Save the Seeds!
Where does our food come from? Some may answer the grocery store, the farmers market, the drive through, or even their backyard. But let’s dig a little deeper… all of our food derives from a basic, seed unit. Seeds have been saved and stored for hundreds of years by farmers, peasants, Indigenous peoples, and garden enthusiasts alike for the purpose of feeding humanity! These little units are arguably one of the most essential aspects of sustaining life as we know it. However, seeds are facing an unprecedented moment in global history, a time where many seeds may become extinct forever!
With increased intensity of the global capitalist economy and advances in crop and seed technology, local seed saving and knowledge of indigenous seeds are in danger of being lost. More, the dangers of loss in biodiversity, and knowledge of regionally native foods and seed families, are all on the chopping block due to seed monopolies and patent lawsuits perpetrated by Big Agribusiness companies such as Monsanto – Bayer.
Ever since the commercial introduction of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in 1996, Monsanto has aggressively pursued its commercial interests on the market, in the fields and in courts, at home and abroad. The company has filed for patent protection for its genetically modified (GM) plant varieties in various jurisdictions and invented unprecedented systems for the collection of royalties and surveillance of farmers. With its resources and power, Monsanto – Beyer has won every single intellectual property (IP) lawsuit filed in the United States and Canada since 1997. This legal precedent of agribusiness winning intellectual property battles against their growers poses a massive threat (perhaps the largest in global history) to seed sovereignty in both local and international arenas.
Seeds determine how and what we are able to eat. Seeds provide the nourishing foods that support us in our day to day lives. Seeds define our communities and how we relate to one another culturally. Most importantly, seeds define our freedom from dependence on industrial agriculture and modified seeds. In this age of genetic modification and the accompanying intellectual property rights, monopolies pose a threat to each and every one of us.
The effects of seeds in the wrong hands can displace families, decemate plant diversity, and cause genetic contamination as well as creating a manufactured reliance on industry rather than our own communities. GM seeds and local seeds are incompatible due to ethical differences in viewing seeds as living beings, ancestors of our food systems, and markers of cultural history while the former is a product of lab engineering, ignorance to locality and colonial histories of erasure of Indigenous knowledge – forcing reliance on neocolonial systems. GM seeds emphasize few varieties of ‘profitable’ products rather than that of historically accurate, culturally appropriate, regional varieties that produce more nutritious foods. More, manufactured seeds are less climate resilient than local varieties, produce less compared to local methods of growing, and work to enhance negative environmental outcomes through use of chemical inputs, poor soil management, and imposition of outside actors into foreign soils (quite literally).
Fight the struggle against the restructuring of our social and natural worlds around the narrow logic of the market and join the movement in defence of our freedom and our food systems!
La Via Campesina, Global Campaign For Seeds.