Biopiracy of Local Seed Varieties: Implications of Intellectual Property Rights on Smallholder Farmers in Southern Africa

Intellectual property rights (IPRS) do have great impacts on food security in Africa. They undermine the rights of farmers to save, use,reuse and exchange seeds to achieve household food security. Seed is the first link in the food chain process and as a result should not be privatized. This book raises food security challenges resulting from the implementation of IPRs. Traditionally,innovation in African agriculture has proceeded through collective community processes, drawn from customary practices based on sharing. This right is being pushed away by IPRS. IPRs are infact an attempt to privatize small- farmers' innovative practices and biological resources and reorganize its seed markets for the benefit of foreign corporations. This book investigates the implications of IPRs on indigenous knowledge systems (IKS)and local seed saving systems in Southern Africa. The objective of this book is therefore to facilitate the emergence of a critical mass of well-informed stakeholders in the Southern African region including decision-makers, negotiators as well as the private sector and civil society to enable them to define their own food production systems.