Open Source for Seeds and Genetic Sequence Data: Practical experience and future strategies

Auteurs

Ida Westphal
Maywa Montenegro
Daniele Manzella
Gloria Otieno
Sophie Steigerwald
Jack Kloppenburg

DOI :

https://doi.org/10.19182/agritrop/00063

Mots-clés


Seed exchange, open source, intellectual property rights, copyleft, licence, pledge, genetic resource, gentic sequence data, biological material, plant breeding

Couverture

United States; Germany; East Africa; Global South

Résumé

Version française de l'article

Application of the open source concept to seeds has a promising future. It reverses the logic of the intellectual property system with a renewable stock of open source material kept outside the exclusive intellectual property realm. Legal defensibility may currently be uncertain, but as open source builds a critical mass of practitioners and supporters, wider social legitimacy could strengthen the legal power. Future extension to other subject matter and settings is discussed on the basis of lessons learnt from current open source seed implementation experience in the US, Europe and Africa.

Biographies des auteurs

Sélim Louafi

Sélim Louafi is a social scientist at CIRAD (France) in the UMR AGAP (Genetic Improvement and Adaptation of Mediterranean and Tropical Plants joint research unit, https://umr-agap.cirad.fr/en). He works on science and global policy interactions in the field of agricultural biodiversity.

Ida Westphal

Ida Westphal is a German lawyer with a specialization in agricultural and environmental law. As a Mercator Fellow on International Affairs (https://www.stiftung-mercator.de/en/), she is currently working on alternative licensing models for seeds.

Maywa Montenegro

Maywa Montenegro is a social scientist specializing in political ecology and Science-Technology-Society approaches to seed epistemologies, policies and politics. She has a PhD in Environmental Science, Policy and Management from the University of California, Berkeley (https://ourenvironment.berkeley.edu), and is currently a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Davis https://www.ucdavis.edu/).

Daniele Manzella

Daniele Manzella is a legal and policy expert at the Secretariat of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture at FAO, Rome, Italy (ITPGRFA, FAO, http://www.fao.org/in-action/right-to-food-global/global-level/itpgrfa/en/).

Gloria Otieno

Gloria Otieno is a Genetic Resources and Food Security Policy Specialist at Bioversity International, Uganda (https://www.bioversityinternational.org/). She holds a PhD in Development Economics from the International Institute of Social Studies of the Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam, Netherlands (EUR, https://www.eur.nl/).

Sophie Steigerwald

Sophie Steigerwald is a German Master’s student in Organic Agriculture. She is interested in plant breeding and seed policy and is working for the OpenSourceSeeds organization (https://www.opensourceseeds.org/en).

Jack Kloppenburg

Jack Kloppenburg is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Community and Environmental Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, US (UWM, https://uwm.edu/). He is a founder of the Open Source Seed Initiative (OSSI, https://osseeds.org).

Références

Authors' publications

Coomes O. T., McGuire S., Garine E., Caillon S., McKey D. B., Demeulenaere E., Jarvis D., Aistara G., Barnaud A., Clouvel P., Emperaire L., Louafi S., Martin P., Massol F., Pautasso M., Violon C., Wencelius J., 2015. Farmer seed networks make a limited contribution to agriculture? Four common misconceptions. Food Policy 56: 41-50. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2015.07.008

Kloppenburg J., 2014. Re-purposing the master's tools: the open source seed initiative and the struggle for seed sovereignty. The Journal of Peasant Studies 41 (6): 1 225-1 246. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2013.875897

Louafi S., Welch E. W., 2014. Disentangling the debate on open access for meeting global challenges in life science. In: Innovation for sustainable development. Grosclaude J.-Y., Pachauri R. K., Tubiana L. (Eds). TERI Press, New Delhi, p. 145-159. ISBN 978-8179935569. http://agritrop.cirad.fr/573370

Louafi S., Bazile D., Noyer J.-L., 2013. Conserving and cultivating agricultural genetic diversity: transcending established divides. In: Cultivating biodiversity to transform agriculture. Hainzelin É. (Eds). Springer, Dordrecht, p. 181-230. ISBN 978-94-007-7983-9. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7984-6_6

Luby C. H., Kloppenburg J., Michaels T. E., Goldman I. L., 2015. Enhancing freedom to operate for plant breeders and farmers through open source plant breeding. Crop Science 55 (6): 2 481-2 488. https://doi.org/10.2135/cropsci2014.10.0708

Montenegro de Wit M., 2019. Beating the Bounds: How Does ‘Open Source’ Become a Commons for Seed? The Journal of Peasant Studies 46 (1): 44-79. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2017.1383395

Montenegro de Wit M., 2016. Are We Losing Diversity? Navigating Ecological, Political, and Epistemic Dimensions of Agrobiodiversity Conservation. Agriculture and Human Values 33 (3): 625-640. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-015-9642-7

Other references

Bollier D., 2014. Think like a commoner: A short introduction to the life of the commons. New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, BC, 192 p. ISBN: 9780865717688. http://thinklikeacommoner.com

Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). https://www.cgiar.org/

Commons Transition Platform. https://primer.commonstransition.org/

International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV). https://www.upov.int

Labeyrie V., Thomas M., Muthamia Z. K., Leclerc C., 2016. Seed exchange networks, ethnicity, and sorghum diversity. PNAS 113 (1): 98-103. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1513238112

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Publié

2018-07-13

Comment citer

Louafi, S., Westphal, I., Montenegro, M., Manzella, D., Otieno, G., Steigerwald, S., & Kloppenburg, J. (2018). Open Source for Seeds and Genetic Sequence Data: Practical experience and future strategies. Perspective, (49), 1–4. https://doi.org/10.19182/agritrop/00063