per pound for that seed, for a $13 or $14 a bushel seed.
Additionally, UPOV 91 would give the rights holders the ability to collect what's called cascading rights or downstream royalty collection. They could collect royalties not only on the sale of the seed but also when farmers deliver their grain. At any point in the food system, they could make a claim, which again would probably encourage those we sell to, to offer proof that we've produced that seed from purchased seed, certified seed, etc., over time. That will drastically increase the cost to farmers.
We sent a letter to the Government of Canada—