Saving, sharing and shaping landrace seeds in commons: unravelling seed commoning norms for furthering agrobiodiversity

IF 3.5 2区 社会学 Q1 AGRICULTURE, MULTIDISCIPLINARY
Emil Sandström, Tove Ortman, Christine A Watson, Jan Bengtsson, Clara Gustafsson, Göran Bergkvist
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Abstract

One of the major challenges facing agricultural and food systems today is the loss of agrobiodiversity. Considering the current impasse of preventing the worldwide loss of crop diversity, this paper highlights the possibility for a radical reorientation of current legal seed frameworks that could provide more space for alternative seed systems to evolve which centre on norms that support on-farm agrobiodiversity. Understanding the underlying norms that shape seed commons are important, since norms both delimit and contribute to what ultimately will constitute the seeds and who will ultimately have access to the seeds and thus to the extent to which agrobiodiversity is upheld and supported. This paper applies a commoning approach to explore the underpinning norms of a Swedish seed commons initiative and discusses the potential for furthering agrobiodiversity in the context of wider legal and authoritative discourses on seed enclosure. The paper shows how the seed commoning system is shaped and protected by a particular set of farming norms, which allows for sharing seeds among those who adhere to the norms but excludes those who will not. The paper further illustrates how farmers have been able to navigate fragile legal and economic pathways to collectively organize around landrace seeds, which function as an epistemic farming community, that maintain landraces from the past and shape new landraces for the present, adapted to diverse agro-ecological environments for low-input agriculture. The paper reveals how the ascribed norms to the seed commons in combination with the current seed laws set a certain limit to the extent to which agrobiodiversity is upheld and supported and discusses why prescriptions of “getting institutions right” for seed governance are difficult at best, when considering the shifting socio-nature of seeds. To further increase agrobiodiversity, the paper suggests future seed laws are redirected to the sustenance of a proliferation of protected seed commoning systems that can supply locally adapted plant material for diverse groups of farmers and farming systems.

保存、共享和塑造公共土地种子:揭示促进农业生物多样性的种子共同规范
当今农业和粮食系统面临的主要挑战之一是农业生物多样性的丧失。考虑到目前防止全球作物多样性丧失的僵局,本文强调了对当前法律种子框架进行彻底重新定位的可能性,这可能为以支持农场农业生物多样性的规范为中心的替代种子系统的发展提供更多空间。了解形成种子公地的基本规范是很重要的,因为规范界定并有助于最终构成种子的内容和最终获得种子的人,从而在多大程度上维护和支持农业生物多样性。本文采用了一种共同的方法来探索瑞典种子公地倡议的基础规范,并讨论了在更广泛的关于种子圈地的法律和权威话语的背景下进一步促进农业生物多样性的潜力。这篇论文展示了种子共享系统是如何被一套特定的农业规范所塑造和保护的,这套规范允许在遵守规范的人之间共享种子,而不遵守规范的人则被排除在外。该论文进一步说明了农民如何能够驾驭脆弱的法律和经济途径,以地方品种种子为中心集体组织起来,这些种子作为一个认知农业社区,保持过去的地方品种,并为现在塑造新的地方品种,适应低投入农业的多样化农业生态环境。本文揭示了赋予种子公地的规范与现行种子法如何在一定程度上限制了农业生物多样性的维护和支持,并讨论了为什么在考虑到种子的社会性质变化时,“建立正确的制度”对种子治理的规定充其量是困难的。为了进一步增加农业生物多样性,这篇论文建议,未来的种子法应该转向维持受保护的种子共用系统的扩散,这些系统可以为不同的农民群体和耕作系统提供适合当地的植物材料。
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来源期刊
Agriculture and Human Values
Agriculture and Human Values 农林科学-科学史与科学哲学
CiteScore
6.70
自引率
13.30%
发文量
97
审稿时长
>36 weeks
期刊介绍: Agriculture and Human Values is the journal of the Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society. The Journal, like the Society, is dedicated to an open and free discussion of the values that shape and the structures that underlie current and alternative visions of food and agricultural systems. To this end the Journal publishes interdisciplinary research that critically examines the values, relationships, conflicts and contradictions within contemporary agricultural and food systems and that addresses the impact of agricultural and food related institutions, policies, and practices on human populations, the environment, democratic governance, and social equity.
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