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Lessons to be learned from Marquis wheat
by Paul Beingessner
(Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2004 -- CropChoice guest commentary) -- Cross breeding of plants to produce new varieties is a relatively recent
science, little more than 100 years old. Improving plant varieties by
selection, on the other hand, has been going on for about 10,000 years.
All cross breeding, or modern plant breeding, is built on that first
10,000 years during which farmers around the world created an astounding
legacy.
One hundred years ago, no one owned plant varieties. Plant breeders
around the world co-operated by sharing germplasm and passing on new
discoveries. The creation of Marquis wheat, forerunner of nearly all
bread wheats in western Canada, illustrates how plant breeders built on
the legacy left by generations of farmers. Marquis is a cross between
Red Fife and Hard Red Calcutta. Red Fife was brought from Scotland, by a
farmer who got the seeds from a Polish ship that carried wheat from the
Ukraine. It was given to another Scottish farmer in Ontario, David Fife.
Hard Red Calcutta came from India, but it was a type of wheat rather
than a single variety. Crossed with Red Fife and carefully selected for
several generations, it yielded Marquis wheat. By 1918, Marquis was
grown on more than 20 million acres, from northern Saskatchewan to
southern Nebraska. James Boyle of the College of Agriculture at Cornell
University said this about Marquis wheat: "The greatest single advance
in wheat ever made by the United States was the introduction of that
class of hard spring wheat known as Marquis wheat. The idea came to us
free of charge from the Dominion of Canada's cerealist, Sir Charles E.
Sanders."
The development of Marquis expanded wheat production and brought
agricultural and economic prosperity. It also brought great numbers of
immigrants to the southern parts of the three western provinces.
The development of Marquis wheat is a story of co-operation.
Co-operation, whether wittingly or not, between farmers of that day in
Poland, the Ukraine, Scotland, India, Canada and the United States, and
farmers from thousands of years before, whose careful work in selecting
and preserving wheat seeds made all the other co-operation possible.
This co-operation occurred because people recognized the importance of
progress and development, and they knew it would only happen if people
shared their knowledge.
Contrast this with the story of Larry Proctor and the yellow bean. Larry
Proctor was a Colorado farmer who went to Mexico in 1994 and brought
back some unusually colored beans. They were cream-colored, with a
yellow hue, or so he said. Proctor planted the seeds. He claims that,
generation after generation, (all five of them) he selected for deeper
yellow color. With each generation, Proctor says, the roots ran deeper
than other bean plants; the plants were more resistant to drought.
This was special, Proctor thought, and he wanted to protect it. So he
got a plant variety protection certificate from the USDA, which gave him
exclusive rights to multiply the new creation he called the Enola bean.
Then he went a step further, to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, to
apply for a patent for his new invention. This would prevent others from
developing any new beans based on the Enola. And, he thought, it would
give hurting farmers in his Colorado valley a chance to grow beans that
could fetch a better price. In 1999, the government awarded the patent
to Proctor's company, based on the bean's color.
There was only one problem with Larry Proctor's version of history.
Yellow beans found in Mexico have been dated back some 4,000 years to a
time prior even to the Incas. And in the late 1970's, plant breeders in
Mexico had taken some of the native yellow beans and bred them to
produce a new variety - a variety that looks identical to Proctor's Enola.
In fact a Mexican entrepreneur living in the U.S. was importing yellow
beans to sell to Mexican migrant workers and immigrants from Mexico who
had grown up eating those beans. In 1998, she imported and sold 6
million pounds. In 1999, patent in hand, Larry Proctor shut down her
business by demanding a royalty on the beans he had "invented".
As a footnote, The Center for International Tropical Agriculture, in
Cali, Colombia, is challenging Proctor's patent. In its collection of
over 260 types of yellow beans is one with an identical genetic
footprint to the bean Proctor patented.
As a result of actions like those of Larry Proctor, public seed banks
like CIAT are now demanding that researchers in the United States and
elsewhere sign agreements not to use the seed for commercial purposes,
lest this public knowledge get locked up by private interests.
You can see that the story of Larry Proctor's beans is an exact opposite
to that of Marquis wheat. Proctor's patent, which is so broad that it
encompasses all beans of almost any shade of yellow, was intended
specifically to stop further research on yellow beans. He wanted to
prevent others from developing any new beans based on the Enola. Where
would wheat breeding have gone on the Canadian prairies if Charles
Saunders had been able to patent Marquis wheat?
The patenting of plants, far from encouraging innovation, as is the
purpose of patents, is now used to stifle innovation. It allows
companies to tie up germplasm for their exclusive use. While plant
breeders' rights do not now allow a breeder to restrict further work
using his creation, patents do. We do not yet allow patenting of plants
in Canada, but the pressure is on to do so. Farmers must let their
voices be heard.
(c) Paul Beingessner (306) 868-4734 phone 868-2009 fax
beingessner@sasktel.net | |
