Shalini Bhutani
This is about the rice we eat. More than 90% of the world’s rice is grown by Asian farmers. The vast majority of this rice is produced from farmer-saved seed, and most of it from farmers’ varieties or from varieties produced by public research centres using farmers’ varieties. The private sector, in want of seeds to commercialise and hungry to take a greater piece of the potentially enormous rice seed market, is more than keen to turn the situation around for their own benefit. With that farmers' rice and seed practices are also under serious threat. Ironically, the biggest threat is posed by the formal agricultural research system itself. In a rice-rich state like Nagaland, it is useful to discuss some of the global issues around rice.
The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) was set up in 1960. IRRI's main beneficiaries are supposed to be 'poor rice farmers' and national agriculture research and extension systems (NARES) in developing countries. According to the original document signed in New York (USA) between the Ford Foundation, Rockfeller Foundation and the Government of Philippines in December 1959, IRRI was established at Los Banos as a benevolent corporation for the term of fifty years. In April 1960 IRRI was registered as a trust for charitable purposes in the South East Asian island nation of Philippines. In September 2001, with retrospective effect, the University of the Philippines Los Banos (UPLB) – one of its partners and IRRI's landlord in the Philippines, renewed its lease of land to IRRI offices until 30 June 2025. Though one does not recall any rice farmers' in Asia or elsewhere asking for its continuance. Nonetheless, the corporation has been extended beyond its fifty years. Now question is in its second phase of life, how IRRI's intended benevolent objectives and original public mandate will fit in with its new aspirations to work with and for the private sector!
IRRI essentially does two things – firstly, it maintains a gene bank which holds the world's rice collection. Secondly, it does rice research. Today IRRI's gene bank has 109,189 accessions of rice from over 125 countries. Roughly 80% of these are varieties developed by farmers and gathered from their fields. India is the biggest contributor to IRRI's rice gene bank. IRRI, as other international gene banks, has the legal responsibility to keep rice 'safe' as an International Public Good (IPG). That means free from any IPR that convert it into a private good. Farmers do not treat rice as their private property. That is the premise of informal seed systems – sharing planting materials, exchanging crop varieties. But much has changed since 1960 in agricultural research. Two amongst the changes, the emergence of the private sector as a major player in the development and spread of agricultural technologies, and the various forms of IPR -- like patents and plant variety protection, that seed technologies are subject to, are pushing institutes like IRRI to consider taking IPR on plant germplasm themselves. But IRRI has signed agreements with the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) to hold the collections in trust. In law a trustee does not have the right to receive any benefits from the property. The right to benefit from the property, belongs to the beneficiary. In this case the world's rice farmers. Also, when passing on the rice germplasm to another, for example a seed company, IRRI is bound to require the recipient not to seek IPR on the material and to pass on the same obligation to subsequent recipients. But seed companies that IRRI has now started partnering with, want IPR.
IRRI's other mandated task is to do rice research. This R&D has to be relevant to its intended audience – small farmers and NARES that are meant to support farmers' agriculture. As IRRI turns fifty this year, small farmers are very critical of its work of the past five decades. IRRI was the home of the 'Green Revolution' in Asia. The 'revolution' pushed high yield hybrid varieties (HYVs), with expensive inputs and increased chemical use at the cost of human and ecological health. Fortunately for Nagaland, its topography unsuited for HYVs kept many more local farmers choosing to grow their traditional varieties. The rice hybrids have let down Asia's small farmers over the past decades. Yet IRRI is promoting them for the control over farming that they offer and the profits that they generate for the seed and agro-chemical companies. IRRI is also developing genetically modified (GM) rice in partnership with the corporates. In India, the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University is doing research on GM rice. ICAR and IRRI have a Collaborative Work Plan running through 2009-2012, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In the past Dr. M.S.Swaminathan has been the Director General of IRRI (1982-88). Also from India Dr. Mangala Rai, former head of ICAR is currently one of the Board of Trustees (BoT) of IRRI. Dr. Usha Barwale Zehr, the Deputy Director of Biotechnology in MAHYCO India Ltd. Monsanto's key partner in India is also on IRRI BoT. So both Indian NARES' officials and personnel of the multinational corporations operating in India are part of the team at IRRI that decides its research direction. In India, the Central Rice Research Institute (CRRI) in Odisha, as an IRRI partner, is now experimenting a submergence-resistant rice variety – Swarna Sub1, made by biotech means.
The fact is farmers' material is industry's raw material and farmers' themselves the seed industry's target market. Private sector companies are demanding exclusive rights over commercial seed production in target countries. In 2008 IRRI announced its Hybrid Rice Research and Development Consortium (HRDC). The founding members of HRDC comprise 19 private-sector company members (from seven countries) include Advanta, Bayer, DCM Shiram Consolidated Ltd., DuPont, Pioneer and Syngenta and 15 public sector institutions from China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka,and Vietnam. The HRDC is all about IRRI directly handing over its hybrid lines (i.e. rights to commercial seed production and sale in a country) to private sector companies that will pay for its use. A new set of Guidelines for HRDC came into effect from 1 January this year. From January 2010, 6 new IRRI-bred rice hybrids are also available to HRDC members. Consortium membership for the public sector is free of charge, though private sector membership is fee-based. All private sector membership contributions will be rewarded to IRRI as grants for a minimum of membership duration of five years. So IRRI is using farmers' varieties to broker deals with the private sector, making money from the arrangement and keeping control over rice away from farmers!
Thus rice farmers feel betrayed. IRRI's 50-year report card by rice farmers in the Asia region clearly reads that it has FAILED. Even today they are asking for its closure! In its latest avataar as a corporation it is headed further away from its original mandate, disregarding legal, social and ethical responsibilities it has towards the real rice keepers of the world – the paddy farmers. It is best IRRI left the work of rice in their safe(r) hands.
(The writer is Regional Programme Officer, Asia | GRAIN | www.grain.org)
