HO-R2F Program Facilitation & Cap Bldg. Project:
Challenging the impact of patents in plant breeding on food security
Vision for 3 years and overall objectives
The projectaims to use the emergence of #native trait patents#  to:
1. Expose and challenge how patent holders perpetuate extremeinequality inseed and food security through the opportunistic use of a European Directive
2. In the context of threat of climate change, oppose the monopoly of patent holders and corroborate how this stifles innovation in the seed sector and threatens local and global food security
3. Create alliances in the Netherlands and European seed sector by supporting an alternative approach that has functioned over many decades, which is to use the protection though plant breeders# rights the only intellectualproperty rights venue for plant breeding companies.
The foreseen project will link the SD=HS policy agenda focusing on developing countries and international governing bodies closer towards a seed policy agenda in the Netherlands and the European Union.Being a much softer form of intellectual property rights than patents, plant breeders# rights allow farmers to use the new commercial varieties in their own breeding and selection efforts, as they are also promoted and developed by the Oxfam Novib-coordinated Sowing Diversity= Harvesting Security programme.
This tactical #policy influencing # project will take into account that part of the civil society community is also opposed to plantbreeders#  rights as it restricts farmers from saving, using, exchanging and especially selling seeds of the protected varieties themselves (but not in using those seeds in research, breeding and training). However, civil society organizations should also be aware of the fact that patents are most pernicious, and that the breeders# exemption in plant breeder#s rights, that allows the use of protected materials for further research, needs to be protected for the benefit and use of small-scale farmers and public breeding institutions producing public goods. Discussions with potential allies and partners in the context of this project holding such beliefs for the purpose of political analysis will therefore form an important component of project activities.

Context Analysis
Patents,along with other intellectual property rights (IPR), have long been used to incentivize innovation by striking a balance between the interests of innovators and the wider public interest. However, in the last few decades inequality has been compounded by the power of companies to use intellectual property to skew the market in their favour, forcing out competitors and driving up prices. This tendency is also conspicuous in the plant breeding sector. Patents in plant breeding allow companies to fetch higher prices for seedfrom farmers, indeveloped and developing countries alike.
In the European Union, a new type of patents, so-called native trait patents makes misuse of the European Union Biotech Directive 98/44. Clever lawyers have found ways to misuse the directive, implemented by theEuropean Patent Office, to protect traits that have been introduced into crop varieties from naturally occurring wild plants by making crosses between these plants and the commercial varieties. By taking out patents on the crossing process, companies have been able to protect all crop varieties with such naturally occurring traits. This is to the advantage of a few big international breeding companies and it drives small and medium size breeding companies out of the market.
Patents also restrict the useof patented varieties as a source for further research and breeding. Farmers, who have conserved and developed plant varieties for hundreds of years are not allowed to use these protected varieties anymore. Public research institutions that generally breed newcultivars as public goods, for free and for the poorest farmers in developing countries will likewise be restricted in their breeding.  Smaller seed companies in both developing and develop countries will also have no access to these varieties.
Native trait patents, even if grantedfor the process facilitating the transfer of traits, effectively lock up useful agronomic traits as monopoly property of patent holders.
Lack of access to be seeds because of price control and protected varieties by patent owners is a threat to food security, since only continuous innovation will be able to cope with the twin challenges of population growth and climate chang