ICTSD Outputs and Activities on Biotechnology, Trade and Sustainble Development

Biotechnology: Addressing Key Trade and Sustainability Issues

B.1 Environmental, health-related and socio-economic considerations

Q7 What has been the role of the private and public sectors in biotechnology research?

While the public sector has provided some of the key innovations necessary for the development of biotechnology tools and products, the commercialisation of biotech products has been driven by the private sector, notably from pharmaceutical, industrial and chemicals companies (Charles, 2001; Graff et al., 2003). The pioneers of agricultural biotechnology were scientists at the chemical firms that had developed, promoted and marketed pesticides and herbicides and were looking for new technologies with lower health and environmental impacts. As a result, companies like Monsanto poured money into the early years of biotechnology research, both doing work in-house and purchasing relevant work of university researchers (Winston, 2002).

In the process, some of the major breakthroughs in the field - the discovery of the Agrobacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis and the gene gun - either happened within the private sector or ended up under the protection of their intellectual property rights. After decades of financing basic and applied research, private sector actors began turning out biotech crops to cash in on lucrative markets in the US and other developed-country markets. At the same time, they created partnerships with plant breeding companies to incorporate their technologies into local varieties. These multinational companies continue a complex pattern of consolidation and mergers that has enabled them to finance cutting-edge research and safeguard the results through intellectual property rights. Today, the supply of GM seeds is dominated by a few large companies, including Aventis, Dow, Du Pont, Mitsui, Monsanto and Syngenta, which are estimated to control 98 percent of the global market for patented biotech crops (ActionAid, 2003).

The freedom of operation, salaries and flexibility offered by these companies led in the 1980s and 1990s to a movement of top researchers in the biological sciences to private companies, thereby shifting the locus of biological scientific research in the last half of the twentieth century from universities to the private sector (Charles, 2001). Some have argued that this has resulted in a shift in research away from farm-level technologies to increase agricultural productivity - traditionally the focus of the public sector - towards a greater emphasis on commercially important food products and agrochemicals by the private sector (see also Section B.4).

This shift towards private sector control is in marked contrast to what happened during the Green Revolution when new varieties of developing country crops created by research conducted in public sector research institutions and those of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) led to an explosion in agricultural productivity in developing countries. The research environment was, in comparison to that of modern biotechnology, much more centred on the public sector, characterised by more sharing of genetic resources amongst research institutions, weaker intellectual property protection of the final results and greater (explicit and implicit) orientation towards addressing public policy objectives.

These differences in the research environment have - at least partly - been attributed to certain differences between biotechnology and conventional agricultural research (Trigo, 2005). Biotechnology research involves the use of basic sciences, such as biology, genetics, biochemistry, physiology and high-cost specialised research into new genes and how to insert them directly into seeds. In contrast, conventional research depended on the cross-breeding of crops and a direct link to how the technology could be applied. In the latter scenario, the direction of research is from specific problems to scientific inquiry, while for biotechnology crops the research into genetic constructs is more 'horizontal' and basic-science. As such, biotechnology research demands multi-disciplinary, high-level research with relatively more expensive tools, which increases the incentive to make the resulting technology proprietary. Others have argued that the additional cost of complying with biotech-specific safety regulations has also contributed to significant increases in the cost of bringing a biotech product to the market. Yet others point to cuts in funding to international agricultural research in the 1990s which has slowed down research in crops and traits of importance to small-scale farmers in developing countries but of limited commercial value.

Nevertheless, publicly-funded institutions have made strides in promoting research into GM varieties that meet the needs of developing countries (Cohen, 2005). Notably, all biotechnology research in China is conducted by the public sector and dates back to the 1980s. Crop biotechnology research networks also provide interesting examples of using biotechnology and entrepreneurship as tools of empowerment for rural communities (Aernie, 2006). The Cassava Biotechnology Network, for instance, brings together cassava researchers and end-users who apply biotechnological tools to cassava - one of the key staple crops in Africa - to address challenges facing small-scale agricultural producers in particular, such as pest and virus infestation or high cyanide content in some varieties.

In addition, several public-private partnerships have developed. Research, for example, has been conducted on virus-resistant sweet potatoes by the Kenyan Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) in Nairobi in partnership with Monsanto and with assistance from USAID and the World Bank, though some controversy surrounds the choice of the crop, trait and the results from the project (DeGrassi, 2003). Other examples include 'Golden Rice' which was developed by university scientists who subsequently signed a deal with Syngenta that allows for free dissemination of the variety to poor farmers (see Biotech Headline 8). Interestingly, dozens of private-sector owners of patents on the inputs used to create Golden Rice decided to waive their rights in this case because the GMO was targeted at poverty reduction in developing countries. However, most institutions find the regulatory requirements and availability of patented seeds to be particularly challenging.

Virtually all analyses of the impact of biotechnology on poverty alleviation and sustainable development agree that more public sector initiatives and public-private partnerships aimed at meeting the needs of the poor are necessary to make biotechnology deliver on its potential to address poverty reduction and enhance food security in developing countries (Sithole-Niang et al., 2004).