L'industrie des semences, économie et politique

The seed industry offers the opportunity to clarify the debates on the protection of a biological material, whether plants or microorganisms, and to bring them down from their metaphysical heights to an analytical ground. Two methods of protection have been implemented in the case of seeds : a biological way, the production of F1 hybrids, a legal and/or administrative, the breeders' rights legislation. The analytical framework developped in the article shows that heterosis or hybrid vigor is not the key variable to explain the choice of hybrid breeding and points out the multiplication rate of the species to be a more relevant variable. In the case of breeder's rights, it shows that the royalties which accrue to the breeder amount to a tax on seed producers. Consequently, breeder's rights appear to be both an inefficient and injust method of financing a breeding work. The case of the seed industry makes it possible to bring out the paradoxical nature of the specific factor of production involved in any biological process of production : the genetic information, which has no price in the two littéral meanings of the expression : an infinite and uncalculable value and no market value. Thus from an economic point of view, the attempts to patent microorganisms appear to promise much more drawbacks than advantages. Key words: Breeders'rights, hybrids, seed industry, patents protection of genetic material.