UK Professor Charts Path To Reconciling IP Rights, Farmers’ Rights

The role of farmers in agricultural innovation can be perceived in different ways. Proponents of intellectual property rights view farmers mainly as recipients of innovation, while others view farmers as main drivers of innovation. Considering those seemingly contradictory points of views, some measures could help reconcile IP rights and farmers’ rights, a UK professor in international governance has said.

The Graduate Institute Centre for International Environmental Studies in Geneva invited Graham Dutfield, professor of international governance at the University of Leeds, for a public lecture on 20 March on intellectual property, food security, and rural development. He talked about innovation in agriculture, the rationale of IP rights, and measures that could be taken to reconcile IP rights with farmers’ rights.

Another speaker at the event spoke on the United Nations draft declaration on the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas, currently under negotiations in a dedicated open-ended intergovernmental working group at the UN Human Rights Council, which includes reference to intellectual property rights and farmers’ rights to seeds.

According to Dutfield, there are different views on the role of farmers in terms of innovation.

The conventional view since the Second World War is of a formal sector where farmers get seeds, agro-chemicals, credits, and expertise, and tend to be viewed as passive recipients, he said.

Another view, which Dutfield calls the “cooperative view” of farmers, is that farmers have the capacity to adapt. They can contribute to innovation, should benefit from it and be empowered to cooperate in innovative activity, for example participatory plant breeding, he explained.

Yet another perception of small-scale farmers is to see them as innovators and priority-setters themselves, as farmers are then seen as important innovators.

The logic of IP rights and those who promote these rights is that the conventional view, in which innovation is always coming from outside, is the correct perspective to adopt, he said. however, for many farmers in the world, the results are actually suboptimal.

IP in Agriculture a Latecomer

In agriculture, IP came relatively recently, he said, about 100 years ago, with the apparition of scientific breeding. The major problem that IP rights were trying to address for seed owners is the self-replicating nature of seeds.

The rationale for IP rights, he said in his presentation, is several-fold. It includes bringing scientific expertise into crop improvement, improving the supply of high yielding varieties for farmers, incentivising the overall investment in commercial crop breeding, and creating markets for foreign and domestic breeding material through the possibility of licences.

However, the potential issues of IP rights are equally multifaceted, he said, including the fact that IP rights increase prices, that there is a risk of decreased relevance of local farmer knowledge and expertise, and a monocultural production which can increase risk and impacts of pest and plant disease outbreaks. Moreover, IP-rights contracts and seed regulations can reduce farmers’ independence and autonomy, his presentation underlined.

Lastly, IP rights do not incentivise investment in domestic staple food crops with small value markets, even those crucial for food security such as neglected or orphan crops, he said.

There also is some evidence that nutritional quality may be reduced as varieties are bred for high yields, he noted, and referred to a 2006 article published in Nature “The breeder’s dilemma: yield or nutrition.” The article looks into the challenges for plant breeders to create more nutritious crops while at the same time seeking higher yields and lower farming costs.

Reconciling IP Rights and Farmers’ Rights

According to Dutfield, measures to reconcile IP rights and farmers’ rights could include enhanced cooperation between the formal breeding sector and farmers, the inclusion of small farmers, and the support of breeding targeted to nutritional needs of whole population without unduly disrupting existing traditions and farming systems where they contribute to food security and sustainable use of agro-biodiversity. We tend to be blind to innovation that is not formalised, he said.

The growth of the domestic breeding industry dedicated to supplying domestic needs should be encouraged, and foreign firms should be encouraged to transfer their high-quality varieties with facilities to adapt these varieties to local conditions, his presentation noted. Smallholder farmers’ rights to experiment, cultivate, share, and sell the fruits of their farms including seeds should be supported, he said.

Farmers’ organisations also should be helped identifying small volume but high value niche products and use appropriate marketing tools, such as trademarks and geographical indications, he said.

UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants

Adriana Bessa, a research fellow at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, and acting as a respondent to Dutfield’s presentation talked about the UN Draft declaration on the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas.

The draft declaration, the latest draft of which was released on 6 March, includes reference to intellectual property with respect to seeds.

Article 19 (Right to Seeds), paragraph 8 of the draft declaration states that: “States shall ensure that seed policies, plant variety protection and other intellectual property laws, certification schemes and seed marketing laws respect the rights of peasants, in particular the right to seeds, and take into account their needs and realities.”

Article 19 also includes a paragraph (1.d) providing for the right to save, use, exchange and sell farm-saved seed or propagating material. This provision is as well included in Article 9 of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. But Article 9 is only subject to national law and can be applied “as appropriate,” Bessa underlined.

The draft declaration is expected to be submitted to the fourth session of the Human Rights Council open-ended intergovernmental working group on the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas from 15-19 May.

According to Bessa, Article 19.8 is not specific enough and there is hope that the provision will be better drafted during the next round of negotiations in May. It remains to be seen, she said, if the declaration is adopted by the Human Rights Council and if the right to seeds will remain in the final version.

The right to save, use, exchange and sell farm-saved seed or propagating material is not permitted under the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV), in its 1991 convention.

 

Image Credits: Catherine Saez