UN Conference Pushes Plant Breeding; Others See Food Security In Jeopardy

23/09/2009 by Catherine Saez, Intellectual Property Watch 7 Comments

Participants at a recent United Nations conference on the role of new plant varieties and seeds in agriculture agreed that access to genetic resources and the protection of intellectual property rights are essential to sustain plant breeding. But key opponents not present at the meeting claim that plant breeding will endanger biodiversity, sustainability and ultimately food security.

The Second World Seed Conference, held 8-10 September at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) headquarters in Rome, aimed at promoting the development and distribution of new plant varieties in order to address the evolving agricultural demand.

The conference organised by the FAO, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV), International Seed Federation (ISF) and the International Seed Testing Association (ISTA), is the second edition of the event.

In the face of a growing global population and climate change, the conference concluded that in order to meet those challenges, urgent, lasting government measures, as well as public and private investments were needed to help the seed sector to achieve food security.

According to the conference press release, the conference was meant to raise awareness about the importance of new plant varieties and high quality seed and governments were prompted to implement a regulatory environment to “ensure that farmers have access to high quality seed at a fair price.”

FAO members were particularly targeted and asked to participate in the internationally harmonised systems of the OECD, UPOV, International Treaty on Plant and Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, and ISTA.

The conference conclusions emphasised the contribution of plant breeding in food security and sustainability and encouraged the development of reliable and internationally acceptable certificates “through collaboration between all stakeholders” as that would contribute to the “development of seed markets to the benefit of farmers.”

IP Protection Crucial For Breeders, Says Conference

A conference conclusion was that intellectual property protection guarantees investment in breeding and the development of new varieties of plants. If a country is a UPOV member, breeders gain confidence in introducing a new variety in the country, according to the conclusions.

The conference also praised the International Seed Treaty for providing food security through conservation and for facilitating access to genetic resources.

Upgrading the UPOV Convention to provide stricter exclusive rights to commercial plant breeders “will further undermine the rights of farmers and promote the loss of seed diversity that poor communities depend on for their resilience to changing climatic conditions,” said Krystyna Swiderska, researcher at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).

According to a presentation by Marcel Kanungwe, director of Pannar Seed, farmers in developing countries are not eagerly adopting new varieties and therefore cannot benefit from the advantages of the new products. This reluctance to use new varieties is mainly due to the lack of information on varieties and services, and the fact that farmers are unaware of the availability of the new varieties which could improve their productivity.

He also explained in his presentation that the lack of defined seed policy in developing countries was a hindrance to seed breeding. Private seed companies could not use “their performances trials as part of the official variety release process” and this slows the introduction of new varieties.

New varieties often require higher chemical inputs and are not sustainable, environmentally or economically said Swiderska. Moreover, those new varieties create a reliance on expensive external inputs and lead to decreasing traditional varieties “which provide a more varied and nutritious diet and enable farmers to adapt to climate change,” she told Intellectual Property Watch.

The London-based IIED is currently conducting research with partners from several countries, such as China. India, Kenya, Panama and Peru, on traditional knowledge in agriculture, the benefit of preserving the diversity of traditional seed varieties, and the necessity for farmers to be able to freely save, use, exchange and sell farm-saved seeds. The report should be available soon, according to IIED.

The introduction of plant breeders’ rights has not encouraged research and development activities as expected, and has driven prices upwards, said Swiderska

The World Seed Conference was aimed at policymakers, governments officials, breeding companies, different stakeholders such as farmers’ organisations, consumer organisations and international breeding and seed research centres, according to the announcement.

However, for Robin Willoughby, policy officer at Share The World’s Resources, “it was very disappointing that more farmers’ organisations from the developing world were not present at the conference. This is especially true as the issue is vitally important to poor farmers, and the results of the meeting could potentially have a negative impact upon their livelihoods and on biodiversity.”

The International Seed Treaty is a welcomed attempt to create a global commons for plant genetic resources, Willoughby told Intellectual Property Watch. Article 9 of the treaty explicitly describes farmers rights but the article “fails to mention specifics” and that comes in contrast to international treaties such as the World Trade Organization Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and UPOV which clearly describe owners rights and are binding on governments.

Shalini Bhutani, Programme Officer at GRAIN in Asia, an NGO supporting small farmers and biodiversity, told Intellectual Property Watch that the conclusions of the conference were “serious concerns”. In particular, the participation of the FAO in co-organising the event was “very out of place,” she said, adding that the event “must be seen in the continuum of the systematic undermining of small farmers and peasant agriculture.” Given the global food crisis, governments should help rebuild the food and seed systems from the bottom up and not promote corporate interests, Bhutani said, adding that the conference conclusions were leading in the opposite direction.

One successful solution, according to IIED, has been experimented with in southwest China with the development of participatory plant breeding research partnerships between farmers and breeders.

On 18 September, during a Human Rights Council (HRC) follow-up discussion to the HRC special sessions on the economic and financial crises and the food crises, Olivier de Schutter, special rapporteur on the right to food, said that the global food crisis could not simply be attributed to insufficient agricultural production, nor could it be imputed to disparities between supply and demand. According to a HRC press release, de Schutter said that among others, organisation of the food production and distribution chain and the building of agricultural systems should be explored.

Catherine Saez may be reached at csaez@ip-watch.ch.

"UN Conference Pushes Plant Breeding; Others See Food Security In Jeopardy" by Intellectual Property Watch is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Comments

wackes seppi says

27/09/2009 at 12:17 pm

This was a conference of utmost importance. It has brought together all actors of the plant variety and seed sector. And it has produced the kind of urgent appeal to governments for actions that are required to address the challenges ahead of humankind. To take the most pressing one, FAO says food production must increase by 70 percent by 2050. This can only be achieved by deploying all proven methods and technologies.

With arable land per inhabitant set to decrease – in large measure arithmetically – from 0.25 to 0.15 hectare, plant breeding (new plant varieties) to achieve higher yields – including through better adaptation to agro-climatic conditions, better resistance to pests and diseases, better quality, etc. – is absolutely vital.

Quality seed – seed that is healthy (with good germination capacity and free of seed-borne pests and diseases) and clean (free of weed seeds), and incorporates excellent and adapted genetics – is one of the main drivers of food production. In some instances, plant breeding is the only, or the only economically viable, remedy to a major plague, e.g. black sigatoka which is killing banana plantations, and consequently jeopardising the livelihood of millions in Africa.

The objections from three entities which have been included in the article are, unfortunately, uninformed and unfounded.

To stick to the views on intellectual property as reflected in the report above, there is no plan whatsoever to “upgrad[e] the UPOV Convention to provide stricter exclusive rights to commercial plant breeders”. Swiderska actually failed to realise that the UPOV system is open to all sorts of breeders, that many of them started as skilled farmers, and that this is still the case today. Whilst States have varied reasons to become members of the WTO, and thus accept TRIPs, it begs reminding that adherence to UPOV is fully voluntary and based on the State’s own assessment of its interests. TRIPs, incidentally, does not define in any way the “owners rights” but only requires WTO members to set up an effective protection system for plant varieties.

The objections are even shocking.

There is no need to elaborate on GRAIN’s view that FAO – with its general mandate and specialised programmes, and as host of the ITPGRFA Secretariat – was “very out of place” at the conference, except to highlight that the view clearly shows where GRAIN’s real priorities are.

Willoughby, citing Sikinyi’s presentation at the conference, wrote for example on the STWR website: “Evidence shows that a high percentage of the plant variety protection applications put forward by developing countries remain for export goods such as ‘cut flowers’ and other luxury items for export. Although these commodities have export market value and can gain foreign exchange, little indication exists of their value in alleviating food insecurity or promoting biodiversity.” Well, according to the same Sikinyi, these “export goods … and other luxury items” provide employment – and a livelihood – for 2 million Kenyans directly in horticulture, plus 3.5 million indirectly (total population: 42 million), and some $1 billion export revenues.

Sikinyi also showed that 132 applications had been filed for maize (known as corn in the US), and 32 for wheat between 1997 and 2008; I am not aware that maize and wheat are export goods or luxury items for Kenyans. When Swiderska says that the “the introduction of plant breeders’ rights has not encouraged research and development activities as expected” (agreed, the trick is in the “as expected”), Sikinyi wrote, on the basis of unquestionable facts (see also the presentation on the Republic of Korea) “PVP introduction has contributed to increased breeding, testing and release of varieties and crops, introduction of superior foreign varieties, to meet the demands”.

Somebody is wrong here, and it is not the man on the ground…

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Gena777 says

28/09/2009 at 4:59 am

This is an increasingly important and high-profile topic. Plant breeding will definitely lead to continued discussion and patent litigation. Balancing of private and public interests is critical in this arena.

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Dr Jag Paul Sharma says

28/09/2009 at 7:41 am

Sustainable development of human society is the ultimate goal of any program launched by any nation or organization. In the same way development of new plant varieties and their quality seed is must to provide food and nutritional security to ever expanding human population. Adding pace to the new variety development program means better utilization of genetic resources and it also means getting more production per unit of cultivated land. if we wish to leave more area for natural vegetation and bio-diversification then evolving of super yielding varieties of major food crops is essential. Transformation of conventional/subsistance agriculture into industrial agriculture will enhance the livelihood security globally to the small and marginal farmers via more return from their small holdings. Commercial feature of agriculture can attract adequate funding from private sector to sustain biological diversity. Recent experiments at SK University of Agricultural Sciences and Technlogy of Jammu, J&K (India)have disclosed that high yielding varieties performed well at their potential level when supplied with medium level doses of chemical fertilizers in combination with liberal application of compost, vermicompost and biofertilizers.

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Wenting Cheng says

29/09/2009 at 4:23 pm

Green Peace issued a report earlier this year entitled “who is the real owner of the GM rice in China”(http://www.greenpeace.org/china/zh/press/reports/3045095), revealing key patents in this field are held by large internaitonal companies. Meanwhile commercialization would make farmers poorer and damage environment.

Though the issues under discussion at the UN conference and the one mentioned above are not the same, however fear of developing countries are the same of being controled by foreign companies with a fully developed free market and a strict IP system.

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wackes seppi says

01/10/2009 at 4:58 pm

This is a reply to the contribution of Wenting Cheng.

The link provided unfortunately (for me at least) leads to a text in Chinese. The closest I have come to is a five-page paper, “ ‘Chinese’ Genetically Engineered Rice in Foreign Patent Trap?”, at http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/china/en/press/reports/ge-rice-foreign.pdf. That paper may well be the project document for the paper quoted by Wenting Cheng and include arguments put forward in the larger paper.

The “fear of developing countries” (‘in some’ would be better here) is undeniable. Sadly, it has been used to shoot at the Second World Seed Conference, this despite the fact that most of its business had nothing to do with the causes of that fear.

Sadly also, the fear is based upon disinformation and scaremongering

A comment to a comment is not the appropriate vehicle for a demonstration of this assertion, but here are four points.

1. Anyone is of course free to believe that the Chinese Government has (irresponsibly) accepted that its food security be subject to the whims of patent owners. I won’t take this neither about China nor about any other country in which genetically modified plant varieties are grown.

2. If one peruses the paper cited by Wenting Cheng, one will find lists of patents which have nothing to do with China (e.g. US, European or Japanese patents), or with rice (e.g. a patent relating to cacao plants, or to wheat), or with genetic engineering (e.g. a patent for a “soil-less growth medium including soluble silicon”). This is according to the motto: “When painting the devil on the wall, make sure it is a giant one”.

3. Many ‘critics’ of the patent system, or genetically modified varieties, or both do as if they ignore that patents are national in scope (so foreign patents are immaterial to research, development, growing and marketing in, say, China), and that the patent rights are subject to the principle of exhaustion. The exercise of patent rights is also subject to competition law, and there are cases (although not relating to genetically modified varieties) where license agreements have been curtailed as abusive.

It is no defence for those ‘critics’ that some patent owners have contributed to bewildering stories through their aggressive if not abusive use of patents: they should know by now.

4. There is also much hoopla about the increase in seed prices. One answer to this is that the man in command is the farmer: if the seed is too expensive relative to the expected benefits, he simply won’t buy it! Hybrid wheat, for example, never made it into farmers’ fields in France, for that very reason, beyond a modest 2-3 per cent.

And since the IIED found it useful to spice its release with a pinch of ‘terminator’ through the latter’s pedantic name ‘Genetic Use Restriction Technologies (GURTS)’, simply ask yourself: if you were a farmer, would you buy it? The technology stumbles over this simple socio-economic fact of life much more than over the CBD moratorium.

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