The History of Farmers' Rights - Fridtjof Nansens Institutt

26 Regine Andersen
Swaminathan, M. S. (ed.) (1996): Agrobiodiversity and Farmers’
Rights; Proceedings of a Technical Consultation on an Implementation
Framework for Farmers’ Rights, (Delhi: Konark Publishers Pvt Ltd).
The technical consultation on which this book is based addressed the
issue of how the equity provisions of the CBD and the concept of farmers’
rights could be developed in FAO. Facts and viewpoints were contributed
by experts and stakeholders from many countries, involving representatives
from the plant breeding industry, public sector breeding
institutions, farmers, various international organizations (e.g. FAO, WTO
and UPOV), research institutions and NGOs.
The book starts out with a comprehensive background paper prepared by
José Esquinas-Alcázar titled ‘The Realization of Farmers’ Rights’, outlining
the rationale for farmers’ rights, a list of suggested components and
the state of negotiations. One of the conclusions is that present inequities
will increase and current forces driving genetic erosion most likely be
magnified if farmers’ rights are not implemented at the international level
(p.15).
The volume proceeds with a section on the national and international context
of farmers’ rights as seen from highly different perspectives, before it
focuses on the relationship between plant variety protection and the CBD.
In the latter context the current status of plant variety protection in
several countries in the South and the North is highlighted. On this basis,
viewpoints from private and public plant breeding institutions are presented,
and then the views of tribal and rural farmer-conservers are
highlighted. A need for resource centres on farmers’ rights is identified.
In conclusion, detailed recommendations are presented. It is recommended
that farmers’ rights should involve the free choice of, and access to,
germplasm; the freedom to sell harvested produce and to improve cultivars;
the ability to influence future breeding efforts; access to technologies
and training; the ability of farming communities to control access to
agrobiodiversity under their custodianship; economic incentives to continue
to conserve agrobiodiversity; and recognition of past and present
achievements (pp. 193–195). Concrete steps are suggested, inter alia in
terms of the development of national legislation and with regard to
negotiations at the international level.
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Cleveland, David A. & Stephen C. Murray (1997): The World’s Crop
Genetic Resources and the Rights of Indigenous Farmers’, Current
Anthropology, Vol. 38, No. 4.
This article explores some theoretical and empirical aspects of the debate
on intellectual property rights for traditional farmers. The authors conclude
that traditional farmers have their own concepts of intellectual
property rights in folk varieties of plants, and that these differ considerably
from the intellectual property rights applied in commercial agriculture.
They moot the possibility of taking advantage of the discourse on