MECHANISMS BY WHICH CENTERS OF THE CGIAR CONSORTIUM CAN SUPPORT THE DEVELOPMENT OF APPROPRIATE POLICIES AND PROCEDURES FOR THE RECOGNITION AND PROMOTION OF FARMERS’ RIGHTS

Farmers’ Rights need to co-exist with intellectual property rights over new varieties and propagating material generated by (formal) breeders. Seeking to assure a market, recognize investments and promote innovation, these grant exclusive rights that limit the free access and use of plant genetic resources in specific circumstances. The mutual interface of Farmers’ Rights and Breeders’ Rights becomes a daily challenge. The recognition of both forms of rights, and their importance in achieving food security and alleviating poverty, needs to be a priority and a reality for the public and private sectors, including the CGIAR Consortium and implementation of their new Strategy & Results Framework.
The new outcome-based scenarios of international agricultural research for development requires the effective integration of a number of important elements: the inclusion of farmers as central to the value chain of agriculture research and development; the consideration by CGIAR Centers of the role of plant genetic resources as international public goods, the development purpose and underlying duty of care to the sources of the materials the Centers’ work with and the need to recognize plant variety rights and other provisions to enable the private sector and other partners to take up opportunities for the scale out and distribution of improved varieties. Under this new framework, Intellectual Asset Principles for the CGIAR Consortium were adopted and guidelines for their implementation are being developed.
The CGIAR’s agreed Intellectual Asset Principles recognized Farmers’ Rights, but did not give CGIAR Centers or partners any guidelines on how to recognize them in the daily exercise of agriculture and research activities, and more importantly, ensuring the co-existence of Farmers’ Rights and Breeders’ Rights. This study was commissioned by GFAR to explore potential ways by which they could be integrated in implementing guidelines for the Intellectual Assets Principles.
The study recognized a range of actions being undertaken by some CGIAR Centres towards implementing Farmers’ Rights in practice. These include participatory plant breeding; legal access of traditional knowledge and plant genetic resources; community seed banks; repatriation of seeds to small-holder farmers; protection of traditional knowledge; exchange of seeds, i.e. through seed fairs; and use of new breeders’ varieties, including material obtained from genebanks or plant genetic resources centers. However, Farmers’ Rights do not, as yet, feature prominently in the CRPs or the IA principles and this study sets out a range of potential measures that can enhance Farmers’ Rights in practice and inform coherent policies for the CGIAR.