Tesco
Seed Activism
Book

Seed Activism

Patent Politics and Litigation in the Global South (Food, Health, and the Environment)

Karine Peschard
MIT Press, 2022

Read or listen offline

  • 0.5×
  • 0.75×
  • 1×
  • 1.25×
  • 1.5×
  • 1.75×
1×

Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Bold
  • Overview
  • Background

Recommendation

The advent of genetic seed engineering in the 1980s triggered disputes between the corporations assuming proprietary control of seeds and those advocating for issues such as farmers’ rights and affordable food that would last decades. Given today’s existential threats, such as climate change, Karine Peschard argues that people must gain a better understanding of the global food supply and the corporations controlling food production. She reveals how the lawsuits against corporate giants such as Monsanto challenge the global agbiotech hegemony.

Take-Aways

  • A few agricultural biotech corporations control the world’s proprietary seed market.
  • The United States pressured states in the Global South to adopt its Intellectual Property standards.
  • Deliberate legal ambiguities created confusion surrounding agbiotech patents.

About the Author

Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights research fellow Karine Peschard is an associate researcher at the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy.

Comment on this summary or Comenzar discusión