Last week I had the privilege to represent farmers, the Iowa Soybean Association and the American Soybean Association in the USDA/DOJ (Department of Justice) workshop on competition issues. The meeting was held at the new FFA building in Ankeny, Iowa.
ISA president Delbert Christensen was contacted by the DOJ to recommend someone to represent farmers on the seeds panel. I started receiving e-mails from the DOJ in late December of 2009. I found the DOJ personnel to be very cordial and well informed on the agricultural seed industry during our conversations.
I thought we at ISA and ASA knew pretty well the U.S. soybean seed industry issues, but during our many meetings and conference calls with the large and small seed companies, universities and technology providers, we found that this is a very complex system of seed patents, technology patents and the licenses to go along with the patents.
The complexity and variety of license agreements and now the upcoming expiration of the RR1 (Roundup Ready) patent in 2014 has led to a huge amount of uncertainty about the future use (and U.S. farmers' ability) to market RR1 soybeans generically, post patent.
We found some Universities and soybean seed breeding companies had discontinued advancing their soybean breeding programs because of the uncertainty in their license agreements and uncertainty on who will continue the registration of RR1 around the world. For the foreseeable future, Monsanto has agreed to continue Registrations of RR1 through 2017.
Without a continual breeding program in RR1 soybeans, RR1 germplasm will stagnate and will not compete in yield with an advancing breeding program in RR2.
The current uncertainty will effectively cause U.S. farmers to lose the seed price efficiencies of generic RR!
At ISA/ASA we believe this is the immediate issue and that we as an industry must clear up the uncertainty in a matter of weeks, not months or years.
The broader issue is how agriculture as an industry will build a clear path for post patent registration around the globe. There are many seed technology traits in the development pipeline that will benefit both consumers and farmers. The RR1 patent is just the first of many and will set precedent for the future.
To read more on Ray's testimony at the competition workshop, go here: http://www.iasoybeans.com/whatnew/isa031210.html