Reclaiming Diverse Seed Commons Through Food Sovereignty, Agroecology and Economies of Care

Abstract

Seed commons—the collective management of seeds and associated knowledge—is a major aim of food sovereignty, that crucial alternative to the dead end of industrialized agriculture. To reclaim the commons, explains Michel Pimbert in this wide-ranging policy analysis, we need to enable community control over growing, trading and consuming food. That will demand mutually supportive transformations in agriculture, economies, rights and political systems towards agroecology, an economics of solidarity, collective notions of property and direct democracy. Drawing on sources such as the Nyéléni Declaration on food sovereignty and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas, Pimbert outlines a radical approach to seed governance outside the capitalist and patriarchal paradigm. The proposals, while scarcely featuring in global and national fora on seed governance, offer a fresh framework for needed change at a time of social exclusion, poverty and deepening environmental crises.

A revitalisation of European farming and the promise of the biodynamic worldview

“…This movement includes many farmers' organisations whose indigenous community members live according to their cultural worldviews that embrace the existence of a sentient, non-material reality as well as a material one. Pimbert, for example, describes the respectful relationship between such communities and their seed which they see as "sisters, mothers and living sentient beings rather than anonymous, inert commodities" [11]. Nevertheless, the science, education and practice of agroecology, as well as of the permaculture and organic farming movements, adhere to the materialist worldview, one that holds matter to be the fundamental substance in nature [12].…”

New geographical directions for food systems governance research

“…The re-emergence of ‘territory’ speaks to a wider critical engagement with the relationships between the state and space, that has played out in both academic discourse (Agnew, 2009; Ong, 2007) and social movements, such as the food sovereignty movement. The idea of food sovereignty resonates with Lefebvre’s argument that the state facilitates processes of capital accumulation; food sovereignty scholars and activists have long argued that governments have played a key role in facilitating the capitalist transformation of rural spaces (Pimbert, 2008). However, there are important differences with regards to the idea of territory.…”

“…There are important reasons for this. Food systems are complex, interconnected and multi-scalar, incorporating a diversity of material, social, economic and political processes (Allen, 2010; Duncan et al, 2021; Pimbert, 2008; Webb et al, 2021). Dominant food systems reproduce social and environmental challenges, not least food insecurity and malnutrition, obesity, ecological degradation, exploitation of labour and growing inequality (Biel, 2016; McMichael, 2009a; Rosset, 2008).…”

Urban hen legislation: Exposing an unexpected public health problem

“…In addition to the public health benefits of urban agriculture, such activities increase civic participation in food systems governance and contribute to food sovereignty within an urban setting. Food sovereignty refers to expanding democracy to regenerate local, autonomous, and ecologically sound food systems that respect the rights of people to decent working conditions and incomes (Blouin et al, 2009; Pimbert, 2010). The food sovereignty movement recognizes political and economic power in the food system and is a critical alternative to the neoliberal model favouring market forces (Desmarais and Wittman, 2014) and is of particular interest to recent radical geography research (Levkoe et al, 2020).…”