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| THE CONTENTS OF FARMERS'
RIGHTS: Two approaches to Farmers' Rights An international stakeholder survey from the Farmers' Rights Project covering diverse views on Farmers' Rights shows that these many perceptions generally fall within one of two main approaches, or somewhere in-between:  The ownership approach
refers to the right of farmers to be rewarded for genetic material obtained
from their fields and used in commercial varieties and/or protected through
intellectual property rights. The idea is that such a reward system is
necessary to enable equitable sharing of the benefits arising from the use of
agro-biodiversity and to establish an incentive structure for continued
maintenance of this diversity. Access and benefit-sharing legislation and
farmers' intellectual property rights are suggested as central
instruments. The stewardship approach
refers to the rights that farmers must be granted in order to enable them to
continue as stewards and as innovators of agro-biodiversity. The idea is that
the 'legal space' required for farmers to continue this role must be upheld and
that farmers involved in maintaining agro-biodiversity – on behalf of our
generation, for the benefit of all mankind – should be recognized and
rewarded for their contributions.These are very different approaches to Farmers' Rights. How different they can be will become evident when they are applied to the measures suggested for the realization of Farmers' Rights in Article 9 of the International Treaty. This is illustrated in the table below, and is explained in the following pages (from a report by Regine Andersen):
Pages in this sub-section: THE
CONTENTS OF FARMERS' RIGHTS Two
approaches to Farmers' Rights Approaches to protecting farmers'
traditional knowledge Approaches to ensuring equitable benefit
sharing Approaches to ensuring
farmers' participation in decision-making Approaches to farmers' customary
use of propagating material Conditions for the combination of
approaches Towards a
common ground of understanding What this may mean in
practice |
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In this
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