Función de los ecosistemas: relación con los servicios que prestan

Social movements in Colombia –and across Latin America- are increasingly associating neo-extractivist projects to death and destruction and, consequently, defining their mobilizations as the defense of life. For instance, the Process of Black Communities (Proceso de Comunidades Negras) in the Colombian Pacific coast refers to the large-scale oil palm plantations as the

‘Green Monster’ that destroys their territories, and thus, the possibility of life itself (Escobar, n.d. and 2008) Similarly, one of the main slogans of the anti-mega-mining movement is “NO to mega-mining; YES to life.”

As I now recall the ‘poisoned chicha’ ethnographic moment, I realize how powerfully – and tragically- it illustrates what NFS seed savers call the ‘dead seed system.’ Poisoned chicha illustrates how seed conflicts in Colombia cannot be fully understood only in terms of resistance of small-scale farmers against seed grabbing by biotechnology corporations. Rather, seed

conflicts are also ontological conflicts. That is the struggle of indigenous seed savers for seed sovereignty is a struggle to defend the worlds they co-create and inhabit together with other beings through agriculture, and particularly seed practices, from the globalization of the world of

what seed savers call ‘live seed systems’ (the worlds they co-create in relations to seeds) against the advance of what they refer to as the ‘dead seed system/world’ that arrogates itself the right to become the one and only.

Death and destruction within the agrobiotechnology complex is crystallized in the incrementation of the pesticide treadmill as well as the aggressive search for genetic seed’s sterility through genetic engineering and increasingly restrictive IPRs as a form of legal sterilization. Sterility and genetic homogeneity, as means of necropower to eliminate what are considered undesirable bodies and ‘inferior’ races, is not new. Campaigns to forcefully sterilize women of color as a weapon of ethnic cleansing and genocide has been used in countries such as Peru against indigenous women under the Fujimori dictatorship, in the US against black and indigenous women, and in Nazi Germany against Jew, gipsy, and other ‘non-Arian’ women, to name a few.

Such eugenics-based mentality of improving the human ‘race’ by eliminating or controlling the reproduction of inferior ‘races’, has also pervade plant science since at least the Green Revolution; what Christophe Bonneuil and Frédéric Thomas (2010) call phyto-eugenics. So much so that, taxonomically, seeds are divided into categories called ‘races’ and the

application of genetics in plant science is known as phytogenic ‘improvement.’ In other words, modern plant science is conceived as the ‘genetic improvement’ of races in order to benefit capital accumulation through a form of biological patenting.

The dead seed system/world then includes ontological and epistemological propositions about what seeds are that underlie seeds’ governance and property regimes. Such propositions emerge from a dualist modern ontology that conceptualizes seeds –and particularly creole and native varieties from the global south– as part of the (Nature) Other. These so-called ‘natural’

and ‘inferior’ seeds are to be ‘improved’ using genetic manipulation and, once manipulated, considered a human ‘invention’ that can be enclosed through IPRs for capital accumulation. In Colombia and across the global south, GM seeds are imposed through FTAs and state and corporate-backed development institutions and programs for the advancement of ‘backward’ forms of peasant agriculture and in hunger-eradication efforts. In other words, rendering invisible and inferior native and creole seeds – and the associated labor and knowledges of small-scale farmers– is part of the coloniality of nature (Alimonda, 2010)

In contrast, live seed systems/worlds are based on relational ontologies where seeds and humans are not ontologically separated but exist within networks of relations through which they bring themselves into being (Escobar, 2016; Muller, 2014a; Demeulenaere, 2014) In fact, seeds have become crucial for redefining what it means to be ‘indigenous’ in Riosucio; seed-human relationships are increasingly shaping identities or configuring multispecies figured worlds (Holland et al, 1998) Due to seeds’ ability to endlessly reproduce life – both their own through germination and of other beings as food–, seeds are the quintessential representation of the interconnections and dependencies between human and non-human beings. As the fox says to the Little Prince in Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s story, domestication is about ‘establishing ties.’

Emberá-Chamí indigenous people, and particularly women, in Riosucio consider seeds sacred and willful beings with whom they establish strong –even kinship– relations. Maize is particularly telling because of its history of domestication. Indigenous people from Mexico talk about maize and themselves and their ancestors co-domesticating each other: maize cannot grow without humans de-kernelling the cob and sowing the grains and indigenous people cannot live and prosper without maize (Casifop, Coa and Grain, 2012). Similarly, the Emberá are literally “people of maize.” Maize is an element in their ritual meals; in their minga, the community work

force that dates backs centuries; and in the inauguration of their governors (Grupo Semillas and CSI, 2011: 9-11).

In addition, seed-savers Networks, Transgenic-Free Territories, Community Seed Houses and other seed sovereignty initiatives in Colombia make visible communities’ claims on seeds not just as communal resources but as beings endowed with agency and rights. For

instance, seed savers’ anti-GM activism is centered in demanding that seed development cannot violate their life cycles through the control of fertility and evolution. That is, the genetic

modification of seeds constitutes a violation of seeds’ rights if looked at through the lens of recent struggles for nature’s rights by indigenous people in Bolivia and Ecuador (Bravo, 2014b)

To end this section, I want to clarify that I conceptualize ‘live’ vs. ‘dead’ seed worlds as analytical terms that do not entail clear boundaries. If you follow seeds, you can observe seed trajectories are never linear but rather intersect constantly. For instance, creole seeds may

participate in the world of the corporate seed system whenever they are patented by corporations or become commodities for international high-end niche markets, such as the case of quinoa in South America. In turn, peasant communities may plant GM seeds and become part of the corporate seed system although in a disadvantaged position. Some plant scientists in Colombia have condemned IPRs and propose forms of open source genetics that may include ‘generic’ GM seeds (see chapter 2).

At the same time, although there is an attempt at ontological displacement, GM seed worlds never fully takes over creole and other seed worlds. For instance, communities may devise communitarian strategies to “heal” GM contaminated creole maize –as seed savers say in Mexico– and control the entrance of GMOs in their territories and other strategies to recuperate

their seed sovereignty. To be sure, there are constant ontological frictions (Tsing, 2005) at the encounters between creole and GM seed worlds.