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Research Projects IP9 - Biotechnology NCCR Publications Benefiting from Biotechnology: Promoting small-farm competitiveness and intellectual property rights
| Benefiting from Biotechnology: Promoting small-farm competitiveness and intellectual property rights |
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B. Karapinar and M. Temmerman, Benefiting from Biotechnology: Promoting small-farm competitiveness and intellectual property rights, 4 ATDF Journal 3 (2007), available at: http://www.atdforum.org/IMG/pdf_ATDF_Journal_Volume_4_Issue_3_Competition.pdf Abstract: The Green Revolution has contributed to alleviating poverty and hunger of hundred of millions of people, but remained technically and institutionally limited: it has largely bypassed small farms located in dry agro-ecological regions and its institutionally “top-down” approach was not equipped to address social, economic and environmental variations at the local level. However, with new developments in biotechnology, including genetic engineering, unprecedented possibilities to address the competitiveness of small farmers in Africa have risen. Yet, there are new challenges too. The new technology is driven by the private sector, which is not attracted to investing in research towards developing biotechnology specifically addressing the needs of small farms in Africa. Moreover, the accessibility of the existing technologies to small farmers is argued to be impeded by the intellectual property rights (IPR) leading to monopoly prices and hindering technology diffusion. Therefore, this paper analyses how intellectual property rights can be domestically tailored within the existing international commitments so as to incite the development of technologies that are favouring and accessible to small-scale farmers in Africa. |
