Concentration in ownership of plant variety rights: some implications for developing countries

role of plant breeders’ rights in an evolving peach and nectarine fresh fruit sector

“…This type of analysis has not been carried out in many of these countries because of inefficient time series data being available owing to the later stage at which developing countries joined the UPOV Convention. 12 Studies that have analysed changes in plant variety protection in developed countries include those done by Diez 16 , Srinivasan 17 and Pardey et al 4 These studies have analysed the trends and changes in plant variety protection policies; the effects of IPRs on plant breeding investment; production of new varieties; and market power or concentration, as well as varietal concentration ratios. Louwaars et al 18 and Tripp et al 12 conducted extensive studies on IPRs in five developing countries: China, Colombia, Kenya, Uganda and India.…”

Visualizing Consolidation in the Global Seed Industry: 1996–2008

“…A number of studies of consolidation in the seed industry have examined trends up until the turn of the 21st century [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12], but the most recent, accelerating changes are not as well-characterized [13,14]. In addition, the hundreds of transactions that have reshaped the industry in recent years challenge human cognitive capacities, making the full extent of this process difficult to comprehend.…”

“…The hybrid seed corn industry, which emerged in the 1930s with the advent of high-yielding hybrid varieties as mentioned above, was the first to consolidate. This process accelerated in the 1970s due to enforcement of patent-like protections, which attracted the entrance of chemical and oil companies to add to their portfolio of agricultural inputs [9]. The commercialization of full patent-protected transgenic seeds in the 1990s has triggered greater consolidation in other commodity seeds, such as soybeans and cotton.…”

“…The goal of vertical integration is to own both the biotechnology research & development companies that hold the patent protections for key traits, as well as the seed companies that sell the actual delivery vehicle for these technologies. Global expansion has been facilitated by international trade agreements that broke down previous national barriers to intellectual property protections, and helped privatize seed markets in countries including China, Brazil and India [9,41]. Transnational corporations have recently acquired, or formed joint ventures with, a number of seed companies in these emerging markets.…”

“…Monsanto was not heavily involved in the seed industry before the mid-1980s, but is now the world's largest seed company [9]. Patented technologies played a key role in this rapid takeover.…”