Ramoo of Sahaja Aharam brought the civil sector perspective on open access and asked some difficult questions like : what is the real meaning of it? What it doesn't mean? etc

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

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