Seeds of Resistance, Seeds of Hope: Place and Agency in the Conservation of Biodiversity

12. When Seeds Are Scarce: Globalization and the Response of Three Cultures

262 CHAPTER TWELVE When Seeds Are Scarce Globalization and the Response of Three Cultures Robert E. Rhoades With seeds understandably being crucial to survival and identity, farming and gardening societies always maintain a strong cultural and agronomic link between their planting material and the rest of their food system. Survival depends on the ability of the farm household to carefully select the appropriate material from which the next harvest will come. Thus, seed procurement, selection, storage, and preparation often embody detailed local knowledge of plants and environment. The preplanting process also carries social and ritual significance for most subsistence producers and plays a central role in origin myths and legends (see chapter 4, this volume). Over the centuries, smallholder farmers and gardeners have learned to diversify their agriculture systems and utilize informal seed networks to make sure that seeds are viable and available when needed. Even in modern agrarian systems serving growing urban populations, the importance of making sure clean, healthy seed is available to producers in a timely way is no less important than in the past. Despite historic demographic shifts away from family farms and a concomitant downgrading of agriculture as a way of life, food and fiber production remains central to human civilization as we know it. In recent decades, seed production has become a major global agribusiness that is increasingly When Seeds Are Scarce 263 controlled by a few multinational companies. Breeder-improved materials are delivered to farm operations through centralized formal seed systems managed by governments or corporations instead of local social networks. Scientific research, especially in biotechnology, aims to produce planting materials that will further increase global production while guaranteeing greater profits to seed and biotechnology companies. Plant genetic resources in the form of traditional landraces and ancestral wild species of food crops have become the flashpoint in a heated international struggle over the legal and political control of seeds (see chapter 10, this volume). These seeds comprise the raw input for conventional breeding as well as bioengineering of commercial hybrids and lines. Biocapitalistic corporations of the North attempt to control their investments in seed technology through intellectual property instruments and genetic modifications (e.g., terminator gene), while post-Convention on Biological Diversity, gene-rich countries of the South and their indigenous communities have officially shut the door to bioprospecting by outsiders. Thus, in the shift from smallholder agriculture to corporate farming, seeds have not become less important. The main difference, and the center of the current debate, is who controls access to the seeds crucial for improved crop production. In the rush to protect what different parties in the North-South “seed wars” feel is rightfully theirs, it is often overlooked that more marginal, small-scale local curators of landrace biodiversity outside of the formal sector increasingly face situations of seed scarcity. The causes of this local scarcity are numerous, including environmental disruptions such as drought and flooding, population dislocations, wars, pests and diseases , and economics. One underlying force generating genetic and plant knowledge erosion among small-scale producers is globalization, the accelerating trend toward an economically, culturally, and politically homogenized world (Appadurai 2001). The number of smallholder farms throughout the world continues to decline as rural people move to cities seeking wage employment. Food becomes a commodity to be purchased and no longer an integral part of the household productionconsumption cycle. The Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s penetrated most local agricultural systems with the consequence that traditional landraces were discarded in favor of introduced hybrid varieties from national breeding programs or multinational seed companies. Farmers in these contexts, while initially captivated by introduced “improved” and “miracle” seeds, soon experienced the genetic vulnerabilities and economic risks of specialized breeding lines (see Introduction, this volume ). Unfortunately, if there was a desire to return to their traditional varieties, farmers often discovered that they were hard to find or had completely disappeared. Another manifestation of globalization is international migration wherein people either voluntarily or involuntarily leave their homelands for foreign countries. Well over 120 million people have in recent decades become immigrants or refugees, taking with them not only their energy and hopes to their new home but also their food habits. In their adopted countries, reflecting on the old adage that the last thing to change in an immigrant’s home is the cupboard, immigrants seek to grow or obtain plants essential to their native cuisine. Aside from fulfilling food memories...