Hope Not Hype - Third World Network

Growing More Food on Less (Intellectual) Property
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Patent and patent-like protections undermine agricultural knowledge, science and
technology (AKST)
The new IPR frameworks and biotechnologies limit seed saving and exchanges –
Equally critical to local food security strategies is farmers’ ability to save and exchange seeds
and to experiment with the planting and breeding of traditional and new varieties, options
which would be eliminated by the enforcement of IPR claims on crop varieties and by new
biotechnologies for seed sterility 2 (McAfee, 2003, p. 213).
– reduce agrobiodiversity and associated
traditional knowledge without proper
compensation (Figure 8.1). The IPR
frameworks allow the corporations to build
on the knowledge and contributions of
farmers in developing agrobiodiversity, and
appropriate the rewards for the corporations.
Many are concerned about the implications
if multinational agribusinesses are able to
use IPRs over bioengineered seeds to
legally prevent farmers who use the new
seeds from reusing and trading seeds
collected from their own fields, practices
especially crucial for communities of small
farmers who depend on small batches of
traded seed to adapt to changing land
conditions. The prospect that the promise
of high yields could then push out
traditional varieties and thereby force
farmers to purchase new seeds for every
crop has induced anxiety about farming
communities becoming ever more
dependent on foreign seed merchants.
Furthermore, as multinational seed
companies reap great rewards from their
innovations, many farmers believe that
their and their communities’ historical
contributions to biodiversity and seed
development are going largely
unrecognized (Borowiak, 2004, p. 512).
2
In other words, GURTs.
The Assessment text
Synthesis Report
This ability to develop biotechnologies to
meet the needs of IP protection goals may
undervalue the past and present
contribution by farmers and societies to
the platform upon which modern
biotechnology is built. It is not just the
large transnational corporations who are
interested in retaining control of IP. Public
institutions including universities are
becoming significant players and in time,
holders of TLK [traditional and local
knowledge] may also… (p. 43)
[T]here needs to be a renewed emphasis
on public sector engagement in
biotechnology. It is clearly realized that
the private sector will not replace the
public sector for producing
biotechnologies that are used on smaller
scales, maintaining broadly applicable
research and development capacities, or
achieving some goals for which there is
no market. In saying this, an IP[R]-
motivated public engagement alone
would miss the point, and the public sector
must also have adequate resources and
expertise to produce locally understood
and relevant biotechnologies and
products. (p. 45)
(From Agriculture at a Crossroads: The
Synthesis Report by IAASTD, ed.
Copyright © 2009 IAASTD. Reproduced
by permission of Island Press,
Washington, D.C.)