MVS to Host Session for the World Food PrizeSeptember 26, 2024

Heidi Sease Nebel

Partner, Patent Attorney, Chair, Chemical and Biotechnology Practice Group

On October 29-31, in Des Moines, Iowa, in conjunction with the presentation of the World Food Prize, the “Borlaug Dialogue” will bring together international experts, policy leaders, business executives, and farmers to address cutting-edge issues in global food security and nutrition. The event attracts over 1,000 participants from more than fifty countries and has been referred to as the premier conference in the world on global agriculture.

MVS is honored to host a side session (which can be attended free of charge to both registrants and non- registrants) with an incredible list of speakers on Wednesday, October 30th, from 7:00 am to 8:30 am CST. The session will focus on the critical role of Intellectual Property (IP) in promoting food security.

The importance of IP in food security is underscored by this year’s honorees, Dr. Geoffrey Hawtin and Dr. Cary Fowler, who are being honored for their leadership in preserving and protecting crop biodiversity in Genebanks to defend against threats to global food security. Global crop biodiversity and genetic resources are essential to long-term food security in the face of climate change, pandemics, conflicts, and other existential threats. They are crucial resources for scientists who develop improved varieties of the world’s most important food crops. The biological material in approximately 7.4 million samples held in more than 1,750 genebanks around the world contains beneficial traits with the potential to improve crops’ climate resilience, disease resistance, nutritional value, and tolerance to high salinity.

These traits become even more critical when considering that ninety percent of the required increase in global food production required to feed the expected population of 8.9 billion people by 2050 will have to come from intensified farming practices and higher yields, as decreasing arable land and climate change bring new threats to farmers. The increase must be from higher productivity enabled by genetic biodiversity that can be bred into our plant varieties.

In this context, plant breeding becomes increasingly important to ensure that crops are adapted to more challenging environmental conditions. Plant breeders have enjoyed remarkable success in increasing the productivity of key crops. From 1960, crop yields have increased globally by 77 percent and in developing countries by 70 percent. Improved soil management and crop rotation systems, fertilization, and plant protection have helped to exploit the genetic potential of new varieties provided by plant breeding.

To ensure global food security, agricultural innovations need to be affordable and seed companies need an incentive to develop them – in sum, the economic benefit of developing these technologies must be present. The importance of offering incentives to develop innovative technologies that will enable us to meet the challenge of food security in a context of climate change and rapid population growth cannot be overstated. Intellectual property has an imperative role to play in providing the incentives to foster the innovation required if we are to meet this challenge.

Our efforts in putting this session together and funding it on behalf of MVS stems from our passionate belief that feeding the world must involve Intellectual Property rights for plant varieties.

Each of the speakers in the MVS session has an important voice and perspective on this issue. Intellectual property protections such as Plant Breeder’s Rights, secured though enactment of UPOV legislation, and patents will bring sophisticated seed companies to the table, and will allow them to enable plant breeders to bring forward new and valuable traits for farmers to grow safer, healthier, and more robust crops to feed generations of people.

Below is a list of Committed Speakers for this important session:

• Jeffery Haynes – Acting Commissioner, Plant Variety Protection Office, USDA Branch Chief at U.S. Department of Agriculture
• Nyeemah A. Grazier – Patent Attorney, Office of Policy and International Affairs USPTO
• Ms. Yolanda Huerta Casado – Vice Secretary General, International Union for the Protection of Plants
• Professor Nicola Spence – Deputy Director, Plant and Bee Health and Chief Plant Health Officer, at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs for the UK.

Hope to see you all October 30th!