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65 Jingsong Li, Janice Jiggins and Yiching Song
conserve genetic diversity.
Working in partnership with farmers
has greatly strengthened the legitimacy of
the farmers’ position as a stakeholder
claiming rights, and the asymmetry of the
existing legal framework in the way it treats
farmers and commercial organisations has
become apparent. The subsequent development of ABS contract mechanisms has
given legitimacy to the idea of benefit-sharing with farmers in policy discussions.
The PPB and ABS innovations at the
community level have also influenced
formal (public) breeding institutions at
provincial and national level, because plant
breeders from GMRI (at provincial level)
and the ICS (at national level) have been
directly involved in the PPB work at local
level. At each stage of the project, the CCAP
researchers, farmers and breeders jointly
defined problems, developed practical solutions and reflected on the tensions between
PPB work at the local level and regulations
at the national level (mainly seed laws). The
resulting learning was documented and
shared with government through regular
policy workshops and discussions (see
below). This reflexive process provided a
systematic approach for fostering institutional innovation at different levels,
including the adoption of PPB practices by
national breeding institutes and extension
programmes and creating awareness
amongst the Ministry of Agriculture of the
need to reform the national seed regimes.
Further effort is required to stabilize this
capacity in the evolving regime, such as
amendment of existing seed regulations in
order to accommodate farmer improved
varieties, support to public research institutes’ role in breeding oriented to
smallholders and conservation, protection
of the public value created by PPB in relation to agrobiodiversity conservation and
farmer empowerment through ABSrelated agreements, and support to
farmer-led seed production and marketing
(Li et al., forthcoming, b).
The project has also had to address
power relationships. The national breeding institute leads the national agricultural
research system, which has a top-down
organisational style, with a clearly defined
power hierarchy. But unlike any single
disciplinary research project or one
confined to local-level research, the PPB
programme has facilitated interactions
across the power structure (e.g. top-down
bureaucratic settings within the formal
breeding system) to create a network of
relationships among diverse stakeholders
with complementary experiences and
knowledge backgrounds. The team consists
of sociologists and policy researchers from
CCAP, besides that the team also has active
collaboration with GMRI and CAAS
breeders. This has been facilitated by the
close collaboration between agricultural
scientists at local, provincial and national
levels in the PPB process, and the systematic feedback and discussion of local level
results at higher levels. At the same time,
for both breeders and farmers, PPB
became an entry point to explore and identify technological and institutional options
to bridge farmers’ seed systems and the
formal seed system, integrate scientific
knowledge and farmers’ knowledge in
breeding and conservation, and to build
mutual respect and understanding among
farmers and public breeders.
Influencing policy
The PPB project team is engaged in ongoing discussions and exchanging knowledge
with researchers from the CAAS, policy
makers from the Ministry Of Agriculture
(MoA) and the Ministry Of Environmental Protection (MoEP). The PPB
programme has also facilitated and/or
contributed to 12 policy workshops and
roundtable discussions at provincial,
regional, national and international levels
since 2000. These discussions have
included the direct and indirect involvement of national and provincial policy
makers from MoA and MoEP, CAAS,
GMRI and international project partners.