There are few topics as polarizing as genetically-engineered (GE) crops and this is not going to be another discussion of the reasons for or against. Suffice it to say there have been plenty of concerns voiced over the years and that many of them (see this great TED talk by Stewart Brand) have now been quieted. GE crops have real benefits and they’re not going away.
That said, there are a number of important issues that still require constant attention, none more important than the question of ownership. No one wants to see a few major companies in charge of the world’s food supply, yet that is increasingly the case as farming becomes more industrialized. Who owns seeds, GE or natural, who owns patents on traits or core technologies, and who can get access to these resources and tools are real and growing concerns.
A counterbalance to industrialized agricultural biotechnology could be the same tools and technologies being used in the public domain. Author, activist and agriculture expert Michael Pollan has been stumping for an open source movement for GE crops for the better portion of a decade. The use of open source in software development has demonstrated that, at least in some industries, open developers can effectively compete against industrial giants.
Unfortunately, the movement towards open source GE is a slow starter. The sheer size of agri-business and the complexity of patent laws related to GE products have made quite a mess. As the non-profit foundation Grain pointed out in a 2001 report: “Today, with the breeding sector dominated by a few mega-corporations, patents on plants and livestock, and draconian restrictions on farmers, are the norm in most industrialized nations.”
One of those mega-corporations is Syngenta. This Swiss-based agri-business firm is a behemoth: 27,000 employees in some 90 countries, with a 2012 total of $1.87 billion in net profits. And here’s the interesting part: Syngenta has lately begun taking a few key steps to turn themselves into the anti-Monsanto.
For starters, in January of 2013, they decided to launch the world’s first e-licensing platform, known as TraitAbility, to provide “quick and easy” access to patented Syngenta traits for commercial vegetables and also to enabling technologies used for moving genes into plants and expressing proteins. “Our hope,” says Christine Gould,” Syngenta’s senior manager for global public policy, “is to become the iTunes of plant patents. It’s one stop shopping for fair prices and with as much transparency as possible.”
The core idea here is sustainability. With the world heading towards a population of nine billion, Syngenta has come to realize that the only way to feed everyone is to foster as much innovation in food systems and technology as possible. While they don’t want to totally abandon the idea of IP, they are interested in modifying it to offer both protection to the innovators and access to outsiders, be they competitors or potential collaborators.
TraitAbility is designed to give breeders the ability to obtain licenses without the expensive legal teams currently needed to wade through the process and paperwork, but what it really does is set the stage for open innovation and collaboration.
From the high level view, what we’re seeing here is the intersection of two important exponential growth patterns. One is population growth, which will continue to put greater demands on the food production system. The other is the growing global access to powerful and affordable DNA technologies. By making it straightforward to license patented traits, Syngenta can support GE innovation while concurrently reducing the growing risk of gene piracy.
With the e-license system, academics and non-profit breeders can get free licenses to experiment with combining multiple traits -- for example, pest and drought resistance – into plants, tailoring them to their locales. It can also better support access by small and mid-size commercial groups.
With an organization as large as Syngenta, change will take time. The immediate benefit may simply be more transparency for the public into their business, a necessary precursor for greater trust. But with genetic technologies advancing much faster than computing, opening up their corporate jewels to more innovators could prove to be just good business sense, giving them an advantage over their closed competitors.
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