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2016-10-28 | permalink
Keeping seeds in the hands of peasant farmers instead of corporations
Keeping Seeds in Peoples’ Hands (Photo: Benedikt Haerlin)
Peasant seeds systems and agricultural biodiversity are under threat as a result of increasing corporate pressure, according to the Right to Food and Nutrition Watch 2016 published by Bread for the World, FIAN International and ICCO Cooperation on October 13 in Rome. The report, which is supported by 24 civil society organizations, draws attention to the threats around access to seeds for smallholder farmers worldwide. “A staggering 70% of the food we consume worldwide is produced by smallholders. Peasant and indigenous communities, who produce a great deal of this food, have been developing and saving seed for millennia - from Guatemala through Senegal to Nepal,” the editors write in the foreword to the report. “However, today seeds are under threat everywhere. Laws are increasingly limiting what peasants can do with their seeds and criminalizing them, thereby impeding their role as food producers and threatening our food sovereignty.”
The authors warn that peasants’ rights to save, use, exchange and sell seeds are under growing corporate pressure and have been neglected by states. Seed and agrochemical transnational corporations seek to privatize, monopolize and control seeds, patenting and commodifying the very source of life. The report says the new wave of giant mergers – Bayer with Monsanto, Dow Chemicals with DuPont and Syngenta with ChemChina, to name but a few – shows that corporations are aiming for a tighter grip on genetic resources, leading to even more market concentration. The economic, ecological, and socio-political risks of a monopolized seed system are innumerable, warns the report. The corporate food regime is leading to the disintegration of small-scale farming and small-scale fisheries as sustainable livelihoods, and to the destruction of collective ways of managing seeds, land and natural resources as commons. According to Marijke de Graaf, expert food and nutrition security at ICCO Cooperation, “Without access to seeds, smallholder famers will not be able to meet the growing demand to enough and qualitative food.”
The report also shows how peasant movements, indigenous peoples, and other local communities around the world are resisting the privatization and commoditization of nature and presenting alternatives. In addition, it turns the spotlight on the fact that access to and control over seeds and natural resources are also directly related to the rising levels of criminalization and killings of human rights defenders. “The criminalization of those who defend the commons, currently on the rise, needs to stop,” said Sofia Monsalve, FIAN International’s Secretary General. Thus, one recommendation of the report is that states must step up and fulfill their human rights obligations by adopting stronger policies and laws to protect peasants’ rights to save, use, exchange and sell seed. “Peasant seed systems, which underpin agricultural biodiversity, should be recognized, protected, and promoted by states,” Monsalve added. What also needs to be changed is the current value system that prioritizes seed and food for profit over seed and food rights for those who produce it and their heirs. (ab)
