I didn’t get to fin­ish my con­tri­bu­tion in the Sen­ate on Fri­day. We are on­ly giv­en 40 min­utes and not a minute more. We were de­bat­ing the Pro­tec­tion of New Plant Va­ri­eties (Amend­ment) Bill, 2026 (Bill). The Gov­ern­ment has the num­bers. The Op­po­si­tion has six votes. We knew the Bill would pass.

Some of the con­cerns raised from the Op­po­si­tion bench­es were met with vary­ing de­grees of scorn and de­ri­sion, from the Gov­ern­ment side. The Bill passed with­out amend­ment.

But my heart re­mained full and heavy.

Be­cause this Bill mat­tered.

And I do not think the pub­lic was ever giv­en a suf­fi­cient­ly clear ac­count of what we were re­al­ly be­ing asked to do.

On Sep­tem­ber 16 2026, Unit­ed Na­tions ex­perts is­sued a pub­lic warn­ing that pe­nal­is­ing peas­ant seed sys­tems threat­ens the glob­al food sup­ply. They rec­om­mend­ed ex­press­ly that states re­frain from im­ple­ment­ing the 1991 Con­ven­tion of the In­ter­na­tion­al Union for the Pro­tec­tion of New Va­ri­eties of Plants, known as UP­OV 1991, which re­stricts farm­ers’ abil­i­ty to save, ex­change and sell seed. That was the same day we were served with the Gov­ern­ment’s Bill to do just that. Two days lat­er the Sen­ate de­bat­ed it. Not one word of that warn­ing was put be­fore us by the Gov­ern­ment.

Here is what the bill does.

We have recog­nised plant breed­ers’ rights for near­ly 50 years un­der the 1978 UP­OV Con­ven­tion. Un­der our act, the breed­er’s per­mis­sion is need­ed prin­ci­pal­ly where prop­a­gat­ing ma­te­r­i­al is pro­duced for com­mer­cial mar­ket­ing, of­fered for sale or mar­ket­ed.

A farmer who saves seed and re­plants it sits out­side the breed­er’s right, be­cause the right does not reach that far. Clause 13 re­draws that line. Re­pro­duc­tion it­self be­comes an act with­in the breed­er’s ex­clu­sive right, along with con­di­tion­ing, sell­ing, ex­port­ing, im­port­ing and stock­ing.

The farmer is giv­en some­thing back through a new sec­tion 15A: farm-saved ma­te­r­i­al may be re­plant­ed, but on­ly on her own hold­ing, with­in “rea­son­able lim­its,” sub­ject to the breed­er’s “le­git­i­mate in­ter­ests.” Lim­its left to Reg­u­la­tions Par­lia­ment has not seen.

Con­sid­er what that means on the ground. A farmer buys seed of a pro­tect­ed va­ri­ety and at har­vest sets aside ten bags for next sea­son. Nine are for her own fields. The tenth she gives to a neigh­bour whose seed was lost to flood­ing.

Un­der the old law, none of this en­gages the breed­er’s right. Un­der the new one, the nine bags may fall with­in the ex­cep­tion. The tenth does not: it is tied ex­press­ly to the farmer’s own hold­ing. Neigh­bour-to-neigh­bour shar­ing falls out­side it, even where no mon­ey changes hands.

Oth­er coun­tries have looked at this mod­el and re­fused it. In Latin Amer­i­ca the im­ple­ment­ing statutes ac­quired a nick­name: the in­fa­mous “Mon­san­to laws”.

In Colom­bia, the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Court de­clared the 2012 law un­en­force­able. In Hon­duras, the Supreme Court struck down its Mon­san­to Law in 2021. In Guatemala, the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Court sus­pend­ed its own and Con­gress re­pealed it out­right with­in weeks, af­ter na­tion­wide protest.

And in Kenya, in No­vem­ber 2025, the High Court struck down sec­tions 20(1) and 20(1E) of that coun­try’s seed law for vi­o­lat­ing the right to food. Those are the breed­er’s ex­clu­sive-acts pro­vi­sion and the farmer’s own-hold­ing ex­cep­tion. Our clause 13 re­pro­duces both, al­most word for word.

Nine oth­er states, among them Brazil, Ar­genti­na, Nor­way and New Zealand, stayed with the 1978 Act and took on­ly the parts of 1991 that suit­ed them. Among Caribbean mem­bers of UP­OV, T&T was the on­ly one still hold­ing that flex­i­ble po­si­tion, and it is one no coun­try join­ing to­day can ob­tain.

But not to be left be­hind, we did not mere­ly take up UP­OV 1991 pro­vi­sions. We went be­yond it, four times over. Sec­tion 15(4) ex­tends the breed­er’s right in­to prod­ucts made di­rect­ly from the har­vest, which UP­OV 1991 per­mits but does not re­quire.

Clause 26 widens the tran­si­tion­al win­dow for va­ri­eties al­ready cir­cu­lat­ing here. On plant cov­er­age, Ar­ti­cle 3(1) gives a coun­try al­ready bound by the 1978 Act five years to ex­tend pro­tec­tion to all plant gen­era and species; clause 5 does it on the day the Act com­mences, and clause 9 re­peals the Min­is­ter’s pow­er to phase it at all.

Even more egre­gious­ly, clause 21 of the Bill abol­ish­es the pre-grant op­po­si­tion mech­a­nism. To­day, if an ap­pli­ca­tion were pub­lished over a mod­i­fied se­lec­tion tak­en out of Moru­ga Hill Rice, any farmer in Moru­ga could ob­ject to it, with­in three months, on pay­ment of the pre­scribed fee. No lawyer. No stand­ing test. No court. Clause 21 re­moves that route and sub­sti­tutes pro­ceed­ings in the High Court, brought by an “in­ter­est­ed per­son”, af­ter the right has been grant­ed and is en­force­able. UP­OV 1991 re­quires none of that. The Gov­ern­ment’s own ex­plana­to­ry note says the pur­pose is to re­move the process for op­po­si­tions.

We were un­der no oblig­a­tion to do this. The World Trade Or­ga­ni­za­tion’s Agree­ment on Trade-Re­lat­ed As­pects of In­tel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty Rights (TRIPS) re­quires mem­bers to pro­tect plant va­ri­eties by patents, by an ef­fec­tive sys­tem of their own de­sign, or by a com­bi­na­tion of the two. It does not pre­scribe UP­OV 1991.

Our Car­i­fo­rum-EU Eco­nom­ic Part­ner­ship Agree­ment (EPA) on­ly re­quires that ac­ces­sion to UP­OV 1991 be con­sid­ered, not un­der­tak­en. Our bind­ing in­ter­na­tion­al com­mit­ment in fact ran the oth­er way to­ward pro­tec­tion of our farm­ers’ rights.

Un­der the UN Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­ga­ni­za­tion (FAO) treaty we joined in 2005, Ar­ti­cle 9 places Farm­ers’ Rights on na­tion­al gov­ern­ments, and un­der the Unit­ed Na­tions De­c­la­ra­tion on the Rights of Peas­ants we vot­ed for in 2018, whose Ar­ti­cle 19 recog­nis­es a right to seeds. Our own re­port to that or­gan­i­sa­tion record­ed that no leg­is­la­tion was ever de­vel­oped to give ei­ther ef­fect.

So whose agen­da was served by this bill?

The rights this bill cre­ates are not re­served to TT farm­ers or breed­ers. Our act has al­ways ad­mit­ted na­tion­als of oth­er UP­OV states, and com­pa­nies, as hold­ers. It is well re­port­ed that four firms, Bay­er, Corte­va, Syn­gen­ta and BASF, hold rough­ly 56 per cent of the glob­al com­mer­cial seed mar­ket worth some US$50 bil­lion.

Bay­er bought Mon­san­to in 2018, and with-it Mon­san­to’s seed busi­ness. That seed is on sale in Trinidad to­day. Who are its lo­cal agents? Who else has the re­sources to rapid­ly reg­is­ter plant va­ri­eties in this coun­try?

None of this was placed be­fore us. Not the warn­ing of Sep­tem­ber 16. Not Ar­ti­cle 9, nor Ar­ti­cle 19. Not Colom­bia, not Hon­duras, not Guatemala. Not the five years Ar­ti­cle 3(1) would have giv­en us. When I raised the Kenyan judg­ment, the Min­is­ter replied that he had searched the case and it had noth­ing to do with UP­OV 1991.

When Sen­a­tor Fran­cis Lewis raised the In­di­an cas­es on turmer­ic, neem and bas­mati, the Min­is­ter replied that those were patent cas­es and there­fore ir­rel­e­vant. He missed the point en­tire­ly. The cor­po­ra­tions lost in In­dia be­cause patent law asks whether any­thing was in­vent­ed. Our patent law ex­empts dis­cov­er­ies. Plant va­ri­ety law of the type the Bill ex­pands, mere­ly re­quires “dis­cov­ery and de­vel­op­ment”.

The vote has hap­pened. The Bill must now go be­fore the House. Be­fore the Reg­u­la­tions fix the re­al lim­its of farm-saved seed, we should doc­u­ment our tra­di­tion­al va­ri­eties, re­store a pre-grant op­po­si­tion a farmer can af­ford, and build the farm­ers’ rights frame­work promised in 1997.

Pol­i­cy by im­port is easy. An in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tion de­vel­ops a mod­el, ex­perts re­fine it, lawyers con­vert it in­to claus­es, and the lan­guage ar­rives al­ready pol­ished, wrapped in the vo­cab­u­lary of mod­erni­sa­tion and best prac­tice. Par­lia­ment re­ceives it, de­bates its tech­ni­cal pro­vi­sions, and en­acts it. That is not the hard­est work of law­mak­ing.

Leg­is­la­tion is de­sign. Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans are not the fi­nal link in an in­ter­na­tion­al pol­i­cy sup­ply chain, and our re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is not ex­haust­ed by ask­ing whether a mod­el is in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised.

Po­lit­i­cal in­de­pen­dence gave us our flag, our gov­ern­ment and our leg­is­la­ture. Sov­er­eign­ty asks some­thing hard­er: the con­fi­dence to think for our­selves about the laws we need, and to in­sist that every im­port­ed tem­plate an­swer one ques­tion be­fore it en­ters our law.

Does this arrange­ment serve us? Our farm­ers. Our sci­en­tists. Our bio­di­ver­si­ty. Our chil­dren, and the gen­er­a­tions who will in­her­it what­ev­er re­mains af­ter we have fin­ished draw­ing prop­er­ty lines across the liv­ing world.