Prima facie reasons to question enclosed intellectual property regimes and favor open-source regimes for germplasm

In principle, intellectual property protections (IPPs) promote and protect important but costly investment in research and development. However, the empirical reality of IPPs has often gone without critical evaluation, and the potential of alternative approaches to lend equal or greater support for useful innovation is rarely considered. In this paper, we review the mounting evidence that the global intellectual property regime (IPR) for germplasm has been neither necessary nor sufficient to generate socially beneficial improvements in crop plants and maintain agrobiodiversity. Instead, based on our analysis, the dominant global IPR appears to have contributed to consolidation in the seed industry while failing to genuinely engage with the potential of alternatives to support social goods such as food security, adaptability, and resilience. The dominant IPR also constrains collaborative and cumulative plant breeding processes that are built upon the work of countless farmers past and present. Given the likely limits of current IPR, we propose that social goods in agriculture may be better supported by alternative approaches, warranting a rapid move away from the dominant single-dimensional focus on encouraging innovation through ensuring monopoly profits to IPP holders

The Governance of Agrobiodiversity

Agrobiodiversity relates to humans and their environments. It is the result of interactions between humans and nature, and thus is simultaneously social and biological by nature. Without humans, agrobiodiversity would not exist. Seeds, as carriers of major agrobiodiversity components, are not mere material objects that exist outside of social relations: they are also sociobiological artifacts embedded in these relations. The multifaceted, highly dynamic realities of agrobiodiversity mean that those interested in questions of governance need to understand the limitations and political implications of the complementary and sometimes contradictory instrumental and relational perspectives on seeds; that is, the understanding of seeds as a production input or as the subject of a social network, in which agrobiodiversity brings together production and social linkages. International instruments aim to provide a legal basis for mediating competing interests and methodologies. In addressing governance, the global framing of these instruments refl ects the dynamics of agrobiodiversity in global socioeconomic and environmental changes. From the earliest recognition of the potential value of crop diversity, crop genetic resources were treated as public goods in the public domain. Breeding companies have opposed this treatment. Breeders sought exclusivity and reward for their creative activities in using genetic resources to create novel varieties. Governance of agrobiodiversity—defi ned by a set of relationships that infl uences the access to and conservation, exchange, and commercialization of agrobiodiversity—refl ects underlying value systems. Confl icting approaches (e.g., “stewardship” vs. “ownership” approaches) toward governance based on divergent value systems and rationales can be distinguished. It is important to identify the actors involved, from local to global, to understand the power dynamics that infl uence the interactions among these various actors and their ability to infl uence or control the management of agrobiodiversity. The governance of agrobiodiversity and the power dynamics involved are increasingly crucial in the context of rapidly changing farming and food systems, especially in the context of globalization, migration, and urbanization. This chapter elaborates an emergent research agenda, focusing on aspects of power relations in agrobiodiversity governance, agrobiodiversity and food systems, nutrition, taste and health, and the governance of genetic information

Seed exchange networks for agrobiodiversity conservation. A review

The circulation of seed among farmers is central to agrobiodiversity conservation and dynamics. Agrobiodiversity, the diversity of agricultural systems from genes to varieties and crop species, from farming methods to landscape composition, is part of humanity�s cultural heritage. Whereas agrobiodiversity conservation has received much attention from researchers and policy makers over the last decades, the methods available to study the role of seed exchange networks in preserving crop biodiversity have only recently begun to be considered. In this overview, we present key concepts, methods, and challenges to better understand seed exchange networks so as to improve the chances that traditional crop varieties (landraces) will be preserved and used sustainably around the world. The available literature suggests that there is insufficient knowledge about the social, cultural, and methodological dimensions of environmental change, including how seed exchange networks will cope with changes in climates, socio-economic factors, and family structures that have supported seed exchange systems to date. Methods available to study the role of seed exchange networks in the preservation and adaptation of crop specific and genetic diversity range from meta-analysis to modelling, from participatory approaches to the development of bio-indicators, from genetic to biogeographical studies, from anthropological and ethnographic research to the use of network theory. We advocate a diversity of approaches, so as to foster the creation of robust and policy-relevant knowledge. Open challenges in the study of the role of seed exchange networks in biodiversity conservation include the development of methods to (i) enhance farmers� participation to decision-making in agro-ecosystems, (ii) integrate ex situ and in situ approaches, (iii) achieve interdisciplinary research collaboration between social and natural scientists, and (iv) use network analysis as a conceptual framework to bridge boundaries among researchers, farmers and policy makers, as well as other stakeholders

Emptiness: Capitalism without people in the Latvian countryside

In Latvian towns and villages, post‐Soviet capitalism has produced a palpable change that locals describe as “emptiness.” People point to empty houses and apartments, and they list friends and relatives who have left. They fear school closures and the cancellation of transportation routes. They imagine the future as an entirely different world, one in which they will play no part. As a social formation, emptiness consists of (1) an observable reality wherein places rapidly lose their constitutive elements (people, infrastructure, services, social networks, and the future); (2) a way of life that emerges in response to such changes, which seem irreversible; and (3) an emic interpretive framework for making sense of the new reality. Emptiness in Latvia is symptomatic of post–Cold War spatiotemporal arrangements of power wherein capital and the state increasingly abandon people and places