Plant Breeders Rights: Balancing Innovation with Operational Freedom
Breeders innovate with balanced intellectual property protection
Breeding barley and other cereals has generally remained in the public domain, in part due to acreage, but also due to the ability for breeders to collect a return on their investment. Commissions like SaskBarley have been investing heavily in plant breeding at public institutions to ensure variety development continues to benefit farmers.
Anthony Parker, Commissioner of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s Plant Breeders’ Rights Office, and Stuart Smyth, Chair of Agri-Food Innovation at the University of Saskatchewan, emphasize the need to strike a balance between protecting farmers’ operational freedom and encouraging innovation in cereal breeding across both public and private sectors.
Plant Breeders’ Rights
The Plant Breeders’ Rights Act plays an important role in Canada’s crop innovation story.
Canada is a member of the Union for the Protection of the New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) – an international body that safeguards plant breeders’ rights and promotes the development of new varieties. Since joining UPOV in 1978, Canada has amended its legislation several times, most recently in 2015, to align with the UPOV 1991 framework, which introduced several changes aimed at modernizing plant variety protections.
“UPOV has been around since the 1960s offering this protection for countries. Canada was interested as far back as the 1970s, but it’s been controversial. Farmers are nervous it will restrict their freedoms,” says Parker, referring to the freedom to save and replant seed without having to pay additional royalties to the variety developer. He subsequently considers what future trade-offs might be possible, or desired, by different parties within the agriculture sector.
When considering the balance between the farmers’ freedom to save seed and the desire to access new innovations, Parker asks, “The question is, do we have the willingness to make this trade-off?”
Smyth raises the same question, saying the conversations must be had between farmers and those who are, or could, develop plant varieties those same farmers might want in the future.
“If we’re putting more money into crop development, there will be new traits that have been significantly improved drought tolerance, disease resistance… Academics and researchers need to better explain the longer-term benefits.”
While public investments through government programs and producer levies are vital, these investments are made in addition to the collection of royalties on the sale of certified seed.
Parker questions whether current funding models are sufficient, suggesting that adopting practices from other countries, such as small per-acre royalty payments on saved seed, could help stabilize and support breeding programs.
Fundamentally, Parker says the public sector needs to define its long-term role in plant breeding. If Agriculture Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) invests dollars back in breeding programs, it’s money well spent. If not, other systems need to be considered to fill the space.
“The public and private sector, commodity groups, and farm organizations need to all discuss what we want the future to look like, and establish alignment,” says Parker, adding an “investor mindset” is needed to drive lasting change.
Barley innovation
There is an investor mindset in the barley sector. According to Mitchell Japp, Research and Extension Manager for SaskBarley, a recent study commissioned by the commodity group revealed farmer-funded investments in barley breeding programs have yielded a 26:1 ratio in value – that is, $26 in value to growers for every $1 spent.
“That’s been a pretty positive result,” says Japp, adding other studies have highlighted an even higher return-on-investment.
Developments in malt barley varieties have been particularly notable. The variety AAC Synergy, for example, features better disease resistance, and set yield records bringing it in line with yield performance of top feed barley varieties. Varieties developed since AAC Synergy continue to generate improvements that benefit farmers directly.
Specific ratios aside, the role of Plant Breeders’ Rights in enabling such returns is significant. SaskBarley’s investment in public breeding programs, alongside royalties from certified seed sales, helps maintain the cycle of innovation.
“Royalties are part of that structure. Plant Breeders’ Rights gives a breeder some control over their intellectual property, while allowing farmers flexibility,” says Japp. He adds that some royalties would still be collected in the absence of the PBR framework.
“This system offers a balance between breeder rights and farmer freedoms—flexibility that other forms of intellectual property protection may not provide.”
Public dollars still needed
Private sector companies have played a role in cereals development, but the public sector continues to dominate the field. Indeed, 72% of all barley varieties commercialized from 2012 to 2022 originated from public breeding programs. And, when a valuable variety emerges, it often dominates the market for years or decades.
For Smyth, this highlights the need for better funding models. Changes to Plant Breeders’ Rights alone will not ensure the long-term growth of public sector cereal breeding. As the cost of research and innovation increases, additional public funding is needed to maintain momentum.
“Under various iterations of Growing Forward, used for a couple decades, the dollars going into the public sector have not increased. And inflation didn’t stop. We know everything costs more money. A 25 per cent reduction in funding, when you factor in inflation, means we’re doing less variety development than we were 20 years ago,” says Smyth.
“Governments in Canada really have not stepped up to the plate to try and ensure Canada can contribute to the sustainable development goals, to try and ensure we’re doing as much as we can.”
While Japp acknowledges the difficulty of gathering quantitative data on the changes in investment, he points to results published in two recent scientific studies, one commissioned by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, the other published in the Journal of Plant Breeding and Crop Science (Sutherland et al).1,2
“While the results were mixed, one report found that the 2015 PBR changes led to more investment in breeding. On the other hand, the other report showed that people are happy with the current level of protection under PBR.”
BarleyBin Magazine
This article was first featured in the Fall 2024 edition of the BarleyBin Magazine.
Author: Matt McIntosh, Burr Forest Group
References:
1 Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. (2021). Assessing the impacts of the 2015 legislative amendments to Canada’s Plant Breeders’ Rights Act and UPOV 91. Retrieved from https://agriculture.canada.ca/en/department/transparency/assessing-impacts-2015-legislative-amendments-canadas-plant-breeders-rights-act-and-upov91
2 Sutherland, Chelsea & Macall, Diego & Smyth, Stuart. (2021). Canadian plant breeder opinions regarding changes to plant breeders’ rights. Journal of Plant Breeding and Crop Science. 13. 46-57. 10.5897/JPBCS2020.0936.
