Sovereignty (noun) - Freedom from external control. [1]

What is Seed Sovereignty?

Seed sovereignty is a term first used by Vandana Shiva, who had the following to say about it:

“Seed sovereignty reclaims seeds and biodiversity as commons and public good. The farmer’s rights to breed and exchange diverse open sourced seeds which can be saved and which are not patented, genetically modified, owned or controlled by emerging seed giants.” -Vandana Shiva

Seed Consolidation

Industrial Agriculture

Seed Patents

GMO Crops

Why is Seed Sovereignty Important?

Genetic Variety

Local Adaptations

Where I live in the desert, local arid-adapted seeds are uniquely capable of thriving in harsh conditions. Extreme heat and very low annual rainfall are what local seeds have been selected to tolerate over thousands of years of agricultural history.

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For example there are Hopi varieties of corn that have been bred over many generations to thrive on as little as 6 inches (15.2 cm) of rainfall per year.

Nutrition

With the focus that commercial seed conglomerates have put on developing seeds for high yields, pesticide resistance, and uniformity, some important qualities have been lost in the process.

Nutrition is notably overlooked by global seed companies, as a quality rarely measured and even more rarely deemed important at all.

This reduction in nutritional value in proprietary and GMO seeds combines with the degradation of soils from chemical monocropping practices to result in some truly abysmal nutrition in modern commercial produce.

"Today, most of the varieties are bred to improve their productivity and profitability and that focus on yield is largely ignoring the nutritional quality of the crops" [3]

Flavor

"Breeding for yield, fruit size and shelf life has also inadvertently led to changes in the flavor qualities of fruits and vegetables." [2]

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References

  1. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sovereignty
  2. 47.Morris C., Sands D. The breeder’s dilemma-yield or nutrition? Nat. Biotechnol. 2006;24:1078–1080. doi: 10.1038/nbt0906-1078.
  3. Bhardwaj RL, Parashar A, Parewa HP, Vyas L. An Alarming Decline in the Nutritional Quality of Foods: The Biggest Challenge for Future Generations' Health. Foods. 2024 Mar 14;13(6):877. doi: 10.3390/foods13060877. PMID: 38540869; PMCID: PMC10969708.


That's all for now, thanks for reading!

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