Privatization is not the Answer
Debunking Common Myths about the “Need” for Privatized Seed, Land, and Knowledge
A Companion Guide to Rich Appetites Episode 2 (Seeds)
Over the course of the 20th century, agriculture has come to operate more like any other industry. As part of this process, the resources it depends on (such as seeds, land, and traditional knowledge and technology) have been increasingly commodified and privatized.
Commodification refers to the conversion of various human and natural processes into things that can be bought and sold. It means that a given resource is not only used as a means toward some other end, but seen as existing solely for monetary purposes. While all human societies have utilized parts of their environments to meet individual and social needs, it is primarily under capitalism that natural resources have been commodified in this way.
Privatization refers to the process of securing individual and exclusive rights to those things over things that were once public goods-–like knowledge, seeds, land, food, and water. Advocates of privatization often claim that private ownership improves resource efficiency and discourages overexploitation, but studies have indicated that privately-owned resources are often more degraded than those that are governed collectively. Advocates also claim that private property rights incentivize people to innovate; however, innovation and land improvements have long occurred, even without the recognition of private property rights.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, AGRA, and other Gates-funded institutions have contributed to the commodification and privatization of agriculture in Africa in two main ways: 1) by promoting laws and conventions that encode Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) protection in national laws (see Myths 1-3), and 2) by developing a Theory of Change that encourages a process of land consolidation among wealthier and better resourced farmers (see Myth 4).
MYTH: Intellectual Property Rights stimulate innovation in the agricultural sector
WTO building (source: World Trade Organization)
Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) privilege large corporations and laboratories, while restricting and undermining long-standing in situ crop development by farmers themselves.
Myth: UPOV is THE BEST FRAMEWORK FOR IPRs
Protests against UPOV in Ghana (source: Victoria Okoye via GRAIN)
African countries already have a viable and pro-farmer alternative to the 1991 International Convention on the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV). However, this existing framework, known as the African Model Law, has been continually quashed by foreign interests and pressure from AGRA and other institutions.
Myth: Seed laws and regulations help farmers
Farmer holding Monsanto soybeans (source: Dan Gill / AP via NPR)
The seed laws currently being passed protect companies, not farmers. In fact, they heavily restrict farmers’ practices and negatively impact the informal seed sector, which is highly efficient and culturally important.
Myth: By making African agriculture operate more like a business, AGRA will boost economic growth and diversification at the local and national levels
This land matrix outside of Maputo, Mozambique exemplifies the tension between large-scale, industrial plantations like “Bananalandia” (left) and small-scale farms (source: National Geographic)
AGRA’s model of agricultural transformation is predicated on a large number of people leaving farming, increasing the commodification and consolidation of land in the hands of larger and wealthier firms. This is based on a flawed set of assumptions and Eurocentric experiences of economic change.
Some people believe that privatization encourages investment, innovation, and competition. This is based on the assumption that people will only be incentivized to create new ideas or inventions under conditions where their ability to profit is ensured. This is untrue.
For millennia, people have innovated and improved agricultural systems, domesticated and developed new crop varieties, and managed land and resources held as part of the commons, without being guided primarily by a profit motive.
But privatization and commodification do enable powerful institutions and individuals to further consolidate their control over all aspects of the food system (and life more generally), from production through to consumption. Laws passed to protect private property rights over land, seed, and knowledge do not benefit farmers or consumers, but instead allow resources and wealth to be extracted from the Global South, and used to further enrich institutions in the Global North.
This pattern tends toward monopolization, standardization, and uniformity. At the present time, a small number of companies control the vast majority of the world’s commercialized seeds; at the same time, of the tens of thousands of known edible plant species on earth, we rely on only three — maize, wheat, and rice — for over 60 percent of our caloric intake from plants.
Yet we require and thrive on diversity: from the genetic level, to the level of human societies, to ecosystems as a whole. Diversity is what enables experimentation, resilience, and adaptation to new conditions. There are many people and places who maintain diversity, even in the face of pressures toward uniformity. Most seeds in Africa are exchanged through informal seed networks, rather than through commercial ones. Most food in Africa (and in the Global South more generally) is produced by millions of small-scale farmers, including women. And many locally- and regionally-important crop species abound, which ensure nutrition and food security but are overlooked by international markets. Privatization allows the powerful to access, usurp, and co-opt these systems, and bring them into greater conformity with models of standardization, efficiency, and productivity developed in the Global North. This doesn’t only reduce agricultural biodiversity—it reduces cultural and economic diversity as well.
Let’s talk about it…
Questions for further discussion
What are some of the problems with the idea that privatization and commodification of seeds, land, and other resources will create innovation? Why do you think this idea is so widespread and pervasive?
What do you think the African seed and agricultural sector might look like today if UPOV had not been imposed on the continent? What might be included in alternative frameworks?
What are some ways that international, national, and regional institutions could create, strengthen, and/or uphold legal protections for farmers’ rights to exchange seeds?
What kinds of protections do you think should exist for agricultural knowledge? How can free exchange of knowledge be ensured without enabling certain individuals or institutions to patent and profit from this knowledge?
You can also view the companion guide as a Google Doc or PDF.