Modernizing Seed Regulations
What the seed industry has always faced, and that the grain industry is newly grappling with, is the need to attach intellectual property value to otherwise generic-looking grain.
Today we highlight the expansion of stakeholder responsibilities to protect the rights of plant breeders in Canada. Building on the role of independent media, policy and technology, the seed industry offers additional insight into how stakeholders with limited vision can loop farmers into traceable, lucrative new value chains.
Background
The development of the seed industry is described aptly in this paper from Colorado State University. It’s a timely reminder of the role of landraces in shifting seed collection and marketing from wild ancestors to modern cultivars, in light of the current growth in demand for heirloom crops.
“As early farmers migrated into new territories, they brought their seeds, tubers, and rootstocks with them. The crops would have encountered a variety of soil types, weather patterns, insect pests, and pathogens. In response to the new environments, farmers would have selected for plants that were better adapted to the local conditions. Thus arose ‘landraces’, traditional varieties selected by farmers for adaptation to local conditions and food preferences. These varieties typically have low yield potential, but are often genetically diverse and stress-resilient. Many so-called ‘heirloom varieties’ are examples of landraces. Typically landraces are genetically heterogeneous (non-uniform), and are therefore an important source of genetic diversity for crop improvement. Landraces are usually less diverse than their wild ancestors, but more diverse than cultivars produced during the modern era of plant breeding.”
The video from the report below explains the stark contrast between the style and productivity of modern corn versus the first varieties brought northward from Mexico. It makes clear that the development of modern crop genetics did not happen quickly, easily, or without considerable investment by commercial stakeholders.
Seed companies take decades to create better-yielding varieties to sell to farmers. The business relies on regulated guarantees and reliable payment systems to recapture investments via the future monetization of genetic attributes brought to market.
Enter: Seed Regulations
Farmers have the right to save some types of seed* from their harvested crops for planting future crops, but it’s illegal to trade in grain grown from certified seed varieties that was procured illegally, i.e. without honoring the intellectual property of the breeder. Plant breeders’ rights are enshrined in legislation, enabling seed companies to sue for damages if they can prove they missed out on royalty payments.
To some readers, the issue of protecting plant breeders’ rights on farmer-saved seed might seem to hinder local food security and farmer independence. There is a faction of society, with good intentions and strong arguments, who get rankled any time agribusiness firms are supported to sue farmers making independent production decisions.
To other readers, the expansion of legislated protection of seed companies’ investments is a welcome new set of guardrails around secondary traders of grain grown from certified seed. In the absence of assurance of future repayment against the up-front costs of acquiring and propagating new varieties, the fear is Canada’s competitiveness in global commodity markets is falling behind other grain-producing parts of the world.
The modernization of Canadian seed regulations underway at this time extends the liability from just farmer sellers, to other commercial businesses who would otherwise unknowingly deal in grain from certified seed without paying royalties to the breeder, including:
Seed conditioners: who clean seed commercially to remove weed seeds and other impurities for farmers wishing to replant from their own harvests;
Other farmers: who might be offered seed from a neighboring farm that was grown from certified seed, without being asked to remit royalties; and
Grain buyers: who may be offered grain grown from seed with protected traits where the royalties were not paid.
The goal is to solve a market failure in the seed industry by enabling the genetics companies to sue a longer list of stakeholders involved. The trade association Seeds Canada provides a set of guidelines and recommendations for each stakeholder to protect their business that is helpful, but still weak, in that it bases the validation on farmer-signed affidavits.
Data-Based Validation of Seed Origin
Affidavits are like handshakes these days in preserving the future integrity of a negotiated off-farm transaction – they don’t work. Nor are they necessary in the presence of modern data gathering technology, to validate the origin conditions forward in a chain of transactions.
A farmer’s saved certified seed tags and invoices represent the foundation for protecting the conditioners, farmer customers, and grain buyers in their transactions down the line. Farmers should also have to produce data on seeding rates and planted areas, and yields demonstrating that the amount of grain marketed equals total production less the amount saved to seed future crops on that farms.
The Math for Stopping Brown-Bagging Seed
Put another way,
[PURCHASED CERTIFIED SEED] @ [PLANTED ACRES]*[YIELD] = TOTAL GRAIN PRODUCTION
[TOTAL GRAIN PRODUCTION] – [FARM-SAVED SEED] = MARKETABLE GRAIN
The time is now for stakeholders to coordinate data and document collection for eliminating the slippage of seed sales that bypass royalty payments. Data and documents are the bones that support the body of audits, which periodically may be undertaken with stakeholders to reduce sales of ‘brown-bagged’ seed.
Brown-bagging: when farm-saved inventories of crop grown from certified seed is sold for the purpose of planting a crop elsewhere, without royalties being paid back to the breeder. It’s an illegal violation of Plant Breeders’ Rights.
* Seed patents and technology use agreements will be covered in a later report.