Javier Carrera, social coordinator of the Red de Guardianes de Semillas (Network of Seed Guardians), shares lessons from Ecuador’s success in defending food sovereignty and winning rights to protect seeds.
Traditional Seeds at Risk
Seeds are the first link in the agricultural chain. Whoever controls them wields enormous power over the entire food system.
For 10,000 years, farmers and native peoples adapted seeds to each small valley on the planet. The result was tens of thousands of varieties for agricultural use, a fundamental legacy for building sustainable production systems, thanks to the work of thousands of hands over generations.
Over the last century many nations have lost a significant percentage of their seed diversity. In the case of Ecuador, of the 300 varieties of corn reported in the 1960s, today only about 50 circulate. Inherited agrobiodiversity is being displaced by a few commercial varieties, dependent on agrochemicals, genetically uniform and that are owned by a handful of corporations. This displacement has been aided by state policies that favour private interests.
Preserving Diversity and Heritage
There are reasons to be hopeful, however. Farmers around the globe still maintain a percentage of traditional varieties that is difficult to quantify. On the Ecuadorian coast rice farmers tend to keep varieties called “creoles” together with their commercial crops, as they are considered to have better flavour and are more resistant to climatic variations, pests, and diseases. A field investigation carried out by our organisation in 2010 found 14 of these varieties still in cultivation.
Additionally, civil organisations have emerged throughout the world in recent decades that seek to rescue, produce and distribute traditional seeds. Their work is fundamental, as it creates a bridge between the farmer cultures of ancestral heritage and the new generations of organic producers.
Legal Challenges to Seed Diversity
These strategies, on which the existence of traditional seeds depends, are threatened by the existence of laws and policies that hinder their work. The 1991 UPOV international agreement, which encourages the appropriation of seeds by corporations through intellectual property registration schemes, promoted the creation of laws that limit the circulation of traditional seeds in many countries. They do so by imposing mandatory registration for all seed varieties and for the seed producers in the country, meaning only registered varieties can circulate. The approval parameters for the varieties are based on industry practices: the seeds must be Distinctive, Uniform and Stable, characteristics that cannot be met by traditional seeds.
The imposition of these laws has caused significant problems in countries such as France and Colombia, where traditional seed producers have suffered persecution by the State, resulting in seizures of seeds, lawsuits and social protest.
Organising for Food Sovereignty
As the innovative Ecuadorian Constitution of 2008 points to Food Sovereignty as a strategic objective of the State, in 2012 there was an interesting process of collective creation of a proposal for a new Seed Law, with the participation of more than 2000 people belonging to 500 social, indigenous and farmer organisations. The document differentiated between industrial seed, to which it applied the compulsory registration models, and traditional seed, for which it established free circulation. This proposal was shelved without discussion by the National Assembly, which in June 2016 drew up its own version, where no differentiation was recognised and mandatory registration of both seed varieties and producers was required, creating a complicated and costly system that included strong legal sanctions.
The reaction of civil society was immediate. Our organisation, Red de Guardianes de Semillas (Network of Seed Guardians), led awareness-raising workshops with peasant and indigenous organisations, and together with them maintained the resistance to this proposal. Ecuadorian law obliges the National Assembly to read the bills in public hearings in each province. In each of these audiences there were people who raised their voices on two fundamental points:
- Seeds cannot be a strategic resource of the State, as this proposal intended and which would have meant total control by the governments, for the simple reason that the State did not create or maintain them. They belong to the people.
- The imposition of compulsory registration, and any impediment to the free circulation of traditional seeds, will result in the extinction of thousands of varieties of seeds, on which the Food Sovereignty of our peoples depends.
The Seed Law
This strategy, along with campaigns on social networks to raise public awareness and the political profile of the issue, worked. The Seed Law, approved by the National Assembly in December 2016, recognised seeds as part of the cultural heritage of the peoples of Ecuador, thus making it impossible for the State or private companies to appropriate them. And it created a mixed system, recognising the existence of traditional and industrial seeds. But the regulations mentioned in the Law were still based on the industrial model. Although the right to free circulation of traditional seeds was recognised, numerous articles in the Law could be used to discourage their production and stop their circulation, while continuing to favour industrial seeds.
Various organisations filed a total of 7 cases against this law in the Constitutional Court of Ecuador in 2017. 6 cases focused on preventing the entry of transgenic seeds, which the Law allowed for research purposes. The case presented by our network with the support of other organisations attacked several articles of the law, seeking to protect the right to free circulation and demanding greater equity in recognition and state support so that it does not favour only industrial seeds.
Ecuador enshrines Seed Sovereignty
In January 2021 the Constitutional Court ruled in favour of our demands, pushing the National Assembly to carry out the necessary reforms to the law to ensure the farmers’ right to property, production and commercialisation of their seeds without the obligation to register, as well as equitable state support for both systems. The Court also recognised the right of the peoples of Ecuador to define seed quality according to their own cultural parameters.
This triumph makes Ecuador a special case, where the law ensures freedom for the seeds. And it shows us that organised civil society can succeed in defending its rights, if it maintains its struggle with coherence and tenacity. We hope that our efforts inspire other peoples in the defence of their seeds.
Resources (in Spanish):
https://www.facebook.com/guardianesdesemillas
Documento sobre la resolución de la Corte Constitucional
Corte Constitucional falla a favor de las semillas campesinas en Ecuador