Hope Not Hype - Third World Network

14 Hope Not Hype
Conclusions
The dramatic shift of responsibility for agriculture research and product development
to the private sector has not been a successful experiment for farmers outside of the
large economies that are also among those with the highest levels of internal agricultural
subsidies. Those subsidies allow farmers to purchase high-cost biotechnology seeds even
if those premiums are associated with net losses (Jost et al., 2008). Meanwhile, the adoption
of revised patent and patent-like PVP instruments concentrated the seed industry,
which raised prices and promoted products best suited to intellectual property protection
rather than to yield and sustainable production in either developed or developing economies
(Adi, 2006; World Bank, 2007).
Fortunately, the prognosis for agriculture is optimistic because many of the biotechnologies
needed to both feed the world and do so in an environmentally and socially sustainable
way already exist. These biotechnologies are not “high tech” as much as they are
the “right tech” (and are very sophisticated). They are also “open source” because they are
usually difficult to appropriate and monopolize, and are user-friendly. The option available
to policy-makers is to invest not just in these biotechnologies, but to invest in the
social and regulatory infrastructure necessary to implement them. It appears clear that
more investment in conventional breeding augmented with MAS, a skilled workforce and
greater farmer participation will pay dividends.