Source: International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI)

In most transactions, there is a winner and a loser. With plant genetic resources for food and agriculture, everyone stands to gain. This week (12-16June) the Governing Body of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture will hold its first meeting in Madrid, Spain. Important decisions will be taken to ensure that a multilateral system that will promote the exchange of PGRFA can come into being.

Some of these discussions will be about money: the financial benefits that come from exploiting and privatizing plant genetic resources. But the multilateral system that supports the exchange of genetic resources is about more than just money. The value of the system lies in easy and low cost access to the resources on which the future of agriculture depends. We all stand to gain.

To understand the true value of the Treaty we need to take a step back in time. Since the dawn of agriculture, people have been exchanging plant genetic resources to develop crops that would meet their needs. Farmers searched for traits that would counter pests and diseases and that would allow their crops to thrive in a wide range of climes. By combining and selecting from the best performers in their harvests they created the vast range of plant genetic resources, and these were considered to be a common heritage of humanity.

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) proposed a different concept: sovereign rights over plant genetic resources. Under this system, the use of plant genetic resources tended to be regulated by contracts between the owner of the resources and the people who wished to use them. This system was developed in a climate of distrust, at a time when allegations of biopiracy were beginning to emerge. The CBD was designed to protect and to offer the possibility of compensation. It made no distinction between plant genetic resources of importance to food and agriculture and plant genetic resources with pharmaceutical or other value. Identifying, isolating and patenting a single active compound that makes a plant medicinally valuable is a relatively straightforward task. Farming is very different: hundreds of varieties from scores of countries can go into the pedigree of a single modern variety.

The system proposed by the CBD favoured bilateral agreements that would be too costly and difficult to monitor for agricultural use. The International Treaty addresses this difference and sets up a multilateral system that operates in harmony with the special nature of plant genetic resources important for food and agriculture and the CBD.

But one cannot consider issues of access separately from issues of benefit sharing. One aspect involves sharing financial benefits from the commercialization of a plant variety which uses material from the Multilateral System and which is restricted from further use through the application of intellectual property rights. Under the Treaty a special fund will distribute cash benefits for conservation, especially in developing countries, but the Treaty also envisages many other non-financial kinds of benefits that are far more important.

Easy and low cost access is by far the greatest benefit of the Treaty. Countries are entirely interdependent when it comes to plant genetic resources. India’s astonishing growth in wheat production over the past 35 years, for example, was thanks to new varieties developed with material from the genebank at CIMMYT (International Center for the Improvement of Wheat and Maize). India’s wheat production is now falling and breeders are searching for new material to develop improved varieties that will boost yields. But wheat is not native to India which means that breeders cannot look to the wild or to farmers’ fields for the material they need. They have to rely on genebanks instead. The Treaty will give them that access.

Access to the resources would be meaningless without the information, knowledge and technology needed to make use of them. The multilateral system improves access to information and creates a supportive climate for innovation and collaborative research. It facilitates access to new technologies and opens the door to training opportunities.

At the Madrid meeting, the Governing Body of the Treaty will work out specific arrangements for implementing these non-monetary benefit-sharing arrangements.

The message is clear. When it comes to the International Treaty’s multilateral system we are talking about win-win transactions that will benefit everyone. Without such a system the future of agriculture and world food security will be at risk, a scenario that will benefit no one.