Recently, Kerala Agricultural University was notified as the Center for Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Authority under the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare. This topic is important for the IAS exam.
 Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers Rights:
- It is a law under the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers Rights (PPV&FR) Act, 2001.
- It recognizes the contributions of both commercial plant breeders and farmers in plant breeding activity.
- It also aims to implement TRIPs agreement to support the specific socio-economic interests of all the stakeholders including private, public sectors and research institutions, as well as resource-constrained farmers.
What are the rights available under the PPV&FR Act, 2001?
- Breeders Rights: They will have exclusive rights to produce, sell, market, distribute, import or export the protected variety.
- They can appoint an agent/ licensee and may exercise for civil remedy in case of infringement of rights.
- Researchers Rights: A researcher can use any of the registered varieties under the Act for conducting an experiment or research.
- This includes the use of a variety as an initial source of variety for the purpose of developing another variety but repeated use needs the prior permission of the registered breeder.
- Farmers Rights: A farmer who has evolved or developed a new variety is entitled to registration and protection in like manner as a breeder of a variety.
- Farmer’s variety can also be registered as an extant variety;
- Farmers are eligible for recognition and rewards for the conservation of Plant Genetic Resources of land races and wild relatives of economic plants;
- They can save, use, sow, re-sow, exchange, share or sell their farm produce which includes seed protected under the PPV&FR Act, 2001;
- They can get compensation for non-performance of variety under Section 39 (2) of the Act, 2001;
- They are not liable to pay any fee in any proceeding before the Authority or Registrar or the Tribunal or the High Court under the Act.
Objective of the new notification:
- It has been made to protect the rights of Kerala farming communities over the traditional plant varieties.
- Any person/group or any governmental/non-governmental organization can claim compensation on behalf of those communities.
Drawbacks:
- Detrimental to the culture of freedom in innovation and research.
- Private investments take a back seat if not incentivised.
- Big foreign players get away from investing.
- Inhibits transfer of cutting edge technological know-hows.Â
Way forward: The PPV&FR Act along with other regulations do help protect the rights of the Indian farmers. Nevertheless, better awareness of provisions among the farming community is needed. It will prevent the exploitation by multinational biotechnology companies in the name of patents as well.
Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act, 2001:- Download PDF Here
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