Working togetherAgricultural innovations come from both public andprivate sector research and almost always involve a lotof time, resources and financial uncertainty. Researchpriorities for both sectors depend on a complex mix offactors, including benefits to farmers, consumers andthe environment, as well as a return on researchinvestment. By working together through public-privatepartnerships these two sectors can pursue unique orotherwise speculative projects. They can also bringtogether the necessary experience, knowledge,investment, technologies and resources to addressagricultural issues which may have been overlooked bya single-sector programme or approach.

For national governments, public-private partnershipsoffer an efficient way to bring timely and relevant toolsto local farmers, while helping to build agriculturalknowledge at a local level. For the private sector,collaboration provides an innovative approach tofinancial and resource needs, and helps developpotential new markets. As a result greater innovationcan be put in the hands of our world’s farmers.

From feeding a population expected to reach nine billion by 2050 tolooking after soil, water and natural habitats – our world’s farmers faceincreasing challenges. What’s more, they’re under greater pressure fromthe changing climate and a shrinking agricultural workforce. As a result,farmers need innovative tools that improve sustainability more thanever before. Providing farmers access to plant science innovations aswell as the knowledge and skills to use them responsibly can make amajor impact on their farms.

So how can we make this possible?One good way is through thepartnership of the public and privatesectors – working together for mutualgrowth and benefit. Thesecollaborations enable goals, resources,expertise and risk to be shared,ensuring scientific innovations becomevaluable tools for farmers.

Successful public-private partnerships:

• Improve the efficiency of developinglocally-adapted innovation.

• Enable technology to be distributedmore effectively to local farmers.

• Help farmers continuously improveand make the most of sustainableagricultural practices.

• Promote the effective andresponsible application of newtechnologies.

• Provide social and economic value tofarmers and communities.

• In Bangladesh and the Philippines, biotech brinjal(eggplant) technology was donated directly to localresearchers to give farmers quicker access toimproved varieties that are resistant to local pests.

• Researchers in the private sector have teamed upwith the University of Bern (Switzerland) to maintainand improve yields of tef, the most important cerealcrop in Ethiopia. The project includes sharing cropimprovement and laboratory techniques. Withoutpublic-private collaboration, it would have beenmore difficult to gain sufficient research supportand focus for this minor crop.

• A multinational team of private and public sectorscientists is currently developing biotech bananas inUganda with increased vitamin A, vitamin E andiron content. Banana is a major food crop inUganda, so successful research could dramaticallyimprove the diets of millions of people.

Improving food securityResearch partnerships can lead to food security solutions. They can improve local agricultural practicesand develop staple crops that are more nutritious, better adapted to local growing conditions or resistantto pests. For example:

• Brazil’s public agricultural research corporation,Embrapa, has worked with private sectorcompanies that have supplied genetic informationused to develop a herbicide-tolerant biotechsoybean that meets local growers’ specific needs.

• The BioCassava Plus project is working to improvethe nutritional quality of cassava, the primarysource of calories for over 250 million people insub-Saharan Africa. Public and private sectorresearchers are focusing on enhancing levels ofzinc, iron, protein and vitamins. They are alsofocusing on improving the durability of cassavaonce it has been harvested – vital, given the poorquality of local storage facilities.

• By sharing agricultural knowledge with theInternational Maize and Wheat ImprovementCentre, the private sector has developed newcommercially-available maize varieties thatadapt to local conditions, and wheat varietiesprotected against devastating diseases such aswheat stem rust.

• The Africa Biofortified Sorghum project is apublic-private consortium that relies ontechnology, capacity building and researchknowledge from the private sector. It is developinga more nutritious and easily digestible sorghumthat contains increased levels of amino acids,vitamins, iron and zinc. This could improve thehealth of 300 million people by increasing thenutritional quality of this important dietary staple.

In the following pages we outline a number of projects from public-private partnershipsinvolving CropLife International’s members: BASF, Bayer CropScience, Dow AgroSciences,DuPont, FMC, Monsanto, Sumitomo and Syngenta. The projects vary but they all share thesame core objectives to improve food security, share knowledge and enable farmers togain greater access to resources.

• Private companies have been involved in the SouthAfrican Developing Agriculture Project, which workswith local farmer organisations to increase andsafeguard crop yields by changing agriculturalmanagement practices for the better.

• Several partnerships between non-governmentalorganisations (NGOs) have focused on integratedpest management training and the responsible useof plant science products in Latin America,Southeast Asia and Africa. Other projects haveincluded educating academia, public and privateresearchers and government agencies on how tocomply with guidelines for regulated field trials,import permits, incident management, productlaunch and Excellence Through Stewardship®

practices.

• Co-convened by the International Centre for TropicalAgriculture (CIAT) and the International Food PolicyResearch Institute (IFPRI), the HarvestPlusChallenge Programme works with more than 200agricultural and nutrition scientists around theworld, including private sector developers. CIAT iscurrently biofortifying the seven key staple cropsthat will have the greatest impact in alleviatingmicronutrient malnutrition in Asia and Africa –beans, cassava, maize, pearl millet, rice, sweetpotato and wheat. This partnership directlycombines expertise across borders, resulting ineconomies of scale and faster adaptation.

Sharing knowledgeCollaborative projects that share practical agricultural information and best practices between the publicand private sector and farmer organisations can help improve farming around the world. For example:

• In Japan, private companies are cooperating withlocal government, agricultural associations anduniversities to improve the productivity andprofitability of vegetable farms through newtechnologies. The project includes establishingthe crop varieties and crop protection tools idealfor year-round cultivation of leafy vegetables.

• The Tissue Culture Banana Project broughttogether Africa Harvest and the private sector tointroduce tissue culture banana productionmethods to farmers in Kenya. Farmers were alsogiven extensive training on agronomy and bestpractices for small farm-based businesses. Theintroduction of both technology and training hasreduced plant diseases and increased productivityin bananas, an important food security crop inKenya.

• In Bangladesh, farmers’ wives influence thepurchase of agricultural products and farmingdecisions. A community project has focused onplacing female crop advisors (“farmers’ sisters”)in contact with farmers’ wives. These advisorssupport farming meetings, meet with retailers andrecommend farming solutions to other women inthe community. Programmes like these supportthe women in the farming community, provideagricultural education and knowledge, and helpincrease farm productivity and profitability.

• The not-for-profit African Agricultural TechnologyFund (AATF) facilitates and promotes public-privatepartnerships that enable resource-poor smallholderfarmers in sub-Saharan African to access proprietaryagricultural technologies. The AATF leads the WaterEfficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) project – a public-private partnership to develop royalty-free drought-tolerant African maize using conventional breeding,marker-assisted breeding and biotechnology.

• In India, private companies have worked with localleaders and banks supported by the National Bank forAgriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) to helpfarmers gain financial independence with the help ofa low-cost credit system. Thanks to the developmentof this transparent, reliable credit and distributionsystem, farmers have access to affordable, high-yielding maize hybrids, farm inputs and specialistknowledge.

• The Frijol Nica project in Nicaragua providesintegrated product bundles of agricultural inputs tofarmers with four to five months of credit, backed bya cooperative and financed by a local distributor. Withimproved access to inputs, farmers can increase theamount and quality of crops they grow and, in turn,their incomes.

• The International Potato Centre has developed a long-term strategy to work with the U.S. Agency forInternational Development (USAID) and the privatesector to increase business investments throughoutthe seed potato value chain. This can help increasethe availability of high-quality seed potatoes, promoteimproved seed management and improve potatoproductivity in Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzaniaand Uganda.

Gaining greater access to resourcesShared projects between government agencies and the private sector can help farmers gain greateraccess to fundamental resources so they can manage their production process more reliably, at lesscost and with greater certainty. For example:

• The Qori Chacra programme in Peru has trainedfarmers so they can meet the rigorous qualityprotocols for local restaurants and businesses.By creating a continuous local market for theirproducts, farmers have been able to improve theirstandard of living as well as adopt new farmingmethods, build greenhouses and field trial newcrop varieties.

• Over the next decade, the International PotatoCentre’s Sweet potato Action for Security andHealth in Africa (SASHA) project could improvethe lives of 10 million sub-Saharan households.It is focusing on improving the quality and rangeof available sweet potato varieties, including aweevil-resistant variety, as well as developingsustainable seed systems. The project connectsresearch and development to make it easier toaccess and distribute better varieties of thisimportant crop for the region.

• Knowledge-sharing and lifelong learning in publicinstitutions is important all over the world,including developed countries such as the UnitedStates. It is being supported through privatecollaborations, for example through fundingendowed chairs at universities and sharing privateexpertise and plant breeding excellence todevelop new plant varieties suited to local andglobal markets.

• Public research institutes in Australia, China,Israel and Japan are working with private industryon rapid gene sequencing models and modernbreeding techniques to make importantagricultural tools available to farmers sooner.

• The public and private sectors must eachvoluntarily participate in the collaborativeproject for mutual growth and mutual benefit –there must be a benefit for all partners.

• Each collaborative effort is a uniquepartnership with its own set of mutuallyagreeable terms and objectives, roles andresponsibilities, and shared capacity-buildingand resources.

Building successful partnershipsThe public and private sectors often play different research and commercialisation roles and possess abroad range of complementary abilities, resources and expertise. To combine these elements into asuccessful project, partners need to consider a variety of factors. For example:

• Partners must recognise, acknowledge and acceptwhat each sector can offer – from resources totalent, relationships or knowledge. Public-privatepartnerships are inherently about working towards acommon goal that can be accomplished moreefficiently and effectively through partnership.

• Public-private partnerships rely on a spirit ofopenness and transparency – including clear lines ofcommunication and respecting and being receptiveto different solutions and ideas. Most importantly,there is no one-size-fits-all approach to successfulpartnerships.

• Creating the right environment for partnerships willoften require collectively addressing regulatory andlegislative frameworks – including intellectualproperty rights and product and technology diffusion– to turn new ideas into innovative products forfarmers.

The pressures and demands on public institutionscontinue to increase – as do the costs of researchand development. It is therefore critical that thepublic and private sectors continue, if notaccelerate, their efforts to work together to meetthe challenges facing our world’s farmers. Theneed to innovate for mutual growth and mutualbenefit has never been greater.

To meet the challenges, we need to increase publicand private funding of agricultural research andincrease the impact of this funding through deeperand broader collaborations between the public andprivate sectors and research communities. Equallyimportant, scientific capacity, regulatoryframeworks, social and research infrastructures,and effective legal frameworks and institutionsneed to enable collaborative projects and supportthe introduction of technology.

The increasing importanceof public-private partnerships

To ensure food security we need to continuously improvethe tools and techniques available to farmers working indiverse ways and environments around the world. Thisinvolves not only developing new technologies, but alsoadapting and applying these innovations to local needsand conditions. It also involves ensuring they can beused effectively by skilled and well-informed farmers.Neither the private nor the public sector can achievethese aims on its own. But together they can combineand maximise the impact of their individual experiencesand resources where it matters most – at the local levelwith our farmers around the world.

If you would like more information on public-privatepartnerships or any of the projects that CropLifeInternational’s members are engaged in, contactCropLife International at croplife@croplife.org.

About CropLife InternationalCropLife International is the global federation representing the plant science industry.It supports a network of regional and national associations in 91 countries, and is led bycompanies such as BASF, Bayer CropScience, Dow AgroSciences, DuPont, FMC, Monsanto,Sumitomo and Syngenta. CropLife International promotes the benefits of crop protectionand biotechnology products, their importance to sustainable agriculture and food production,and their responsible use through stewardship activities.

For more information, visit www.croplife.org or www.ActionForAg.org.

CropLife International aisbl

326 Avenue Louise, Box 35

1050 Brussels

Belgium

tel +32 2 542 04 10

fax +32 2 542 04 19

croplife@croplife.org

www.croplife.org

Date of publication: May 2012

Printed on 100% recycled paperwith vegetable-based inks

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