Background: Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmer’s Rights

The parliament of India had passed the PPVFR (Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmer’s Rights) Act 2001 to establish an effective system for the protection of plant varieties, farmer’s & breeder’s rights and to encourage the development of new plant varieties.

Background

Prior to enactment of this act; agriculture was not included in the system of intellectual property rights in India; and thus there was no concept of plant variety protection in the country. There was one principle of ‘common heritage’ whereby the crop genetic resources were considered as a part of the common human heritage, not owned by anyone. Thus, farmers were free to use, share and exchange the seeds.

This system was fine until there were no private players in seed sector in the country. But the New Seed Policy of 1988 allowed the private sector to enter into Indian seed segment. This was the time when for the first time, the plant breeder’s rights were voiced. One of the first organizations to promote breeder’s rights in the country was Seed Association of India, formed in 1985.

In 1995, India became a member of the World Trade Organization. The obligations under the TRIPS agreement required plant protection law in the member countries. The member countries could provide protection to plan varieties either by system of patents or by any other sui generis (of its own kind) system.

Protests and Including the Farmer’s rights

Initially the Public sector opposed to the plant variety protection, mainly due to the fear that the private companies would take an unfair advantage of breeding material developed by them. Moreover, the NGOs and farmer’s organizations also protested against such law arguing that such a law would recognize the rights of only companies and would sideline the farmers and local communities.

In this background, the government created draft of the plant breeder’s rights bill. After substantial debates and a number of revisions, the PPVFR Act was passed in the parliament with a separate chapter on Farmers’ Rights and a system for registration of farmers’ varieties. This bill thus must be noted for role of NGOs and Pressure Groups under whose pressure, it underwent a sequence of amendments resulting into provisions for registration of farmer’s varieties.