August 18, 2025
The IPC Working Group on Agrobiodiversity recently sent its critical assessment and proposals regarding technology transfer and capacity building for Digital Sequence Information to the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA).
IPC members emphasised that the small holders, Indigenous Peoples and local communities around the world, co-exist and work together with the physical ecosystems, and not data or DSI. The group added that:
“Our systems have been feeding the world for millennia and will keep on doing so even in times of climate change. Therefore, DSI is not something we require, we are forced to deal with it as it is leading to the disruption of our farming practices and food-systems”.
Peasants and Indigenous Peoples do not need technologies that increase their dependency and undermine their resilience. In that context, the most urgent need for the IPC in terms of technology transfer, technical assistance, and capacity development for DSI/GSD is the setting up of a system that can monitor violation of our rights through biopiracy exacerbated by the growing release of patents and other IPRs on DSI and on Living Modified Organisms created using DSI. This system should have farmers organizations as an integral part in the capacity as decision-makers right from its inception, to its implementation.