LEGAL MEASURES FOR AGRICULTURIST PROTECTION CASE STUDY OF 1999 PLANT VARIETIES PROTECTION ACT AMENDMENT

Abstract

This research is the Qualitative Research. Its objectives are to study the necessary reasons of the amendment of the current laws enforcement condition, the conflict of requested issues amendment and the selection and measures that should be used to protect farmers. Researcher studied the Legal Measures in Agriculturist Protection which is the special Case Study of 1999 Plant Varieties Protection Act Amendment by using the method of document analysis, observation and in-depth interview. The research results found that 1). The crucial necessary reasons for amendment is to enroll for the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) member and to reform the agricultural system to be the Seed Hub Center of Thailand. 2). The condition of the 1999 Plant Varieties Protection Act enforcement, found that the current legal enforcement process can partially utilize for the legal enforcement. Thus, the law can protect for new varieties plant only, but for the parts that related to conservation and plant breeders’ rights protection are not clearly issued for the processing regulation yet. 3). The amended issues conflict occurred from the increasing of the expansion of plant breeders’ rights protection or plant varieties company’s rights protection and it caused the agriculturists and agriculturist groups associated units worried for the topic of keeping their own seeds to grow and do something illegally without the awareness of the fact and also with the benefits seeking of the foreign investors from the national native significant heritage plant seeds without fairly sharing interests. 4) Processing choices are consisted of 3 alternative ways, they are: The immediately using public hearing outcomes to apply as the legal enforcement, the assignment for various associated units to process the amendment together prior to enter into legal enforcement and to cancel the amendment request, but still allowing to enforce seriously for the application of 1999 Plant Varieties Protection Act together with the building up of knowledge, understanding and the readiness for future Plant Varieties Protection Act Amendment. 5) 4 Measures that should be used for agriculturist protection are consisted of: To finish the arrangement of Accounting assignment or Thai’s Plant Varieties Name-Lists information quickly, to specify model for agriculturist or the locally benefited from natural resources of plant varieties together with the application of the 1999 Plant Varieties Protection Act, the inventing of surveillance mechanism in enrollment of Thai’s genetic materials improvement and the creating of developing countries’ group collaboration that have various bio-resources in order to increase trade negotiation power.