ROME: The United States on Monday signed The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, a platform which aims to ensure better use of genetic diversity to strengthen food security.
Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Director General José Graziano da Silva and Thomas M. Duffy, Chargé d’Affaires ad interim of the U.S. Embassy to Rome, marked the entry into force of the treaty for the United States during a ceremony at the UN food agency’s Rome headquarters.
Duffy said, “The United States looks forward to working with U.S. stakeholders and international partners to continue to strengthen the Treaty to conserve the resources needed for agricultural productivity, resilience and food security.”
“We welcome the membership of the United State of America and we hope that as new countries join the International Treaty, the increased exchange of material and the flow of benefits resulting from their use will translate in more support to local farmers in developing countries who conserve seeds and other planting material,” said Graziano da Silva.
The FAO director general added, “Biodiversity can help us face the impacts of climate change. We need to ensure that farmers have access to seeds, and to promote and support breeding programs in different regions to find the best way to adapt. That is what FAO’s Seed Treaty is all about.”
The United States officially deposited its certificate of adherence three months ago, triggering a three month count-down to its entry into force.
Five other countries Argentina, Bolivia, Guyana, Tuvalu and Chile also joined the treaty with Antigua and Barbuda recently depositing its certificate of adherence. The treaty’s centrepiece is its “Multilateral System” that facilitates access to a globe-spanning collection of plant genetic resources, exclusively for use in research, breeding and training efforts, which also includes measures to ensure the fair and equitable sharing of financial benefits.
The Multilateral System currently applies to 64 foods, feeds and grazing crops maintained by International Agricultural Research Centres or under the management and control of national governments and in the public domain. Those who access the materials must be from the treaty’s ratifying nations and must agree to use the materials only for research, breeding and training purposes.
The Multilateral System now covers over 1.5 million crop “accessions” samples of plants, seeds and crop. Since 2007, the system has transferred 3.2 million of these accessions for research and breeding efforts.
US holds some of the largest public and best-documented crop gene bank collections in the world, with more than 576,600 documented crop accessions to its name. These will now become much more widely available under the treaty’s Multilateral System. Access to the genetic material available in the global gene pool is critical to work by researchers and agronomists to develop new crop varieties with higher nutritional values that are more resistant to pests, diseases and environmental stresses, which give improved yields. Indeed, much of the crop yield achieved in recent decades is attributable to improved new seed varieties developed.
The treaty prevents accessing of genetic resources under the system from claiming intellectual property rights and ensures access to resources already protected by international property rights is consistent with international law.
Under the Treaty’s Benefit Sharing Fund, those who commercialise plants bred with material from the Multilateral System pay a share of their returns into a trust fund used to support efforts to help developing countries improve the conservation and sustainable use of their plant genetic resources.
To date, the treaty has disbursed almost $20 million to help one million farmers stay ahead of climate change through 61 projects in over 55 developing nations. More than 220 civil society organisations, non-governmental organisations, universities, gene banks, national and international research institutions, rural community groups and producers’ organisations have been involved in executing these projects.