First the Seed: The Political Economy of Plant Biotechnology

6. Plant breeders' rights and the social division of labor: historical perspective

6 Plant breeders' rights and the social division oflabor: historical perspective A man can patent a mousetrap or copyright a nasty song, but if he gives to the world a new fruit that will add millions to the value of the earth's harvest, he will be fortunate if he is rewarded by so much as having his name associated with the result. Luther Burbank (in U.S. House of Representatives 1930) The United States has just changed its plant variety protection law amidst rather bitter controversy and, by executive decision, has also accepted the International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV). This convention reflects a global, but not uncontested, trend towards plant patents. John Barton (1982) Hybridization furnished capital with an eminently effective technical means ofcircumventing the natural constraints on the commodification ofthe seed. But not all crops submitted to hybridization. There is, however, a second route to the commodification of the seed: the extension of property rights to plant germplasm. Plant breeders' rights (PBR) have now been an issue in the plant science community for over a century. In 1970 the United States followed the lead of I7 Western European nations by passing the Plant Variety Protection Act (PVPA), which gave patent-like protection to developers of novel, sexually reproduced (i.e., by seed) plants. At the time, this legislation attracted little attention outside the agricultural community. However, a 1980 extension of the act that covered six previously excluded species engendered widespread and often heated debate as to the advisability of granting proprietary rights in so fundamental a resource as plant germplasm.Recent attempts to introduce PBR legislation in Australia, Canada, and Ireland have been stalled by opposition from diverse farm, labor, church, and environmental groups. As the advanced industrial nations press for the globalization of PBR, controversy has also 13° Plant breeders' rights 13 1 erupted over whether or not Third World nations would benefit from the adoption of such legislation. In view of this continuing debate, there is good reason to examine closely the American experience with PVPA. P\nPA: the issues Critics of the PVPA have called attention to a wave of acquisitions that has swept many prominent American seed companies into the corporate folds of large multinationals over the last decade. They contend that the PVPA enhances economic concentration in the seed industry, facilitates noncompetitive pricing, constrains the free exchange of germplasm, contributes to genetic erosion and uniformity, and encourages the deemphasis of public breeding (P. R. Mooney 1979, 1983; Fowler 1980). Corporate proponents of the act argue that the PVPA stimulates private investment in plant breeding , thereby providing a greater number of superior and more genetically diverse varieties for farmers and freeing public institutions to concentrate on basic research (Studebaker 1982). Various analysts - principally economists - have attempted to assess these conflicting claims (Claffey 1981; Barton 1982; Godden 1982; Ruttan 1982a; Perrin et al. 1983; Lesser and Masson 1983). For the most part these studies have suggested that the PVPA is relatively benign. A congressionally mandated evaluation concluded that Increases in prices, market concentration and advertising and declines in information exchange and public plant breeding the feared costs of PVPA - have either been nil or modest in nature. Thus, at this point in time, the evidence presented in this report indicates the Act has resulted in modest private and public benefits at modest private and public costs ... If a reasonable balance is maintained between the public and private sectors in the breeding of most crops, the present balance of benefits and costs should continue. [Butler and Marion 1985:79] This conclusion is perceptive yet seriously flawed. A pivotal role in shaping the character and structure of the seed market is correctly ascribed to public research agencies - i.e., the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and the state agricultural experiment station/land-grant university (SAES/LGU) complex. The implicit point is made that potentially negative impacts of the PVPA have been limited by the continued vitality of public breeding programs . Yet, there is no reason to assume that this reasonable balance of public and private effort will be maintained in the long term. A major problem with economic analyses of the PVPA has been the fundamentally ahistorical approach they have taken. The act has been ob- 132 First the seed served through a narrow window in time as an isolated, free-standing event uncoupled from historical processes. But changes at...