Creating a Digital Marketplace for Agrobiodiversity and Plant Genetic Sequence Data: Legal and Ethical Considerations of an AI and Blockchain Based Solution

The EU regulation on ‘Organic Production and Labelling of Organic Products’ opens the door for the creation of an EU-wide marketplace for agrobiodiversity contained in so-called “heterogeneous materials”. However, the creation of such a marketplace presupposes the existence of optimal demand and supply of agrobiodiversity, linked plant genetic sequence data and local/traditional knowledge on how best to use agrobiodiversity. Farmers’ tendency to prefer genetically uniform “high yielding” seeds and the adoption of chemical intensive farming have compromised the supply of agrobiodiversity. At the same time, regulatory regimes have disincentivized the use of agrobiodiversity in research and breeding programs, resulting in a lack of demand for agrobiodiversity. This chapter argues that these trends result from (inadvertent) inequities in existing regulatory frameworks that primarily support uni-directional data/knowledge flows from the formal sector (academia, industry) to the informal sector (farmers). We propose ways in which rapidly evolving technologies like blockchain/DLTs and AI/Machine Learning can (and should) diversify the direction of scientific research as well as of data/ knowledge flows in the agricultural sector. The chapter thus provides food for thought for developing novel regulatory frameworks and ethical business models for robust digital marketplaces for agrobiodiversity for the benefit of farmers, researchers, and the environment.