International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture

1. Background

Crop genetic resources were long treated as the “common heritage of mankind”, freely collected from farmers’ fields in the South and stored in gene banks, often in the North. The FAO adopted the non-binding International Undertaking on Plant Genetic Resources in 1983 on that basis. Two developments changed the position: breeders in industrialised countries obtained PBRs and patents over varieties developed from that free material, and the Convention on Biological Diversity (1992) recognised national sovereignty over genetic resources. Food crops pose a special problem for bilateral access deals, because every country depends on crops that originated elsewhere (India on maize and potato from the Americas; the Americas on wheat and rice from Asia).

The FAO renegotiated the Undertaking into a binding treaty. The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture was adopted by the FAO Conference in November 2001 and entered into force in 2004. India is a party.

2. Objectives (Article 1)

The conservation and sustainable use of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture (PGRFA) and the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising from their use, in harmony with the CBD, for sustainable agriculture and food security.

3. Conservation and sustainable use (Articles 5 and 6)

• Surveys and inventories of PGRFA; promotion of collection; support to farmers and local communities in on-farm management and conservation.
• In situ conservation of crop wild relatives and wild plants for food production, including in protected areas.
• Ex situ conservation in gene banks.
• Sustainable use through diverse farming systems, participatory plant breeding, broadening the genetic base of crops, and reviewing breeding strategies and seed regulations.

4. Farmers’ rights (Article 9)

Article 9 recognises the enormous contribution of local and indigenous communities and farmers of all regions, particularly in centres of origin and crop diversity, to the conservation and development of PGRFA. The responsibility for realising farmers’ rights rests with national governments, which should, according to their needs and priorities and subject to national law, take measures to protect and promote them, including:

1. protection of traditional knowledge relevant to PGRFA;
2. the right to participate equitably in sharing benefits arising from the use of PGRFA; and
3. the right to participate in making decisions, at the national level, on matters related to the conservation and sustainable use of PGRFA.

Article 9.3 adds that nothing in the Article shall be interpreted to limit any rights that farmers have to save, use, exchange and sell farm-saved seed or propagating material, subject to national law and as appropriate. This is the first binding international recognition of farmers’ rights. It is weak in form (“subject to national law”), which leaves strong implementation, as in India, to national choice.

5. The Multilateral System (Articles 10 to 13)

Instead of negotiating access country by country, parties pool a list of crops in a Multilateral System of access and benefit sharing.

• Coverage: the crops and forages listed in Annex I (64 crops and forages, including rice, wheat, maize, potato, sorghum, pulses, brassicas and many forages), chosen for food security and interdependence. Notable omissions include soybean, groundnut, sugarcane and most tropical fruits, which some countries kept out.
• Material in the system: Annex I material under the management and control of parties and in the public domain, plus collections of the CGIAR centres placed under the Treaty.
• Facilitated access (Article 12): access is provided for research, breeding and training for food and agriculture, not for chemical, pharmaceutical or non-food industrial uses; expeditiously and free of charge or at minimal cost; with passport data and available information.
• Standard Material Transfer Agreement (SMTA): every transfer uses one contract adopted by the Governing Body in 2006, binding the recipient and later recipients.
• Benefit sharing (Article 13): exchange of information, access to and transfer of technology, capacity building, and sharing of monetary benefits. A recipient who commercialises a product that is a PGRFA incorporating material from the system must pay an equitable share of the benefits into the Treaty’s Benefit-sharing Fund if the product is not available without restriction to others for further research and breeding; payment is encouraged where it is so available.

6. Institutions and finance

• The Governing Body of all parties adopts the SMTA, budgets and the funding strategy.
• The Benefit-sharing Fund finances projects for farmers in developing countries, though income from mandatory payments has been small, and most of its money has come from voluntary contributions.
• The Global Information System and links with the Global Crop Diversity Trust (which supports long-term gene bank conservation, including the Svalbard Global Seed Vault).

7. Relationship with other instruments

• CBD and Nagoya: the Treaty is a specialised ABS instrument recognised by the Nagoya Protocol (Article 4(4)); for Annex I material used for food and agriculture, the Treaty’s system applies instead of bilateral Nagoya-type deals.
• UPOV and TRIPS: the Treaty’s farmers’ rights and Article 12.3(d) sit uneasily with UPOV 1991’s narrow farmers’ exception and with gene patents.
• Digital sequence information: the growth of sequencing lets users take the information without the physical material, escaping the SMTA. Negotiations to expand the system and cover DSI have stalled.

8. India’s implementation

India gives effect to Article 9 more strongly than almost any party: section 39 of the PPV&FR Act gives farmers the right to save, use, sow, resow, exchange, share and sell unbranded seed, registers farmers’ varieties, rewards conservation from the National Gene Fund, and provides benefit sharing and community compensation. The National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (ICAR) handles access to Annex I material. Section 40 of the Biological Diversity Act, 2002 allows exemptions for normally traded commodities and can be used to align with the Treaty.

How this is examined

The 2025 question is the template. Use the headings above. Quote Article 9 and Article 12.3(d), name the SMTA and the Benefit-sharing Fund, and finish with the conflict with IP and India’s strong implementation of farmers’ rights.