Can Intellectual Property Help Feed the World? Intellectual Property, the PLUMPYFIELD® Network and a Sociological Imagination

TL;DRAbstract

Can IP law help feed the world? Informed by C.W. Mills’ 1959 sociological classic, The Sociological Imagination, this chapter begins to answer the question of whether intellectual property can help feed the world. In exploring the role of intellectual property in hunger, malnutrition and food insecurity, this chapter begins by suggesting that justifying intellectual property based on advances in technology is compromised by the complexity of food insecurity, and ultimately results in a technology trap; a situation in which intellectual property specifies food security as technology at the expense of the relations in which food is produced, distributed and accessed. The chapter then examines Nutriset’s PlumpyField global supply network, an instance in which intellectual property is being used in the fight against hunger, malnutrition and food insecurity. In the context of food insecurity and intellectual property, the PlumpyField network provides a model in which intellectual property c

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