Farmers' rights: from laws to action

By M. S. Swaminathan

ON AUGUST 9, 2001, the Lok Sabha passed ``The Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers' Rights Bill''. An earlier version of this Bill had been redrafted by a Joint Parliamentary Committee. This Bill is unique in the sense that for the first time anywhere in the world the rights of breeders and farmers have received integrated attention. Converting farmers' rights from legislation to action hence needs urgent attention.

In 1983, when I was Independent Chairman of the FAO Council, we had established a Commission on Plant Genetic Resources (PGR) and developed an International Undertaking on PGR. This was to ensure that the developing countries, which represent the major centres of diversity of genetic wealth, are able to derive full benefit from their bioresources.

Later, the Commission developed the concept of farmers' rights in order to give recognition and reward to the past and ongoing contributions of farm families to the conservation, selection and improvement of crop genetic resources. In fact, much of the rich diversity occurring within a crop species is the result of such community conservation.

In January 1994, at a consultation held at the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF), a draft plant variety protection Act was developed, giving concurrent recognition to the rights of farmers and breeders.

Farmers and breeders are allies in the struggle for sustainable food security and hence their rights should be mutually reinforcing and not antagonistic. I am happy that the Bill approved by Parliament retains this important feature.

Farmers' rights fall into the following three major categories - farmers as breeders, as conservers and as cultivators. A majority of farm families fall under the category of cultivators. Their major right under the Act is to save, use, resow, exchange or share or sell their farm produce, including seeds, in the same manner as before the coming into force of this Act. However, farmers cannot sell branded seed of a variety protected under the Act.

Farm men and women, who develop new strains, through selection and breeding, have the same rights as any professional breeder. They can seek protection under the Act, provided their strains satisfy conditions such as novelty, distinctness, uniformity, and stability.

Farmer-conservers are mostly tribal and rural women and men. They conserve as well as select strains for local adaptation as well as for qualities such as resistance to pests and diseases and soil and water stresses.

Very valuable genetic material such as medicinal plants, a wide range of millets, pulses, oilseeds, tubers and vegetable crops have been preserved by farmer-conservers. They constitute the feedstock for the organised plant breeding and genetic engineering enterprises.

In the 1994 Chennai draft, I had proposed the term ``Community Gene Fund'' for the fund to be established for rewarding the in situ on-farm conservation traditions of local communities. This was for the purpose of giving explicit recognition and reward to community conservation, a component of the conservation chain, which has hitherto remained unrecognised and unsung.

Unless the efforts of tribal and rural families in the area of genetic resources conservation and enhancement received both social prestige and economic reward, such conservation will become vanishing wisdom. The Act has used the term ``National Gene Fund'' instead of the term proposed by me. The purposes for which the fund will be used are also rather wide. Since the size of the fund is likely to be modest, I hope its use will be mainly confined to recognising and rewarding farmer conservers.

The provisions relating to breeders' rights are, by and large, similar to those of the Acts recognised by the UPOV (Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Crops). It will be interesting to watch the reaction of the UPOV to the Indian Act, since this is for the first time the rights of farmers and breeders are given concurrent recognition.

The UPOV should not have any objection, since the responsibility of recognising farmers' rights has been left to national governments in the revised international undertaking on genetic resources, now being negotiated in the forum of FAO.

I hope soon the Act will become law. To ensure that farmers receive their entitlements under the Act, we should begin in right earnest establishing Resource Centres for Farmers' Rights.

The MSSRF established such a centre in 1995, anticipating the passing of such an Act some day. The MSSRF Farmers' Rights Resource Centre assists in the establishment of field level gene banks by tribal and rural families and maintains a cryogenic community gene bank as well as a community herbarium.

A community Agrobiodiversity Centre has also been set up at Kalpetta in Wayanad, Kerala, to provide the needed infrastructure to tribal women and men to organise themselves into biodiversity conservation self-help groups.

The principal mandate of such resource centres should be to help tribal and rural families get recognition and reward from the National Gene Fund. Since quite often the conservation and improvement of agrobiodiversity (i.e. biodiversity relating to economic plants) is the result of community, and not individual, efforts, methods of compensating communities from the National Gene Fund will have to be developed in consultation with them.

The Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers' Rights Bill is a major step in incorporating the ethics and equity provisions of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in a sui generis system of varietal protection. Crop improvement through breeding as well as the revitalisation of the conservation traditions of tribal and rural women and men will make accelerated progress if the provisions of the Act are implemented in an effective, transparent and speedy manner.

It should also be ensured that this Act and the Biodiversity Bill, which is currently under the consideration of Parliament, are implemented in a coordinated manner, so that we not only conserve our bioresources but also use them effectively to strengthen national food, health and livelihood security systems.

Finally, we should also ensure that the revised TRIPS (Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights) agreement under the WTO incorporates the ethics and equity provisions of the CBD.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Opinion
Previous : Putting conflict before cricket
Next     : Saffronisation and textbooks