presentation in workshop on "Open Access to Agricultural Knowledge for Inclusive Growthand Development" held on 29-30th October, 2014 at National Academy of Agricultural Research Management

1. “OPEN ACCESS TO
AGRICULTURAL
KNOWLEDGE FOR
INCLUSIVE GROWTH
AND DEVELOPMENT”
Experiences of CSA and Sahaja
Aharam

2. Who we are?
 Centre for Sustainable Agriculture a not for
profit organisation working in AP, Telangana,
Maharashtra, Punjab, Chhattisgarh, Odisha
and Madhya Pradesh
 Sahaja Aharam is a farmer producer
organisation with 5000 farmers who are into
food, fibre, seeds and bioinputs productions

3. What we are working on?
 Generating and collating knowledge on agro-ecological
approaches to sustain agriculture
 Building farmers institutions to improve their
bargaining power
 Institutional, legal and policy frame work for
supporting farmers livelihoods

4. Open access to knowledge
 Collaborative innovation: NPM scalingup
 Indian Society for Agro-Ecology (ISOR)
 Agriculture Biodiversity Knowledge Community
 within communities of independent people that choose
voluntarily to cooperate
 Three key ingredients of openness:
Cultural practices,
Licensing
Innovative collaborative methods

5. Open Knowledge sharing
platforms
 http://www.eKrishi.in  http://www.krishi.tv

6. Open Source Seed Systems
 OSS System: arrangements that facilitate and
preserve freedom of access and use of plant genetic
material, prohibit exclusive rights, and apply to any
subsequent derivatives of those materials
 Freedom of access: Any one committing to OSS
agreement receives freedom of access and use for
the material under Material Transfer Agreements
(MTAs)
 Open Access and Benefit Sharing
 Legal and Institutional Systems

7. Issues…
 No access to data and information
Pesticide residue testing
GM field trials
 Not acknowledging the contributions
Non Pesticidal Management, CMSA
 Biopiracy
HMT rice by PKV
Bt Brinjal by UAS
 Knowledge appropriation
Gongura pickle by NRC Meat

8. Way forward
 Move beyond ‘free’ access
 Create platforms for innovative collaborations
for knowledge generation
 Open access to data to make research more
transparent and accountable

9. Centre for Sustainable
Agriculture
Ramanjaneyulu
ramoo@csa-india.org
www.csa-india.org
www.agrariancrisis.in