View source for Farmer-Scientist Partnership for Agricultural Development


'''= MASIPAG is an acronym for Magsasaka at Siyentipiko Para Sa Pag-unlad ng Agrikultura, which translates to “Farmer-Scientist Partnership for Development, Inc.”'''


URL = http://www.masipag.org

"Where Stallman and the Free Software Foundation seek to ensure that their GNU tools will always be available to programmers, MASIPAG demands that farmers be given the equivalent ability to save their seeds, trade seeds with neighbours, and work separately or together on developing better or different strains in their crops.” - Kipp [http://ssrn.com/abstract=1390273]

=Description=

Douthwaite:

"MASIPAG] is an acronym for ‘Farmer- Scientist Partnership for Agricultural Development’ in Tagalog . . . . [It] was founded in 1985 in Los Banos in the Philippines as a partnership between a group of farmers dissatisfied with the economic and environmental cost of growing [high-yielding varieties] with high
levels of chemical inputs; a group of ‘dissident, nationalist, crop scientists from the
University of the Philippines’; and some social scientists from an NGO. . . . MASIPAG
shows that [farmers] can learn new techniques and become more effective breeders.”
(http://ssrn.com/abstract=1390273)


=History=

Douthwaite:

'“MASIPAG was formed in 1985 in Los Baños in the Philippines as a
partnership between a group of farmers dissatisfied with the economic and environmental
cost of growing [Hi-Yielding Varieties] with high levels of chemical inputs; a group of
‘dissident, nationalist, crop scientists from the University of the Philippines’; and some
social scientists from an NGO. . . . The organisation began by collecting rice varieties and by
1992 it had 210 in its breeding stock, of which 87 were [Hi-Yielding Varieties]. At the same
time, the scientists trained the farmers in the basics of hybridisation, selection and record-keeping.”
((http://ssrn.com/abstract=1390273))


=Discussion=

Keith Aoki:

"Farmers’ rights advocates have the potential to evolve into what
the open source software movement has become, i.e., a commons-based
peer-production network that facilitates the sharing of plant genetic
information and biotechnological tools. This is where adaptation of GPL
from the software context into the PGR context may be useful. As in the
software context, opposition to proprietary moves regarding PGRs has been
coalescing. One of the most active of these groups is the Philippines-based
MASIPAG, an organization that brings together farmers, scientists, and
NGOs to engage in agricultural research. To illustrate parallels between
trying to ensure free access to PGRs and software source code, consider the
following comparisons between MASIPAG’s version of farmers’ rights and
the GNU/Linux software model. In the context of MASIPAG, Boru
Douthwaite writes about parallels with the open-source software movement that created Linux.
For software read seed. Some farmers are seed “hackers.” Although their
source code—the DNA coding—is closed to them, nature itself or human
intervention generates new “hacks” by crosses and mutation, and farmers
select hacks that they judge beneficial. The tantalising prospect opens up
that [participatory plant breeding] might be able to capture the power of
the “bazaar” development model in the same way that the open-source
software movement has. . . . If [participatory plant breeding] can harness
the creativity of farmer “hackers,” wouldn’t this be a better and safer way
of trying to double rice production in the next twenty years than relying
on Big Science to pull off a second Green Revolution?

An open source PGR model would be based on the idea that farmers are
both users and developers of different types of information technology.140
Such a model might be applied not only to the development of plant
varieties via selective breeding, genomics, and genetic manipulation of
PGRs, but also to the development of related machinery/technology and the
sharing of agricultural information, knowledge, and other agricultural
know-how."
(http://ssrn.com/abstract=1390273)


[[Category:Agrifood]]

[[Category:Open Technology Transfer]]

[[Category:Philippines]]