July 5, 2002
Rice has been steamed, boiled,
fried and puffed, but never before served up like this. The
journal Science made headlines in April when it published the
rice genome, the genetic makeup of the world's most important
food crop. Science published two research results: the Beijing
Genomics Institute's
sequence of one subspecies, and the Swiss company
Syngenta's sequence of
another. Significantly, one of the projects is public, the other
private.
Private research into the genomes of food crops draws
unrelenting fire from those who abhor "patents on life." Rice in
particular is a lightning rod, because it is the staple food of
most of the world's poor, especially in Asia, which produces and
consumes 92 percent of the world's rice. Cultivating rice is the
mainstay of hundreds of millions of poor farm households, who on
average eat half of the rice they grow - and often not much
else. Only six percent of the harvest is traded internationally.
While rice production is the foundation of food security,
economic growth, and social and political stability in rural
communities across Asia, it hardly registers in commerce.
At least not yet. The sequencing of the rice genome and the next
step, assigning functions to individual genes and combining them
to accelerate crop improvement, is revolutionizing rice science.
How this genomics revolution plays out will determine whether
poor rice farmers and consumers win or lose.
Critics fear that private ownership of portions of the rice
genome will commercialize the crop in a way that subverts the
right of farmers to grow the myriad traditional varieties their
ancestors developed over millennia, as well as the improved
varieties that publicly funded research institutions have bred
and distributed as public goods over the past few decades.
Insisting that rice must remain wholly within the public domain,
they roundly condemn both private research and public-private
research partnerships.
But they are silent on the question of how cash-strapped public
research can maintain momentum without private-sector
participation and the patents that corporations need to protect
their investments.
Wholly public ownership of the fruits of rice research would
require steadfast commitment to public support for that
research. Sadly, funding trends tell a different story.
- Funding directed by the United
States Agency for International Development (USAID) toward
agricultural research in less-developed countries declined by
75 percent from the mid-1980s to 1996. In that period, Asia
suffered the steepest losses, as its share of USAID annual
funding plunged from $57 million to a vestigial $1.4 million
(constant 1993 prices).
- In 2000, the Consultative
Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), a global
association of 16 Future Harvest centers and their donor
governments, agencies and foundations, spent US$305 million,
or 10 percent less than the US$338 million it spent when
funding peaked in 1990 (constant 1993 prices).
- Core funding for the CGIAR's
International Rice
Research Institute (IRRI) will fall from $22.3 million in
1999 to $14.7 million in 2003, when the full force of a recent
halving of one key donor's support for the CGIAR takes effect.
Meanwhile, private-sector
investment in agricultural research is rising rapidly. And, as
Syngenta illustrates, privately funded research is a prime mover
in the genomics revolution, in rice as in other areas. The best
response from IRRI and
its public-sector partners is to augment their own research by
bending private-sector achievements to the advantage of poor
rice farmers and consumers. This requires partnerships with
corporations.
One precedent for public-private partnership is Golden Rice. IRRI's
right to develop tropical versions of the beta carotene-rich
grain, which promises to help alleviate vitamin A deficiency and
the widespread suffering it causes, hinges on the decision of 32
holders of 70 patents to donate their intellectual property
rights to make Golden Rice freely available to people making
less than US$10,000 per year.
Forging such mutually beneficial partnerships - beneficial to
poor rice farmers and consumers, as well as to corporate
shareholders - takes ingenuity, persistence and careful
dedication to principles. It also
requires something like parity in what public and private
partners bring to the table.
Meeting this challenge - ideally with the help of more funding
for public research -will both protect the intellectual property
rights that facilitate advances in rice science and deliver to
poor rice farmers and consumers the improved livelihoods and
nutrition that are their birthright.
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