Seeds and Sovereignty

by Jack Ralph Kloppenburg
Seeds and Sovereignty
Author: Jack Ralph Kloppenburg
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 390
Release: 1988-06-06
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780822307563
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Seeds for economically important crops are big business indeed. As large seed companies continue to improve their product in various ways, they make use of the original gene pools of these plants, often located in tropical and subtropical areas of the world. With increasing recognition that plant germplasm is an important raw material, highly charged international disputes have developed over the exchange and use of this material, adding another point of contention between poor nations and the manufacturing wealthier ones. Twenty experts from several nations, representing both the natural and social sciences, consider the historical background, the issue of patent rights as applied to plant germplasm, the nature of global genetic interdependence, the internationalization of the seed industry, the implications of biotechnology on genetic resources, the Third World attitude toward the debate, and the viewpoints of the International Agricultural Research Centers.

Seed Sovereignty, Food Security

by Vandana Shiva
Seed Sovereignty, Food Security
Author: Vandana Shiva
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
Total Pages: 425
Release: 2016-02-02
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 162317029X
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In this unique anthology, women from around the world write about the movement to change the current, industrial paradigm of how we grow our food. As seed keepers and food producers, as scientists, activists, and scholars, they are dedicated to renewing a food system that is better aligned with ecological processes as well as human health and global social justice. Seed Sovereignty, Food Security is an argument for just that--a reclaiming of traditional methods of agricultural practice in order to secure a healthy, nourishing future for all of us. Whether tackling the thorny question of GMO safety or criticizing the impact of big agribusiness on traditional communities, these women are in the vanguard of defending the right of people everywhere to practice local, biodiverse, and organic farming as an alternative to industrial agriculture. Contents • Seed Sovereignty, Food Security VANDANA SHIVA • Fields of Hope and Power FRANCES MOORE LAPPÉ & ANNA LAPPÉ • The Ethics of Agricultural Biotechnology BETH BURROWS • Food Politics, the Food Movement and Public Health MARION NESTLE • Autism and Glyphosate: Connecting the Dots STEPHANIE SENEFF • The New Genetics and Dangers of GMOs MAE-WAN HO • Seed Emergency: Germany SUSANNE GURA • GM Soy as Feed for Animals Affects Posterity IRINA ERMAKOVA & ALEXANDER BARANOFF • Seeds in France TIPHAINE BURBAN • Kokopelli vs. Graines Baumaux BLANCHE MAGARINOS-REY • If People Are Asked, They Say NO to GMOs FLORIANNE KOECHLIN • The Italian Context MARIA GRAZIA MAMMUCINI • The Untold American Revolution: Seed in the US DEBBIE BARKER • Reviving Native Sioux Agriculture Systems SUZANNE FOOTE • In Praise of the Leadership of Indigenous Women WINONA LADUKE • Moms Across America: Shaking up the System ZEN HONEYCUTT • Seed Freedom and Seed Sovereignty: Bangladesh Today FARIDA AKHTER • Monsanto and Biosafety in Nepal KUSUM HACHHETHU • Sowing Seeds of Freedom VANDANA SHIVA • The Loss of Crop Genetic Diversity in the Changing World TEWOLDE BERHAN GEBRE EGZIABHER & SUE EDWARDS • Seed Sovereignty and Ecological Integrity in Africa MARIAM MAYET • Conserving the Diversity of Peasant Seeds ANA DE ITA • Celebrating the Chile Nativo ISAURA ANDALUZ • Seed Saving and Women in Peru PATRICIA FLORES • The Seeds of Liberation in Latin America SANDRA BAQUEDANO & SARA LARRAÍN • The Other Mothers and the Fight against GMOs in Argentina ANA BROCCOLI • Seeding Knowledge: Australia SUSAN HAWTHORNE

Globalisation and Seed Sovereignty in Sub-Saharan Africa

by Clare O'Grady Walshe
Globalisation and Seed Sovereignty in Sub-Saharan Africa
Author: Clare O'Grady Walshe
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2019-04-16
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3030128709
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"It is my expectation that respect for the critical importance of seed sovereignty will in due course be recognised by member states of the United Nations to be as critical to global peace and security as the UN Charter demands in respect of State sovereign equality, justice, human rights and economic and social wellbeing for all peoples."—Denis J. Halliday, UN Assistant Secretary-General 1994-98 "A constructive contribution to our understanding of what is going wrong and what can go right in the complex area of seed sovereignty."—Dervla Murphy, renowned travel writer and adventurer "Keeping seed diversity alive is the secret ingredient, not just for the good, nutrient-dense food that every cook, gardener and farmer/producer needs, but for strengthening our resilience in the face of multiple environmental threats. This compelling and timely book helps us to understand what we are up against and how we can overcome it."— Darina Allen, internationally renowned cook, founder of Ballymaloe Cookery school and President of the East Cork Convivium of Slow Food This book studies the relationship between globalisation and seed sovereignty in Sub-Saharan Africa. It provides comparative case studies of the most recent Kenyan and Ethiopian seed laws, as well as a study of seed sovereignty 'on the ground' in a locality within Ethiopia. Based on extensive fieldwork, it identifies the interests and motivations of transnational seed corporations, global philanthropic organisations, state actors, and local farmers. It finds significant differences in the wording of seed laws and the exercise of seed sovereignty, applying theories of globalisation to help us better understand these varied outcomes. It shows that seed sovereignty has the potential to be shared between local, national, regional, and global authorities, but in different ways in different countries and localities. In the face of what might sometimes appear to be unstoppable global forces, these findings suggest that the exercise of seed sovereignty can be transformed even in a highly globalised world.

Indigenous Food Sovereignty in the United States

by Devon A. Mihesuah
Indigenous Food Sovereignty in the United States
Author: Devon A. Mihesuah
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages: 387
Release: 2019-08-02
Genre: Cooking
ISBN: 0806165782
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“All those interested in Indigenous food systems, sovereignty issues, or environment, and their path toward recovery should read this powerful book.” —Kathie L. Beebe, American Indian Quarterly Centuries of colonization and other factors have disrupted indigenous communities’ ability to control their own food systems. This volume explores the meaning and importance of food sovereignty for Native peoples in the United States, and asks whether and how it might be achieved and sustained. Unprecedented in its focus and scope, this collection addresses nearly every aspect of indigenous food sovereignty, from revitalizing ancestral gardens and traditional ways of hunting, gathering, and seed saving to the difficult realities of racism, treaty abrogation, tribal sociopolitical factionalism, and the entrenched beliefs that processed foods are superior to traditional tribal fare. The contributors include scholar-activists in the fields of ethnobotany, history, anthropology, nutrition, insect ecology, biology, marine environmentalism, and federal Indian law, as well as indigenous seed savers and keepers, cooks, farmers, spearfishers, and community activists. After identifying the challenges involved in revitalizing and maintaining traditional food systems, these writers offer advice and encouragement to those concerned about tribal health, environmental destruction, loss of species habitat, and governmental food control.

The Seed Keeper

by Diane Wilson
The Seed Keeper
Author: Diane Wilson
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2021-03-09
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1571317325
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A haunting novel spanning several generations, The Seed Keeper follows a Dakhóta family’s struggle to preserve their way of life, and their sacrifices to protect what matters most. Rosalie Iron Wing has grown up in the woods with her father, Ray, a former science teacher who tells her stories of plants, of the stars, of the origins of the Dakhóta people. Until, one morning, Ray doesn’t return from checking his traps. Told she has no family, Rosalie is sent to live with a foster family in nearby Mankato—where the reserved, bookish teenager meets rebellious Gaby Makespeace, in a friendship that transcends the damaged legacies they’ve inherited. On a winter’s day many years later, Rosalie returns to her childhood home. A widow and mother, she has spent the previous two decades on her white husband’s farm, finding solace in her garden even as the farm is threatened first by drought and then by a predatory chemical company. Now, grieving, Rosalie begins to confront the past, on a search for family, identity, and a community where she can finally belong. In the process, she learns what it means to be descended from women with souls of iron—women who have protected their families, their traditions, and a precious cache of seeds through generations of hardship and loss, through war and the insidious trauma of boarding schools. Weaving together the voices of four indelible women, The Seed Keeper is a beautifully told story of reawakening, of remembering our original relationship to the seeds and, through them, to our ancestors.

Heirloom Seeds and Their Keepers

by Virginia D. Nazarea
Heirloom Seeds and Their Keepers
Author: Virginia D. Nazarea
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2005-05-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0816544921
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Farmers and gardeners have long appreciated a wide variety of plants and have nurtured them for meals, healing, and exchange. But diversity too often has been surrendered to monocultures of fields and spirits, predisposing much of modern agriculture to uniformity and, consequently, vulnerability. Today it is primarily at the individual level—such as growing and saving a strange old bean variety or a curious-looking gourd—that any lasting conservation actually takes place. As scientists grapple with the erosion of genetic diversity of crops and their wild relatives, old-timey farmers and gardeners continue to save, propagate, and pass on folk varieties and heirloom seeds. Virginia Nazarea focuses on the role of these seedsavers in the perpetuation of diversity. She thoughtfully examines the framework of scientific conservation and argues for the merits of everyday conservation—one that is beyond programmatic design. Whether considering small-scale rice and sweet potato farmers in the Philippines or participants in the Southern Seed Legacy and Introduced Germplasm from Vietnam in the American South, she explores roads not necessarily less traveled but certainly less recognized in the conservation of biodiversity. Through characters and stories that offer a wealth of insights about human nature and society, Heirloom Seeds and Their Keepers helps readers more fully understand why biodiversity persists when there are so many pressures for it not to. The key, Nazarea explains, is in the sovereign spaces seedsavers inhabit and create, where memories counter a culture of forgetting and abandonment engendered by modernity. A book about theory as much as practice, it profiles these individuals, who march to their own beat in a world where diversity is increasingly devalued as the predictability of mass production becomes the norm. Heirloom Seeds and Their Keepers offers a much-needed, scientifically researched perspective on the contribution of seedsaving that illustrates its critical significance to the preservation of both cultural knowledge and crop diversity around the world. It opens new conversations between anthropology and biology, and between researchers and practitioners, as it honors conservation as a way of life.

Science and Colonial Expansion

by Lucile H. Brockway
Science and Colonial Expansion
Author: Lucile H. Brockway
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2002-01-01
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9780300091434
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This widely acclaimed book analyzes the political effects of scientific research as exemplified by one field, economic botany, during one epoch, the nineteenth century, when Great Britain was the world's most powerful nation. Lucile Brockway examines how the British botanic garden network developed and transferred economically important plants to different parts of the world to promote the prosperity of the Empire. In this classic work, available once again after many years out of print, Brockway examines in detail three cases in which British scientists transferred important crop plants--cinchona (a source of quinine), rubber and sisal--to new continents. Weaving together botanical, historical, economic, political, and ethnographic findings, the author illuminates the remarkable social role of botany and the entwined relation between science and politics in an imperial era.

First the Seed

by Jack Ralph Kloppenburg
First the Seed
Author: Jack Ralph Kloppenburg
Publisher: CUP Archive
Total Pages: 374
Release: 1990-06-29
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9780521395588
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This history of the scientific and commercial lines of plant development in the United States traces the transformation of the seed from a public good produced and reproduced by farmers into a commodity controlled by businesses and corporations divorced from the uses of their product.

The River Is in Us

by Elizabeth Hoover
The River Is in Us
Author: Elizabeth Hoover
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Total Pages: 406
Release: 2017-11-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1452956243
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Winner of the Labriola Center American Indian National Book Award 2017 Mohawk midwife Katsi Cook lives in Akwesasne, an indigenous community in upstate New York that is downwind and downstream from three Superfund sites. For years she witnessed elevated rates of miscarriages, birth defects, and cancer in her town, ultimately drawing connections between environmental contamination and these maladies. When she brought her findings to environmental health researchers, Cook sparked the United States’ first large-scale community-based participatory research project. In The River Is in Us, author Elizabeth Hoover takes us deep into this remarkable community that has partnered with scientists and developed grassroots programs to fight the contamination of its lands and reclaim its health and culture. Through in-depth research into archives, newspapers, and public meetings, as well as numerous interviews with community members and scientists, Hoover shows the exact efforts taken by Akwesasne’s massive research project and the grassroots efforts to preserve the Native culture and lands. She also documents how contaminants have altered tribal life, including changes to the Mohawk fishing culture and the rise of diabetes in Akwesasne. Featuring community members such as farmers, health-care providers, area leaders, and environmental specialists, while rigorously evaluating the efficacy of tribal efforts to preserve its culture and protect its health, The River Is in Us offers important lessons for improving environmental health research and health care, plus detailed insights into the struggles and methods of indigenous groups. This moving, uplifting book is an essential read for anyone interested in Native Americans, social justice, and the pollutants contaminating our food, water, and bodies.