tensify links with CGIAR and NARS organizations, to en­sure appropriateness and adoption of technologies?

De/centralization and consolidation
Physical distancing in food chain and regional specialization has economic benefits but has often had negative environ­mental and social impacts. Food and product chains and marketing channels seem to be diversifying, due to more varied product combinations and demand segments. Will these developments and the notion of multifunctionality cause a paradigm shift towards the development of diver­sification and integration within regions, or will farm and regional specialization continue, using new tools to meet the environmental and social challenges?
     And do policies, demand and formal AKST lead to diver­sification of on-farm supply, or only operate at the regional or even national or international level, through comparative economic advantages? Where in this scenario is the lower limit of the economic scale set?
     Will paradigms and their operationalization in policies and demand lead to centralized transnational organizations, possibly to the existence of a small number of discipline-based international centers  of excellence  for the whole world, generating knowledge, technologies and products and segmenting their activity for diverse markets? Or does contextually and local adaptation proceed through decen­tralization and regionalization of AKST?

Contextualization of AKST organizations
There are means to adjust the societal and organizational situation to the requirements of capital-intensive agricul­tural technology, a technology which is less appropriate for resource-poor farming communities as such. One example is the Grameen Bank, founded by Muhammad Yunus, 2006 Nobel Prize winner. The Grameen Bank provides micro-loans for the poor, with an adjusted guarantee system. Will such models for more diverse and contextualized organiza­tional structures, e.g., banking systems, be developed and popularized?

5.5.1.3 Consequences for AKST
To achieve the development and sustainability (D&S) goals requires   reconsideration   of   appropriate   organizational structures for AKST. Societal support for the development of AKST and relevance for the crucial challenges demand broad dialogue and a broad range of perspectives implied in flexible, diverse, integrative organizational structures. The share of public and private sectors in AKST is decisive for the kind of public regulatory arrangements that best meets the public goals. Regulatory regimes can be limited to cov­ering cover transparency and communication, or can set economic incentives for the mainly private organizations to promote the goals, or directly regulate their activity through rules and legislation or through a public organizational structure. Public economic incentives may increase feasibil­ity and result in higher equity than full reliance on price pre-mia paid by consumers. In any case, proactive policies are required to shape AKST organizations and their activity.
     The integration of organizations of knowledge genera­tion and dissemination can promote goals. However, if focus is on globally coherent and centralized policies and AKST

organizations, the strengths and weaknesses of society will be very different than if focus is on locally coherent and de­centralized policies and AKST organizations. Global mod­els with few centers of excellence and top-down approaches in science might be better in meeting global environmental problems, while local horizontally-integrated models and bottom-up approaches might have greater social and cul­tural benefits. Integration among organizations representing AKST components may produce more traditional solutions that are still highly relevant for present actors, while linkages to KST components foster more substantial changes and in­novations with higher risks and opportunities for meeting the D&S goals. Relevance and contextuality of the latter might depend on importance given to the social sciences.

5.5.2 Proprietary regimes
The private sector invests in agricultural research purely to make a profit. A legal framework that adequately pro­tects intellectual property rights is therefore very important. Interacting factors determine the effectiveness of patents awarded in any country: (1) the scientific fields in which a patent can be obtained; (2) international treaties that guar­antee the respect for patents awarded in other countries and vice versa; (3) the ability to maintain an obsolete patent; (4) the ability to sanction patent violations; and (5) the dura­tion of patent protection (Ginarte and Park, 1997; ISNAR, 2003).

5.5.2.1 Ongoing trends
The  assignment  of intellectual property rights to  living things is of relatively recent origin in developed countries. Vegetative propagated plants were first made patentable in the US in 1930. And the protection of plant varieties (or plant breeder's rights—PBRs), a new form of intellectual property, only became widespread in the second half of the 20th Century. Intellectual property laws vary from jurisdic­tion to jurisdiction, such that the acquisition, registration or enforcement of IP rights must be pursued or obtained separately in each territory of interest. However, these laws are becoming increasingly harmonized through the effects of international treaties such as the 1994 World Trade Or­ganization (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs), while other treaties may facilitate registration in more than one jurisdiction at a time.
     If the aim of plant variety protection is to provide incen­tives to breeders, one of the questions that arises is how the contribution of farmers to the conservation and develop­ment of plant genetic resources should be recognized and preserved. Building on the principles embodied in the CBD, PGRFA seeks to establish principles for facilitating access to plant genetic resources and establishing fair and equitable mechanisms of benefit sharing. The International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) aims to encourage the development of new varieties of plants for the benefit of society by codifying intellectual property for plant breeders. In 2005, 58 countries had joined UPOV. For plant breeders' rights to be granted, the new variety must meet four criteria under the rules established by UPOV. The new plant must be novel, which means that it must not have been previously marketed in the country where rights are applied