ABSTRACT
The concept of agrobiodiversity has emerged in many disciplines over the last 10–15 years, but it has still not been fully recognized by, or found its place in, the juridical world. The loss of agricultural diversity is associated with changes in agriculture, particularly those that followed the green revolution or industrialization of agriculture. The green revolution took place between the 1950s and 1970s, and it was characterized by the introduction of chemical, mechanical and biological (quality seed of improved varieties) inputs. Industrial inputs and mechanization have spread throughout different parts of the world, but particularly so across Brazil's agricultural frontier. This model has generated various negative socio-environmental consequences that are well known. The increasingly artificial nature of agricultural ecosystems has also caused a reduction in the diversity of crops and varieties, as well as in the variation in agricultural ecosystems, in many cases leading to their complete disappearance. Evidently, the loss of agrobiodiversity cannot be attributed to legal frameworks only, but their effects need to be considered. Seed laws, for instance, were adopted as a legal support for (or component of) the industrialization of agriculture. In the domain of seed and varieties, the agricultural development paradigm was translated into a linear approach to seed sector development, in which formal and commercial systems would eventually replace the sometimes considered ‘inferior’ informal or farmers' seed systems (Louwaars, 2010). Furthermore, it was considered only a matter of time until these ‘inferior’ local varieties would be replaced by continuous flows of improved ones. Many of the seed and varietal laws that were developed in the 1970s and 1980s reflect this agricultural development paradigm (Louwaars et al., 2013), which does not take into account the capacities of farmers to deal with seed, and which considers farmers as mere ‘recipients’ of new technologies, who can be persuaded to adopt new seed that is produced by formal systems.
