What does the future hold for farmer-saved seeds? Between informal sharing, changing laws, and the use of digital technology
Less than 3% of the seeds traditionally cultivated by humans are currently used for global food production. And for good reason: in many countries, these seeds are kept out of commercial channels. While so-called “farm-saved” seeds continue to play an important role in subsistence farming in the Global South, it is industrial seeds that ensure massive production volumes on a global scale.
George Aboueldahab, EDC Paris Business School; Myriam Kessari, University of Montpellier and Florence PALPACUER, University of Montpellier
In this regard, France ranks among the pioneers of the industrial paradigm, which, as early as the 1930s, relied on standardization criteria designed to make seeds predictable, productive, and marketable. A vast market has since developed around standardized seeds, from which the inherent diversity of living organisms is excluded, as are a multitude of seeds derived from diverse ecosystems.
In the face of this commercial takeover, however, some people are resisting by continuing to grow and exchange so-called “peasant” seeds. They are exploring the best ways to share these seeds and the knowledge associated with them, in order to foster a different relationship with living things in our approach to agriculture and food.
The Legal Framework for Commercialized Seed
To understand how we got to this point, we must first examine the legal framework that governs the exchange and trade of seeds today.
Before the industrialization of agriculture, the seeds used by farmers were the result of the collective effort of an entire community united around a single variety. It was this community that ensured the propagation of the seeds, their transmission from one generation to the next, and the sharing of farmers’ knowledge and associated expertise. Since the primary purpose of growing these varieties was to feed the community, marketing focused mainly on any surplus, which was sold at local markets. Traditional agriculture has also always worked to maintain seed diversity to allow crops to adapt to different geographical and climatic conditions.
Today, however, the marketing of commercial seed is governed by a complex legal framework from which farmer-saved seed is excluded. Indeed, by their very nature, these farmer-saved varieties do not meet the criteria of distinctness, uniformity, and stability (DUS) that apply to commercial seed and are mandatory for any commercialization.
In fact, to meet the criterion of distinctness, a variety must be clearly distinguishable from all other known varieties. A variety is also considered uniform if its plants exhibit similar characteristics, and stable if the consistency of these characteristics is guaranteed over the defined reproductive cycle.
However, because it is constantly co-evolving with its environment, a heirloom seed cannot be perfectly homogeneous or perfectly stable. On the contrary, it is precisely because of its heterogeneity and its evolving nature that such a seed can adapt to the environments in which it is grown, and this ability to adapt is considered a valuable asset in the philosophy of traditional farming.
This diversity would gradually be excluded from the commercial market in France. As early as 1932, an official catalog listed and defined the “varieties” eligible for sale. The decree of June 11, 1949, subsequently prohibited the sale of any seed not listed in the catalog.
In 1961, the creation of the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV), at France’s initiative, extended this legal framework to the international level, with the aim of protecting the technical investments required for the control and productive selection of seed varieties, which were increasingly being carried out by large private firms.
A venerable institution, UPOV nevertheless grants farmers the “privilege” of continuing to freely use their own seeds from one year to the next—a right that was restricted in 1978 to the saving and non-commercial exchange of seeds, before becoming optional, left to the discretion of individual states, in the early 1990s.
A controversial commercial seizure
This legal framework has come under increasing scrutiny since the 1980s, from figures such as the Indian environmental activist Vandana Shiva, as well as movements like Let’s Liberate Diversity at the European level and Red de Semillas Libres in Colombia. In France, the Réseau Semences Paysannes, founded in 2003, and Kokopelli, established in 1999, are among the organizations advocating for seeds to be treated as a common good, and which view small-scale farmers’ seed autonomy as a central element of agriculture that respects life.
More broadly, movements advocating for smallholder agroecology criticize a system of seed ownership and use that is based on regulations that are complex, opaque, inaccessible, and difficult for farmers to understand. They refuse to accept that farmers have become dependent on industrial suppliers for a resource so essential to their livelihood.
Peasant agroecology movements are thus fighting to “liberate” seeds from commercial control. They reject an industrial approach that favors private biotechnological innovations at the expense of the seed commons. Their struggles take various forms: some organizations choose to wage a legislative battle at the national level in France, as well as at the European level, and sometimes see their efforts crowned with success. For example, the law of June 10, 2020, ends the ban on the sale of peasant seeds to amateur gardeners, thereby making this practice legal once again. https://www.youtube.com/embed/6NsayXcuLVY?wmode=transparent&start=0 A France 24 report featuring the Triticum association. In the report, farmer-saved seeds are presented as being better able to resist disease and adapt to drought.
Others choose to take the offensive and do not hesitate to engage in activities that are partly illegal, specifically the sale of seeds not listed in the official catalog. This can sometimes result in convictions and fines, as is often the case with Kokopelli.
Nevertheless, these movements continue to take a proactive, grassroots approach based on initiatives to disseminate and preserve heirloom varieties through seed banks or informal exchange networks. The sharing and dissemination of these farmer-bred varieties directly foster an alternative form of agriculture that protects these seeds from industrial appropriation. The goal here is to organize alternative supply chains that limit farmers’ dependence on models based on intellectual property rights.
Community-managed heirloom seeds
Peasant seed movements thus rely on “commoning,” a concept that refers to the organizational processes through which social actors manage a resource while preventing its privatization.
Commoning takes shape through the formation of communities, networks, collectives, and associations that preserve, use, and exchange—outside the market—varieties of heirloom seeds that remain “free” because they are neither patented nor cataloged.
Unlike DHS seeds, whose reuse is restricted, farmer-bred varieties aim to achieve—and enable—agricultural autonomy in terms of seed reproduction. Seeds co-evolve with their environment and with the human communities that ensure their conservation and dissemination. The operating practices of these communities may therefore conflict with the legal framework governing the seed sector at the national and international levels.
At the national level, heirloom seeds continue to be exchanged and shared at farmers’ festivals and seed fairs, which serve as opportunities to disseminate heirloom varieties. While these events are primarily local in scope, some farmers and supporters do not hesitate to travel across France to attend them. While legislation today appears to be moving toward greater flexibility (Law of June 10, 2020), it is this type of event that has facilitated the transmission of heirloom varieties under more restrictive legal frameworks.
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Co-constructed knowledge under threat
The preservation and use of heirloom seeds are therefore rooted in traditional knowledge that is locally grounded and tied to the specific characteristics of local varieties. This knowledge has been preserved and passed down from one generation to the next in a way that maintains its subjective nature and allows it to be adapted to new contexts. This knowledge can range from the simple weight of the seeds, growing conditions, or sowing time, to more complex knowledge regarding potential resistances or desirable traits inherent to the varieties (productivity, ease of harvest, etc.).
They are also central to the agroecological transition, since this transition will rely on heirloom varieties—selected by farmers—that are adapted to the local environment, often require less water, and depend little or not at all on chemical inputs.
But this traditional farmers’ knowledge, just like heirloom varieties, is now threatened both by difficulties in passing it on and by the risks of privatization and industrialization of the elements it contains. The FAO thus highlights the role of industrial varieties in the loss of more than 75% of plant genetic diversity. Indeed, when farmers abandon a local heirloom seed, the associated knowledge is often lost as well. In France, however, farming communities are demonstrating that it is possible to keep heirloom varieties alive, as in the case ofthe Menton pink onion. https://www.youtube.com/embed/j2KRcVOFUCQ?wmode=transparent&start=0 The Menton pink onion, a species saved from oblivion by farmer-saved seeds, is the subject of this report by France 3 Provence.
But while physical connections and face-to-face encounters have ensured the survival of this knowledge thus far, will they be enough to facilitate its wider dissemination? At a time when gas prices are high, travel is expensive, and almost everything can be found online, the question of digitizing this knowledge arises—and there is no unanimous or easy answer.
The sharing-versus-protection paradox: pooling resources in the face of the risk of confiscation
Some initiatives (such as community groups, seed savers, and seed banks) are therefore working to develop digital tools to track varieties and the people who hold them.
Drawing on participatory action research, we worked with farmers and seed artisans to explore how digital tools could be used to share this knowledge among those involved in the production of heirloom seeds.
It appears that digital technology could facilitate the sharing of knowledge related to heirloom varieties within the communities that cultivate them and help promote the dissemination of seed commons. Furthermore, it would be particularly useful for tracing the lineage of seeds and contributing to their preservation (or preventing their disappearance).
However, this very traceability can also jeopardize seeds by disrupting the informal nature of knowledge retention and sharing—such as specific growing conditions and desirable genetic traits—to which farming communities remain attached.
The formalization of tacit or interpersonal knowledge also involves a form of standardization that eliminates the contextual roots and subjectivity of that knowledge.
These fears of appropriation and standardization shape the organizational strategies of peasant seed movements as they grapple with the adoption of digital tools. Thus, in a context of struggle where the threat is acute, activist movements tend to prioritize defensive strategies that may, to some extent, limit their potential for proactive, alternative action.
Our action research thus reveals a reluctance toward the use of digital technology for the management of farmer-saved seeds and the sharing of related knowledge. These findings highlight a key prerequisite for the sharing of seeds and associated knowledge through new tools such as digital technology: the relaxation of legal constraints that currently stifle our relationship with living organisms within a market-driven model that is too far removed from nature.
George Aboueldahab, Professor, EDC Paris Business School; Myriam Kessari, Lecturer and Researcher at the Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Montpellier, University of Montpellier and Florence PALPACUER, Professor of Management Sciences, University of Montpellier
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