Are Intellectual Property Rights Stifling Agricultural Biotechnology In Developing Countries?
Annual Report 2000-2001 : Biotechnology - Two Perspectives
by Philip G. Pardey, Brian D. Wright, and Carol Nottenburg
FOR MORE THAN a century, plant breeders in government-funded research centers have sought out crop varieties with characteristics that might help poor farmers in developing countries grow more food. They have painstakingly bred and cross-bred these varieties through generations to achieve a desirable mix of characteristics. At an accelerating pace in the 1960s and 1970s the work of these breeders changed the developing world — the higher-yielding varieties of wheat, rice, and other food staples they produced helped avert catastrophic famine in Asia — and their work continues to improve the lives and livelihoods of millions of people. Now, however, critics of the newest tool in the agricultural researchers’ toolbox — genetic engineering — argue that the new environment for agricultural research may leave farmers in the developing countries out in the cold.
Whereas government or international public institutions once performed most agricultural research, now private firms are taking the lead in applying the tools of genetic engineering to agriculture. When corporations (and increasingly public agencies too) develop new agricultural biotechnology products or processes or new crop varieties, they often seek legal rights over the intellectual property these innovations represent. Many are concerned that corporations’ efforts to protect their profits will isolate developing countries from the benefits of important innovations by blocking access to new developments by public and nonprofit researchers.
Corporations concentrate their research efforts on crops such as hybrid corn, soybean, canola, cotton, and some specialty horticultural products, which are grown for markets with high commercial value. The range of crops and production problems addressed by private research could well expand, but, as in the health area, private investment is mostly a complement, not a substitute, for continued public and other nonprofit research. Moreover, the development of a vast number of crops critical to food security throughout the developing world (such as cassava, yams, sweet potatoes, sorghum, millet), as well as crops that are globally grown (like rice, wheat, and maize), must continue to rely on public and nonprofit institutions as the principal source of genetic innovation. In developed economies, these types of institutions may increasingly find their access to essential new research inputs uncertain, unduly expensive, or even blocked altogether. This lack of access to intellectual property in the developed countries is a source of aggravation and inefficiency but is not currently a serious threat to the well-being of their citizens.