Seed sovereignty as decommodification: a perspective from subsistence peasant communities in Southern Mexico

Check out this JPS article by Carol Hernández (National Autonomous University of Mexico & CASAS member). How do subsistence communities conceptualize their seed sovereignty? What do peasants perceive to be the principal threats to their seed sovereignty and how do they respond to these threats?; and How do local seed sovereignty initiatives relate to the broader ideologies, goals, and strategies of the global seed sovereignty movement? Local conceptions of seeds as a commons are contributing to a multidimensional decommodification project of peasant agriculture and indigenous autonomy. I analyze one particular initiative targeting environmental deterioration and climate change, two of the most salient threats to these communities’ seed sovereignty: efforts to halt widespread chemicalization of subsistence agriculture.

Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2022.2025780

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The Collective of Agrarian Scholar-Activists from the Global South (CASAS) is a community of Scholar-Activists working in critical agrarian studies.