ABSTRACT
Farmers’ rights – understood as farmers’ right to freely access, use, exchange and sell crop genetic resources – are a key dimension of food sovereignty.1 They are also the object of an important debate among scholars and activists.2 It is widely acknowledged that the concept is ambiguous and its implementation fraught with difficulties. As a result of the slow progress made in realizing farmers’ rights in the last 25 years, a number of researchers, while agreeing with farmers’ rights in principle, have grown increasingly critical of their usefulness in practice (Borowiak 2004; Kloppenburg 2004; Bertacchini 2008).
