Module IV: Biotechnology and Biosafety

Public opinion is not the only constraint on biotechnology, which currently represents only a small percentage of total agricultural research expenditure in Africa. The application of biotechnology to agricultural research requires new investments, changes in resource allocation, and new expertise and responsibilities among policymakers and scientists. Benefits and risks need to be identified and weighed, productivity constraints need to be understood, and decisions need to be made regarding the extent to which biotechnology is appropriate under a given set of national conditions, as well as what the priorities of biotechnology research should be.

ISNAR conducted surveys in 1998 of biotechnological research in Mexico, Kenya, Indonesia, and Zimbabwe, with data covering the period from the mid-1980s to the late 1990s for a total of 34 public and private research organizations. The ISNAR survey showed that public sector institutions accounted for upwards of 90 percent of expenditures on biotechnology, yet only a few public sector institutions were using advanced research techniques; most were only in the early stages of developing the capacity for biotechnology research. Private sector biotechnology research has been virtually absent, in contrast to the developed world, where upwards of 70 percent of such research is performed by private firms. This trend may be reversing in developing countries, as noted in Module III, with an increasing emphasis on private investment and IPR. The public sector may have difficulty keeping up with the private sector; the entire CGIAR research budget is only a small fraction of the research budget of one large biotech company.

In addition, the ISNAR study found that most of the existing agricultural biotechnology research focused on crops, rather than livestock. Finally, the number of researchers grew faster than the amount of money allocated, resulting in an overall decline of funding per researcher. In short, technical capacity and financial resources for biotechnology are currently very limited in these countries.

Policy and management issues involved in encouraging responsible biotechnology include enhancing managerial capacity in public research organizations, creating strategies and setting priorities, managing biosafety and intellectual property, assessing funding implications, considering public-private partnerships, and delivering products to end users. The research agenda, and biotechnology’s place within it, must be determined by a country’s particular priorities. Biotechnology is most likely to have an appropriate role where conventional research has been unable to solve a priority problem. Therefore, defining a clear research agenda is an important preliminary step in managing biotechnology.

Whether or not a given country is interested in investing in its own biotechnology development capacity, some capacity for priority setting and policymaking remains essential in light of biotechnology’s growing global importance. Imports of biotechnology products can raise as many policy questions as biotechnology research itself, e.g., what testing and safety standards have been used? Similarly, in-country private investment, whether local, foreign, or multinational, may raise important policy considerations as well: What policies will provide incentives for the research to address pressing local needs? Patent applications may force a country to determine policies on the fly if it is not prepared. For example, Uganda had to decide very quickly about Monsanto’s terminator gene patent application when it came through the Patent Cooperation Treaty system. Therefore it is important for countries to anticipate likely scenarios and be prepared to respond.

Priority setting is not a trivial consideration. Rather, it is a highly complex process of consulting with stakeholders, documenting, disseminating, and receiving information, and ultimately making difficult choices among research areas to find those that promise to have the most desirable impact within the limitations of available resources. Faculty emphasized that priority setting should be a structured, formal process, and presented several different models that can be employed. Regardless of the method of priority setting used, however, certain key points emerged as fundamental to the process:

• The method should have a transparent and formal structure in order to ensure logical consistency, resolve conflicting demands, and strengthen the quality of the results;
• The quality of the results depends on the quality of the inputs;
• The process must be ongoing and include periodic re-evaluation, with frequency balanced against the costs incurred;
• Participants in the process include decisionmakers, economists, researchers, clients (including farmers and private sector interests), and, as some people argued during discussions, NGOs and other members of the community at large;
• Priority setting can have a top-down or a bottom-up structure, or can combine the two approaches;
• Decisions are determined by objectives, which can include efficiency and economic growth, equitable distribution of benefits, food security, and sustainability of the resource base; not all objectives are mutually compatible;
• Basic priority-setting steps include: identification of research objectives; definition of alternatives; definition of criteria and methods; assessment of performance and comparison with alternatives; and approval and implementation of priorities;
• Success factors include: good inputs (method, criteria, and information); participation of stakeholders; consensus building; support of key agencies and individuals.

One of the primary challenges, easily overlooked, is how to involve the "silent stakeholders" such as small farmers. Decisionmakers must actively seek the input of these groups. Participants urged that managers of priority-setting efforts should not "just sit in the office," but should go out into the field and speak with representatives of farmers’ associations, for example. If there are no such organizations, the manager can approach community centers or go through local chiefs. Throughout Africa, small farmers are a crucial part of society, and their input is needed, their needs and priorities must be understood.

Once agricultural biotechnology priorities have been determined, it is important that the research has stable, long-term funding if it is to have a reasonable expectation of scientific success and development impact. Political support is therefore an essential element to the biotechnology endeavor, and will necessarily involve documenting and publicizing research impacts, establishing open communications channels, engaging all stakeholders in a participatory process, building strong relationships among key players, and broadening the funding base, e.g., by promoting public-private partnerships and including a range of government agencies.