Panel 5.1. Building alternative seed commons: new challenges and international perspectives
co-Chairs: Armelle Maze1, Fabien Girard2, Maria Gerullis3, Cathleen McCluskey4, and Morgane Leclerq5
1INRAE, Université Paris-Saclay, 2Université de Grenoble, France, 3Universitât Gottingen, 4University of Wisconsin-Madison, Organic seed alliance, 5Université de Laval
This panel session will explore the contemporary challenges faced in the building of alternative seed commons in the context of growing loss of genetic agrobiodiversity and climate change. In the context of a growing concentration of seed firms, alternative peasant seed networks are nowadays developing across the world by proposing a paradigm shift from the classical non delegative and hierarchical genetic breeding and seed certification towards participatory breeding systems by peasants. The panel will address the legal issues posed at the international by seed treaties, but also the organizational and epistemic challenges posed at national levels for supporting the development and democratization of collective participatory breeding systems of at the farmer level. It also will question the way scientific knowledge and access to data can measure agrobiodiversity evolution
