Fuente: Sustainability - Revista científica (MDPI) Sustainability, Vol. 18, Pages 5608: Reconfiguring Seed Governance in Japan: A Review of Institutional Transformation from Public Seed Supply to Intellectual Property and Multi-Level Governance
Sustainability doi: 10.3390/su18115608
Authors:
Satomi Kohyama

Seed governance has become increasingly important in agricultural sustainability, food security, and innovation policy. Many countries have shifted toward stronger intellectual property (IP) protection in plant breeding; however, the institutional consequences of these reforms on seed governance structures remain insufficiently examined. In this review, I analyze the recent transformation of seed governance in Japan in the context of two major legal reforms enacted in 2018 and 2020. Herein, I examine how these reforms have reshaped the institutional architecture of seed governance, based on a comparative institutional review and empirical evidence from nationwide surveys of prefectural governments conducted in 2022 and 2024. The results indicate that Japan’s seed governance system is transitioning from a publicly coordinated seed supply model to a multi-level governance structure that integrates IP protection, regional branding strategies, and strategic management of plant variety circulation. These findings suggest that recent reforms represent a diversification of seed systems, governance functions have been reconfigured across different levels of government, and national IP regimes interact with prefectural agricultural policies and regional economic strategies. Therefore, this review provides important insights into how contemporary seed governance evolves through interactions among IP systems, agricultural innovation policies, and regional development strategies.