Latin America and the Caribbean
Muzaka, V. (2021). Stealing the common from the goose: The emergence of Farmers' Rights and their implementation in India and Brazil
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The emergence of Farmers' Rights in international law is closely related to the “seed wars” at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) during the 1980s. Recognizing the plant innovations of farmers everywhere, these rights represented a countervailing measure against increasing pressures to protect commercial plant breeders' rights around the world. Nearly three decades later, the intellectual property rights of plant breeders, internationally recognized and legally binding, are stronger than ever, while Farmers' Rights are facing increasing threats from the continuing spread of industrial agriculture and biotechnologies. The present article seeks to make two contributions: first, embedding the emergence of Farmers' Rights in a historical analysis, it conceptualizes them not simply as a new category of rights, but as a specific manifestation of the conflictual entwinement of capitalism and plant genetic resources fomented in the geopolitical context of the 20th century. Second, focusing on India and Brazil, it analyses the different manner in which the state in both has played a crucial role in restricting the real freedoms of traditional farmers. While farmers' “interests” are routinely preyed upon to justify various policies, their overall effect promises to deepen the ongoing process of farmers' dispossession and separation from their basic means of production: the seed.
Peschard, K. (2017). Seed wars and farmers' rights: comparative perspectives from Brazil and India
Drawing on interviews with Indian and Brazilian farmers’ rights activists, lawyers, agronomists and plant breeders, this article aims at better understanding how farmers’ rights are protected on paper and implemented on the ground in these two countries. It is shown that India has adopted an ownership approach to farmers’ rights, while Brazil leans towards a stewardship approach. Based on an examination of the progress made in enforcing these rights, it is further argued that the stewardship model adopted by Brazil is more conducive to the realization of farmers’ rights. Finally, the author demonstrates how farmers’ rights provisions in the Brazilian and Indian legislations represent fragile gains that could be curtailed by several bills currently under discussion in the field of seed and plant variety protection.
Wattnem, T. (2016). Seed laws, certification and standardization: outlawing informal seed systems in the Global South
A series of relatively new seed laws are becoming novel mechanisms of accumulation by dispossession in agriculture. Many researchers have argued that intellectual property rights (IPR) laws that apply to living materials dispossess people of seeds by privatizing germplasm. What these authors have not addressed is the role that non-IPR-related seed laws play in the seed enclosure. I argue that we should pay more attention to the implications of seed laws and regulations that do not deal directly with IPR issues, because they are also being used to outlaw practices that are necessary for the functioning of informal seed systems. As a result, they are setting the stage for the further erosion of seed sovereignty and are becoming an additional threat to an already waning agro-biodiversity, with direct consequences for farmers’ livelihoods. These seed laws establish certification requirements and quality standards for the marketing and/or exchange of seeds. I use the example of contemporary Colombian seed politics to illustrate how and why certification requirements and quality standards are currently being introduced throughout the Global South. I draw on insights from the standards literature in order to explain the power, limitations and consequences of these laws.
Ruiz, M. (2009). Agrobiodiversity zones and the register of native crops in Peru: Learning from ourselves
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This book presents and reflects upon two experiences which have sought to revalue biodiversity in Peru. Firstly, it analyzes how the idea of Agrobiodiversity Zones developed over time. These zones are created to conserve and maintain centres of cultivated genetic diversity as well as the cultural interaction with small farmers. Secondly, an analysis is undertaken regarding the national registry for native crops, which was established as a policy and legal tool to further revalue and protect national biodiversity in what was seen as a highly competitive and interconnected world. For this purpose the book presents a review of the national process that created the registry. It also reflects upon the principles and rationale which led to the development of both the zones and the registry.
De Haan, S. (2009). Potato diversity at height: Multiple dimensions of farmer-driven in-situ conservation in the Andes
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It is possible to distinguish between two types of in-situ conservation of crop genetic resources: farmer-driven and externally driven, and in this thesis it is the first type that is the subject of study. This type refers to the persistence of potato genetic resources in areas where everyday practices of farmers maintain diversity on-farm. In the thesis the species, morphological and molecular diversity of Andean potatoes in Huancavelica is treated at different scales of conservation: farmer family, community, geographically distanced, regional, in-situ and ex-situ subpopulations. The results show that farmers in Huancavelica maintain high levels of diversity. The thesis also investigates the indigenous biosystematics of potatoes (folk taxonomy, folk descriptors and nomenclature), as well as the annual spatial management of potatoes (cropping and labor calendars, field scattering practices, and genotype by environmental management). It is suggested that farmers conduct annual spatial management by deploying combined tolerance and resistance traits imbedded in particular cultivar combinations in order to confront the predominant biotic and abiotic stresses present in different agroecologies. Three specific dimensions of potato land use were researched in order to gain insights into possible contemporary changes affecting the in-situ conservation of potato genetic resources: land use tendencies, rotation designs and their intensity, and sectoral fallowing systems. Farmer seed systems can be conceived as an overlay of crop genetic diversity determining its temporal and spatial patterning and the thesis investigates the relation between selected farmer seed system components (storage, health and procurement) and infraspecific diversity of potato in Huancavelica. The role of biodiverse potatoes within the human diet in Huancavelica is also looked into. As part of the conclusion the implications for externally driven R&D oriented in-situ conservation efforts seeking to support dynamic and ongoing farmer-driven conservation are discussed. It is argued that the science and practice of R&D oriented in-situ conservation lag behind the policy commitments to its implementation and that institutional learning from diverse projects already implemented throughout the Andes and the diffusion of key lessons is essential for the success of future interventions.
Scurrah, M., Andersen, R., and Winge, T. (2008). Farmers' Rights in Peru: Farmers' Perspectives
Download the pdf in english here (PDF, 665KB) and in spanish here (PDF, 760KB).
The realization of Farmers’ Rights is crucial to the maintenance of Peru’s rich agro-biodiversity and for poverty alleviation. This report presents the perceptions and experiences of 180 farmers from various regions of the Peruvian Andes on issues related to Farmers’ Rights as they are addressed in the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. A series of regional workshops were held in the Andes from March to May 2008 to map the views, experiences and suggestions of farmers on the realization of Farmers’ Rights. Their views were presented at a national multi-stakeholder workshop in Lima in September 2008, where also central government institutions, NGOs, farmers’ organizations, as well as gene bank officials and breeders were represented. In this report the results from these workshops are presented and analyzed as to how they can form the basis for future policies on Farmers’ Rights in Peru. Central recommendations include documentation of traditional knowledge; the establishment of agro-biodiversity reserves; support to community gene banks, seed fairs and exchange visits; participatory research on traditional seed systems and participatory plant breeding; assistance in processing and marketing products made from traditional varieties; improved economic incentive structures for maintaining traditional crop varieties; and the establishment of pilot villages to bolster the conservation and exchange of genetic resources and traditional knowledge. Suggestions for activities to foster farmers’ participation in decision-making are elaborated as well as institutional questions on how to coordinate the realization of Farmers’ Rights.
Ruiz Muller, M. (2006). Farmers' Rights in Peru. A Case Study
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The case study provides an overview of the state of Farmers' Rights in Peru and of the perceptions of central stakeholders in this regard. Peru is a centre of origin and diversity of important food crops and a country where traditional farming practices coexist with modern and intensive farming, and the study offers an analysis of the various and complex issues and problems which arise with regard to understanding and, especially, implementing these rights at the national level.
Various perceptions and limited awareness about the implications of Farmers' Rights pose an additional challenge. However, Peru has made some progress, particularly in the area of public policies and laws oriented towards the protection of traditional knowledge and seeking to ensure the fair and equitable sharing of benefits derived from the use of genetic resources. Most concerns at present focus on the impacts that a seed certification system and new plant breeders' rights may have on traditional saving and use of seeds and propagating material by campesinos and native communities. Farmers' Rights appear to be an important tool for campesinos and native communities to ensure the legitimacy of the traditional practices of saving, reusing and exchanging seeds.Gómez Martínez, F., and Torres, R. (2001). Hegemony, Commodification, and the State: Mexico's Shifting Discourse on Agricultural Germplasm
This article employs a neo-Marxist theoretical framework to examine the debate on the commodification of crop genetic resources in Mexico. The focus is on Mexico's movement away from a 'farmers' rights' framework and towards the passage of the Mexican federal law on plant varieties.
Under the farmers' rights framework, crop genetic resources were seen as a 'common good', whereas under the new law they are seen as a commodity. To understand this transformation, the recent history of the discourse in Mexico is analysed, with emphasis on the ideological elements of the debate. The authors conclude that there has arisen an international hegemonic bloc which works through the international bodies of free trade, transcending the boundaries of any single state entity. This hegemonic bloc has influenced the change in Mexico. Farmers' rights are viewed as contradictory to the commodity rational that underlies classical intellectual property rights to plant genetic resources; thus the authors are not overly optimistic regarding the potential for the realization of these rights. They question what will happen if the commodity rational wins through in Mexico, as the country has a tremendously rich agricultural biodiversity, currently preserved in the hands of farmers. Mexico's varieties, so vital to global biodiversity, may be lost to the dominance of the commercially improved breeds, the authors warn.