Recovering res communis from res propia: how does open source seed contribute to farmers’ seed rights and breeding for diversity?

Abstract

The current complex seed governance framework, and the increasingly oligopolistic seed industry that has championed it, have created a series of seed enclosures that exclude farmers and many breeders from freely accessing, sharing and improving seed, and constraining their freedom to operate and cooperate. Opposing the resulting ongoing loss of both cultivated diversity and farmers? seed rights, experimental initiatives applying open source models and copyleft principles to the domain of seed have emerged. This article presents six initiatives from five different continents applying open source seed (OSS) models in very diverse cultural, policy and agronomic contexts: Bioleft in Argentina, Seed Savers Network in Kenya, MASIPAG in the Philippines, OpenSourceSeeds in Germany, Open Source Seed Initiative in the USA and Rete Semi Rurali in Italy. We analyse the mechanisms by which OSS models attempt to overcome legal, knowledge, and financial enclosures by creating safe operating spaces in current governance frameworks, breeding for diversity and rebuilding bridges between farmers and breeders, while exploring innovative financial models to fund breeding for cultivated diversity. The findings show that OSS emerges as a synergistic strategy to amplify seed rights through three dimensions: first, geographically, by connecting local and international efforts to enhance cultivated diversity and seed rights. Second, a temporal dimension, by acting now, within the current legal context, while contributing to the long term transformation of seed governance. Third, through its capacity to be applied in both physical and digital realms. Finally, further areas of research on OSS are proposed.