have been unsure of whether to complement or compete with the private sector; confusion has arisen as to how to take advantage of IPR to control the use of public material (Reeves and Cassady, 2002) or to capture royalties for bigger budgets (Fischer and Byerlee, 2002). These trends have triggered concerns that the lure of potential royalty revenue has distorted research priorities in public institutions away from poverty alleviation and sustainability, as has been suggested by research managers in Uganda (Louwaars et al., 2005) and the emergence of the so called "University-Industrial Complex" in which universities are redirecting their research to meet the needs of sponsoring corporations (Press and Washburn, 2000). Historically, public sector institutions have been the dominant distributor and pre-breeder of germplasm (Morris and Ekasingh, 2001). In contrast, the growing private sector has focused on widely commercialized, competitive crops that are well protected by legal or technical IPR (Fernandez-Cornejo and Schimmelpfennig, 2004). This has meant that tropical crops, crops for marginal areas (and other public goods attributes, such as safety, health, and environmental protection), and "orphan crops" have remained outside the orbit of private investment (Naylor et al., 2004; Fernandez-Cornejo and Schimmelpfennig, 2004). This will remain a problem until an incentive is created for private firms to work on marginal crops or funding for these important crops is increased in public institutions.

2.3.1.5 Farmers, public and private sector: roles and relations

Changes in funding and investments and the strengthening of the private sector vis à vis the public sector. While global agricultural research investment has grown dramatically since the 1960s (more than doubling between 1976 and 1995), recent trends indicate a shift from public to private sector dominated research. The top ten multinational bioscience companies spend $3 billion annually on agricultural research while the global CGIAR system will spend just over $500 million in 2007 (see Chapter 8). The system has seen its funding decline over the last 15 years compared to the widening of its mandate to include NRM issues (Pardey and Beintema, 2001). Lack of funding for the CGIAR is expected to have negative consequences for NARS plant breeding, particularly in Africa as more than one-third of the approximately 8,000 NARS released crop varieties were based on IARC germplasm. Additionally, structural adjustment programs have severely affected the ability of developing countries to support their own public R&D budget (Kumar and Sidharthan, 1997; CIPR, 2002; Chaturvedi, 2008). A continued decline in public sector breeding (see Chapter 8), coupled with increased private sector growth will only increase the growing gap in research intensity between rich and poor countries.

Emergence of new institutional arrangements. Public-private partnerships to reach development and sustainability goals. The changing character of the seed industry has highlighted public/private partnerships as potential generators of valuable synergies (Table 2-5). Examples of partnerships that have positively affected small-scale farmers include hybrid rice development in India, insect resistant maize in Kenya, industry led associations to improve seed policy in Kenya

and collaborative efforts to promote biosafety regulation in India (IFPRI, 2005).

     Some public-private partnerships have a strong charitable character; others include a clear, but often long term, commercial benefit to the private partner. However, to date few success stories that are pro-poor have emerged, and even fewer examples have surfaced where partnerships have contributed to food security, poverty reduction and economic growth. Major constraints have been identified, including (1) fundamentally different incentive structures between collaborating organizations; (2) insufficient minimization of costs and risks of collaboration; (3) limited use of creative organizational mechanisms that reduce competition over key assets and resources; and (4) insufficient access to information on successful partnership models (see Spielman and von Grebmer, 2004). Creative IPR strategies may help in the establishment of public-private partnerships. Licensing of IP rights by private to public sector actors for humanitarian uses has facilitated technology transfer, e.g., rice rich in pro-vitamin A and Ringspot Virus Resistance for papaya Asia (Al-Babili and Beyer, 2005; Brewster et al., 2005). Partnerships can be successful as in the case of the Daimler Chrysler collaboration with Poverty and the Environment in Amazonia (POEMA) to use coconut fibers and natural latex rubber (Zahn, 2001; Laird, 2002). Additionally, a recent initiative, the Science and Knowledge Exchange Program, to exchange staff between the public and private sectors may effectively develop productive pro-poor partnerships in food and agriculture. In Africa, schemes have been put forward to promote the acquisition of private sector innovations by the public sector at a price based on their estimated value to society (Kremer, 2003; Master, 2003). Private companies would contribute to crop improvement through partnerships that use local varieties and provide source material and information for improved regulatory passage (Keese et al., 2002; Cohen, 2005). However for complicated genetic transformations, dozens of patents are involved in a single transformation (Guerinot, 2000). In this case, all public and private IPR holders must grant licenses to all IP involved in the final product (Al-Babili and Beyer, 2005). Experience suggests that the public sector must take the lead in such initiatives on crops that are essential for food security, but have marginal profitability.

Renewed involvement of farmers in genetic resource management: Participatory Plant Breeding as a new arrangement. Today, farmers remain indispensable actors in any regime that seeks to conserve, improve, and disseminate genetic diversity. It is estimated that 1.4 billion farmers save seed from year to year (Pimentel et al., 1992; Cleveland et al., 1994; Bellon, 1996). There are many advantages of in situ conservation, in particular the relationship between diversity and yield stability (Amanor, de Boef, and Bebbington, 1993; Trinh et al., 2003; Abidin et al., 2005). Participatory plant breeding and in situ management relies on the collaboration between farmer-breeders and corporate plant breeders (Lipton and Longhurst, 1989; Sthapit et al., 1996; Kerr and Kolavalli, 1999; Almekinders and Elings, 2001; Witcombe et al., 2005). Traditionally, these projects are judged on their ability to produce adapted crop material at