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NFUniversity – Seed Activism: Global Perspectives
March 25, 2021 @ 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm PDT
Thursday, March 25th, 12:00 – 1:30 PM Pacific
NFUniversity is inviting you to register for our class on Seed Activism presented on Thursday, March 25, 2021, at noon Pacific / 1PM Mountain / 2PM Central / 3PM Eastern / 4PM Atlantic.
In Canada and around the world, there has been a corporate push in the past two decades to strengthen laws and regulations governing seeds and plant varieties. These developments have proven highly controversial and have prompted a resurgence of activism around seeds. In this NFUniversity session, Dr. Karine Peschard will draw on the experiences of Brazil, India, New Zealand and Norway to provide a global perspective on these developments. How have different groups – peasants and family farmers, large farmers, Indigenous peoples and civil society organizations – come together to oppose these legislative changes? What are the parallels with recent developments in Canada (namely, Bill C-18 and the Seeds Act Regulations), and what can be learned from these countries’ experiences? This session will highlight common trends among countries with different agricultural landscapes, and present successful examples of mobilizations against seed enclosures.
Bio
Karine Peschard is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva. Trained as an anthropologist, her research interests center on intellectual property, agrobiodiversity, legal activism, peasant rights and seed sovereignty, with a focus on Brazil and India. Her work has appeared in several edited books and academic journals, including the Oxford Handbook of Law and Anthropology, the Annual Review of Anthropology and the Journal of Peasant Studies (JPS). She recently co-edited a JPS Special Forum on Seed Activism, and is preparing a book entitled ‘Seed Activism: Patent Politics and Litigation in the Global South.’
https://www.graduateinstitute.ch/academic-departments/faculty/karine-peschard
Event Materials
Webinar recording: Seed Activism — Global Perspectives
Seed activism is about defending farmers’ rights in the face of expanding corporate control over plant genetics, and global perspectives matter because countries are pressured through trade agreements and international standards—so victories, setbacks, and strategies in one place shape what’s possible everywhere. The international treaty known as International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) promotes plant breeders’ rights as intellectual property, and its 1991 convention (UPOV 91) dramatically strengthens those rights while restricting farmers’ long-standing ability to save, reuse, and exchange seed.
Yet countries like India, Brazil, and Norway show that alternatives are possible when farmers and civil society organize to defend seed sovereignty. In Canada, the fight continues after the adoption of UPOV 91 in 2015, with ongoing pressure to further limit farm-saved seed. The message is clear: resistance works. Farmers, advocates, and communities can shape seed policy—but only if we stay informed, mobilize together, and insist that seeds remain a shared foundation of food sovereignty, not just a source of corporate profit.
Visit our NFUniversity playlist on our Youtube channel to see a complete list of our NFUniversity recorded webinars.
