Politics of Knowledge in Development: Explorations in Seed Sovereignty

There is an existing debate on the epistemic hegemony of the knowledge system of industrial agriculture. The two sides posit a critique and offer alternatives from already existing practices of agriculture. Most often, the critique is on hard material grounds, while the alternatives are offered in terms of the recovery of a cultural set of practices. This article posits a fresh critique to complement the existing one and expands the scope of the alternative to make critical appraisals of existing knowledge systems. For the first, it critically analyses each of the presumptions that underlie the argument of the dominant vision and for the second, this article identifies, analyses and aims to foreground those perspectives that contested major policy decisions and the reasons for their subsequent marginalization. The issue of seed sovereignty—that of women farmers specially, retaining the authority to breed and propagate seeds for farming—is the focal point of this study.

Can public universities play a role in fostering seed sovereignty?

Across Canada and the United States, public universities were founded with a mission to contribute to broad societal well-being. Yet, the capacity of public research institutions to develop and disseminate flexible and accessible tools for resilient agriculture has been challenged in recent decades. The role of universities in advancing extractive, rather than regenerative, economies has been amplified by the privatization of public agricultural research and extension of knowledge to farmers, particularly in plant breeding and plant genetics. In this article, we examine the history of public research for seed systems in North America through a “seed regimes” framework, arguing that a narrow focus on commercialization of public research has exacerbated inequalities inherent in the founding structure of public agricultural research, including the displacement of Indigenous land and seed relations. We then discuss how community organizations are challenging the enclosure of seed through seed sovereignty organizing and freelance plant breeding, in some cases through the development of community–university partnerships based on the principles of the cocreation of knowledge. We conclude by offering a reimagined public seed research agenda that focuses on strengthening links between public research and grassroots seed movements, as an opportunity to build more resilient seed and food systems.

Capturing the Narratives of Sustainable Farming: Study of Marginal Women Farmers in Five Districts of Odisha

This article presents an analysis of field research on sustainable farming practices in five districts of Odisha, that have emerged as a response to the adversities created by modern industrial agriculture and agribusiness market. The capital and chemical-intensive farming have left a legacy of irreparable environmental damage; and the monocultures have led to the gradual disappearance of a variety of indigenous crops, causing erosion of the seed sovereignty. 1 The first section of the article engages with the critique of increasing monopolisation of the food and farming systems, secured in a systematic and structured way by the forces of global agribusiness conglomerates. The second section captures the initiatives in which marginal women farmers are trying to revive seed saving and natural farming that had been lost due to the green revolution. These field investigations illuminate the exemplary ways in which such initiatives are empowering women farmers and enabling them to reclaim food security 2 and seed sovereignty in the current milieu of agrarian distress. Such grassroots engagements show the possibility of emancipatory politics outside the formal institutional framework that are structuring the alternative discourse rooted in local agroecology. 3

Emociones, Semillas Nativas y Cambio Climático: El Movimiento de Soberanía de las Semillas en Chiapas, México

What role do emotions play in the creation of interpretive frameworks that allow communities to respond effectively to the challenges posed by climate change? This article explores this question empirically from the perspective of small indigenous peasant communities in the central region of Chiapas, Mexico. The study shows that the spiritual, cultural and material meanings that indigenous communities assign to the traditional milpa agroecosystem and to their native seeds, particularly maize, converge in a conjunction of emotions that enables these communities to recognize the risks posed by environmental degradation and climate change, and to mobilize politically around the frame of seed sovereignty. Particularly important is the informal system by which children inherit maize seed from their parents, which imposes on new generations the moral and social obligation of reproducing the milpa. This reproduction is necessary to keep alive the spirits of their ancestors and deities, which are thought to be embodied in the seeds, and to preserve the environmental conditions needed for future generations to live from the maize and the land. The regional social movement around seed sovereignty embraces and amplifies the emotions that underlie this moral and cultural commitment, at the same time as it emphasizes the risks posed by conventional agricultural practices (agrochemical use, deforestation, and quasi-monoculture) and environmental deterioration to the sustenance of the milpa and seeds. Three key foci comprise the agenda of this movement: agroecology, agrobiodiversity conservation, and adaptation of the milpa to climate change.