The Effectiveness of Seed Intellectual Property on The Rights of Small-Scale Farmers

From the dawn of agriculture, small-scale farmers have been selecting, storing, using, and exchanging common seeds as a result of their successive harvests, and at the same time adopting new methods using the knowledge gained along the way to produce better quality crops. Since Seeds are a staple of food systems around the world, today the vast majority of people, especially those living in developing countries, continue to rely on the same food system and seeds from farmers to ensure food security and biodiversity. From this point of view, recognition of the right to seed is essential for small-scale farmers; This is included in some international documents. On the other hand, after the Industrial Revolution and the establishment of the World Trade Organization, attention to the global seed market, a growing trend towards breeding and new technologies in this field was created and business models of improving the conditions related to intellectual property rights seem to be an incentive to grow. Since the seed is a common point for the basic needs of farmers and breeders on the one hand and a very important case for biodiversity and food security, on the other hand, This article addresses the fundamental question of how intellectual property right on seeds affects the rights of small-scale farmers.