Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture as a Commons
(2018) Handbook of Food as a Commons: An alternative narrative and political praxis to cultivate and eat — ISBN: [9781138062627], 424 p. (pp.218-230), published
Files
No attached file found for this publication.
Details
- Authors
- Abstract
- Agrobiodiversity is the continuum of wild to domesticated plant, animal and ecosystemic diversity sustaining people's livelihoods. This biodiversity results from an equally diverse set of culturally defined farming practices. To maintain both forms of diversity, access to genetic resources for food and agriculture (GRFA) is crucial. However, current regulation and policy increasingly commodifies GRFA, rendering their access and use difficult for smallholder farmers and peasant communities, hence jeopardizing food security and food sovereignty, and limiting the emergence of more sustainable farming practices. In this paper, we argue that governing GRFA as commons may offer remedy to this problem. As commons, GRFA are considered networked knowledge-goods with non-exclusive access and use conditions, which are governed, produced and consumed by communities. Two case studies are used to illustrate this: first, the Global Seed Commons established under the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture; second, the reintroduction and 'commonification' of a traditional pig breed by a local community enterprise in Schwäbisch Hall, Germany. These cases show that, when moving beyond a narrow institutional understanding, innovative legal frameworks and governance arrangements inspired by the philosophy of the commons can facilitate access to and sharing of GRFA, hence helping to ensure the transition towards more sustainable agriculture.
- Affiliations
Citations
Frison, C., & Coolsaet, B. (2018). Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture as a Commons. In Jose Luis Vivero Pol, Tomaso Ferrando, Olivier De Schutter, Ugo Mattei (eds) (ed.), Handbook of Food as a Commons: An alternative narrative and political praxis to cultivate and eat (p. 424 p. (pp.218-230)). Routledge. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/122627