In recent years, the seed industry has taken steps to acknowledge that access to genetic resources should be linked to sharing the benefits of such access. Bayer is the first company to make a monetary contribution to the Benefit-sharing Fund of the International Treaty for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA), under the current use-based regulations. An industry proposal was put forward for an additional ‘subscription-only model’. This would give companies access to genetic material from (public) gene banks based on an annual contribution calculated as a percentage of their annual seed sales. Limagrain took a leading role on behalf of the industry in international negotiations around this proposal.
