Digital (Transgenic) Seed and Its Copy

The politics of digital seed in India is one of the best illustrations of the fact that it is inherently difficult to contain any product that has been digitally processed. This chapter explores digital seed in India within the attempt to privatize seeds by companies such as Monsanto. Both seed and the turn towards precision agriculture can be seen as attempts to control the independence and sovereignty of farmers in India and curb their autonomy. This chapter deals with digital seed in the context of the farming crisis in India and highlights the spread of ‘copy seed’ and the virtual impossibility of curbing its use. Farmers are an extremely important vote bank and no government can risk alienating this sector. This chapter provides a succinct introduction to the global political economy of seed and precision agriculture and its rollout in India.

ESTRATÉGIAS DE RESISTÊNCIA DO MOVIMENTO CAMPONÊS BRASILEIRO EM FRENTE DAS NOVAS TÁTICAS DE CONTROLE DO AGRONEGÓCIO TRANSNACIONAL

The article surveys strategies developed by Brazilian rural social movements to combat the hegemony of transnational agricultural corporations and agribusinesses utilizing biotechnologies such as transgenic seed to gain control of agricultural production and commodity markets.

Having or Doing Intellectual Property Rights? Transgenic Seed on the Edge between Refeudalisation and Napsterisation

In contrast to neoliberal rhetoric, the commercialisation of knowledge has proved to be an intricate endeavour that implies unexpected effects. Taking Monsanto’s transgenic canola and its propertisation regime as an example, we will shed some light on the counterintuitive phenomenon that strong intellectual property rights are in heavy contrast to the liberal utopia of full commodification, i.e. universal competition and ideal type market relationships. We will find that Monsanto, in order to avoid Napsterisation, has established and still maintains a rather repressive commercialisation regime that maximises property control by strongly reducing the exchangeability of seed and crops. It can therefore be interpreted as a new form of landlord dominion which contradicts the modernist idea of concordance between market liberalisation and individual emancipation.