The kernel of equality lies in seed sovereignty

‘Globalisation and Seed Sovereignty in Sub-Saharan Africa’ was launched on 4 December at the Law Society.

Written by Dr Clare O’Grady Walshe, described as someone with “a powerful reputation as an activist”, the book argues that ‘seed sovereignty’ must be understood as critical to global peace and security.

The Lexicon of Food defines seed sovereignty as “the farmer's right to breed and exchange diverse open source seeds which can be saved and which are not patented, genetically modified, owned or controlled by emerging seed giants”.

Seed laws

The book finds significant differences in the wording of seed laws and the exercise of seed sovereignty.

It examines how the need for food is increasingly being met by a greater reliance on uniform, commercially-bred seed, and how this eliminates the sovereignty of domestic food producers.

It assesses how farmers in sub-Saharan Africa can express seed sovereignty in the face of globalisation.

O’Grady Walshe said that she didn’t expect her book to be popular, but that she didn’t write it for popularity. She said she questioned why seed laws were being passed, including a patent order on seeds in Iraq during the Iraq war.

“Seeds are very, very important,” she said.

Gardener

As a gardener, she had discovered the bounty of forgotten seeds.

In the course of her research, the author discovered that Kenyan seed law was quite different from Ethiopian seed law.

At the launch, O'Grady Walshe said that the view that globalisation was hollowing out nation states was true in some countries, and her research had led her to question the motivations for some seed laws.

Ethiopia has a much less-globalised seed law because the public institutions were consulted before the legislation was written, which allowed for an exemption for farmer seeds and seed varieties, and for bio-diversity to be enshrined.

This is an example of how the globalisation of law is affecting our domestic and local situations, she said.

“There are transformative possibilities to reform globalisation.

"If these seeds disappear, so do we. It is inextricably linked,” she said.

‘Crying out to be written’

Joe Murray from human rights and justice group Aid from the Republic of Ireland (Afri) said that this was a hugely important book.

Having spent most of his life working on issues related to famine, food security and hunger, he commented that this was a book that was crying out to be written.

Murray quoted Afri patron, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who commented that “food is not an accident; it is a result of political and economic decisions”.

The work of Afri, and its document ‘Famine Is A Lie’ (1995), had made O’Grady Walshe question her ideas about famine she said.

Laws that ‘deleted’ agri-ecology were very detrimental to populations, she added.  

Forces that must be confronted

Barrister Turlough O’Donnell, a former chair of the Bar Council and a member of the Irish Seed Savers Association, said that the book explained, through the story of seed sovereignty, the forces we now face, “and must confront”.

“O’Grady Walshe is telling the story of life itself,” he said, “and her book is powerful and a profound intervention at this moment.”.

Recalling his student years learning the Irish language in school in Belfast, he was taught that, instead of saying ‘mo airgead’, it was better usage to say ‘mo chuid airgead’, or ‘my share of money’.

“Our Irish language developed without the influence of industrialisation, or the input of capitalism to any great extent,” he said.

We cannot get to grips with the enormity of current problems through traditional adversarial means, but must engage in dialogue, he said.

“We will have to talk … about the position in relation to modified seed, and about what that will do for hunger in the world.”

Adversarial distractions

“Adversarial systems of dialogue are a distraction, and it’s too late for pointless arguments against globalisation,” O’Donnell said. “It’s an argument against energy. You might as well force back the sea.”

The key questions are what interests are being protected with seed laws, and how can we work together for the greater good of all, to ensure that no voice is excluded.

The voice of common sense and experience in relation to the production of seeds was being excluded, he said.

To ignore common sense is “a madness, a waste of resource. We need the mettle of ideas … to see a way out of this,” he said.

The idea that we will manipulate all the seeds of the world, and prevent open-pollinated varieties from growing, lacks any depth, O’Donnell added.

While he could guess at the reasons for the production of manipulated varieties, he  could not understand why other landrace [heirloom] varieties should be prevented from growing.

“The crudeness, the lack of sensitivity, the lack of poetry -- the sheer ham-fistedness of that approach -- I can’t understand it,” he said.

Seeds and their diversity were a miracle, and it was ham-fisted and crude not to recognise the inter-connectedness of the earth, ever since wheat production from seed began 9,000 years ago.

Thunderbolt

O’Grady Walshe’s questions about seed law should strike every lawyer like a bolt, he said.

“Who is making the law, what is its purpose, and where is it coming from?”

He said these laws were coming from the top down, and not ‘bubbling up’ from below.

He quoted from what he called the glorious words of the Irish Constitution: “We the people of Éire do hereby, adopt enact, and give to ourselves this constitution.”

“Any system of law worth the name law bubbles up from the people and is an expression of their equality. It expresses itself horizontally for the good of all of the people.

“…it spreads out from among us, and that’s the hope I see in the work of Clare, the hope for Kenya and Ethiopia, the hope for all of us, that the people will express themselves through the basic law … and that … will be the bulwark against the onward march of globalisation.”

Dynamic force

He quoted from the book that globalisation was a dynamic force, transforming the state’s policy role, not eroding it.

But the power of globalisation must be contained by strong fundamental law, he said.

“We must give all our people the law to contain the power, and then use it.”