The central dilemma of this book is the tension between, on the one hand, the need for food, or food security, and, on the other, the desire to maintain sovereignty over food production, in this case seeds and agricultural production, or seed sovereignty. The need for food is increasingly being met by a greater reliance on uniform commercially bred seed, including genetically modified seeds designed by multinational corporations and supported by philanthropic organisations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. However, meeting the need for food in this way risks eliminating the sovereignty of domestic producers. These are the local farmers and farming communities that wish to continue freely cultivating the seeds of their choice, notably their locally adapted seeds. The loss of seed sovereignty threatens the extinction of these varieties of seeds, ones that have been in use for millennia and that have adapted to a changing climate over that time, and central to our shared agrobiodiversity. The dilemma between food security and seed sovereignty is expressed most clearly in areas of the world where the need for food is most acute, notably parts of sub-Saharan Africa that are subject to rapid climate change. In this context, this book has two main aims. Firstly, to examine the extent to which local farmers and farming communities in sub-Saharan Africa can exercise seed sovereignty in the face of the forces of globalisation expressed, amongst other actors by multinational corporations and philanthropic organisations. Secondly, to apply existing theories of globalisation to provide a better way of understanding the contemporary exercise of seed sovereignty in this region.
The Core Dilemma
There is undoubtedly a need for subsistence food or food security. Climate change threatens already vulnerable rain-fed subsistence farming most acutely. A 20% decrease in growing periods is projected for parts of sub-Saharan Africa (ETC 2010), with the African continent set to be hardest hit with erratic weather, decreased crop yields, crop failure, increased disease, water stress and related problems of indebtedness, aid dependency and out-migration (IPCC 2014; FAO 2011, p. 188). Estimates suggest that there will be between 40 and 170 million more undernourished people directly due to climate change, with sub-Saharan Africa faring worst (FAO 2011, p. 186).
Global agribusiness is responding to this need for food security by developing ‘climate-smart’ seed solutions. Building on developments in plant genetics in the twentieth century, which brought new highly bred homogenous seed varieties (F1 hybrids),1 generally referred to as improved varieties, to fulfil the need for uniformity, productivity and the growing market for monoculture cash crops, multinational global agribusiness corporations are now set to increase the commercialisation of genetically modified (GM) seeds or transgenic seeds. By inserting particular traits, notably drought resistance or other climate-related trait from one species into another, they create a transgenic plant. They claim that these seeds have the potential to substantially increase the yields and variety of foods available globally, as well as supporting the ambitious agricultural export plans for poorer countries (Robin 2010; ETC 2010; Patel 2007).
Global agribusiness is also responding increasingly strategically to the need for food security. Multinational corporations in this domain are on target to dominate the future of seed choices, significantly changing agricultural practices worldwide. Six Western firms now control over two-thirds of the formal seed market (Oakland Institute 2017, p. 3). Prior to the acquisition of Monsanto by Bayer2 in 2018, Monsanto was already the global market leader for vegetable seeds (Berne Declaration 2013, p. 10), while 87% of the total area devoted to genetically engineered seeds worldwide was occupied by Monsanto seeds. Other giant agri/seed corporations such as Du Pont, Syngenta, Badische Anilin und Soda Fabrik (BASF) and Cargill to name a few claim their role and purpose is to feed the growing world population as it ascends towards nine billion. Cargill’s CEO was more forthright, calling it the ‘commercialisation of photosynthesis’ (Page cited in Moseley 2012).
These new seed choices come at a price though. GM seeds fundamentally threaten seed sovereignty. GM seeds are engineered and owned by corporations, with strict prohibitions on use and cannot be saved. Similarly, the more common commercially bred seeds (F1 hybrids) are not rigorous in the second generation and cannot generate robust seed that can be saved by the farmer for cultivation the next year. Instead, the farmer has to return to the company year on year and buy more seed. More than that, the contractual nature of such seed production criminalises open-pollinating seed-saving systems—the natural subsistence type of farming practiced across the world by the majority of local farmers. Sovereignty over seed choice thus moves from the local farmer/community to the corporation, indeed the multinational corporation, placing seed and food security well beyond the boundary of the farmers’ fields, beyond the local community and indeed the domestic state. In this way, seed sovereignty, the “critical nexus where the contemporary battle over the means of production and consumption of food will be determined” (Kloppenburg 2010, p. 368), is inextricably linked to broader processes of globalisation.
This is an important issue. Sovereignty is a fundamental principle of politics and international relations. A vast literature examines the fate of the nation-state in light of accelerating globalisation. A multiplicity of ‘new actors’ now exercise power and determine change in the global order at every level (George 2015; Cerny 2009, 2010; Hettne 2009; Scholte 2008; Eriksen 2007; Held and McGrew 2007; Harvey 2003; Slaughter 2004; Hirst and Thompson 2002; Sassen 1996; Giddens 1990). In this context, the basic research question of this book is to what extent can domestic actors act independently in the face of globalisation? To what extent can they exercise sovereignty?
This question is of particular importance in those parts of the world where the domestic state is relatively weak and where global interests create the prospect of much-needed economic development. Sub-Saharan Africa is one of those regions. Africa’s ‘development crisis’ is considered to be at the heart of a market-led globalisation, characterised by massive inequalities in power, skewed regulatory processes of state systems, economic fragility and spatial differentiation (Harrison 2010, p. 6; Maathai 2010). In these circumstances, poor countries are mandated to liberalise their policies on trade and the free flow of capital, despite being home to some of the world’s most vulnerable people, and despite the paradox of their considerable resource wealth. In short, the need for development in sub-Saharan Africa can often come at the expense of domestic decision-making sovereignty.
In the African context, I focus on food sovereignty. To what extent can domestic actors, namely governments and their agricultural agencies and institutions in Africa pursue sovereign food policies in the face of global pressures from multinational corporations, philanthrocapitalist organisations and other external actors, including dominant US interests? More specifically still, I focus on seed sovereignty. To what extent can local farmers and farming communities in sub-Saharan Africa exercise seed sovereignty in the face of global pressures towards the importation of foreign seeds, GM seeds and pressure to conform to changing agricultural practices?