This article has been written by Ms. Samriddhi Vishen, a 2nd year LL.B. student of Shri Jai Narain Misra PG College (KKC), Lucknow.
In order to treat the interests of plant breeders and farmers equally, the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act (PPV&FR Act) was enacted. It reaffirms the need to acknowledge and defend farmers’ rights in light of their commitment to the preservation, enhancement, and availability of Plant Genetic Resources (PGR) for the creation of new plant varieties.
The PPV&FR Act acknowledges the various responsibilities that farmers play in producing, preserving, creating, and selecting varieties. The Act refers to the value that farmers give to wild species or traditional varieties or landraces through selection and identification for their economic qualities when it comes to developing and selecting varieties. In light of this, the rights of farmers cover their roles as conservers, users and breeders. Thus, this article attempts to explain the provisions related to farmers’ rights under the Plant Varieties Act in India.
Rights of Farmers
The following specific rights are granted to farmers under the Plant Varieties Act, which are as under:
Right 1: Access to seed [Section 39(1)(iv)]
Farmers will have the same rights to conserve, use, sow, re-sow, exchange, share, and sell their farm products, including seed from protected varieties, as they did before the PPV&FR Act went into effect. Farmers are not permitted to sell branded seed of a variety that is protected by this Act, nevertheless. The amount of seed that farmers can save from a harvest grown on their own farms from a protected variety is not specified under the Act.
Right 2: Benefit-sharing [Section 26]
All Indian legal entities, including farmers, who give PGR to breeders for the development of new varieties are entitled to a fair portion of the profits from the commercial gains of the registered varieties. The PPV&FR Act is the first national plant variety protection law passed since 2001 to incorporate an access and benefit-sharing (ABS) along with PBRs. The Biological Diversity Act, 2002 governs this topic instead of the Act, which does not address the legal accession of genetic resources employed in breeding. However, the PPV&FR Act mandates that a breeder produce a sworn declaration regarding the origin and method of access of the genetic materials employed in the pedigree of the new variety.
Right 3: Compensation [Section 39(2)]
The agronomic performance of registered seed must be fully disclosed when it is marketed under recommended management conditions. Farmers have the right to recompense from the breeder through the PPV&FR Authority if such seed is sold to them but does not perform as expected under the under recommended management conditions.
Right 4: Reasonable seed price [Section 47]
Farmers have a right to affordable access to registered variety seeds. If this requirement is not met, the breeder’s exclusive ownership of the variety is suspended in accordance with the compulsory licensing clause, and the breeder is required to grant a license to a qualified legal entity for the production of seeds, distribution, and sales of the variety. To ensure that farmers have access to enough seeds, the majority of plant variety protection laws include clauses requiring protected varieties to be licenced under strict conditions. A few of these laws also utilize unjust pricing as a rationale for compulsory licensing.
Right 5: Farmers’ recognition and reward for contributing to conservation [Section 39(i)(iii) & Section 45(2)(C)]
The national gene fund recognises and rewards farmers who have participated in PGR conservation and agricultural development and who have significantly contributed genetic resources for crop improvement. The gene fund receives funding from the Act’s implementation, which is then supplemented by donations from domestic and foreign organizations. The fund can be seen as a national equivalent to the global benefit-sharing fund operating under the ITPGRFA, as outlined by Andersen (Chapter 6.2), because its expenses are designated to encourage the conservation and sustainable use of PGR. Since 2007, the Plant Genome Savior Award which is associated with National Gene Fund has recognised agricultural communities and individual farmers for their support of in situ conservation on-farm and the selection of PGR (Bala Ravi and Parida, 2007).
Right 6: Registration of farmers’ varieties [Section 39(1)(iii)]
Existing farmer’s varieties that meet the conditions for distinctness, uniformity, stability, and denomination may be registered under the Indian PPV&FR Act, however the requirement for novelty is not one of them. From the time a crop species is added to the crop portfolio under the PPV&FR Act for registration, this right gives farmers a one-off opportunity for a limited period of time. These varieties are entitled to all PBRs once registered.
Right 7: Prior authorization for the commercialization of essentially derived varieties [Section 28 (6)]
Farmers have the benefit of being fully exempt from paying any fees or other payments that are typically required for variety registration, tests for distinctness, uniformity, and stability (DUS), and other services provided by the PPV&FR Authority, as well as for legal proceedings related to infringement or other causes, under the terms of the PPV&FR Act.
Right 8: Exemption from registration fees for farmers [Section 44]
Under the PPV&FR Act, farmers have the privilege of being completely exempt from paying any kind of fees or other payments that are normally payable for variety registration; tests for distinctness, uniformity and stability (DUS), and other services rendered by the PPV&FR Authority; as well as for legal proceedings related to infringement or other causes.
Right 9: Farmer protection from accidental infringement [Section 42]
A farmer won’t be held accountable if they can demonstrate in court that they had no knowledge of any legal rights at the time they violated them, as described in the PPV&FR Act. This clause takes into account the farmers’ long-standing, unrestricted rights to all types of seed, the novelty of the PPV&FR Act, and the farmers’ low level of legal literacy.
Case Laws
- Sungro Seeds Ltd. v. Union of India- In this case, it was discussed whether a plant variety’s seed should be regarded as unique if a hybrid seed is produced from it. The petitioner had argued that a decision made by the Registrar against them was impugned. The Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Authority issued a decision stating that parent lines of well-known hybrid plant varieties may not be registered as “new” plant varieties under the provisions of the PVP&FA. A parental seed would still be eligible to be considered under the category of a novel product, according to the petitioners, and a hybrid and a parental seed can be registered for novelty separately under the Act even when a hybrid crop has been developed from a parental seed. It was decided that the hybrid’s parental lines cannot be considered unique if they fall into the category of an existing variety that is well-known.
- Umakant Dubey v. The Chairperson of PPVFR- The Court argued that a provision of a parent Act cannot be overridden by subordinate law. The Authority can make direct recruitments and appointments after jobs have been formed if the requisite approval is obtained from the Central Government, the court said, and it should consider the effects of Rules 3 and 20 of the Act. It was therefore decided that the petitioners could continue working for the Authority and that they were free to approach court at any moment if the Authority tried to remove them in the future.
- Pioneer Overseas Corporation v. Chairperson- In this case, the request for a special test was reinstated in the registrar’s file. Based on the findings of the DUS test, the Court initially decided that both varieties’ traits met the requirements for the test and that they were almost identical to one another when compared inter se. According to the aforementioned, the Registrar’s orders that Kaveri cannot apply for registration and that the special test as requested by Pioneer be restored to the Registrar’s file were set aside by the ACC. As a result, the parties were left to cover their own expenses.
Conclusion
The farmers’ rights of the Act [Chapter VI] specifies farmers’ privileges, including the ability to defend cultivars they have created or preserved. Farmers are permitted to use, save, resow, share, exchange and sell farm products of protected varieties, except sales made according to commercial marketing arrangement (branded seeds). Additionally, protection against innocent infringement has been given to farmers [Section 42 (1)] when they violate breeder rights without knowing they are doing so.
References
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