A Natural Superfood, and Intellectual Property

In the United States we are used to an IP regime where the state grants the IP rights (usually limited monopolies) but does not itself own IP. That's not universally true, though. Many other countries rest control of local IP with the government and control its use and export. Two of those countries are Bolivia and Ecuador.

This matters because, as Lisa M. Hamilton reports for Harper's, these countries control the germ plasm (i.e. the biological IP) for quinoa. It's possible that quinoa is just another flash-in-the-pan fad-of-the-month food. But it's also possible that this crop, which contains a variety of nutrients and is the only known plant to have a whole protein, is an important resource in the fight against world hunger and a possible way to stave off the crop depradation

In order to do that, though, it would need to be adapted to grow at something other than the high, cold, barren conditions where it now thrives. If you could get hold of the best seeds this would not be a huge problem. Even in the days before GMOs the Andean potato was taken (by Spanish conquistadors) and crossed with other plant species to get something that now grows pretty much everywhere in the world. Today, though, the best seeds are locked up in the national reserves of Bolivia, which is well aware of the value of its intellectual property, and has no intention of sharing it.

That seems so unfair but consider the history of the potato and that Bolivia is one of the poorest countries in the world right now. The country and its peasant farmers saw not a penny in compensation for the potato so why should it now give away what might be its last and most valuable crop? It is, as the Bolivians say, about food sovereignty. In the end, science may trump sovereignty, as there are wild plants outside Bolivia that share many of the desirable traits of quinoa. Scientists working with those may be able to do an end run around the seed blockade and cross-breed those related wild plants with domesticated crops to get the desirable traits. Or maybe the whole thing will become moot, as no grain is likely to be a significant displacement for current corn and wheat in time to deal with the shifts of climate change.

To me it's like watching a train wreck in slow-motion. There's no perfect outcome here - the best I can hope for is everyone to have a change of heart and the Bolivians manage to negotiate some kind of licensing for their plant IP that helps lift their peasantry out of grinding poverty and gives the world more healthy feeding options.