Author: Jeremy Cherfas

An interesting tale of woe from Tim Haab, an environmental economist. He set out to study the impact of paying farmers in developing countries for environmental services. (I don’t know whether those services included the conservation of agricultural biodiversity, but they should have.) But the paper describing the results was rejected by an academic journal for the strangest reasons. See for yourself.

An analysis of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture’s provision on Farmers’ Rights argues that these rights are fundamental to the conservation of crop plant diversity. Among other things, the paper says that these aspects are most important:

• seed legislation must permit farmers to store seed and planting material, to use, develop, exchange and sell it
• indigenous varieties must remain publicly accessible and not protected by plant breeders’ rights. This can be achieved through plant registers that document all known varieties
• farmers must be rewarded for the contribution that they make to biodiversity. This can include ensuring access to seed suitable for improving traditional varieties, support in conserving seed and planting material and sustainable utilisation of these resources
• in order to safeguard these rights, farmers must participate in decision-making processes.

Farmers’ rights and agrobiodiversity was produced by GTZ, the German development donor, as part of its programme on Global Food Security and Agrobiodiversity.