Rome
THE new 鈥済reen revolution鈥� needed to feed the world鈥檚 poor in the next century may fail because of aggressive patenting by companies in the rich, well-fed world, the UN World Food Summit heard this week.
Ismail Serageldin, chairman of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), fears that biotechnology patents held by companies will create a 鈥渟cientific apartheid鈥�, which locks the 80 per cent of people in developing countries out of scientific advances.
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Companies are trying to patent new techniques as well as final products, says Serageldin. The spirit of cooperation that forged the first green revolution, which was largely conducted in the international crop research centres run by the CGIAR, is being lost, he says. 鈥淭here is not likely to be the same free flow of information and germ plasm that we have known to date.鈥�
The CGIAR is based in Washington DC at the headquarters of the World Bank. It is funded by the World Bank, aid agencies and companies. It runs 18 research centres round the world, including the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines, which transformed rice production in the 1960s and 1970s by developing new high-yield varieties.
At the World Food Summit in Rome this week, governments are expected to sign an 鈥渁ction plan鈥� to feed the world in the next century, based around new agricultural research. But if this goal is to be met, says Serageldin, companies pioneering new methods of genetically engineering crops must 鈥渞each special arrangements鈥� to allow these technologies to be used to help feed people in the poorest parts of the world.
The loudest complaints about the patenting of agricultural biotechnology were heard two years ago, when Agracetus, a company based in Wisconsin, was granted a European patent for genetically engineered soya beans. The technique developed by the company creates transgenic plants by shooting particles of gold coated with DNA into cells. But the patent covers any process of making transgenic beans (This Week, 30 April 1994, p 7). The patent has since been sold to the Missouri-based agrochemicals giant Monsanto.
鈥淢odern agricultural technology is on a knife edge,鈥� says Gordon Conway, vice-chancellor of the University of Sussex and author of a recent CGIAR report on the future of agricultural research. 鈥淯nlike almost any other technology, it can provide cheap products for the very poor. But equally it can be captured by the rich, and that is what is in danger of happening.鈥�