Seed Sovereignty: The Promise of Open Source Biology –Some thoughts…

“Who controls the seed gains a substantial measure of control over the shape of the entire food system.”

This quote from Professor and Rural Sociologist Jack Kloppenburg, expresses a concern shared by many who have come to understand the dominant seed industry. Indeed, the seed is a vehicle of heritage, and through the seed, traditions and cultures persist and evolve. Planting a seed, cultivating, harvesting, and consuming it’s flesh completes the cycle of the seed and advances both the seed and food sovereignty movements.

Seeds were once shared and bartered locally. These exchange systems independently evolved throughout history and contributed to vast genetic diversity among crop plants. The agricultural biodiversity that accumulated by the hand of farmers is the source of resilience modern plant breeders exploit. The question that no one seems to address is whether it was right to exploit these landraces to begin with. In many cases, the stewards of this diversity freely gave or traded their landraces to plant collectors from the West, like Vavilov, not knowing the ramifications it would have.

Sharing seed has given way to appropriation. With commercialization and the proprietarization of ‘traits’ through inbreeding/hybridization of the early 20^th century, agriculture was modernized and seeds became more tightly restricted. The creation of a dominant seed industry would not have been possible without the aid of progressive/technology-oriented public and private sectors. However, these actors have been accused of committing acts of biopiracy, as they appropriate and exploit biodiversity of common heritage. Ultimately, this has worked to reduce the capacity of those interested in saving seed.

Even within our public universities, cooperation is stifled among plant breeders as proprietary interests become more important to protect. All is not lost, however. Increasing awareness over the consolidation of resources and the seed industry has stimulated the development of Open Source methodologies, including participatory research and public licenses for plant germplasm. These efforts are aimed at giving some power back to those it was taken from to begin with, by allowing the free use and sharing of technologies and biodiversity.

To read some of Dr. Jack Kloppenburg’s work on this very subject, please check out this PDF.