Who’s Running Plant Genetic Improvement in France: Overlapping Interests of Trade and Politics

• In Event: Corporate Influence on Science and Regulation – III

Abstract

This communication is based on a research started in May 2018 on the French organisation of inscription of new plant varieties (CTPS). It is specially focused on the integration of the environmental consideration in the regulation revision for one of the species sections. Every section involves all « sector members »: that means plant breeders, which are strongly represented, public servants, members of technical institutes and of sectoral organisations, and some farmers. This organisation aims to draft the rules of entry in the French catalogue and manages research funding. It was historically structured in order to promote genetic progress and by the way protect breeders interests against farm-saved seeds users. This analysis is based on the observations of the mains meetings of the section during one year and on about fifteen interviews with section members.
This communication first presents how the historical structuration of this organisation involved a deep imbrication of political and corporate interests, but also how the structures of most of the members organisations are deeply crossed by those interlocking. Those entanglements constitute a very favourable landscape to the corporate influence particularly in research orientations. In a second part, it shows how this organisation is caught in a double bind in a context of agro ecological turn of the French agricultural politics: to involve more environmental considerations and to restore catalogue attractiveness in a European regulation competition background and how corporate influence is strongly unfavourable to environmental orientation.

Author

• Aïcha Bourad, INRA UMR AGIR