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Every day, Filipinos wake up to another looming crisis. An El Niño is expected to reduce harvests. A typhoon threatens crops before they can be harvested. Water shortages and an energy crisis drive up production costs. We immediately feel these crises in our wallets as food prices climb. But behind every spike in the price of rice, vegetables, and other staples are the farmers who grow our food. As climate change makes farming increasingly difficult, they need greater flexibility to adapt, not more restrictions.
For generations, Filipino farmers have survived by saving seeds from one harvest, exchanging planting materials with neighbors, and selecting the varieties that perform best under local conditions. These practices have helped communities cope with droughts, floods, pests, and changing weather while conserving the country’s rich agricultural biodiversity.
Yet a provision being negotiated under the proposed EU–Philippines Free Trade Agreement could gradually undermine these practices and may be quietly entering through the backdoor. Tucked within the agreement’s Intellectual Property chapter is a proposal that would require the Philippines to align its plant variety protection system with UPOV 1991, an international convention that gives stronger rights to commercial plant breeders, but offers far less space for the traditional seed-sharing systems that many Filipino farmers continue to rely on.
If farmers lose the freedom to save, exchange, share, sell, and replant seeds, the consequences will not stop at the farm. Following the sixth round of negotiations in May 2026, the provision remains on the table, raising questions not only about intellectual property, but also about who controls seeds, whose knowledge is protected, and how much policy space developing countries can afford to give away in the name of trade.
The problem at hand
Article X.51 of the proposed Intellectual Property chapter, entitled, “Protection of Plant Variety Rights,” says:
“Each Party shall protect plant variety rights in accordance with the International Convention for the Protection of the New Varieties of Plants (UPOV Convention) as lastly revised in Geneva on 19 March 1991.”
The concern with this text is not that it seeks to protect plant breeders. The Philippines already does that. Over two decades ago, the country had its own plant variety protection system through Republic Act No. 9168, or the Philippine Plant Variety Protection (PVP) Act of 2002. The law grants intellectual property rights to plant breeders while also recognizing the realities of Philippine agriculture and the important role of small farmers in conserving, exchanging, and cultivating seeds.
What makes the proposed provision problematic is that it does not simply require plant variety protection. It specifically requires protection “in accordance with” UPOV 1991. In effect, it elevates one particular model of plant variety protection above all others, even though the Philippines already has a functioning sui generis system tailored to its own agricultural conditions and development needs.
This distinction matters because the Philippine PVP Act contains safeguards that UPOV 1991 does not fully recognize. Section 43(d) of the law explicitly protects:
“The traditional right of small farmers to save, use, exchange, share or sell their farm produce of a variety protected under this Act…”
The provision also states:
“The provision shall also extend to the exchange and sell of seeds among and between said small farmers: Provided, That the small farmers may exchange or sell seeds for reproduction and replanting in their own land.”
These were deliberately included to recognize long-standing farming practices in the Philippines, where farmers have traditionally saved, exchanged, and shared seeds as part of their community-based agricultural systems.
Limiting our options
The EU’s proposed clause narrows the policy choices available in the Philippines. Under the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), countries are allowed to develop their own sui generis systems for protecting plant varieties. The Philippines exercised that flexibility when it enacted the PVP Act of 2002.
The clause also raises questions about the Philippines’ commitment under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which the country joined in 1994. Article 10(c) encourages the protection of customary practices that support the conservation and sustainable use of biological resources.
These concerns have led the Southeast Asia Regional Initiatives for Community Empowerment (SEARICE), a Philippine-based regional NGO (disclosure: the authors are affiliated with this organization) that has spent decades working with farming communities on seed conservation, farmer-led breeding, and agricultural biodiversity to call on Philippine negotiators to reject the inclusion of Article X.51 in the EU–PH FTA.
For SEARICE, the issue goes beyond just legal compliance. These restrictions could weaken farmer seed systems, reduce seed accessibility, and ultimately affect food security and other socio-economic rights. It could also potentially violate the rights of Indigenous Peoples. Both the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act of 1997 (Republic Act No. 8371) recognize the rights of indigenous communities to maintain and develop their traditional knowledge, seeds, and genetic resources.
The imperative of seed sovereignty
If all of this sounds familiar, it’s because the Philippines is not the first country to encounter UPOV through a trade agreement, and it will not be the last.
For decades, industrialized countries have used free trade agreements to push intellectual property rules that go beyond what is required under the WTO’s TRIPS Agreement. What cannot be won at the multilateral level is often secured through bilateral negotiations, where developing countries have far less bargaining power.
The pattern is already visible across Southeast Asia. Indonesia, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Malaysia have all faced pressure to align their seed laws with UPOV-style standards. Different countries, different negotiations, same demand: stronger rights for breeders, fewer rights for farmers.
That why there should really be no UPOV in trade agreements. Seeds and other plant genetic resources are not inventions that appeared out of nowhere. They are a product of generations of farmers who selected, exchanged, conserved, and improved them long before intellectual property offices and plant variety certificates existed. Yet under the logic of UPOV 1991, these same farmers are treated not as innovators, but as infringers.
Perhaps that is the greatest irony of all. A system that claims to encourage innovation does so by restricting the very people who have been innovating for centuries. The Philippines and other developing countries should not hand over their seed sovereignty in exchange for market access. Some doors are closed for a reason and in this case a good one. – Rappler.com
