Srinivasan, C.S. (2003). Exploring the Feasibility of Farmers' Rights
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This article examines the feasibility of farmers' rights provisions based on intellectual property rights.
It argues that the farmers' rights legislation already adopted in some developing countries will involve enormous operational difficulties, while intellectual property rights based farmers' rights are unlikely to provide any significant economic returns to farmers or farming communities. Indeed, they may dilute the incentives for innovation provided to institutional plant breeders, the author argues, noting that this may not be a desirable outcome for developing countries. Conservation projects supported by community gene funds may be a better way to address concerns regarding the conservation of agrobiodiversity, but it would be unrealistic to expect that such funds could be financed through levies on the royalties of plant breeders, the author concludes.