Agrobiodiversity and the Law

Regulating Genetic Resources, Food Security and Cultural Diversity

Juliana Santilli

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781849713726
• eBook ISBN: 9781136580024
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Ecology
• Index: Biological Sciences

A wide range of crop genetic resources is vital for future food security. Loss of agricultural biodiversity increases the risk of relying on a limited number of staple food crops. However, many laws, such as seed laws, plant varieties protection and access and benefit-sharing laws, have direct impacts on agrobiodiversity, and their effects have been severely underestimated by policy-makers. This is of concern not only to lawyers, but also to agronomists, biologists, and social scientists, all of whom need clear guidance as to the relevance of the law to their work.

This book analyzes the impact of the legal system on agrobiodiversity (or agricultural biodiversity) – the diversity of agricultural species, varieties, and ecosystems. Using an interdisciplinary approach, it takes up the emerging concept of agrobiodiversity and its relationship with food security, nutrition, health, environmental sustainability, and climate change. It assesses the impacts on agrobiodiversity of key legal instruments, including seeds laws, the International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants, plant breeders' rights, the Convention on Biological Diversity (regarding specifically its impact on agrobiodiversity), and the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. It also reviews the options for the implementation of these instruments at the national level in several countries. It discusses the interfaces between the free software movement, the 'commons' movement, and seeds, as well as the legal instruments to protect cultural heritage and their application to safeguard agrobiodiversity-rich systems. Finally, it analyzes the role of protected areas and the possibility of using geographical indications to enhance the value of agrobiodiversity products and processes.

1

AGROBIODIVERSITY

A concept under construction

The concept of “agrobiodiversity” emerged in the past 10–15 years, in an interdisciplinary context that involves various areas of knowledge (agronomy, anthropology, ecology, botany, genetics, conservation biology, etc.). It reflects the dynamic and complex relations among human societies, cultivated plants, and domestic animals and the ecosystems in which they interact. Agrobiodiversity is directly associated with food security, health, social equity, hunger alleviation, environmental sustainability, and rural sustainable development.

Biodiversity or biological diversity – the diversity of life forms – covers three degrees of variability: diversity of species, genetic diversity (variability within the set of individuals of a given species), and ecological diversity, referring to different ecosystems and landscapes. The same is true of agrobiodiversity, which comprises the diversity of species (different species of cultivated plants, such as maize, rice, pumpkins, tomatoes, etc., called interspecific diversity), genetic diversity within a given species (different varieties of maize or beans, etc., called intraspecific diversity), and the diversity of cultivated ecosystems or agroecosystems¹ (agroforestry systems, shift cultivation, home gardens, rice paddy fields, etc.). Local knowledge and culture are also integral parts of agricultural biodiversity, since it is agriculture, a human activity, that conserves biodiversity. Most crops have lost their original seed dispersal mechanisms as a result of domestication and so can no longer thrive without human input (Cromwell et al., 2003). Agrobiodiversity, or agricultural diversity, is an important part of biodiversity and encompasses all the elements which interact in agricultural production, including all crops and livestock and their wild relatives, and all interacting species of pollinators, symbionts, parasites, pests, predators, and competitors, and the genetic diversity within them (Qualset et al., 1995). According to Cromwell et al. (2003), agricultural biodiversity includes (1) higher plants: crops, wild plants harvested and managed for food, trees on farms, and pasture and rangeland species; (2) higher animals: domestic animals, wild animals hunted for food, etc., wild and farmed fish; (3) arthropods: mostly insects including pollinators (e.g., bees, butterflies), pests (e.g., wasps, beetles), and insects involved in the soil cycle (notably termites); (4) other macro-organisms (e.g., earthworms); (5) micro-organisms (e.g., rhizobia, fungi, disease-producing pathogens). Agrobiodiversity’s functions are related to sustainable production of food and other agricultural products, including providing the building blocks for the evolution or deliberate breeding of useful new crop varieties; biological support to production by means of, for example, soil biota, pollinators, and predators; and wider ecological services provided by agroecosystems, such as landscape protection, soil protection and health, water cycling and quality, and air quality (Cromwell et al., 2003).

According to Harold Brookfield (2001, p. 46), agrobiodiversity is the “dynamic variation in cropping systems, output and management practice that occurs within and between agroecosystems. It arises from biophysical differences, and from the many and changing ways in which farmers manage diverse genetic resources and natural variability, and organize their management in dynamic social and economic contexts.” Brookfield (2001, p. 41) defines management diversity as all methods of managing the land, water, and biota for crop production and maintaining soil fertility and structure. Local knowledge, constantly modified by new information, is the foundation of this management diversity, as with agrobiodiversity. For Brookfield (2001, p. 41), biophysical diversity includes soil characteristics and their qualities and the biodiversity of natural (or spontaneous) plant life and the faunal and microbial biota. Organizational diversity is often called the socioeconomic aspect of agriculture. It includes diversity in the manner in which farms are owned and operated and in the use of resource endowments and the farm workforce. Elements include labor, household size, the differing resource endowments of households, and reliance on off-farm employment. Also included are age group and gender relations in farm work, dependence on the farm as compared with external sources of support, the spatial distribution of the farm, and differences between farmers in terms of access to land. Organizational diversity underpins and helps explain management diversity and its variation between particular farms, communities, and societies. According to Brookfield (2001, p. 44), no agricultural system can be understood independently from the manner in which farms are organized and the forces that interact to shape this organization.

Agrobiodiversity is generally associated with crops (cultivated plants). However, Cromwell et al. (2003) point out that wild species² are important nutritionally and culturally. Foods from wild species form an integral part of the daily diets of many rural households. Livestock diversity is also an important component of agrobiodiversity. Domesticated animals provide people not only with food but also with clothing, fertilizer and fuel (from manure), and draft power. Social and cultural forces are often the most important factors in diversifying livestock (and livestock production systems) and in developing distinctive breeds. Most local livestock breeds in rural environments are products of a community of breeders, and the effective management of animal genetic diversity is essential to global food security and sustainable development.

The Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO’s) Global Databank for Animal Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture identified a total of 7,616 livestock breeds. Such diversity has enabled farmers and pastoralists to adapt to local environmental conditions and to meet specific social and cultural needs, as well as to inhabit a wide range of production environments from hot humid tropics to arid deserts and cold mountainous regions. Genetic diversity also allows livestock to adapt to diseases, parasites, and wide variations in the type and availability of food and water. Yet livestock diversity is at risk. According to the Report on the State of the World’s Animal Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture,³ approximately 20 percent of the cow, goat, pig, horse, and bird breeds in the world are threatened with extinction, and in the past six years 62 breeds of domestic animals have become extinct, which represents a loss of nearly one race per month. In 2000, FAO (FAO, 2000) estimated that, of the 3,831 breeds of cows, buffalo, goats, pigs, sheep, horses and donkeys believed to have existed in the twentieth century, 16 percent had already become extinct and a further 15 percent were at risk of extinction. The most significant threat to livestock diversity is the marginalization of traditional production systems and the associated local breeds, driven mainly by the rapid spread of intensive livestock production, often large-scale and utilizing a narrow range of breeds (Report on the State of the World’s Animal Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture).

Cromwell et al. (2003) also highlight the importance of aquatic diversity as a component of agrobiodiversity. Fish and other aquatic species are integral parts of several important farming systems. For example, in the tropical rice–fish systems of Asia, fish from rice paddies may provide as much as 70 percent of dietary protein. Another important component of agrobiodiversity is the underground biodiversity: roots bring nutrients and water to plants and stabilize the soil against erosion and soil movement on steep slopes and, in tropical systems, the contribution of roots to soil organic matter is proportionately larger than the contribution from above-ground inputs. Microbial diversity is also relevant to agricultural biodiversity, as microbes contribute a wealth of gene pools that can be sources of material for transfer to plants to achieve traits such as stress tolerance and pest resistance, and large-scale production of plant metabolites. The diversity of insects (such as bees and other pollinators), spiders, and other arthropods (grasshoppers, etc.) is another important component of agrobiodiversity, since they often act as natural enemies of crop pests. Finally, there is increasing realization of the importance of agricultural biodiversity at the ecosystems level. An ecosystem consists of a dynamic complex of plant, animal and micro-organism communities and their living environment interacting as a functional unit. That is why agrobiodiversity at the ecosystems level is sometimes referred to as “functional agricultural biodiversity”: that which is necessary to sustain the ecological function of the agroecosystem, its structures, and processes in support of food production (Cromwell et al., 2003). In this book, we shall focus mainly on the diversity of cultivated plants and agroecosystems, and on livestock diversity, more than on other components of agricultural biodiversity, since they are the mostly regulated components of agricultural biodiversity, and the purpose of the book is to analyze impacts of legal instruments on agrobiodiversity.

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)⁴ does not contain a definition of agrobiodiversity, but, according to Decision V/5, adopted during the Fifth Conference of the Parties of CBD (COP-5), “agricultural biodiversity is a broad term that includes all components of biological diversity of relevance to food and agriculture, and all components of biological diversity that constitute the agroecosystem: the variety and variability of animals, plants and microorganisms, at the genetic, species and ecosystem levels, which are necessary to sustain key functions of the agroecosystem, its structure and processes.” Agricultural biodiversity has the following dimensions (according to Decision V/5):

1 Genetic resources for food and agriculture, including (a) plant genetic resources, including pasture and rangeland species, and genetic resources of trees that are an integral part of farming systems; (b) animal genetic resources, including fishery genetic resources, in cases where fish production is part of the farming system, and insect genetic resources; and (c) microbial and fungal genetic resources. These constitute the main units of production in agriculture, including cultivated species, domesticated species, and managed wild plants and animals, as well as wild relatives of cultivated and domesticated species.

2 Components of agricultural biodiversity that provide ecological services. These include a diverse range of organisms in agricultural production systems that contribute, at various scales, to inter alia: (a) nutrient cycling, decomposition of organic matter and maintenance of soil fertility; (b) pest and disease regulation; (c) pollination; (d) maintenance and enhancement of local wildlife and habitats in their landscape; (e) maintenance of the hydrological cycle; (f) erosion control; and (g) climate regulation and carbon sequestration.

3 Abiotic factors which have a determining effect on these aspects of agricultural biodiversity.

4 Socioeconomic and cultural dimensions, since agricultural biodiversity is largely shaped by human activities and management practices. These include (a) traditional and local knowledge of agricultural biodiversity, cultural factors, and participatory processes; (b) tourism associated with agricultural landscapes; and (c) other socioeconomic factors.

It is important to understand that a domesticated plant is not the same as a cultivated plant. Ethnobotanist Laure Emperaire (2004) explains that domestication is an evolutionary process through which a plant moves from its wild state – in which there is no human intervention – to a closer relation with humans and their agricultural activities. Domestication requires modification in the genetic heritage (composition) of the plant. As a result of selective cultivation by man, domesticated plants lose certain characteristics (which are not interesting for agricultural activities) and develop others. Some characteristics of domesticated plants include gigantism (especially of parts of the plant of interest to humans), suppression of natural mechanisms of seed dispersion, rapid and uniform seed germination, etc. Therefore, cultivated plants are not necessarily domesticated, but domesticated plants are necessarily cultivated (Emperaire, 2004). In other words, wild plants can be cultivated without being domesticated, but the inverse is not true: domesticated plants cannot be abandoned in unmanipulated landscapes because they have lost their ecological adaptations to natural environments.

Jack Harlan (1975) explains that “to domesticate means to bring into the household.” According to Harlan (1975), domesticated plants and animals have been altered genetically from their wild state and have come to be at home with man. He explains that to cultivate means to conduct those activities involved in caring for a plant, such as tilling the soil, preparing a seedbed, weeding, pruning, protecting, watering, and manuring. Cultivation is concerned with human activities, whereas domestication deals with the genetic response of the plants or animals being tended or cultivated. It is therefore possible to cultivate wild plants, and cultivated plants are not necessarily domesticated. Harvested plant materials may be classified as wild, tolerated, encouraged and domesticated (Harlan, 1975).

According to Charles Clement (1999), plant domestication is a “co-evolutionary process by which human selection on the phenotypes of promoted, managed or cultivated plant populations results in changes in the population’s genotypes that make them more useful to humans and better adapted to human intervention in the landscape.” Human selection may be either unconscious or directed, but for plant domestication to take place there must be selection and management to cause differential reproduction and survival. According to Clement (1999), the degree of change in the targeted population can vary:

1 Wild. A naturally evolved population whose genotypes and phenotypes have not been modified by human intervention.

2 Incidentally co-evolved. A population that volunteers and adapts in a human disturbed environment, possibly undergoing genetic change, but without human selection. Many weeds are examples of incidentally co-evolved species, which can also enter the domestication process if humans start to select them for their useful traits and start to manage or cultivate them.

3 Incipiently domesticated. A population that has been modified by human selection and intervention (at the very least being promoted), but whose average phenotype is still within the range of variation found in the wild population for the trait(s) subject to selection. The variance of this average is probably smaller than that of the original wild population, how...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• About the Author
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Acronyms and Abbreviations
• 1. Agrobiodiversity: A concept under construction
• 2. Agrobiodiversity and food security, nutrition, health, and environmental sustainability
• 3. Agrobiodiversity and climate change
• 4. Seed laws: The paradigms of industrial agriculture, traditional/local agricultural systems, and agrobiodiversity
• 5. The Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants and the UPOV System: The protection of intellectual property rights over plant varieties
• 6. Access and benefit-sharing laws and plant genetic resources for food and agriculture: the international legal regime
• 7. Options for the implementation of the international treaty on plant genetic resources for food and agriculture at the national level
• 8. Farmers’ rights
• 9. Animal genetic resources for food and agriculture: Access and benefit-sharing and livestock keepers’ rights
• 10. The open source software movement, the commons movement and seeds: What they have in common – biological open source and protected commons
• 11. Agrobiodiversity and cultural heritage law
• 12. Agrobiodiversity and protected areas
• 13. Geographical indications for agrobiodiversity products?: Case studies in France, Mexico, and Brazil
• Conclusions
• Index