A representative from Monsanto, the world’s largest seed company that today controls 65% of the global seed market for maize and more than a quarter of the world’s commercial seed market, is on record to have defined the problem to securing a Global Intellectual Property Rights Agreement as: ‘Farmers save seeds’—and thus they offered a solution: ‘Seed saving should be made illegal’.
This quote from the book Seed Sovereignty, Food Security, edited by Vandana Shiva aptly illustrates the global strategy of TransNational Corporations (TNCs) towards capturing control over seeds, the basis of life, farming livelihoods and food. This book authored exclusively by women scientists, activists and academics from the Global North and South, whilst analysing the history of ascendancy and hegemonic control of seeds by Transnational Seed Corporations, also offers a powerful counter-narrative of how farmers, scientists and other citizen-activists across the globe are organizing to reclaim sovereignty and control over seeds and food.
Following Vandana Shiva’s introduction the book is divided into three sections: the first titled ‘International: Reflections on the Broken Paradigm’, the second and third titled ‘Global North’, and ‘Global South’ respectively.
The first section discusses some of the serious challenges that exist within the global canvas of Corporate Industrial Chemical and GMO1 agriculture, farming and food: it begins with Moore and Lappes’s essay where they discuss the dangers of corporate chemical industrial agriculture and then illustrate agro-ecological efforts of farmers to take back control over their farming in Ethiopia, Niger, India and Brazil. Their choice of a World Bank funded progamme in India to illustrate a successful model of agro-ecology is however intriguing, as the same World Bank successfully destroyed farming livelihoods of India through supporting structural economic reform policies! The other four essays analyse the grave negative impacts of GMOs and associated practices, on people’s health and the environment, and raise fundamental questions on how biotechnology directly undermines the power of people’s choice.
An excellent piece by Stephanie Seneff, which is as gripping as a detective novel, pulls together evidence to show a strong correlation between the expansion of the use of the herbicide Roundup Ready (with its active ingredient Glyphosate) on GMO corn and soya in the USA, and the growing prevalence of autism amongst children. She concludes with a strong argument that government bodies and other independent researchers examine further this possible connection. The contribution by Marion Nestle titled ‘Food Politics, the Food Movement and Public Health’ is extremely relevant, in the context of a stark paradox of growing obesity and rampant malnourishment in India, and a policy context in India which actively encourages the expansion of Industrial and processed foods.
‘The Global North’ section has some insightful contributions that trace the growth of the Seed Industry and Seed policy history in Germany, France, Italy, leading to legislations for the EU and the history of commercialization, consolidation and control of seeds in the USA. The story in all these countries is identical: till 1945, it was farmers who selected, saved and exchanged seeds amongst one another. They innovated and adapted their seeds to local environments with huge seed and food biodiversity. Farmers were autonomous and controlled their farming activity. Post World War II, seed production shifted to laboratories and fields for seed multiplication. The dual strategies of technology advancement and regulation, promoted by the state, encouraged the monopolization of seeds by the private sector, resulting in a strong private sector whose interests and profits were protected. Public sector institutes began to create and propagate ‘stable’ varieties: distinct, homogenous and stable. Strict regulations and certification procedures controlled the commercialization of seeds. It became inordinately expensive to register, certify and sell a selected variety and investing in plant breeding became very tedious. The next step was to protect the varietal innovation and work of breeders through Intellectual Property (IP) rights. In these early years, farmers were still permitted to save seeds produced on their own farm, and seed saving was considered a privilege. However soon this became illegal. Since 1994, a European legislation authorizes saving farmed seeds for 21 varieties alone, on payment of a tax ! Legislations uphold the rights of breeders and their freedoms to create. Farmers meanwhile lost their capacity and knowledge to choose and produce seeds, and have merely become users of seeds that they do not control. The narratives conclude with the growing movement amongst farmers to take back control over seeds. The message is strong: seed sovereignty is key to food sovereignty, the health of the environment and the freedom of the people. There is also a very interesting description of how the Swiss People voted for a moratorium against the commercial release of GMOs. A stand alone essay is the contribution by Winona LaDuke ‘In praise of the Leadership of Indigenous Women’ , for whom it is not merely seed and food under threat but the entire indigenous territory, way of life, cultures and the existence of native people of USA and Canada, where women are taking a lead in fighting imperialist colonizing powers.
The historical narratives of the Global North have clearly informed the seed policies of the Global South and a similar trajectory of seed hegemony by Corporations is evident, as meticulously discussed by contributors from Bangladesh, Africa, Mexico and Chile. Here too we get to understand the strong movements underway to regain seed sovereignty. A gap in the section, surprisingly is Shiva’s contribution for India, which does not substantively discuss the historical trajectory of seeds in India—from purely farmer controlled, to the emergence of the public sector, and the role of the state in facilitating the growth of the private seed sector along with the emergence of the GMO seed industry. Instead it focuses almost entirely on Navadanya’s work on conserving seeds, which whilst interesting, would have been more powerful when placed within the Indian context of seed and food policy.
Three contributions, one each from Peru, Argentina and the USA, are presented within the highly contentious ‘mother-nurturenature’ paradigm. The woman as mother figure, her protective and regenerative powers, is provided as an explanation for their role in leading movements to revive seeds and resist GMOs in their respective countries.’ I see in the struggles of the Mothers of Ituzainigo too an expansion of the feminist movement to embrace the values of motherhood—the traditional role of a woman in a household as mother, nurturer, protector and educator of family and the children’, is an articulation that is deeply problematic. Women play a pivotal role in food farming (a point also made by several of the contributors), particularly in selecting, storing, saving, exchanging seeds, deciding upon seeds to be sown in the next season and sowing seeds. Whilst this is true for women in farming communities cutting across various cultures and ethnic groups, one cannot attribute this to some ‘biologically’ determined natural mothering trait of women, or because women are inherently more closely linked to nature, or to essentialize their powers of reproduction/fertility; rather it needs to be analysed through embedded gendered roles that women have traditionally been required to perform. Undoubtedly because of these roles, women from food farming communities possess a huge wealth of ecological knowledge with respect to seeds, and have exercised pivotal roles in decision making with respect to agriculture within their families and the larger community.
What is completely missing is a much needed gendered analysis of the impact of the rise in corporate agriculture embodied, in this case, in the seed industry, on farming communities looking more closely at the interactions of gender with class, caste, ethnic groups, race, particularly in light of this role of women as seed savers. Curiously, none of the contributors of the Global North (except those who discuss indigenous communities of North America and Australia), provide a gender lens to their description of ‘farming communities’ and seed—whether in the early days when communities controlled seeds, or in current times where communities are involved in taking back control over seeds.
In fact, what is surprisingly absent from the book is a gendered analysis of the entire story of seed, the seed industry, and its relationship to Food Security and Food Sovereignty (which are two completely different worldviews that have been inadequately discussed in the book), which moves beyond the rhetoric of a patriarchal seed industry. Such an analysis would deepen our understanding of the issues at play and should include questions that explore and theorize on:
(i) knowledge (women food farmers’ ecological knowledge on seed is today of vital interest to the seed industry over which they desire complete intellectual property rights and control; women’s knowledge on seed in turn is being completely displaced and devalued in its praxis in the family, community and larger public domain),
(ii) labour (for instance virtually all domestic and multinational seed companies in India, depend on women’s labour to perform manual cross–pollination of seed plants, sowing, weeding and harvesting operations which are highly labour intensive and amongst the most poorly paid jobs. Men on the other hand are tasked with better paying jobs like spraying pesticides, ploughing and applying fertilizers: what drives the industry in deciding on the gendered divisions of roles and differential payments?)
(iii)the alienation of labour and knowledge (the seed industry has powerfully strengthened patriarchy within farming communities by targeting men to buy their seeds and enter loan economies, displacing women and their knowledge which used to critically shape and inform farming decisions within the community. Ironically, this labour of women heavily subsidizes the industry, and is completely alienated from women’s knowledge of and control over seeds.)
(iv) resistance to the hegemony of the seed industry (what forms are they taking? Is patriarchy being strengthened or challenged in the process?
Finally, what one misses is a discerning introduction by Shiva, providing an analytical oversight to the reader on the central arguments of the contributions, weaving together various sections of this important book.
Sagari R. Ramdas is a veterinary scientist, a member of the Food Sovereignty Alliance, India, and is learning to be an agro-ecological food farmer. She was a founder-director of Anthra till 2015.