ABSTRACT
Given the position of the seed as part of the irreducible core of agricultural production, it is difficult to imagine any form of ‘food sovereignty’ that does not include a necessary and concomitant dimension of what might be called ‘seed sovereignty’. The erosion of farmer sovereignty over seed – via corporate appropriation of plant genetic resources, growing monopoly power in the seed industry, the development of transgenic crops and the global imposition of intellectual property rights – has become a pivotal issue for farmers the world over. Whatever their many differences, primary agricultural producers of all types and in (almost) all places find themselves confronting Monsanto (and/or its corporate analogs) in similar fashion, with similar implications for their access to and use of seed. The seed and its attendant political ecology are now a potential vector for
Vol. 41, No. 6, 1225-1246, https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2013.875897
development of the sort of shared consciousness envisioned by Marx (1998, 45) and welcomed by La Vía Campesina (LVC) leaders as ‘a common base… for globalising the struggle’ (Nicholson in Wittman 2009, 678) against the corporate food regime.
