Corporate dominance and agricultural biotechnology

GM crops have the potential to contribute to resolving food security and poverty issues in developing countries. However, the crops and traits developed so far have been targeted at the needs of large-scale commercial farmers, particularly in North America. Critics point out that the tendency of both private and public sectors to focus on GM distracts attention from research into alternative technologies that are more likely to benefit science institutes and farmers in developing countries.

The growth of biotechnology will be driven largely by the decisions of company directors and research scientists in the private sector. These people are mainly concerned with profits for their companies and competitiveness, rather than the problems of poverty, food security and economic development in poor countries. The public sector is poorly-equipped to address the needs of poor farmers, and companies will continue to concentrate on high-value GM technologies that meet the needs of wealthy markets in developed countries.

Resources in the public agricultural research sector are under great pressure. The autonomy of public sector researchers is undermined by a number of costly legal instruments, such as intellectual property rights (IPRs), research contracts and material transfer agreements (contractual licence agreements to transfer plant material from the owner to another researcher, allowing certain conditions, such as limited types of research). These increase the burden on limited financial and technical resources. They also inhibit the traditional strengths of public sector institutes in working together to develop technologies that are good for farmers in developing countries.

By contrast, for the private sector, these legal requirements represent important safeguards to protect future income and preserve key commercial assets. Private companies prioritise GM crops over other potential biotechnological applications. Genetic engineering is attractive to firms because they can register exclusive ownership over new varieties. This makes it easier to recover the high costs of biotechnology research and development.

The impacts of private company strategies in the developing world will be felt most greatly through their core business activities, rather than smaller gestures and partnerships with the public sector. Corporate initiatives to benefit developing countries, such as Vitamin A rice or virus-resistant sweet potatoes, can only achieve a small amount of good in harnessing appropriate biotechnology for development. There is a risk that farmers in developing countries will be left to use technologies developed for the agricultural, ecological and economic settings of the developed world, rather than technologies designed for their needs.

An effective, coherent regime of public policy and regulation is urgently needed. This should include public funding for research and development to specifically address the needs of developing country farmers. There is a great demand for affordable, appropriate technologies and a regulatory framework to ensure that the core business activities of companies will contribute to development, rather than undermine it. This will require:

• l providing incentives for companies to develop products for which large markets do not exist, for example by governments agreeing to buy the products once they are developed
• l re-examining the scope of IPRs to ensure that undesirable monopolies are not created and beneficial public research is not inhibited
• l effective enforcement of competition and anti-trust laws to tackle the negative consequences of concentration in the biotechnology and seed sectors
• l careful evaluation of the potential for policy and regulatory frameworks to create incentives for best practices, corporate social responsibility and corporate citizenship. This will harness the capacity of the private sector to deliver public as well as private goods more effectively and more often.

Dominic Glover
Institute of Development Studies
University of Sussex
Brighton, BN1 9RE
UK
d.glover@ids.ac.uk

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