Session 5. 1.

Agricultural seeds are one of the most striking examples of the profound interdependence between humans and non-humans. They embody both human ingenuity and natural processes, merging these forces in ways that have shaped agriculture for millennia. However, in the 1960s, plant-specific intellectual property regimes, once confined to a few countries, began to internationalize. This transformation popularized the idea that humans actively shape and subdue agricultural plants. It also fueled the commercialization of seeds, often severing their connection to local growing conditions and surrounding ecosystems. This study explores various legal strategies used by states, international agricultural research institutions, and indigenous and local communities to limit the negative impacts of this institutionalization of human control over agricultural plants. These strategies would benefit from a legal environment that promotes alternative frameworks for property rights and fosters a more integrated understanding between subject and object.

In the U.S. and globally, seed industry concentration is at a historic high with two agrochemical companies controlling 71.6% of the market (MacDonald et al., 2023). This is particularly acute in maize (Zea mays) and driven by the dominant, productivist seed system (Buttel, 2005). Independent genotyping can only be conducted after patent and licensing restrictions have expired, a period of 20 years. These restrictions also impede a molecular based assessment of the standing crop by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) as recommended by experts. Data blanks about landscape vulnerability put farmers at risk of crop failure and the public at risk of food insecurity. Knowledge gaps about genetic diversity in U.S. commercial maize are designed through patents, contracts, non-disclosure agreements, and confidentiality agreements by patent holders who do not want their inbred lines genotyped by competitors. Findings from an empirical study based on semi-structured interviews with maize genetic diversity experts (n=44) indicate this restricts research and knowledge flow about genetic information to farmers and public networks (McCluskey & Tracy, 2021; McCluskey & Tracy, 2024).

A review of the emergence of PPB in the Global North (Colley et al., 2021) found agronomic improvements were only one lens motivating PPB, with many projects identifying goals of conservation of crop genetic diversity, farmers' seed sovereignty, and avoidance of certain breeding techniques. As a response to being underserved by the productivist model in the U.S., organic farmers and public and independent plant breeders developed the ‘Who Gets Kissed?’ project to develop an open-pollinated sweet maize variety bred under organic systems (Buttel, 2005; Shelton & Tracy, 2015). We present this case study through a systems lens to identify and address impacts of extreme concentration in the seed industry. Through alternative models we demonstrate the potential to navigate socio-economic and policy constraints resulting in expansion and diffusion of maize genetic diversity within countries of the Global North, inspired by traditional, community based, and participatory models from the Global South.

The present transdisciplinary research project is motivated by the need to revert the accelerated loss of agrobiodiversity in the last century, and to generate well adapted varieties to farmers´ needs, and local environmental conditions in the context of climate change. This project’s main purpose is to carry out a plant participatory breeding (PPB) experience, aiming to strengthen small farmers´ capacities to create new varieties and knowledge, that enable them to better meet their needs. I also propose to develop PPB researchers´ abilities to communicate and collaborate with different social actors in PPB and the wider sustainability science community.

This project consists of a three-year PPB exploratory study of native bean Phaseolus coccineus L., in the State of Mexico, Mexico, in order to monitor its performance under natural and artificial selection according to participatory breeding objectives and indicators. This proposal addresses the epistemological aspects of collaboration, aiming to implement an intercultural approach across all the projects´ components and activities, and to help build bridges of collaboration between producers´ and scientists’ knowledge systems, and their plant breeding research, monitoring and validation methods.

This project has a strong social ecological component which seeks to investigate the effects that PPB can have in generating collective agreements with regards to seeds and knowledge generated during the PPB experience. The project considers local seed regimes and their associated knowledge systems as common pool resources. Therefore, it aims to analyze the current context of public policies that favor agroindustrial agriculture as a means of enclosure of peasant agriculture, under Ostrom´s social ecological framework. The project seeks to identify opportunities to strengthen local governance and agency on crop breeding practices, in order to keep native agrobiodiversity in small farmers’ hands.

At the end of the project, a collective evaluation, acknowledgements and a report on learning outcomes shall be shared amongst all participants. Possible beneficiaries include local bean and native crop small producers, the scientific PPB and sustainability science communities, and all stakeholders interested in PPB as a means to generate more resilient crops and sustainable social ecological breeding commons.

Key words: seed regimes, common pool resources, transdisciplinary research, plant participatory breeding, knowledge systems, Phaseolus vulgaris L.

Badstue et al. (2006), in their pioneering application of the Ostromian framework to farmer seed networks (i.e., local seed supply systems), concluded that there was no clear operationalization of collective action in respect of the exchange of seeds. They observed only the presence of “more informal institutions with rules that are not predetermined and that adjust to contingencies,” or what they termed “fuzzy” rules (Badstue et al., 2006, p. 268; see also Garine et al., 2018).
These findings challenge certain assumptions of the commons framework. Farmers in centers of diversity do not operate from a maximizing or productivist rationality, nor do they always make intentional, deliberate decisions regarding the maintenance, selection, and access to the diverse seeds circulating within networks. Instead, along a spectrum from “default intentionality” to “conscious intentionality” (Almekinders et al., 2019, p. 122), small-scale farmers “do not typically choose agrobiodiversity for its own sake but rather because it aligns with underlying farming rationales or trait preferences” (Almekinders et al., 2019, p. 122). As Toledo (1990, p. 55-56) explains, intentionality is evident in the manipulation of ecological components and processes, where farmers, motivated by subsistence, “play the game of survival.”
Moreover, as said, there is no formal coordination of collective action; at most, there exists a “diffuse” institutionalization shaped by pre-existing social structures.
We consider that “[i]n many subsistence societies, the primary reasons for maintaining agrobiodiversity are not market-driven or due to environmental pressures but rather rooted in non-monetary, culturally specific factors” (Howard, 2010, p. 163). This suggests a strong biocultural link between social institutions, cultural practices, and biological diversity, advocating for a “biocultural” approach to the seed commons (Girard et al., 2022). This approach posits that seed exchange systems are sustained only when the triptych of “territory, cultural identity, and local institutions-vernacular rights” is preserved.

Developing means of accelerating modern plant breeding and stirring it towards stewardship of agricultural systems whilst dealing with global policrises demands a better insight in how humans and crops co-evolve since industrialization and how modern knowledge systems in plant breeding play a role in these processes of coevolution. Human-crop coevolution has been a dynamic process for over 10.000 years, but modern plant breeding has a wide range of practices from peasant seed to industrialized plant breeding systems. They differ in their objectives, processes and outcomes, but still are driven by the same underlying means of cultural evolution present in modern day knowledge systems across multiple-levels. Drawing from Multilevel Selection Theory, I analyze how variation, selection, replication, and innovation operate across different levels in knowledge systems of plant breeding science works, based on the cases of the German seed system in three crops (canola, winter wheat, and maize). Cultural evolution introduces additional mechanisms of replication aside of learning leading to cumulative retention of information in technologies, which are embodied in crops and their underlying genetic diversity. I consider crop breeding in interaction with the context in which it is being researched and developed and propose a framework for looking at plant breeding with a coevolutionary lens that explicitly includes and explains the socio-cultural factors influencing path-dependencies in plant science. Goal is to develop a framework useful to analyze genetic diversity in crops to investigate patterns of change over time across a wide variety of contexts and crops. By understanding the reciprocal influences between humans and crops, we can enhance our approaches to sustainable crop improvement in the Anthropocene.

In this communication, we analyze the emergence and controversies that have led to the progressive structuration since two decades in France of alternative seed systems for wild and local plants under the label “Végétal Local”. Initiated by an alliance between regional botanical conservatoires, agroforestry networks as an alternative to the classical seed certification both for herbaceous plants and forest tree seed certification and its FRM (Forest Reproductive Material Regulation) standards. Based on in depth interviews with key actors, our analysis shows that the dynamics surrounding the development of the label follow different regional patterns, as well as the national level, enabling their progressive recognition by public authorities and a change in regulations at national and EU levels. More importantly, we also highlight differences of visions between the actor’s networks about the relationship between the co-evolution of the plants (including both herbaceous and trees) with their environment and its translation into the governance of the label “vegetal local”.

In Mexico, seed diversity has at least two components. The first is its Comunalidad, an ensemble of small-scale farmers who share points of view about being, seeing, and thinking. The second is its local practices formed by milpa, a creative, bio and culturally diverse, long-term as well as sustainable type of agriculture, and ejido, a kind of common property with a scheme of members' decision-making processes through a mechanism called "Asamblea Ejidal." Both components form a complex common influenced by no local contexts (formal science and international as well as national regulation). In this context, this research aims to analyze how no local factors influence seed diversity and its common local components in a positive or negative form.
Based on the eight design principles for common institutions suggested by Elinor Ostrom, this work studied seed diversity, culture, and local knowledge as supporters of small-scale farmers' types of seed conservation and biodiversity preservation through local selection and seed interchange. Then, the analysis compared these perspectives with no local practices to find potential synergies, offering hope for a future where local and non-local practices can work together for the common.
The study's findings underscore science's significant role in bolstering or undermining traditional agricultural practices. Science with agroecological perspectives aligns with and supports the ancestral wisdom of milpa, while science focused on the Green Revolution does not. Furthermore, the analysis reveals that most of the legislation, particularly at the international level, is perceived as a hindrance to the stability of the commons. However, recently, new national legislation seems to protect maize.