Farmers' rights

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A community seed bank at Jawhar in Maharashtra, India (2014). Community seed banks are among the options listed for realising farmers' rights.

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Farmers' rights are rights of farmers and of local and indigenous communities that arise from their work in conserving, improving and making available plant genetic resources. The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture of 2001, the plant treaty, sets them out in article 9: the protection of traditional knowledge, a share in the benefits from these resources and a part in national decisions about them. National governments are responsible for realising these rights. Article 9 does not limit any right farmers have to save, use, exchange and sell farm-saved seed, subject to national law.^{: art. 9}

The treaty does not name Cannabis or say whether cannabis material counts under it. The Transnational Institute argued in 2021 that cannabis farmers entering the licit market should have their rights to seeds protected under the plant treaty and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants of 2018.^: 79 Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy calls traditional cannabis farmers "the originators and guardians of the plant's many local cultigens".^: 3 The rights of breeders are treated under intellectual property. The terms on which a plant may be collected or received are treated under access and benefit-sharing.

From a campaign term to a treaty article

The headquarters of the Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome (2008). Its Conference endorsed the concept of farmers' rights in 1989.

Pat Roy Mooney and Cary Fowler coined the term in the early 1980s to draw attention to what farmers had contributed to plant genetic resources without reward. The term answered growing demands for plant breeders' rights.^: 2 In 1989 the Conference of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) endorsed the concept in Resolution 5/89. The resolution describes rights "arising from the past, present and future contributions of farmers in conserving, improving, and making available plant genetic resources, particularly those in the centres of origin/diversity" and vests them in "the International Community, as trustee for present and future generations of farmers".^: 13–14 In 1991 the Conference decided to carry out these rights through an international fund, which was never set up.^{: v, 15} Regine Andersen of the Fridtjof Nansen Institute judged that the resolution of 1989 "did not actually define the concept": what the rights were rights to and who held them stayed open.^: 14

The plant treaty moved the subject to national law. Gerald Moore and Witold Tymowski, in their guide to the treaty for the International Union for Conservation of Nature, call this a "sea change". The concept had become "more focussed on rights that may be enjoyed by farmers under national law", and responsibility passed from the international community to national governments.^{: 68, 72} The treaty's preamble names the contributions of farmers as the basis of the rights and calls the rights to save, use, exchange and sell seed "fundamental to the realization of Farmers' Rights".^: preamble Andersen held in 2010, of crops in general, that halting genetic erosion depends on farmers' rights.

Article 9 of the plant treaty

Article 9.1 recognises the "enormous contribution" of local and indigenous communities and farmers. Moore and Tymowski hold that this recognition creates no legal obligation.^: 68 Under article 9.2 each party "should, as appropriate, and subject to its national legislation" take measures to protect and promote the rights, including the three named above.^{: art. 9.2} In Moore and Tymowski's reading, governments are encouraged to act but not required to and the three rights are examples.^: 72

Article 9.3 came out of the negotiation as a compromise. Some delegations sought positive recognition of saving and exchanging seed. Others feared that the treaty would conflict with breeders' rights under the 1991 Act of the UPOV Convention. Moore and Tymowski call the result neutral: article 9.3 "would not be a sufficient legal basis for claiming rights" and leaves national options open.^: 75 Karine Peschard, Christophe Golay and Lulbahri Araya hold that article 9 aims at "protecting customary rights that farmers/peasants have always had".^: 18

The treaty relates to plant genetic resources for food and agriculture. Article 9 frames the rights in the same terms. It does not refer to Annex I, the list of crops covered by the treaty's multilateral system.^{: arts. 3, 9, 11} Annex I leaves out cannabis.^: 46–49

The treaty's Governing Body set up an expert group on farmers' rights in 2017. The body welcomed the group's inventory of national measures in 2019 and noted the group's 32 options in 2022.^: iv The options include awards for custodian farmers, contributions to benefit-sharing funds, community seed banks, on-farm conservation, participatory breeding and legal measures. FAO's publication of the options states that "no particular option should be understood as being specifically required under Article 9". Those on legal measures are a proposal by the group's co-chairs.^{: 5, 61}

The right to seeds in the peasants' declaration

The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas on 17 December 2018 by 121 votes to 8, with 54 abstentions.^: 1 The declaration is a resolution of the Assembly and not a treaty. It defines a peasant as a person engaged in small-scale agricultural production "for subsistence and/or for the market" who relies significantly on family or household labour and has "a special dependency on and attachment to the land".^{: art. 1}

Article 19 restates the plant treaty's three rights and adds "the right to save, use, exchange and sell their farm-saved seed or propagating material". States are to recognise the right of peasants to rely on their own seeds or on other locally available seeds. States are also to ensure that "seed policies, plant variety protection and other intellectual property laws, certification schemes and seed marketing laws" take account of the rights, needs and realities of peasants.^{: art. 19} Golay, Peschard and four co-authors hold that the declaration places the right to seeds among the human rights "that take precedence over other legal norms".^: 1

The same elements in three texts

Element	Plant treaty, article 9	Peasants' declaration, article 19	India's Act of 2001
Traditional knowledge	Art. 9.2(a): measures to protect it, "as appropriate"	Arts. 19.1(a), 19.2: a right to its protection and to maintain and develop it	S. 40: an applicant discloses any genetic material used that tribal or rural families conserved
Benefits	Art. 9.2(b): a right to participate equitably in sharing them	Art. 19.1(b): the same right	Ss. 26, 45: claims against a registered variety; the National Gene Fund
Decisions	Art. 9.2(c): a right to participate, at national level	Art. 19.1(c): a right to participate	S. 3: seats on the Act's authority for a farmers' organisation and a tribal organisation
Seed	Art. 9.3: not limited by the article, "subject to national law and as appropriate"	Art. 19.1(d), 19.5: a right to save, use, exchange and sell it	S. 39(1)(iv): save, use, sow, resow, exchange, share or sell, except branded seed

National law

India passed its Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers' Rights Act in 2001 and ratified the plant treaty the following year. The Act lets a farmer who breeds a new variety register it like any other breeder. It also allows registration of a farmers' variety, meaning a variety traditionally cultivated and evolved by farmers in their fields or "a wild relative or land race of a variety about which the farmers possess the common knowledge". A farmer who conserves landraces and wild relatives may be rewarded from the National Gene Fund if the material has served as a donor of genes in registrable varieties. A village or local community may claim compensation for its contribution to the evolution of a registered variety.^{: ss. 2(l), 39, 41} A farmer may "save, use, sow, resow, exchange, share or sell" farm produce, including seed of a protected variety, "in the same manner as he was entitled before the coming into force of this Act". Branded seed of a protected variety is excepted.^{: s. 39} A farmer unaware of a breeder's right does not infringe it. Farmers pay no fees in proceedings under the Act.^{: ss. 42, 44}

Of the 1,763 certificates that the Act's authority issued in 2023–24, 1,546 went to farmers' varieties. Cereals took 1,364 across all categories. The government had notified 197 crop species for registration, a step the Act does not require for farmers' varieties.^: iii Section 29 bars registration where preventing commercial exploitation is needed to protect public order, public morality or health.^{: s. 29} Cultivation of cannabis comes under a second statute. The Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985 forbids the cultivation of any cannabis plant except as the Act provides. State governments may permit and regulate cultivation by rule, and government may allow it for fibre, seed or horticulture.

Industrial hemp near Biedermannsdorf in Lower Austria (2026). European Union payments for hemp depend on certified seed of listed varieties.

The UPOV Convention lets each member choose whether to except farm-saved seed from the breeder's right. The diplomatic conference of 1991 recommended that this exception should not extend the "farmer's privilege" to sectors where the practice is not common, and UPOV's notes speak of selected crops.^: 8–9 The European Union's regulation of 1994 lets farmers replant the harvest of a protected variety, other than a hybrid or synthetic one, on their own holdings. Small farmers pay the holder nothing and others pay "an equitable remuneration". The derogation covers only listed species of fodder plants, cereals, potatoes, swede rape, turnip rape and linseed "with the exclusion of flax". Cannabis sativa is not on the list.^{: art. 14} A delegated regulation of 2021 makes European Union payments for producing hemp conditional on seed that is certified, in the common catalogue and within the THC limit. Seed of conservation varieties, a class described under landrace conservation, may be certified under separate rules.^{: art. 2}

Seed law has also reached the courts in Kenya. On 27 November 2025 the High Court at Machakos declared unconstitutional provisions of the Seeds and Plant Varieties Act that criminalised traditional seed practices. The Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate Service appealed, arguing that action against fake seed would become harder, and in March 2026 the Court of Appeal declined to suspend the judgment until the full hearing. In August 2026 seed custodians were still asking for clear rules on selling traditional seed.

Cannabis growers

A cannabis farm in Westmoreland, Jamaica (2015).

Chouvy holds that traditional farmers in Asia, Africa and Latin America have grown most of the world's drug cannabis for centuries and account for most of the plant's genetic diversity. He expects these farmers to suffer when global competition under legalisation erodes "the competitive advantage of illegality".^: 3 Robert Clarke and Mark Merlin held that indigenous farmers who maintain local landraces preserve genetic diversity.^{: 317, 319} On landraces in general, Valeria Negri and colleagues say that treating a population brought in from elsewhere as a landrace at anyone's disposal raises questions of farmers' rights.^: 9–10

Martin Jelsma and five co-authors at the Transnational Institute drew on workshops with cannabis farmers in Colombia, Jamaica, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Morocco. They wrote that new seeds and strains would displace landraces and local practice and that, as cannabis farmers enter the licit market, "it will be important to protect their rights to seeds".^{: 2, 79} They proposed public cannabis seed banks open to growers, who might otherwise pay for access or be shut out by patented technologies.^: 72 In Lebanon, they wrote, legalising a different variety from imported seed would undermine "the local knowledge and (agri)cultural heritage" and exclude traditional growers. They took Law 178/20 to imply such a variety.^: 47–48 They also cite the South African non-profit Fields of Green for ALL, which asks for respect for the traditional knowledge of cannabis-growing communities.^: 69

Morocco ratified the plant treaty in 2006 and is bound by the 1991 UPOV Act. Law 13-21 of 2021 requires licensed growers to use seed and plants certified by the national agency, ANRAC. Producing, transporting, selling, exporting or importing cannabis, its seed or its plants without the agency's authorisation carries the penalties of the drug law of 1974.^{: 1173, 1180} In March 2024 Morocco's agricultural research institute, citing the press and the cooperative concerned, reported that the agency had authorised a first supervised trial of the local variety, Beldia, in the Al Hoceima region. Wider cultivation depended on tests. The agency had not yet confirmed the news. Chouvy asks, of any intellectual property in the kif landrace, which tribes or tribal confederations of the Rif would be the legitimate beneficiaries.^: 3

What the sources do not establish

None of these sources reports a cannabis farmer claiming a right under article 9, the declaration or India's Act, or a court ruling on such a claim. Jelsma and colleagues make a recommendation and Chouvy a forecast. India's certificate counts do not show how those varieties fare in the field. Moore and Tymowski's guide is a commentary of 2005, and the Kenyan judgment was under appeal in the latest report. The treaty's text does not settle whether hemp or drug-type cannabis is a plant genetic resource for food and agriculture.

See also

• Access and benefit-sharing
• Appellation
• Community seed bank
• Genetic erosion
• Genetic resources
• Intellectual property
• Landrace Cannabis
• Landrace conservation
• On-farm conservation