Development and Public Interest Concerns
Whether or not UPOV negatively affects agriculture in developing countries is much debated. It is argued that UPOV's focus on patents for plant varieties hurts farmers, in that it does not allow them to use saved seed or that of protected varieties. Countries with strong farmers' rights, such as India, cannot comply to all aspects of UPOV. François Meienberg is of this opinion, and writes that the UPOV system has disadvantages, especially for developing countries, and that "at some point, protection starts to thwart development".
On the other hand, Rolf Jördens argues that plant variety protection is necessary. He believes that by joining UPOV, developing countries will have more access to new and improved varieties (better yielding, stronger resistance) instead of depending on old varieties or landraces, thus helping fight poverty and feed the growing world population.
Empirical evidence to support either point of view is lacking. However, two things are clear.
First, UPOV supports an agricultural system that is clearly export-oriented. In other word, developing countries moving towards UPOV-consistent systems tend to favour breeders who are producing for export. The example of Kenya is telling in this regard, as UPOV's own study points out, the majority of varieties are owned by foreign producers and are horticultural crops, clearly destined for export. An over-heavy dependence on agriculture for export is increasingly recognized as being unwise.
Second, given the lack of empirical evidence to support this, it would make sense to encourage debate, exchange of knowledge and research on the impacts of UPOV type plant variety protection on farming, food, human rights and other public interest objectives. However, UPOV seems to be resisting this, for instance by keeping meetings secret, not making its documents available and A recent exploring the role of UPOV concluded that UPOV's governance falls short in many different ways. See In addition, UPOV officials know very little about actual farming. They may know about breeding and favour breeders, but this is not the same as knowing about how small-scale farmers actually develop new varieties and produce them. In addition, UPOV systematically uses "he" "his" to refer to breeders, ignoring the role of women in many countries and many cultures in sharing knowledge and breeding new varieties. The UPOV system thus favours commercial breeders over farmers and producers, and private interests over public interests. The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier De Schutter, came to similar findings in his study of UPOV in 2009. He found that IP-related monopoly rights could cause poor farmers to become “increasingly dependent on expensive inputs” and at risk of indebtedness. Further, the system risks neglecting poor farmers’ needs in favour of agribusiness needs, jeopardising traditional systems of seed-saving and exchange, and losing biodiversity to “the uniformization encouraged by the spread of commercial varieties.
Read more about this topic: International Union For The Protection Of New Varieties Of Plants
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