Farmers’ Rights and Genetic Resources: An International Perspective

Every crop we grow today exists because of centuries of careful seed selection by farmers around the world. The wheat in your bread, the rice on your plate, and the vegetables in your market – all trace back to genetic diversity nurtured by farming communities across generations. But who owns these seeds? And what rights do the farmers who developed and preserved them actually have? These questions sit at the heart of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA), a landmark agreement that grew out of the earlier International Undertaking on Plant Genetic Resources. Let’s break down how plant genetic resources, farmers’ rights, gene banks, and intellectual property conflicts all fit together in this critical area of biodiversity governance.

Why plant genetic resources matter 🔗

All crops, whether traditional varieties selected by farmers or modern varieties bred by professional plant breeders, descend from wild and improved genetic resources collected around the world. These resources – seeds, roots, tubers, and other propagating material – are the raw material that allows agriculture to keep feeding a growing planet.

Plant genetic resources for food and agriculture (PGRFA) are not just biological specimens sitting in a lab. They are the foundation of food security. The FAO predicts that farmers will need to increase food production by at least 70% by 2050 to meet the demands of a world population projected to reach 9.1 billion. Meeting that challenge depends on having access to diverse genetic material that can be used to breed crops resistant to new pests, diseases, and the impacts of climate change.

Here’s a key fact: no country is self-sufficient in terms of surviving solely on crops indigenous within its borders. This global interdependence means every nation relies on plant genetic material that originally came from somewhere else. Since no nation has the desired spectrum of genetic resources within its borders, international collection and exchange is essential.

This interdependence is why international frameworks governing the exchange and conservation of PGRFA exist. Without them, the development of climate-resilient, disease-resistant crops would slow dramatically, putting global food supplies at risk.

The international undertaking and the birth of farmers’ rights 🔗

In 1983, the Commission on Plant Genetic Resources was established under the FAO, and the Commission developed the International Undertaking – a non-binding treaty to govern the exchange of genetic resources. The Undertaking operated on the principle that plant genetic resources were a shared heritage of humankind, meant to be freely available to all.

However, this framework quickly ran into problems. Northern governments refused to make the Undertaking binding, so it became a voluntary agreement instead of a convention. Developed countries were concerned that the Undertaking could undermine intellectual property rights held by their seed industries. Meanwhile, developing countries became disillusioned because the developed world continued to patent and profit from germplasm sourced from the Global South, while the South received nothing in return.

The concept of Farmers’ Rights emerged from this tension. These rights were envisioned as communal in nature and were not analogous to Western-style intellectual property rights – instead, they represented obligations of the international community to support traditional farming activities.

From voluntary agreement to binding treaty 🔗

The International Undertaking formally existed until the Plant Treaty in 2001, but scholars note it did not have much impact on national policies because of its lack of legal force. After the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) established that nations have sovereign rights over their genetic resources, negotiations began to create a stronger, legally binding framework specifically for agricultural biodiversity.

On November 3, 2001, after more than 15 sessions of the FAO Commission on Genetic Resources, representatives of 116 nations approved the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. The Treaty entered into force in 2004 and currently has 155 contracting parties, including 154 member states and the European Union.

Key aspects of farmers’ rights 🔗

Farmers’ rights under the ITPGRFA acknowledge that farming communities around the world have been the custodians and innovators of crop genetic diversity for millennia. The Plant Treaty established a principle of Farmers’ Rights, recognizing farmers as holders of traditional knowledge and stewards of agricultural biodiversity.

Under Article 9 of the Treaty, contracting parties agree to protect and promote Farmers’ Rights, which include three core components:

Protection of traditional knowledge: The treaty recognizes the right to protect traditional knowledge relevant to plant genetic resources for food and agriculture. Farmers possess invaluable knowledge about local crop varieties, growing conditions, and seed selection – knowledge that has been passed down through generations and contributes directly to global agricultural innovation.

Equitable benefit-sharing: Farmers have the right to equitably participate in sharing benefits arising from the use of plant genetic resources. When commercial plant breeders or biotech companies develop profitable new varieties using genetic material originally sourced from farming communities, those communities deserve a fair share of the benefits.

Participation in decision-making: Farmers have the right to participate in making decisions at the national level on matters related to the conservation and sustainable use of PGRFA.

The right to save, use, exchange, and sell seeds 🔗

One of the most significant – and contested – elements of farmers’ rights is the right to save, use, exchange, and sell farm-saved seeds. Article 9.3 of the Treaty states that nothing 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.

This provision is crucial because seed-saving and exchange is the backbone of smallholder agriculture across much of the world. For most of their history, farmers have planted their crops with seed saved from previous harvests or acquired from others in the community. However, the Treaty leaves the implementation of these rights to individual national governments, which has led to significant variation in how they are actually protected.

India provides a notable example. India’s Plant Variety Protection and Farmers’ Rights Act (2001) allows farmers a restricted right to save and sell seed they have produced on-farm, even if it contains genes from a protected variety. The Act recognizes the role of farmers as cultivators and conservers, and it ensures that farmers can save, use, sow, re-sow, exchange, share, or sell their farm produce including seed of a protected variety.

The role of gene banks and technology 🔗

Conserving plant genetic diversity requires a combination of strategies. Conservation of plant genetic resources is achieved by protecting populations in their natural habitats (in situ) or by preserving samples in gene banks (ex situ), with the two methods being complementary.

In situ conservation 🔗

In situ conservation means maintaining genetic diversity where it naturally occurs – in farmers’ fields, in wild habitats, and in traditional agricultural systems. This approach allows crops and their wild relatives to continue evolving in response to environmental pressures, which is essential for maintaining adaptive genetic variation.

On-farm conservation is particularly important because it keeps traditional farming knowledge alive alongside the genetic material itself. When farmers continue growing and selecting local landraces (traditional crop varieties adapted to local conditions), they maintain both the seeds and the knowledge of how to cultivate them.

Ex situ conservation: gene banks 🔗

Ex situ conservation involves storing genetic material outside its natural habitat. It includes seed gene banks, plant tissue culture, cryopreservation, and botanical gardens, and serves as a method to conserve endangered and overexploited genetic resources that might otherwise go extinct.

A gene bank is a type of biorepository used to store the genetic material of plants and other organisms, preserving their genetic information in the form of seeds, sperm, eggs, embryos, cells, and other kinds of DNA. For plants, the most common method is seed banking. Seed banking has considerable advantages over other methods of ex situ conservation, including ease of storage, economy of space, and relatively low labour demands.

Presently, more than 17,000 regional, national, and international institutions are involved in the conservation and sustainable use of PGRFA, with 711 gene banks and 16 regional/international centres spread over 90 countries, conserving more than 5.4 million accessions.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault 🔗

The most well-known gene bank in the world is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, located deep inside a mountain on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen in the Arctic. As of February 2025, over 1.3 million seed samples were stored in Svalbard, representing more than 6,200 plant species.

The Seed Vault provides long-term storage for duplicates of seeds from gene banks around the world, protecting the global food supply against loss due to mismanagement, accident, equipment failures, funding cuts, war, sabotage, disease, and natural disasters.

The Vault’s real-world value was demonstrated during the Syrian Civil War. When the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) had to relocate from Aleppo, seeds withdrawn from the Svalbard Vault formed the basis for re-establishing their gene bank operations in Morocco and Lebanon. This was the first-ever withdrawal from the Vault and proved how critical backup storage is for global food security.

The role of technology 🔗

Modern technology has expanded what gene banks can do. Cryobanks preserve biological material at extremely low temperatures, typically in liquid nitrogen at around −196°C, allowing seeds and embryos to stay viable for at least a century. Advances in genomics, molecular markers, and bioinformatics are also helping scientists better characterize stored genetic material and identify useful traits for crop improvement.

Biotechnological tools such as next-generation sequencing and molecular markers help in the precise characterization and conservation of rare and endangered species, while genomic tools help identify useful genes that can be transferred through marker-assisted breeding approaches.

Challenges in protecting farmers’ rights 🔗

Despite the protections outlined in the ITPGRFA, significant challenges remain. The biggest tension exists between farmers’ traditional practices and the expanding reach of intellectual property (IP) rights over seeds and plant varieties.

Seed patents vs. traditional farming 🔗

The diversity of domesticated plant varieties is disappearing at an alarming rate while private sector interest in the commercial use of genetic resources has increased alongside modern biotechnologies and accompanying demands for intellectual property rights.

The WTO’s TRIPS Agreement requires all member countries to provide some form of protection for plant varieties, either through patents or through a sui generis (unique) system. The seed industry holds the view that Plant Breeders’ Rights under the UPOV Convention sets the only acceptable standards for implementing TRIPS provisions on plant variety protection.

The problem is that UPOV standards – particularly the 1991 revision – significantly restrict farmers’ ability to save and exchange seeds. Under the UPOV 1991 Act, breeders’ rights were broadened to cover all forms of multiplication of a protected variety, while introducing only an optional and limited “farmers’ privilege” that restricts the sale and exchange of seeds from protected varieties.

The UPOV Convention and its impact 🔗

The International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) was established in 1961 to provide a framework for privatizing seeds and crop varieties. Over the decades, its successive revisions have progressively tightened restrictions on what farmers can do with seeds from protected varieties.

The UPOV Convention makes no mention of farmers’ rights, and therefore only a few developing countries have adopted it. Countries like India have deliberately chosen not to join UPOV, instead creating their own sui generis systems that attempt to balance breeders’ rights with farmers’ rights.

In some countries, the consequences of adopting UPOV have been stark. For example, Vietnam joined UPOV in 2006, and within ten years, the seed industry became highly consolidated, with eight companies – most of them global giants – controlling 80% of the market.

Corporate consolidation and farmer dependency 🔗

The growing concentration of the global seed market in the hands of a few multinational corporations is another challenge. When farmers become dependent on commercial, patented seeds, they lose the autonomy that comes with seed-saving and exchange. Small-scale farmers encounter numerous challenges navigating the complex landscape of seed patenting, as the high costs of patented seeds can be prohibitively expensive, limiting access to improved crop varieties.

Legal disputes further illustrate the tension. In India, PepsiCo filed a lawsuit against four Gujarati farmers for growing a potato variety registered under the PPV&FR Act, claiming they infringed on the company’s intellectual property. Such cases highlight how corporate IP enforcement can directly threaten the livelihoods of small farmers.

Weak implementation of the treaty 🔗

The interpretation and realization of farmers’ rights is weak and is not the same across all countries. Because the ITPGRFA leaves implementation to national governments, countries with strong seed industry lobbies often prioritize breeders’ rights over farmers’ rights. The treaty contains a relatively weak article on Farmers’ Rights, and its direct effects are felt almost exclusively in the formal research and breeding sector.

Without a consistent, strong international focus on realizing the rights of farmers who conserve and sustainably use PGRFA, the genetic variety of crops and related agricultural biodiversity will suffer.

Finding the balance 🔗

The challenge of protecting farmers’ rights while encouraging innovation in plant breeding is not going away. Both are necessary for global food security. Plant breeders need incentives and IP protection to invest in developing improved crop varieties. At the same time, the absence of a mechanism for compensating farming communities for their contributions to developed-country agriculture has long been viewed as a significant inequity.

Moving forward, the key lies in finding frameworks that protect traditional seed systems alongside modern breeding. Countries like India have shown that it is possible to create legislation recognizing both breeders’ and farmers’ rights. The continued operation and expansion of gene banks – both community-level seed banks and global facilities like the Svalbard Vault – ensures that genetic diversity is preserved regardless of shifts in IP law. And greater farmer participation in decision-making at national and international levels can help ensure that policies reflect the realities of those who actually grow the world’s food.

What do you think? Should farmers who have conserved and developed crop varieties for generations have the same level of legal protection as commercial plant breeders? How can countries better balance the need for seed innovation with the preservation of traditional farming practices?

References

1. https://www.fao.org/plant-treaty/en
2. https://www.croptrust.org/what-we-do/programs/svalbard-global-seed-vault/
3. https://www.iatp.org/battling-for-farmers-seed-systems