The open source seed model has been compared to “Linux for lettuce”. Building on the principles of the Digital Commons of open source software – which in turn builds on the idea of the Natural Resource Commons and which became open source in the 19 19 developed in our fields – one of the accelerated effects of industrial agriculture.
There used to be almost as many varieties as there were producers. Today, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), we’ve allowed 80% of the varieties grown a century ago to disappear, and back in 2018, four companies controlled more than 60% of global proprietary seed sales . This dramatic reduction in cultivated biodiversity increases crop vulnerability to pests and extreme weather conditions.
The key to the open source seed model (SCA) is based on leveraging the licensing mechanism typically used by the dominant seed system to privatize it, with the opposite goal. Through copyleft licenses (as opposed to copyright licenses), SCAs open themselves up to the world in a protected way, allowing everyone to use them freely, ie to maintain, store, distribute, develop, improve and reproduce them.
SCA buyers cannot privatize the seed or its progeny through exclusive intellectual property rights or other usage restrictions, and the same rights and obligations are transferred to subsequent recipients. The SCA model also encourages recognition of those who improve one of these seeds through the allocation of credit, and any resulting benefits must be shared throughout the seed value chain.
There are physical seed initiatives in several countries. The US Open Source Seed Initiative (OSSI) was the first to be formalized in 2014 and is still ongoing. Other similar initiatives followed in other countries such as Germany, Argentina and more recently Italy (taking advantage of the new European Regulation on Organic Heterogeneous Material, which is expected to support seed production for organic farming). Also in Kenya and the Philippines. Monsanto corn breeders have described OSSI’s seeds as “too contagious to touch”. The copyleft label on a seed package not only declares the intentions and rights of the producer or breeder, but also raises public awareness of seed issues, which are often hidden and largely unknown compared to other systemic challenges.
Today, big data has emerged as a new product in its own right, and the food and seed systems have not escaped this trend. Reducing the cost of genetic sequencing technologies is enabling technological advances that allow the reproduction of DNA from seeds in virtual format, generating what is known as digital sequence information or Digital Sequence Information (DSI) in English, leading to the creation of big data on plant genetic resources for food and agriculture. This technological advance has sparked controversy over the regulation of international access to DSI and the rules for fair and equitable sharing of benefits from its use, as set out in the Convention on Biological Diversity.
Should a line of code for the genetic sequencing of a seed be governed by the same legal framework as a physical seed? Although DSI is derived from physical plant material and can be synthesized back into physical form, it can now have value without needing to regain its materiality. Thanks to DSI, genetic information can be replicated and experienced without movement or access to physical seeds. Instead of seeds, big data becomes the crop that yields the most profitable crops.
Varieties used to be common property, not private property. Their digitization and dematerialization into lines of code makes unowned seeds more vulnerable to appropriation and digital biopiracy. SCAs provide legal protections with their copyleft license that enable disruptive change by converting seeds from res nullius – meaning owned by no one and therefore vulnerable to appropriation – to res communis, meaning owned by everyone.
The project The Challenge of Seed Digitization: Sustainability, Big Data and the Social Movement for Open Source Seed Systems, framed in the Department of Sociology of UNED and funded by the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation, talks about the Daniel Carasso Fellowship 2021 this problems. To date, open source seed initiatives have focused on physical seeds. Considering the increasing digitization of seeds, bringing new and urgent challenges, my research analyzes the concept and social movement of open-source seeds as a governance mechanism at the interface between the physical and digital spheres. The uncertainty about the DSI could be used as an opportunity to categorize seeds in both their physical and digital forms as commons governed by open source principles. Connecting with the digital commons community complements and expands efforts and work on food systems transformation and connects them to broader forces and issues that go beyond food and agriculture.
According to the FAO, we have allowed 80% of the varieties grown a century ago to disappear, and as early as 2018, four corporations controlled more than 60% of global sales of patented seeds
The current governance system for agricultural biodiversity embodies an enforced compromise between very different worldviews: on the one hand, part of the debate sees DSI restrictions as undermining biodiversity research and intellectual property rights, while others argue that it does not challenge existing property regimes provides resources and thus strengthens the neoliberalization of biodiversity. The DSI exacerbates these contradictory worldviews. There are complex legal, financial, and biological debates taking place that render technical an intrinsically ethical debate about whether life should be patented and privatized, and who has the right, power, and material resources to do so.
After a long and heated debate of almost 10 years, delegates to the United Nations Conference on the Environment (COP15), held in Montreal (Canada) in mid-December 2022, managed to agree to establish within the new Global Framework for Biological Diversity a multilateral fund for equitable benefit-sharing between providers and users of DSI in relation to genetic resources. The terms, rules and format of the fund will be finalized at the COP16 in Turkey in 2024, making the DSI a challenge that, more than completed, has only passed the first page.
Ideas about what progress in seed management and cultivated biodiversity means are best presented not as a single-track technical and reductionist race, but as efforts to be accomplished through a variety of pathways and mechanisms that cultivate biodiversity and the right of producers to do so ensure seeds in in situ, ex situ, in silico (digital) and trans situ contexts, in both physical and digital environments.
Rachel Ajates She is a postdoctoral researcher at UNED on seed systems and guidelines.
Portions of this article are an edited and updated summary of a scholarly article published in the October 2022 Journal of Peasant Studies and are freely accessible in English.
The project to which this research belongs is funded by the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation through the Foundation Daniel Carasso Fellowship 2021. This project has called for three arts and science curators to be exhibited in late 2023 and in Madrid and Tarragona early 2024.
The 2nd call for the Daniel Carasso Fellowship is a grant running until March 10, 2023 to attract and strengthen research talent. This postdoctoral fellowship is aimed at researchers of all nationalities and scientific disciplines (social sciences, arts, agronomy, health sciences). , engineering, architecture, etc.) that advocate for the sustainability of food systems.
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