(agreeing on most of your mail, BUT - and it's a BIG BUT)
>I agree. The breeding enterprise (public AND private) has worked like a
>gigantic recurrent selection system, and improved private germplasm always
>leaks out eventually into the public domain, to serve as raw material for
>new cycles. This is a public good.
wrong for europe !! (see below)
you also wrote:
>>So the varieties we come up with are truly new, not stolen from
>>the public pool. The resources, the raw material, is still
>>there. Do you want some of these varieties? you can get
>>them from the USDA:
and mark champagn's answer:
>Dale's reasoning seems (as usual) fairly solid, but what is
>being proved? That sexual recombination in plant breeding is
>difficult? Yes. That it is expensive? OK. That it requires
>organization of people and across space? Definitely.
as i got my first degree in horticulture (where varieties are
more valuable than in agriculture and where there are much more
varieties than in agriculture - think of apples, there are about
40.000!! varieties of dahlia. well, there are also more than
100.000 varieties of rice, we actually have a guest professor
from china working on variety testing, who told me that), i as a
vegetable gardener certainly am very thankful to the work of private
breeders and it's out of discussion for me, that they have their
share in today's improvements of plant cultivation and we will have
to pay their impressive work (esp. in vegetable breeding) like
everybody else.
nevertheless i see some excesses in the legal aspects of
properties in AGRIculture.
(a first start for the basics might be rafi's article on their
homepage rafi.org, look out for "plant breeders rights and wrongs"
and especially the behavior of breeders from "down-under". they
STOLE germplasm and even CGIAR and the other breeders were extremely
upset. another very good source from the same homepage is the work
of the dag hammarskoel foundation in norway: "the parts of life",
written by p.r. mooney)
the situation here in europe: the ENTIRE public germplasm of
britain (and afiak austria) was sold to zenica. most of the very
valuable grain germplasm from russia (some say it's was the most
valuable wheat germplasm worldwide and russia always in lack of
foreign exchange) was also sold out to private companies. so "gone
with the wind" for farmers, who would try to get it from public
sources.
another problem: even if i can get it from a germplasm center
like ars-grin, cimmyt, clima or grdc or singer, the public law
would still force me to pay royalities (an automatic system,
where every farmer has to pay a certain amount of money depending
on his seeding area, it's assumed, that he buys certified seed
for half of this area - for which he pays the full royality - and
the other half from his own multiplication, for which he has to
pay royalities to a fund. the money collected there is
distributed among the national breeders) still worse: even if i
managed to multiply the sample from the public germplasm centers
(would it be more than 1 pound?), it would be highly ILLEGAL to
even offer one single grain FOR FREE to my neighbor. trade,
marketing and exchange are EXCLUSIVELY allowed within the four
generations "pre-basic", "basic" and "certified 1.generation" and
"certified 2.generation". NO WAY OUT of that except by a fine of
about 10.000$ plus the loss for the fund (and you still have to
destroy it).
that makes the PURELY THEORETICAL option "multiplying publicly
available germplasm" a farce!! in whole europe PRACTICALLY it
isn't possible ANY MORE !!!!
the line between 'theoretical' and 'practical' is not so fine as
often claimed. comparing american rights of saving seeds vs.
these in europe, that makes your country a paradise for
home-saved seed growers.
give to the king, what belongs to him. but only give, what really
belongs to him and nothing more !! we in europe meanwhile will
have to give to him, what definitely does not belong to him !!
americans, take care !!
klaus
---------------
klaus wiegand
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