Files
Details
Title
Maintaining Access to Modern Science to Serve the Poor: A Case Study with Rice
Author(s)
Fischer, Ken S.
Subject(s)
Issue Date
Aug 08 2002
Publication Type
Conference Paper/ Presentation
DOI and Other Identifiers
10.22004/ag.econ.123936
Record Identifier
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/123936
PURL Identifier
http://purl.umn.edu/123936
Language
English
Total Pages
10
Note
Modern biology is generating revolutionary advances in genetic knowledge and our capacity to
change the genetic make up of crops and livestock. Much of this new science is proprietary,
owned both by the private sector and increasingly by advanced public sector researchers, leading
to a concern by many, and expressed by Serageldin (past chair of the CGIAR):
that the progressive monopolization of knowledge – and the increasing marginalization of most of
the world’s population – is skewing the new science to the benefits of the rich and excluding the
poor.
The poor of the world deserve the best that science has to offer. Consequently, national and
international public sectors in the developing world will have to play a key role, in accessing
proprietary tools and products (Intellectual property (IP)) from the private sector to serve the poor.
Conversely, the owners of the IP have an opportunity and an obligation to see that their
technologies are made available to the poor in non-commercial markets. The paper discusses
policy and institutional options for accessing IP within a framework of public and private bargaining
chips and segmented markets. Four case studies focusing on rice, the food source for most of the
world’s poor, are discussed. The case studies are the exchange of germplasm to maintain choices
and diversity in farmers fields, the discovery and
ownership of a rice gene from African rice, the
freedom to operate (FTO) Vitamin A rice, and an
International Consortium on Rice Functional
Genomics to provide a public platform for gene
discovery in rice.
The challenge is to develop a shared vision for rice
research that will provide the public sector access
and freedom to use modern tools and sufficient
incentives for the private sector (including
advanced institutions in developed and developing
countries) to innovate, develop, and deliver new
rice technologies and more choices to farmers
(and consumers).