Deconstructing food systems: seeds and the future of food

Talking about ecological transition without looking at food systems is, nowadays, outdated.

For a long time, the common narrative about the future of food has inevitably centred on the need to produce ever greater quantities of food, embodying the rhetoric of feed the world. In this way, today’s food and farming systems have succeeded in supplying large volumes of foods to global markets, but are generating negative outcomes on multiple fronts:

  • widespread degradation of land, water and ecosystems;
  • high GHG emissions; biodiversity losses;
  • persistent hunger and micronutrient deficiencies alongside the rapid rise of obesity and diet-related diseases;
  • and livelihood stresses for farmers around the world.

Many researches, already in early years, have disproved this theory showing that at the roots of the issue is a distributive, and not a quantitative, dysfunctionality.

Therefore, starting from the basics is crucial to understand not only the roots of the mechanisms that built the food system as we know it today, but also to reconstruct the role of certain constituents of food systems and understand their value.

Back to the seeds

The seed is the first component of the agri-food chain: those who control the seeds control the food systems, control both the food we eat and those who created it.

Three companies controlled nearly 50% of the world’s commercial seed market in 2007; seven companies controlled virtually all fertiliser supply; and five companies shared 68% of the world’s agrochemical market. This concentration has led to a drastic reduction of small and medium seed companies, and an even narrower range of varieties being developed.[1]

But has it always been like this? And if not, what was first? According to the Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Michael Fakhri,[2] people have had a domestic relationship with plants for approximately 10 thousand years. Through this relationship based on continuous experimentation and adaptation, farmers have co-evolved and adapted genetic resources resulting in increased agricultural biodiversity. The Report he published in 2021 on Seeds, Right to Life and Farmers’ Rights explains how: «relying on reproductive genetic recombination and mutation for novelty, farmers have driven innovation and agricultural biodiversity by selecting which seeds to save, grow and distribute within and among communities through gifting, exchange or sale».[3]

The shift towards privatisation has been stimulated by several factors: the first patents on fruit in the US, the emergence of hybrid seeds and seed companies, the arrival of privatisation principles in Europe as well, the adoption of regulations constraining the purchase of seeds.[4] In general, an increasing centralisation and intensification of monopolistic control over seeds – industrial intensive models – passed through economic concentration and the use of patents and intellectual property.[5] So back to the narrative: the idea was that if people are encouraged to purchase industrial inputs – synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and carbon-reliant machines – then they can produce a large amount of food. Productivity was not measured in terms of human and environmental health, but exclusively in terms of commodity output and economic growth.[6]

It is a process that takes place over decades, but remains not just an affair of genetics and botany, but has a real social, if not philosophical and legal framework. Indeed, this process has been profoundly influenced by the way privatisation has been promoted or not by international agendas and regulated at European and national levels.

The ways in which seeds are governed and regulated through intellectual property rights became a powerful instrument. Indeed, depending on the ways in which those legal instruments are put in place, and in particular the political aim and context in which the authorities decide to operate in,[7] they may either reproduce the mainstream scheme or challenge it.

An example of this is the seed system created and promoted by the International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (‘UPOV Convention’ of 1991), which propagated a vision in which farmers cannot use their own seed unless they buy it or pay a royalty to the company that claims the variety as its property.[8] Contrarily, as suggested by Micheal Fakiri, a reinterpretation of other instruments as the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture in relation to human rights law could focus on the right of farmers and indigenous peoples to participate equally in all benefit-sharing schemes.

Socio-ecological externalities

This process brings with it a number of negative effects.

First of all, the loss of biodiversity. The erosion of biodiversity caused by industrial agriculture has therefore had specific impacts on women as producers and custodians of food, including the loss of knowledge about seeds, food processing and cooking. To date, our relationship with only nine species (sugarcane, maize, rice, wheat, potato, soya, oil palm, sugar beet and cassava) accounts for over 66% of all crop production by weight.
In addition, the direct consequence is that farmers are excluded from seed management, moving from producers to customers and become dependent on agrochemical companies responsible for the global pesticide market.

Between alternatives and resistance

To cope with the system promoted by industrial agriculture, some attempts have been and continue to be put in practice by civil society – and some governments too – to challenge this vision. This need arises not only to counter the externalities described above, but also because moving away from the seed commercialisation model has its own advantages: farmers’ seed systems make food systems more resilient against climate change, pests and pathogens. This is because the more diverse a food system and the more dynamic the global ecosystem, the higher the chance that any one species has a particular trait that enables it to adapt to a changing environment (and in turn, pass that trait along).[9] Following these principles, seed swaps are gaining ground in many communities around the world, i.e. seed exchanges mainly run by organisations, research centres and private entities that aim to conserve and reproduce seeds, outside the commercial scheme.

According to La Via Campesina,[10] the system of patented industrial seed is only the last component of a large-scale plan to standardise industrial seed and replace the diversity of peasant and farmers’ seeds.[11] Different projects all over the world have been implemented to fight back, many of them focused on the creation of native-seed systems (Mozambique) and Native seed Movement (Korea) to protect the seeds; other organisations struggle against the payment of royalties[12] to industry (Germany). In some other cases, governmental strategy in using trademarking and licensing schemes – as for the Ethiopian coffee – has shown how it is effectively possible to preserve growers and producers’ position, make them become part of price setters and, at the same time, increase the country’s coffee exports.[13]

Some scholars have emphasised how the alternative model requires fewer external inputs, the majority of which are produced locally and/or self-sufficiently. Furthermore, in order to provide the resilience that is so important in diverse systems, a diverse set of highly locally-adapted seeds is required, as well as the ability to reproduce, distribute, and access that foundation of genetic resources across time. This is also reflected in the incentive system: a substantially diminished role for input-responsive varieties of main cereal crops, resulting in limited incentives for commercial providers of seeds, fertilisers, and pesticides.[14]

Moreover, «specific seed legislation could be developed to support the exchange of and access to seeds from traditional, often genetically heterogeneous, varieties through informal/traditional seed systems.»[15]

Seeds are a fitting symbol of the current transition to sustainable food systems, now caught between the dominant model of intensive agricultural production through industrial agriculture and alternative systems, such as diversified agro-ecological systems. In order to facilitate a just transition, which guarantees food but at the same time the rights of the farmers who care for it, it is necessary to reconsider the role of seeds in preventing environmental and cultural erosion.


[1] Frison, E. A. IPES-Food (2016) From uniformity to diversity: a paradigm shift from industrial agriculture to diversified agroecological systems. IPES, Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium), 96.

[2] Micheal Fakhri is a professor at the University of Oregon School of Law, where he teaches courses on human rights, food law, development and trade law. He is also director of the Food Resiliency Project of the Center for Environmental and Natural Resources Law.

[3] United Nations, Report of the Special Rapporteur Michael Fakhri, Seeds, right to life and farmers’ rights, A/HRC/49/43, 30 December 2021.

[4] Lavinia Martini, Cos’è lo scambio di semi in agricoltura, e perché è una forma di resistenza, VICE. Disponibile: https://www.vice.com/it/article/y3pmmk/scambio-di-semi-agricoli.

[5] Shiva Vandana, The stolen harvest of seeds, Chapter 5.

[6] United Nations, Report of the Special Rapporteur Michael Fakhri, Seeds, right to life and farmers’ rights, A/HRC/49/43, 30 December 2021.

[7] Fabio Ciconte, Chi possiede i frutti della terra, Editori Laterza, 2022.

[8] GRAIN, UPOV 91 and other seed laws: a basic primer on how companies intend to control and monopolise seeds, GRAIN, 2015.

[9]  United Nations, Report of the Special Rapporteur Michael Fakhri, Seeds, right to life and farmers’ rights, A/HRC/49/43, 30 December 2021.

[10] La Vía Campesina is an international farmers’ organisation founded in 1993 in Mons, Belgium, consisting of 182 organisations in 81 countries, which describes itself as ‘an international movement that coordinates farmers’ organisations of small and medium-sized producers, agricultural workers, rural women and indigenous communities in Asia, Africa, America and Europe’.

[11] La Via Campesina, Our Seeds Our Future, 2013.

[12] This “curiosity” is explained by the fact that, according to Plant Variety Protection laws, German farmers must pay royalties or fees to breeders if they save and reuse seeds bought from seed companies.

[13] WIPO, The Coffee War: Ethiopia and the Starbucks Story, Case Study. Available at: https://www.wipo.int/ipadvantage/en/details.jsp?id=2621.

[14]  Frison, E. A. IPES-Food (2016) From uniformity to diversity: a paradigm shift from industrial agriculture to diversified agroecological systems. IPES, Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium), 96.

[15] Ibid.