Abstract
This book examines the tension between the need for food, or food security, and the desire to maintain sovereignty over food production, in this case seeds for agricultural production, or seed sovereignty. The need for food is increasingly being met by a greater reliance on uniform commercially bred seed, including genetically modified seeds designed by multinational corporations and supported by philanthropic organisations such as the Gates Foundation. However, meeting the need for food in this way risks eliminating the sovereignty of domestic producers. These are the local farmers and farming communities who wish to continue freely cultivating the seeds of their choice. This chapter introduces the issues at stake in the tension between food security and food sovereignty.
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Notes
- 1.
F1 hybrid refers to filial generation 1—the first filial generation of offspring of distinctly different parental types. They are not as resilient in the second generation and so are not appropriate for seed saving.
- 2.
- 3.
Meaning Nine Seeds, Navdanya was established by Vandana Shiva in 1987 to protect and enhance indigenous seed and crop varieties from corporate capture in agriculture.
- 4.
https://nyeleni.org/spip.php?article290 [accessed online 10 April 2017].
- 5.
- 6.
- 7.
The Seed and Plant Varieties Act, 1972 (as amended in 2002) Act No. 2 of 2002 (Cap 326).
- 8.
Federal Negarit Gazette, No. 27, 15 February 2013, pp. 6808–6825.
- 9.
Peasant associations are also called kebeles in Ethiopia or kushets in Tigray. When five or six or up to ten villages come together, they form a kebele.
- 10.
‘Wurch’, is the climatic zone represented by cold moist temperatures associated with Afroalpine areas. The only crop capable of growing at this high altitude is barley.
- 11.
A ‘wereda’ or woreda is a third-level administrative district division. It is part of a zone, which are grouped into regions based on ethno-linguistic communities or ‘kiliochs’.
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O’Grady Walshe, C. (2019). The Core Dilemma: Seed Sovereignty and Globalisation. In: Globalisation and Seed Sovereignty in Sub-Saharan Africa. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12870-8_1
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