new varieties of seeds can be patented and protected as the basis of food and culture for local and indigenous community is an LAC. The existing system, based on individual and private property, is inadequate to protect the traditional rights of rural communities and of nations to their natural resources.

• Establishment of precautionary measures under the Cartagena Protocol (Article 10) prohibiting the transfer of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) among countries that are centers of origin or of genetic diversity.
• In countries of the region, limit production of GMO plants that have wild relatives and show botanical characteristics that could contaminate the gene pool (for example, the case of corn in Mesoamerica).
• Promote food safety research in cases of transgenic products that are consumed and produced in the region (for example, food safety studies are currently “rubber stamped”, and there is no research geared to the particular conditions in the region).
• To protect human health and biodiversity from transgenic risks, governments should establish international standards for the clear, accurate and rigorous documentation and labeling of transgenic products in shipments of grain for human and animal consumption. Products that contain transgenics or derivatives, regardless of their final destination, should be recognizable as such by their labels, in order to respect the right of purchasers to choose freely. This label should identify the risks and enable the enforcement of biosecurity measures.
• From this perspective, there is also a need for policies to encourage those producers who contribute directly to genetic resource conservation as part of managing their productive systems.

The instruments for achieving such policies involve building capacities in biosecurity because modern biotechnology is still immature. All stakeholders need to know about its progress and provide continuous feedback. In addition, existing institutions devoted to biosecurity need to be strengthened and new ones created. When it comes to incorporating agrobiotechnology into the productive processes of small farmers, technical assistance is essential for assessing their risks and possibilities. The idea is not to go back to the old kind of extension services, where programs were designed in offices far from the people directly involved, but rather to strike a proper balance between the generation and validation of scientific and technical progress and the concrete demands of producers with less access to information and resources.

According to the Cartagena Protocol, states must establish a system of objective responsibility for the risks inherent in GMOs The sustainable management of biodiversity entails measures of economic compensation and reparations for damage to biodiversity (through oil spills, deforestation, pollution of water courses, release of GMOs into the environment, etc.), which is the basis of indigenous and peasant culture.

There is concern over the plundering of genetic resources located on the territory of various ethnic groups to make pharmaceuticals or other products that can be patented outside the country. This form of illegal appropria

appropriation of biological resources has been termed “bio-piracy” (Dutfield, 2004). Work is under way within the Convention on Biological Diversity to prepare an international system of Access and Benefit-Sharing (ABS). Yet communities still fear that under that scheme the benefits of such access will be shared only between governments and users (Einarsson, 2004). The distribution of benefits is thus a topic for debate. The best option would be to arrange channels of participation between the stakeholders involved so that collective rights to natural resources can be guaranteed. Policy instruments would be designed to produce:

• Research for classifying plants of agrifood importance, so that those not yet classified and registered can be protected.
• Legal frameworks governing access to genetic resources, for example in the context of the Andean Community’s Standard 391.
• Special regulatory frameworks to protect traditional knowledge about phytogenetic resources that will take account of the full scope of knowledge, as well as nontraditional records (oral history, for example) and systems for distributing the revenues generated by access to genetic resources.

While modern biotechnology developments constitute a competitive advantage for some countries in the region, as the growing of transgenic soybeans has done for Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil (albeit with sharp controversies and social tensions), recent advances in this leading-edge technology that allow use of food crops to produce pharmaceuticals, biofuels and plastics now pose a new threat to biodiversity. Not only could there be environmental impacts, but there is also a risk that products of this kind will pass into the food chain through uses that have nothing to do with human or
animal consumption. For example, corn is the staple food of Mesoamerican cultures, and its use for producing pharmaceuticals and inedible industrial substances could affect directly the food security and safety of people in the region, without mentioning the effect on biodiversity in the center of origin (Galvez and Gonzalez, 2006).

The concern over producing biofuels from food crops is that it further threatens food security by increasing the price of foodstuffs, with the attendant impact on hunger and poverty.

When prices for biofuel crops rise, this does not necessarily benefit small-scale producers and peasants in developing countries, because they have no access to such markets, or market imperfections may deny them the benefits.

The idea here is not to discard biofuels production in the region, recognizing that, in some Caribbean countries for example where food must be imported, devoting farmland to biomass production for export could offer a
way out of poverty. What is proposed, instead, is that the needed biomass should be derived from agricultural residues, from nonfood crops, and from animal wastes. The challenge is to ensure food security so that rural families can feed themselves and at the same time lift themselves out of poverty.

One possible alternative would be to adopt a policy that would prevent the use of food crops for other purposes, as has been done in the case of wheat.