Can FOSS stem the tide towards the commodification of agricultural knowledge?

Gabriel Ash: Acting against the grain of current economic and political structures and offering both valuable access and inspiring ideas about collaboration, the sharing of ‘the commons,’ and the future of work, these FOSS-modelled schemes are unlikely to be the last of their kind. But if they are to realize their full potential, it is essential that both the lessons of the history of FOSS, and differences in context between IT and agriculture, as well as the impact of the quarter century that separates the two moments in time, become subjects of reflection.

The reality of FOSS is significantly more complicated that the simple distinction between open and proprietary. In many products—the Android phone, for example—‘open’ and ‘closed’ elements co-exist, and tiered commercial projects with an Open Source base and proprietary additions are common. Furthermore, ‘open’ itself is a continuum, with various licensing schemes offering a range of different degrees of control. If FOSS models become widespread, forms of accommodation between open and proprietary technologies are likely to emerge in agriculture as well, which could further advance the interests of agribusiness at the expense of farmers. It matters therefore how and to what ends FOSS schemes engage and mobilize users and producers.

Blueprints for agricultural technology and machinery can be found on websites like FarmHack or Atelier Paysan (CCO)

The history of the evolution of agricultural knowledge is also more complicated than a simple binary between proprietary and public. The Green Revolution replaced the informal, tacit knowledge of farmers with formal, scientific knowledge that was nevertheless organized as public knowledge, primary through institutions of research and higher learning. This phase of development elicited resistance and criticism for both the damage to farmers and ecosystems, primarily in the Third World, and for the denigration of centuries of accumulated local knowledge. This conflict was instrumental in the emergence of agroecology as a discipline[1] as well as in a range of efforts to foster better interactions between scientists and farmers.[2]

A second process that began shifting funding, control, and eventually the ownership of knowledge from the public to the private sector occurred later. In contrast to agriculture, software development never had the equivalent of farmers, and FOSS emerged purely out of resistance to the second process. This difference implies that FOSS-inspired schemes in agriculture could be more complex and resilient, and potentially more effective alternatives. But it also opens more room for misaligned interests and internal conflicts.

The ideas of unfettered collaboration and democratic creativity that FOSS schemes invoke are not external to the development of the privatized knowledge economy and its attendant intensification of intellectual property rights. Workforce creativity, technological innovation, intellectual property rights, and economic growth are widely perceived today by policy makers as linked.[3] By advancing ideas of knowledge as common and knowledge production as free, FOSS-inspired schemes expose some of the internal contradictions of a model of economic growth premised on profiting from immaterial labour and the control and selling of knowledge. But they will not buck the trend towards privatized hi-tech agriculture alone.

Agriculture, however, may offer unique opportunities for linking FOSS-inspired schemes with other forms of engagement and mobilization on issues such as environmentalism and farmers’ and peasants’ rights, and the different ways each of the latter raises the question of the commons. Let these projects be the early shoots of a wide wave of reflection, experimentation, and mobilization around these questions.

Read part 1 of this series here.

[1] Gliessman S.R. (2015) Agroecology: the ecology of sustainable food systems, 3rd Ed., CRC Press, Taylor & Francis, New York, USA, p. 28.

[2] World Bank (2006) Global – International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) Project. Washington, DC: World Bank http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/753791468314375364/Global-International-Assessment-of-Agricultural-Science-and-Technology-for-Development-IAASTD-Project , pp. 65-68.

[3] See Barry (2008), pp. 42-43.

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Gabriel Ash: Recently, a number of initiatives defending free access to agricultural knowledge have emerged. FarmHack, Atelier Paysan, The Open Seeds Initiative, and Open Source Seeds advance alternatives to the proprietary knowledge model of industrial farming based on ideas drawn from Free/Open Source Software. These initiatives respond to current trends in agricultural development and raise questions about its direction; they express an emergent concern for the commons against the drive to privatize knowledge. But why now? What is Free/Open Source Software (FOSS)? How is the FOSS model applied to agriculture? Finally, what are the opportunities and pitfalls such schemes present?[1]

Why now?

Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, blockchain, cryptocurrencies—these are today’s ‘hot’ investment trends. The hi-tech ventures that seek to deploy these technologies receive the bulk of new investment in start-ups as well as media attention. The dominance of Information Technologies affects agriculture in two ways: First, an investment gold rush is building up in ‘Agritech,’ around buzzwords such as ‘smart farming’ or ‘precision agriculture,’ and a crop of companies that seek to make agriculture more efficient and profitable with information technologies such as drone and satellite imagery analysis, cloud based data collection, digital exchanges, etc. One gets a sense of the magnitude of the forces unleashed from browsing the offerings of start-up accelerators such as EIT.  Second, businesses, regulators, politicians, NGOs, and the media adopt vocabulary, goals, expectations, and ‘common sense’ derived from Information Technology, which are then applied to agriculture.[2]

The dominance of Information Technology and its tendency to shape other industries as well as law and regulation is not simply the outcome of “market forces.” Both the US and the EU have long promoted the dissemination of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and the adoption of new intellectual property rights to support it. Thus, “the 2005 Spring European Council called knowledge and innovation the engines of sustainable growth…it is essential to build a fully inclusive information society, based on the widespread use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in public services, SMEs and households.” According to António Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General, “we want to ensure that big data will bring the big impact that so many people need.” It is taken for granted by policy makers that innovation and growth depend on commodified, proprietary knowledge, which in turn require reforming and unifying intellectual property rights.[3]

With the growing visibility of ICT, the policy drive for hi-tech innovation, and the push to commodify and privatise knowledge, alternative practices that first emerged within ICT—notably Free/Open Source Software—have also migrated into the mainstream, inspiring projects such the Creative Commons and Free Culture. They are also gaining a presence in agriculture.

What is Free/Open Source Software (FOSS)?

FOSS emerged in the 1980s among computer scientists and engineers who resented the way commercial constraints interfered with the norms of unfettered collaboration and exchange of information that prevail in science. In 1985, Richard Stallman created the Free Software Foundation (FSF), which launched the GNU project of free software tools. Breaking with the habits of commercial development, the software was written by volunteers in open collaboration over the internet and gave users full access to the source code as well as the right to freely share, tinker with and modify the program.

The FSF introduced a new relation between software producers and users, the General Public License (GPL), which effectively “hacks” copyright law to create the very opposite of a property right, a resource that obliges its users to place the fruits of their own labour in a shared common domain. By mandating that all derivative works must be distributed with the same license, this property of the GPL, called ‘copyleft’, prevents the appropriation and integration of free software in a proprietary product and guarantees that the code will remain free and open to users.

Although inspired initially by ideals of openness and freedom, FOSS did not evolve as a radical challenge to proprietary software. Companies large and small soon began investing important sums in open source development, creating new business models around it. In 1998, the shift toward as a more business-friendly model was formalized with the establishment of Open Source Initiative. Today the trend for new projects is towards licenses that eschew copyleft.

There is a perception that FOSS is US-centric. This is true insofar as the powerful US tech industry has shaped its major trends, but with important qualifications. Not only are there numerous European organizations promoting FOSS, but European countries, especially France and Germany, provide a surprisingly large number of participants. Furthermore, a number of Third World countries and public institutions have embraced it for political reasons.

FOSS is undoubtedly a success story. Its products, including heavyweights such as the operating system Linux and the ubiquitous PHP, MySQL, and Apache, power much of the web, and major ITC companies rely on it. It is also a realm of empowerment and meaning for the skilled programmers who contribute to it, one that implicitly invokes new forms of collective creativity, unfettered by the structures of intellectual property that support the expansion of the ‘information society’ and its attendant commodification of knowledge. Yet FOSS has not delivered on the utopian aspirations that are often invested in it. It has not subverted the dominant proprietary industrial structures, nor has it ushered a society of empowered technology users/creators. In David Barry’s words, FOSS remains “precariously balanced between the need for a common public form in which innovation and creativity can blossom and the reliance, to a large extent, on private corporations…” that push forward the commodification and enclosure of knowledge.[4]

Blueprints for agricultural technology and machinery can be found on websites like FarmHack or Atelier Paysan (CCO)

FOSS-inspired initiatives in Agriculture

Mechanized farm equipment manufacturers such as John Deer progressively moved toward digitized, software-controlled components that require authorized software access to repair, as well as restrictive contracts that forbid repairs and modifications. This inspired hackers, first in Eastern Europe, then in the US, to develop and share hacked versions of the control software, circumventing the manufacturers’ protections. In the US, farmers who used those hacked versions joined a larger movement demanding legislation to protect ‘the right to repair.’[5]

Addressing similar concerns from a different direction, FarmHack, established in 2010 and describing itself as “a worldwide community of farmers that build and modify our own tools,” draws inspiration from the hacking culture of FOSS to promote low-cost, open farm technology. Participants share designs for farm tools and license them under ‘copyleft’ licenses. FarmHack seeks to “light the spark for a collaborative, self-governing community that builds its own capacity and content, rather than following a traditional cycle of raising money to fund top-down knowledge generation.”

In France, Atelier Paysan was set up in 2011 with a similar basic concept, offering “an on-line platform for collaboratively developing methods and practices to reclaim farming skills and achieve self-sufficiency in relation to the tools and machinery used in organic farming.” Unlike FarmHack, whose off-line presence is limited to meetups, Atelier Paysan is organized as a cooperative that owns a certain amount of equipment and provides workshops to farmers. Atelier Paysan publishes its collaborators’ design under the same creative commons ‘copyleft’ license.

The enclosure and commodification of plant genome through patenting, licensing, and hybridization have spurred similar efforts. The Open Source Seed Initiative, a US organization created in 2012, describes itself as “inspired by the free and open source software movement that has provided alternatives to proprietary software,” with the goal “to free the seed – to make sure that the genes in at least some seed can never be locked away from use by intellectual property rights.” After initially trying and failing to devise a legally enforceable license, OSSI opted for a short pledge that is printed on all seed packages: “…you have the freedom to use these OSSI- Pledged seeds in any way you choose. In return, you pledge not to restrict others’ use of these seeds or their derivatives by patents or other means, and to include this Pledge with any transfer of these seeds or their derivatives.” As of today, OSSI’s list of pledged seeds numbers over 400 varieties.

Last year, a second open seeds initiative was unveiled in Germany, Open Source Seeds, which has its institutional roots in ecological agricultural development in the Third World. Unlike FOSS copyright-based licenses, OSS license was devised under German civil contract law. The license, which is copyleft and includes derivatives, aims at combating market concentration. As one can expect for an organization that operates for less than a year, only five open source varieties are listed so far, all tomatoes.

Part 2 will question whether FOSS can stem the tide towards the commodification of agricultural knowledge. 

Gabriel Ash is a translator, software developer, writer, activist, and filmmaker. He lives now in Geneva, Switzerland

[1] The account of FOSS below is highly indebted to David Berry’s excellent analysis in Berry, D. (2008) Copy, Rip, Burn: The Politics of Copyleft and Open Source, Pluto Press, London.

[2] See the European Conference on Precision Agriculture Sponsors, the European Parliament report on Precision Agriculture and the Future of Farming in Europe, the European Commission’s Communication on Future of Food and Farming .

[3] See European Commission (2005), p.4.

[4] Berry (2008), p. 144;

[5] See The Repair Association  and Nebraska’s Fair Repair Bill

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Last month, an interesting article on Jean-Luc Danneyrolles was published (in French) on the site Reporterre. Danneyrolles is the founder of “Potager d’un curieux” (The Curious One’s Garden), a place in the Vaucluse region of France which is dedicated to the preservation and promotion of free seeds. In particular, the article explains the obstacle course this farmer had to cross in order to have his activities accepted by administrative authorities. Fortunately, he has been able to stabilize the situation more or less, but one point continues to create friction: the marketing of the seeds produced.

When Jean-Luc is asked the simple question of the right to sell all his seeds, he reverses the question. “By what right would we not have the right to produce good seeds and to market them? It is the reappropriation of this heritage that I defend. We do not have the right, we take the right” To take a right is not to steal something, he explains. “I never imagined that the police would come to arrest me because I sell my seeds. We are supported by civil society, that is to say that there are plenty of people who encourage me to continue and that is enough for me.”

Prohibition on the marketing of free seed?

As I have already had occasion to mention on SILex, seeds can be the subject of intellectual property rights in Europe through Certificates of Plant Production (VOCs) which protect varieties obtained by seed producers. Moreover, in order to legally market seeds, they must be registered in a catalog based on criteria excluding by definition old varieties, as explained in the article by Reporterre:

For the marketing of seeds or seedlings, Decree No 81-605 of 18 May 1981 requires the inclusion of varieties in the official catalog of plant species and varieties. To be registered, the varieties must undergo two tests: DHS (for “distinction, homogeneity, stability”) and VAT (for “agronomic and technological value”). First hitch, the old, peasant, terroir varieties, call them as you want, are essentially unstable. They are expressed differently according to biotopes and climatic conditions. So, they are checked by the catalog entry tests.

The varieties which respect the DHS criteria are generally “F1 hybrids” produced by the large seed companies, which yield plants with identical characteristics, whatever their environment. They also degenerate from the first reproduction, which prevents farmers and gardeners from reusing the seeds and obliges them to repurchase seeds each year from the same manufacturers. Thus, the system has been designed to mechanically privilege varieties protected by intellectual property rights, while so-called “free” seeds (those belonging to the public domain) are disadvantaged, specifically because they can not be marketed.

The regulation has, nevertheless, been relaxed somewhat at the European level since 2011, with the introduction of a list complementary to the official catalog based on criteria of less drastic homogeneity, which makes it possible to include old varieties. But this margin of maneuver remains insufficient to cover all seeds in the public domain, which means that militant peasants such as Jean-Luc Danneyroles remain largely illegal when they want to market seeds that they produce. They risk fines imposed by the repression of fraud, which can be high (even if they are rarely applied in practice). A French association called Kokopelli decided openly to brave these aberrant prohibitions, claiming as a right the possibility of marketing free seeds, to defend it before the courts. Last year it was believed that the situation would change with the Biodiversity Act, an article of which explicitly allowed non-profit associations to market seeds belonging to the public domain. However, unfortunately, the French Constitutional Council declared this part of the text to be annulled, on the very objectionable ground that it entailed a breach of equality towards commercial companies.

Ambiguous links between enclosures and commodification

What I find interesting with this story told in Reporterre, but more broadly with the issue of free seeds, is that they illustrate well the complex relationships that exist between the common goods and the market. Indeed, free seeds are considered to be a typical example of “common” resources. They have reached us through a process of transmission from generation to generation of farmers, which has led the process of selection and crossing necessary to develop the varieties and adapt them to their environment. The so-called “old”, “peasant” or “traditional” varieties are not protected by intellectual property rights: they are in the public domain and are therefore freely reproducible. That’s why they are very interesting for farmers, especially to rid themselves of their dependence on the seed industries.

Since these seeds are in the public domain, they should also be free to be sold on the market as physical objects. It is clear that this is a prerequisite for activities such as “The Vegetable Garden of a Curious One” or Kokopelli to be sustainable and develop. Even if these structures generally adopt associative forms oriented towards non-profit or limited profitability, they need a connection with the market, at least to cover the costs incurred by the production and distribution of seeds. However, this is precisely what is now theoretically prohibited by regulations, which has been organized to exclude traditional seeds from the market, notably via the registration requirements in the official catalog.

We see here that the specific enclosure that weighs on seeds consists of forced exclusion from the market, and it is somewhat counter-intuitive, in relation to the general idea that one can make of the phenomenon of common property. Historically, enclosures first hit certain lands that were collectively used by the distribution of private property rights to convert them into commodities. Landowners have been recognized in several waves of the right to enclose land that was previously the subject of customary collective rights of use. This is particularly the case in England during the 18th and 19th centuries. In France, the dismantling of the Commons took the form, in the French Revolution, of a process of “sharing the Communals”, which consisted in the sale in certain regions of these lands so that they became private properties. In both cases, enclosure takes the form of a forced inclusion in the market of goods that previously were “protected” and it can even be said that enclosure is then explicitly aimed at the commodification of the good.

In this regard, we must re-read the analyses of the historian Karl Polanyi in his book “The Great Transformation” in which he explains how “market society” has been constituted and generalized by producing three kinds of “fictitious goods”: the Land (and more generally nature), labor (human activity) and money. In his vision, it was the forced inclusion of these three essential goods in the market mechanisms that allowed the latter to “disentangle” the rest of society and become a self-regulated system that allowed the rise of capitalism.

Exclusion from the market as an enclosure

From the foregoing, one may have the impression that enclosure is thus intimately linked to “commodification”. Moreover, many of the social struggles carried out on behalf of the Commons demand that certain goods be excluded from the market or subject to a specific regulation which protects them from the most destructive excesses. This is the case, for example, for the fighting on water, in particular in Italy, which has gone through opposition to the privatization of water management by large companies.

Nevertheless, the case of seeds shows us that the issue of enclosures is much more complex. In order to grasp what happens to the seeds, we must understand them in two different ways: in their immaterial dimension, through the plant varieties that the seeds express and in their material dimension, through the physical objects that are the seeds produced by the peasants. Old plant varieties do not (and have never) been subject to intellectual property rights, unlike the F1 hybrids produced by the seed industry. As such, these varieties are actually ‘de-marketed’, in the sense that they can not, as such, be subject to exclusivity subject to authorization and transaction. But the seeds produced by the peasants constitute rival physical objects, which are the object of property rights and can be legitimately sold on the market. Except that the legislation on seeds has been organized to prevent these seeds from entering the market and being able to be marketed, unlike proprietary varieties. The enclosure of the common good which constitutes traditional seeds, therefore, does not have the same nature as that which has struck land or water: it consists of a forced exclusion from the market.

Indeed, it could be said that free seeds are subjected to a double process of enclosure, both working in opposite directions. It is known that some large companies like Bayer or Monsanto are working to file abusive patents on some of the characteristics of old plants, such as natural resistance to diseases. They do this to reserve rights over the “immaterial dimension” of plants, by creating new GMO varieties in which they will inject the genes carrying these particular traits. In such cases, they use an intellectual property right to induce a forced entry into the market on an element which previously belonged to the public domain and was freely usable. One of the best known examples of this phenomenon known as “biopiracy” has, for example, concerned a patent filed by a Dutch company on an aphid resistance of a lettuce, allowing it to levy a toll on all producers’ seeds for these salad greens.

Enclosure may therefore consist of forced entry into the market and is often the effect of the enforcement of intellectual property rights. Another example which could be cited in this sense is that of scientific articles. The vast majority of these products are produced by researchers employed by public universities. They are collected by private publishers through the transfer of copyright granted by the same researchers at the time of publication. They then resold at very high prices to universities. They are then obliged to buy back with public money what had originally been financed by public funds (salaries of researchers). To use Polanyi’s vocabulary, we are here in a caricature of “fictitious goods”, created by the artificial application of intellectual property rights on goods in order to forcefully include them in a market.

But conversely, there are also intangible goods which undergo, like seeds, phenomena of enclosure by forced exclusion from the market. If one takes for example the case of free software, one knows for example the problem of tied selling (sometimes also called “forced sale”) which means that one can not generally buy computers without proprietary software pre-installed, which conditions users to the use of protected software to the detriment of free software. Last year the Court of Justice of the European Union refused to consider that the tying of PCs and proprietary operating systems constituted an unfair commercial practice. The seed analogy is not perfect, but there is a link as long as the problem of tied selling prevents free software from reaching the consumer under the same conditions as proprietary software. The machinery market would be important for their distribution and adoption by the greatest number. In the end, the consumer is deprived in both cases of the choice of being able to opt for a free solution, radically with regard to the seeds and relatively for the software.

For a complex approach to the links between Commons and the market

To be able to grasp the phenomenon of enclosures in its complexity is, in my opinion, important, in particular to avoid misunderstandings on the question of the Commons. It is sometimes said that the Commons constitute a “third way between the market and the state”, but this way of presenting things is rather misleading. It would be better to say that the Commons, with the State and the market, constitute a way for humans to take charge of resources. These three poles can, depending on the moment in history, have more or less importance (today we are going through a period of overwhelming dominance of the mechanisms of the self-regulated market, resulting in a marginalization of the Commons and a weakening of the State). But the Commons are always articulated to the State and the market: they never constitute a completely autonomous sphere. In particular, they may need market opportunities to exist and weigh significantly in social relationships. This is clearly illustrated by the example of free seeds.

Of course, there are also cases where we have to fight for a “de-commodification” of certain goods and many struggles for the recovery of the Commons go through this confrontation with the market to “snatch” from the essential resources. But there are also cases where, on the contrary, it will be necessary to fight for the right to have resources joining the market to be traded. At first glance this may sound confusing, but it seems crucial to keep this in mind so as not to sink into a romanticism that would lead us to believe that the goal is to “get out of the economy”, as one can sometimes read … There is also a struggle to lead “in the economy”, as Karl Polanyi rightly said, in order to “re-integrate” this sphere within the processes of social regulation and in particular in the logics of reciprocity.

That is what Jean-Luc Danneyroles expresses in his own way at the end of the article by Reporterre, referring to the question of barter and the commons. One senses at the same time his reluctance to consider the seeds as goods “like the others” and his need to connect yet to a market:

Quietly, in his open kitchen, at the time of the coffee, as almost every day, Jean-Luc receives the visit. A curious one looking for Roman chamomile for skin care. Jean-Luc gives him advice, names of plants and methods of cultivation. She will leave with her sachets of seeds, in exchange for soap and toothpaste that she has made. Jean-Luc always has a little trouble with getting paid. “The ideal is barter, I like the idea of common goods, which one does not pay for what belongs to nature. Utopian, yes, but feet on the ground. “Every work deserves salary,” he knows, and his seeds are his means of living.

Photos used by permission, Éric Besatti/Reporterre

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Nithin Coca: We know about open-source software and hardware, but can the concept – decentralized development and open collaboration for the common good – be expanded to address other global challenges? The nonprofit OpenSourceSeeds based in the German town of Marburg has just launched a licensing process for open-source seeds, to create a new repository of genetic material that can be accessed by farmers around the world, in perpetuity.

We spoke with one of the leaders of this initiative, Dr. Johannes Kotschi, to learn more about exactly how the open source model was adapted for seeds, and why this initiative is so important in an era of increasing global concentration of power in the agriculture industry.

Can you tell me a bit about the open-source seeds movement in Germany as well as around the globe? How big is it, is it growing, and who are the members?

Open Source Seeds (OSS) is a newly created organization, and we had our launch on the 26th of April in Berlin. We launched with a tomato called Sunviva. A tomato is quite a good symbol – everybody likes tomatoes, and everyone can grow a tomato. From all over in Germany we got requests from gardeners, plant breeders, from open-source activists for our open source tomato.

We are an offspring of AGRECOL, [which] is about 30 years old and focuses on sustainable and organic agriculture – mainly in the developing world. Within AGRECOL we started working on open source seeds about five years ago – first as a small working group.

There is a similar initiative in the United States – the Open Source Seeds Initiative, based in Wisconsin – but they are not licensing, they are giving a pledge to varieties. We have different strategies, we, OSS, pursue the legal strategy, and they pursue the ethical strategy, but we are working closely together.

How did the idea for creating open-source seed licensing emerge? Can you tell me about the process that led to the first licensed, open-source seeds? Were there any roadblocks or challenges you had to deal with?

We were inspired by persons – Elinor Ostrom, an American sociologist who received the Nobel Prize for Economics for her finding that commons can be used in a sustainable way. Refuted the idea of the Tragedy of the Commons – in which common resources overused by the public and thus have to private property, the famous hypothesis given by a scientist, [Garrett] Hardin.

She said no, there are clear rules to managing the commons – they are managed sustainably, and she defined seven principals. The other inspiration was a computer scientist Richard Stallman…who created the open source idea, and the general public license.

Our idea was to develop a similar something, like a Creative Commons license, but seeds do not fall under copyright, seeds fall under seed laws. So we had to find another legal area to design a license.

So we defined a license agreement that falls under German Civil Law, as a contract that is pre-written for use by a single party, not individually negotiated. We do not violate seed laws, they exist, our license is supplementary to the seed laws – and this license protects seeds against patents, and against plant variety protection.

The license, in a sense, has the main principals of a creative commons license. The whole process took us roughly a year, mainly due to the fact that we had little funds, mainly had to rely on pro-bono contributions from lawyers.

Why is having a special license with definable rights so important to protecting seeds and promoting diversity in global agriculture?

Our license is quite radical. It says that if a seed is licensed, this seed, and all further developments and modifications [of that seed] fall under this license. So this means you start a chain of contracts – if the person who has got the seed is giving further developments of this seed to a third person, he becomes a licenser, which means he or she is licensing a new variety

In theory, this can be indefinite. There is no way back to private domain. [Our license] does not allow any seed company to take the seed, use it for breeding, and put a patent on it.You can work with is, you can earn your money with it, but you have no exclusivity.

This is important because we are living in a time of not only privatization of genetic resources, but the monopolization of genetic resources. Big companies, they are interested in producing few varieties and extending and distributing these varieties for large acreages – the larger the acreage, the larger their return through royalties.

But what we need is diversity in production, diversity in genetic resources, and we need diversity in breeders. It is a danger if you are depending on a few companies – because they tend towards uniformity, their energy for creating innovation is decreasing because competition is getting less and less. They are also producing variety that do not respond to the needs we have. For example, these big seed companies do not provide what is needed for adaptation to climate change.

Monsanto and Bayer, for example, you will have a concentration of a company which has dominating position in producing pesticides and herbicides, and dominating the seed sector – they will link these two businesses together. They will produce seeds that correspondent with sales of agrochemicals. But in agriculture we need less pesticides, more agroecology. We need genetic resources and plants that fight pest and diseases by resistance, not by chemicals.

Can you tell me a bit about what it means if a farmer uses an open-source seed rather than a private, or corporate alternative?

License, first all of all says, there is no limitation to the use of this seed by the farmer. The only limitation is to refrain from privatization. Commercial seeds have become extremely costly, but the other point which is more important, the characteristics of a variety are not fully meeting the needs farmers have today.

And this applies, in particular, to small farmers in the world who are not able to pay the high costs of seeds for seeds from the big companies, or who may not need the varieties which are offered.

How can open source licenses for seeds help stem, or shift, the growing concentration of power in a few large mega-corporations?

Our initiative is a small initiative which shows an alternative to the existing system, which aims to establish a second column of publicly owned seeds, in coexistence with private seed sector. I hope that over time that this column will grow and be a real alternative for farmers and ultimately, also consumers. To have a choice about what you grow, and what you eat. If you go on observing the market concentration, you are getting more and more dependent on what is dictated by the private sector.

Of course, in the first step, OSS has mainly a political impact. We are not yet in a position to say we have a fully fledged public domain on seeds. There is not yet a real choice – this choice may develop, but at present we are just starting, and showing this as a mutual alternative to the existing system.

How do you plan to expand the number of open-source seeds? What is your strategy going forward to engage those working in all facets of the agriculture sector?

We are now in the first stage of putting the idea into practice. This includes working together with plant breeders, regulating seed transfers from plant breeders to seed producers, and from producers to traders while ensuring that the chain of contracts is not violated. These are practical and legal questions, not so difficult to answer, but it has to be done.

Our big challenge will be to extend the idea. But it will be an important task to get breeders to provide newly developed varieties to our initiative – and we hope that this will grow the number of open source licensed varieties, satisfactorily.

Our license has stimulated initiatives in other sectors – there is for instance – the World Beekeeping Association – they have on their annual meeting decided to use our open source license and adapting it for bees, and doing open source licensing for bees. Another initiative is thinking about open source licensing of microorganisms, and there’s a third one which explores possibilities of using open source licensing for animal genetic resources – farm animals.

Lastly, we need people to help us spread the idea. As we are a nonprofit organization, we are happy to receive donations, and as far as the breeding community is concerned – we are interested in requests from plant breeders to license their newly developed breeds. Our license is under German law, but it is valid in most countries.

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In short, seed patents have become a tool for privatizing seed from the pool of open and commonly owned plant genetic resources: an insidious enclosure of seed commons.

This scenario is eerily similar to the consolidation of software for personal computers some twenty years ago. Microsoft used its market dominance to incorporate all sorts of software programs into its Windows operating system, a strategy sometimes referred to as “embrace, extend and extinguish.”  As Microsoft exploited its de facto monopoly over common software systems, programs for word-processing, spreadsheets and other functions began to go out of business.

From OpenSourceSeeds website

The Open Source Seed license, recently released by a group called OpenSourceSeeds, is trying to “make seeds a common good again.” The license amounts to a form of “copyleft” for new plant varieties, enabling anyone to use the licensed seeds for free. Like the General Public License for free software, the seed license has one serious requirement: any seeds that are used, modified or sold must be passed along to others without any legal restrictions.

This is the “share-alike” principle, which is also used by Creative Commons licenses.  Its purpose is to prevent the privatization of a common resource by requiring any user to share it freely and forever.

The Open Source Seed license directs any users:

You will in particular refrain from making any claim to plant variety rights, patent rights or any other statutorily possible exclusivity rights of the seeds or their propagation and enhancements.

Simultaneously, the licensing provisions oblige you, in turn, to subject any seeds or enhancements of the seeds obtained from the present seeds to these licensing provisions, and only to pass them on to third parties on these conditions (“copyleft”). Should you infringe the obligations arising from this licence agreement, you will forfeit your rights of use of the seeds or any seeds or enhancements obtained therefrom.

By acquiring or opening the packet of these plant seeds you accept, by way of an agreement, the provisions of a licence agreement where no costs shall be incurred to you. You especially undertake not to limit the use of these seeds and their enhancements, for instance by making a claim to plant variety rights or patent rights on the seeds’ components. You shall pass on the seeds, and propagations obtained therefrom, to third parties only on the terms and conditions of this licence. You will find the exact licensing provisions at www.opensourceseeds.org/licence. If you do not wish to accept these provisions, you need to refrain from acquiring and using these seeds.

The open source seed license was released on April 25 in Berlin by the Association for AgriCulture and Ecology (AGRECOL e.V) and the German NGO Forum on Environment and Development. They also released the first two open-sourced seeds, the tomato “Sunviva” (Lycopersicon esculentum L.) and the spring/summer wheat known as “Convento C.”  (For more on this event, see this story by Intellectual Property Watch.)

OpenSourceSeeds hopes that plant breeders will use its license to protect access to new crop varieties, eventually producing a new sector of open source seed production.  The group’s website invites breeders and seed distributors to register on its database so that buyers can discover where they can purchase open source seeds.

OpenSourceSeeds explains that its agenda is to promote food security through seed diversity; restore crop seeds as a common good; and assure free access to seed (meaning, no legal restrictions on use; seeds can still be sold).

It envisions a more ecological approach to farming rather than the monoculture crops of industrial agriculture. It wants to develop and promote a diversity of crop types, and promote varieties with ecological potential for niche locations and landscapes. All of these goals require a non-private, commonly owned seed sector where private profit is not the primary goal.

If you’d like to explore this topic further, here is an informative background essay, “Liberating Seeds with an Open Source Seed License,” by Johannes Kotschi and Klaus Rapf, of AGRECOL, the Association for AgriCulture and Ecology, in Germany.

Bravo, OpenSourceSeeds, for this ingenious initiative!  May your new license and ethic of seed stewardship produce many bountiful harvests in the future.

Cross-posted from bollier.org

Photo by timlewisnm

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Monika Ermert: The Germany-based OpenSourceSeeds initiative this month started to offer open source-licensed seeds in an effort to strengthen a form of “copyleft” for new plant varieties. The goal, according to the organisation established by academics, activists and breeders and establish a non-private seed sector as a second pillar alongside private plant breeding.

At an event Tuesday in Berlin, hosted by OpenSource Seeds organiser, the Association for AgriCulture and Ecology (AGRECOL e.V) and the German NGO Forum on Environment and Development, the first two open-sourced seeds were presented, the tomato Sunviva (Lycopersicon esculentum L.) and the spring/summer wheat “Convento C”.

To make seeds open source was a necessary answer to the increasing market concentration and resulting reduction in genetic diversity in plant varieties. The lack of varieties and spread of uniform cropping systems over large areas present a risk for global food and nutrition security, according to the OpenSourceSeeds initiative.

Another concern is that farmers and society as a whole become more dependent on just a few companies. Earlier this week, 20 German organisations published a study on the lack of interventions of EU competition authorities in recent years against a long list of agro-chemical mega-mergers and warned against the effects for food security and dependencies also in the global South. With the mergers of Dow-DuPont, ChemChina-Syngenta and Bayer-Monsanto these three giants would dominate 70 percent of agrochemical products and 60 percent of the seed market.

To counter the trend, OpenSourceSeeds has created a special licence that will allow plant breeders an opportunity “to protect their new developments against privatisation and maintain them as a commons,” the organisation explains on its website. The new licence grants the right to use the seed and also to multiply it, pass it on and enhance it.

AGRECOL organised a first international workshop on open source seed initiatives last year and was in close contact with the US-based Open Source Seeds Initiative (OSSI), according to Johannes Kotschi from OpenSourceSeeds. OSSI already has a considerable pool of open-sourced crop and plant varieties. But contrary to the German OpenSourceSeeds, US-based OSSI so far decided not to use a licence, but a “pledge” to the OS principles.

Photo by Eugene Kogan

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Biodiversity is not a new idea. Humans were advocating for biological diversity decades ago.

Hivos, and advocacy and development organization, combined these concepts in its Open Source Seed Programme. They were not the first to do so.

The story of the Open Source Seed Programme provides contemporary illustration of the challenges in changing policy, commerce and culture.

The Open Source Seed Programme and biodiversity excerpts below date to 2014 and 2015. The maize infestation posts are from 2017.

Extracted from: https://www.hivos.org/why-open-source-seed-systems

Global challenge

The world’s agrobiodiversity, crucial to maintaining food security, is under pressure. While there are some 120 plant species cultivated for human food, it is estimated that just 30 crops provide 95 percent of human food-energy needs.

Most agrobiodiversity is maintained on-farm, and its fundamental role in income generation, adaptation to climate change, nutrition and food security is widely acknowledged (Padulosi, Bioversity International 2012). The main cause of genetic erosion is that modern varieties are replacing local farmer varieties (The State of the World’s Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture). In addition to this trend, the patenting of plants and seeds further restricts experimentation by individual farmers or public researchers, while also undermining local practices that enhance food security and economic sustainability by adding a price tag to every seed (or cultivar) that used to be saved, shared and sown again the following year.

According to the FAO (The State of Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture), conservation of species in gene banks has made considerable progress. A number of global initiatives exist that focus on safeguarding diversity, such as the Global Crop Diversity Trust and the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership. Other initiatives like “Access to seed index” aim to bridge the gap between the world’s leading seed companies and the smallholder farmer.

But inadequate policies that remain focused on high input agriculture offer few options to the majority of resource-poor farmers to bolster resilience, improve nutrition and enhance their own livelihoods.

Extracted from: https://www.hivos.org/focal-area/open-source-seed-systems

Open Source Seed Systems

Hivos believes in the importance of farmers’ access to diverse and ecologically adapted seeds and the need to prevent exclusive and monopolistic rights on plant genetic resources for food and agriculture and associated practices and knowledge.

Hivos’ Open Source Seed Systems (OSSS) programme aims to reverse this trend by promoting the freedom to use seeds and stimulate breeding, diversification and resilience. We support concrete initiatives, learn what works and use the results in our lobbying and advocacy for change.

Open source seed approaches

Increasingly, Hivos together with breeders, farmers, and others concerned with seed systems, has felt the need to develop an alternative system, based not on exclusive intellectual property rights claims, but on protected commons that subvert the IPR system. Inspired by the open source software movement, several initiatives around the world have established variations of open source seed systems. Breeders declare their seeds open source, and farmers and consumers support the search for well-adapted varieties and tasty crops suitable for current cultivation technologies.

The distinctive feature of “open source seed” is an express and explicit commitment—legal and/or ethical—to maintain freedom to use the seed and any of its derivatives. This commitment accompanies the seed and its derivatives through any and all transfers and exchanges.

Strategy

Three strands of activities are central to the programme:  building viable business models for open source seed systems; strengthening an emerging global alliance of breeders, farmers, gardeners and consumers through joint research and learning; and accelerating a shift in public policy orientation through showcasing the strength of national open source seed initiatives that create alternatives.  We invite governments and other stakeholders to join in this global development of open source seed systems .

In East Africa, we work with Bioversity International to enable resource-poor male and female farmers to increase food security and mitigate climate change.

We build global alliances with like-minded organisations such as Open source seed initiative US and Apna Beej India. With them and others we are building capacity and promoting open source seeds in Africa and globally, going against the current ‘exclusive rights’ stream.

Extracted from: https://www.hivos.org/blog/why-media-matters-sustainable-food-zambia

Hivos Southern Africa is currently implementing the sustainable foods programme in Zambia aimed at fostering a radical rethinking of food production and consumption that recognises ecosystems as the foundation of societies and economies.

The existing food system in Zambia, built on large-scale mono cropping of maize, is eroding ecosystems and crop diversity and reducing diversity on our plates. In our view, we need to put citizens centre stage to build a new food system that is sustainable, nutritious, diverse and healthy.

Sustainable diets are respectful of biodiversity and ecosystems, culturally acceptable, accessible, economically fair and affordable, nutritious, safe and healthy. A diverse food system builds on the productivity and nutrition potential of agricultural biodiversity in food systems.

It enables women and men to use and develop their knowledge to further improve the diversity in production and consumption systems. Diversity on the farm is diversity on the plate. As Hivos Southern Africa Hub, we firmly believe that a sustainable food system can contribute to sustainable diets that are key to realizing the goal of a healthy nation

Extracted from: https://www.hivos.org/blog/armyworm-maize-attack-case-sustainable-food-production-strategy-zambia

Maize – Zambia’s most favoured crop – is under attack from alien armyworms. The pest has already invaded more than 10 percent of farms in the country. The army worms are caterpillars that “march” across the landscape in large groups feasting on young plants, leaving devastation in their wake.

In Zambia, maize is the primary staple crop, and over 90 percent of smallholders rely on it for food security and income. As with other countries in the region, maize dominates production.

Despite being a beloved crop in Zambia and other countries in the region, maize is proving a costly crop both at production level and to the dietary needs of Zambia.

Maize, which is suffering the most from the armyworm attack, is referred to as a ‘politicised crop’ because of government interventions to support it. Zambia’s government has promoted maize more than other crops such as cassava, millet and sorghum. Since 2007, it has spent on average eighty percent of its agricultural budget supporting the production of maize.

The inadequate production of alternative staple crops, climatic shifts, and poverty is contributing to widespread food insecurity in Zambia. Within the last 20 years, prolonged dry spells and shorter rainfall seasons have reduced maize yields to only 40% of the long-term average. Furthermore, the culture of maize monocropping is diminishing the diversity of foods in the fields and on the Zambian plate. The culture of mono diet is born from monocropping food production, which is heavily slanted towards maize.

The latest attack of the maize crop by armyworm highlights the urgent need for Zambia to diversify its food crops.  An investment in sustainable food diversity is urgently needed to combat hunger and micronutrient deficiencies as well as cushion millions of Zambia people from the unknown threat of climatic change.Photo by CIFOR

Link to an Open Source Seed Programme video: https://vimeo.com/189777328/483c1ddf0b

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This article reports on a number of important new initiatives that have the potential to integrate the various projects and movements working  against the enclosure of living material and for the seed commons. An important read for saving the endangered food supply of humanity now and in the future. Penned by Rachel Cernansky, it was originally published in Ensia.com.

Rachel Cernansky:  Frank Morton has been breeding lettuce since the 1980s. His company offers 114 varieties, among them Outredgeous, which last year became the first plant that NASA astronauts grew and ate in space. For nearly 20 years, Morton’s work was limited only by his imagination and by how many different kinds of lettuce he could get his hands on. But in the early 2000s, he started noticing more and more lettuces were patented, meaning he would not be able to use them for breeding. The patents weren’t just for different types of lettuce, but specific traits such as resistance to a disease, a particular shade of red or green, or curliness of the leaf. Such patents have increased in the years since, and are encroaching on a growing range of crops, from corn to carrots — a trend that has plant breeders, environmentalists and food security experts concerned about the future of the food production.

A determined fellow dedicated to the millennia-old tradition of plant breeding, Morton still breeds lettuce — it just takes longer, because more restrictions make it harder for him to do his work.

“It’s just a rock in the river and I’m floating around it. That’s basically what we have to do, but it breaks the breeding tradition,” he says. “I think these lettuce patents are overreaching and if they [were to hold up in court], nobody can breed a new lettuce anymore because all the traits have been claimed.” He continues to work with what is available, breeding for traits he desires while being extra careful to avoid any material restricted by intellectual property rights. He has also joined a movement that is growing in the U.S. and around the world: “open source” breeding.

Astronauts on the International Space Station grew and ate Outredgeous red romaine lettuce in the station’s “Veggie” system, a test kitchen for growing plants in space. Photo by NASA

If the term sounds like it belongs in the tech world more than in plant breeding, that’s no accident. The Open Source Seed Initiative, inspired by “the free and open source software movement that has provided alternatives to proprietary software,” was created to ensure that some plant varieties and genes will remain free from intellectual property rights and available for plant breeders in perpetuity. As part of the initiative, commonly known as OSSI, U.S. breeders can take a pledge that commits the seeds they produce to remain available for others to use for breeding in the future.

That doesn’t mean they can’t build a business with or sell them. What the pledge does is allow farmers who buy seeds from an open-source breeder to cross them with other material to breed their own varieties and save them for future seasons — two things many crop patents forbid. Dozens of breeders and seed companies have committed to OSSI since the initiative’s launch in 2014.

Compromised Future

For University of Wisconsin–Madison professor emeritus and OSSI board member Jack Kloppenburg, control of seeds and the ability to breed new crops are matters of both food security and environmental protection. Seeds play a role in larger issues like biodiversity, farmers’ rights, control of the food system and use of agricultural chemicals, which many independent breeders try to avoid or reduce by breeding natural resistance into crops themselves.

Kloppenburg emphasizes that the open-source movement is not about genetically modified organisms; patents can affect all crops, vegetable or grain, GMO or conventional, organic or not. “Control over the seed is what’s at the core of all environmental sustainability that we’re working toward,” he says, pointing to the increased consolidation in the global agriculture industry, most recently with the mergers announced between ChemChina and Syngenta in August 2016, and Monsanto and Bayer in September. “If you go to the farmer’s market and you’re interested in buying good, local, sustainably produced vegetables, you also need to understand that most vegetables are coming out of a breeding process that is itself endangered. We will not have food sovereignty until we have seed sovereignty.”

The Open Source Seed Initiative, where U.S. breeders take a pledge committing their seeds to remain available for others to use for breeding in the future, is in contrast to the practice of patenting seeds and crop traits. Photo by Jack Kloppenburg

OSSI supporters argue that as planting material becomes more restricted through intellectual property rights, the future of the food supply is compromised because the gene pool is continually shrinking. OSSI executive director Claire Luby, whose Ph.D. thesis focused on genetic variation and availability within carrots, found that about one-third of all carrot material has been protected by intellectual property rights, rendering it unavailable or difficult for plant breeders to use. Similar estimates do not yet exist for other crops, but experts such as Luby are confident that big commodity crops such as corn are even more heavily impacted than crops such as lettuce and carrots.

A Matter of Perspective

Growers breed plants to selectively express desirable traits — from those that will improve a crop’s taste or color, to those that help crops thrive in certain environments and resist threats such as pests or disease. Opponents of crop-trait patents say the increase in patents is shrinking the catalog of plant material available to breeders at a time when the need for genetic diversity is greater than ever, thanks to the less-predictable conditions brought on by climate change.

In an email, Monsanto spokesperson Carly Scaduto recognized the importance of genetic diversity, saying it’s crucial for the company’s operations and Monsanto works to preserve diversity through its four gene banks and by collaborating with institutions around the world, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But she disagreed with the notion that intellectual property suppresses other breeding efforts. “Patents and [plant variety protection] inspire innovation,” she wrote. “Basically, the patent creates a map to allow anyone else to do the same once the patent expires. Oftentimes those ‘how to’ instructions enable others to accomplish the same result by finding another method to get there. So rather than hindering innovation, such protection facilitates it by placing more material and know-how in the public domain.”

Morton, however, argues waiting the 20 years for a patent to expire is no way to encourage innovation, and waiting that long to breed crops that can adapt to changing conditions is a losing battle. Even that misses the main point for Morton, though: genetic resources have always belonged to the commons, and should continue to be a public good, he says. “[Independent plant breeders] have neither the time nor money for such formalities, and monetary incentives are not what move us. We want to improve farming for farmers. That’s a different motivator, not promoted by stifling the free use of the best and newest genetic resources.”

Independent plant breeder Frank Morton selects lettuce seed in his breeding nursery. Photo by Karen Morton

Furthermore, Morton takes issue with the very concept of patenting a plant trait. “You didn’t actually create it,” he says. “The plant created it, and the plant breeder has no idea how the plant created that trait. It is just nature at work.”

For Carol Deppe, an Oregon plant breeder and OSSI board member, there’s another component to breeding that’s important. “When you breed a variety, you breed your own values right into the variety,” she says. “If you believe in huge agribusiness farms with monocultures that are managed with massive doses of herbicides, then you breed your concept of what agriculture should be like into that variety. I do exactly the opposite.”

While a handful of medium-sized companies (those with international markets but smaller than, say, Monsanto) hold patents, most smaller seed companies are able to survive without patenting — they either are opposed to the practice, have decided the process is too costly to be worthwhile, or both.

Morton argues that avoiding intellectual property protection also encourages more active breeding. “Seems to me that my incentive to crank out new stuff is stronger than [companies that patent]. I need new stuff constantly to feed my catalog with new material, knowing that my competitors will be selling my varieties within a few years,” he says. “A patent creates a 20-year insulation against competitive intrusion, which seems pretty cushy from my perspective.”

Global Response 

While the U.S. seems to be leading the open-source charge, the concept is rapidly spreading around the world. In India, the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture, which describes itself as a professional resource organization, runs an open-source seed program, working with farmers to preserve seeds for traditional food varieties and to involve them in breeding new varieties that meet specific needs. The organization also helps farmers access and market open-source seeds. German organization Agrecol is in the process of launching an open source “license,” essentially a more formal, legally binding version of the OSSI pledge for breeders in the European Union. (Regulations governing breeding differ from country to country, so the OSSI pledge cannot simply be adopted as-is in Europe or elsewhere.) In early November the European Commission, the EU’s executive body, declared that conventionally bred plants should be nonpatentable, marking a shift from the European Patent Office’s current stance, which permits patents for conventionally bred crops. The statement is not law, however; it will now be up to European governments to push the patent office to implement the commission’s statement.

In October 2016, the Dutch organization Hivos hosted a conference on open-source seed systems in Ethiopia, attracting farmers, community seed bank operators, and representatives of governments, non-governmental organizations and seed companies from around East Africa to learn about the open-source seed movement and the global shift toward patenting seeds.

Willy Douma, who runs Hivos’ open-source seed systems program, says the organization is in the process of building a global alliance on open-source seed systems that it hopes to launch formally next year. A coalition of environmental and development groups (including Hivos, international development nonprofit USC Canada and the Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration) has compiled a database of seeds and biodiversity around the world to publish the Seed Map Project. And in a report published in September, the Global Alliance for the Future of Food — a collaboration of philanthropic foundations, including the WK Kellogg Foundation, the McKnight Foundation and more — said that to ensure a resilient food supply, farmers need to be able to access, exchange and improve seeds, and have a voice in shaping seed policies. The report also emphasized the role that diverse, local seed supplies play in sustainable food systems — a connection that Luby of OSSI hopes more people start to make soon.

“The food movement has focused on where is it grown and how is it grown, and the seed systems haven’t been as much a part of those conversations,” she says. “We’re trying to connect with people to say, ‘Hey, there’s an even deeper layer to your food.’”

Photo by tamaki

Photo by Syd3r

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This year my wife and I celebrate a monumental achievement in our life together.

We have successfully grown zucchini.

For eight years, we watched beautiful yellow blossoms form,  only to wither and die before any zucchini formed.  After settling into our third home, my wife planted her spring garden in January. Her zucchini plants flourished, then sprouted. We steeled ourselves for disappointment.  But the blossoms turned into finger sized squash.  And continued growing.

We have so much zucchini and yellow squash we don’t know what to do with it.  Which is a great way to meet neighbors.

In fact, that is value model of an organization called Food is Free.

Extracted from http://foodisfreeproject.org/about-us/

MISSION

The Food is Free Project started with one front yard garden. Less than 3 months later, the majority of neighbors on our pilot block host front yard community gardens.  We are documenting the process as we continue to expand, sharing our mistakes and successes, making the information open-source and available to anyone around the globe. Over 300 cities around the world have started Food is Free Projects and we invite you to start one in your community this season. It all starts with that first front yard garden or shared harvest. Let us know if we can offer any advice or answer questions.

Food is Free provides a platform for community interaction that opens doors to further collaboration and connection. Imagine driving down your street, where the majority of homes host a front yard community garden, neighbors come together for potlucks, establish tool-sharing and community composting programs while creating safer, more beautiful neighborhoods.

The Food is Free Project not only transforms neighborhood blocks, but has installed gardens at elementary schools, community arts spaces, farmers markets, churches and small businesses.

We are creating models for how to grow food in unused public spaces that provide opportunities for people to experience fresh, healthy, organic food, and the power of community when we come together for a cause that’s greater than ourselves. We want to learn what has worked for you so share your experiences and #foodisfree photos with us on social media.

Erin Garrison talks about Food Is Free Albuquerque founded and run by two mom's and their kids. For the last two… https://t.co/aMOc39YtZo

— Food is Free Project (@foodisfreeproj) April 25, 2016

Extracted from: http://foodisfreeproject.org/connect/

 GET INVOLVED

Thanks for sharing the vision and taking action in your community. We’re all in this together! Food is Free Project is an open-source project so we encourage you to take the first step to start a Food is Free Project in your community. It all starts with that first garden and from there things will evolve and grow. Stay in touch and let us know if we can offer advice. Plant a garden in your front yard or if you don’t have a yard grow some container veggies and set up a #foodisfree sharing table. Our actions ripple out and inspire others and this movement will grow like wildflowers. Share your #foodisfree photos with us and remember that together our ripples create waves of change.

Check out our PDF guide on “How to Start a Food is Free Project” to get started.

Photo by UU-Jackson

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Photo credit: J. Scott Applewhite/AP

A group of scientists and food activists is launching a campaign Thursday to change the rules that govern seeds. They’re releasing 29 new varieties of crops under a new “open source pledge” that’s intended to safeguard the ability of farmers, gardeners and plant breeders to share those seeds freely.

It’s inspired by the example of open source software, which is freely available for anyone to use but cannot legally be converted into anyone’s proprietary product.

At an event on the campus of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, backers of the new Open Source Seed Initiative will pass out 29 new varieties of 14 different crops, including carrots, kale, broccoli and quinoa. Anyone receiving the seeds must pledge not to restrict their use by means of patents, licenses or any other kind of intellectual property. In fact, any future plant that’s derived from these open source seeds also has to remain freely available as well.

Irwin Goldman, a vegetable breeder at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, helped organize the campaign. It’s an attempt to restore the practice of open sharing that was the rule among plant breeders when he entered the profession more than 20 years ago.

“If other breeders asked for our materials, we would send them a packet of seed, and they would do the same for us,” he says. “That was a wonderful way to work, and that way of working is no longer with us.”

These days, seeds are intellectual property. Some are patented as inventions. You need permission from the patent holder to use them, and you’re not supposed to harvest seeds for replanting the next year.

Even university breeders operate under these rules. When Goldwin creates a new variety of onions, carrots or table beets, a technology-transfer arm of the university licenses it to seed companies.

This brings in money that helps pay for Goldman’s work, but he still doesn’t like the consequences of restricting access to plant genes — what he calls germplasm. “If we don’t share germplasm and freely exchange it, then we will limit our ability to improve the crop,” he says.

Sociologist Jack Kloppenburg, also at the University of Wisconsin, has been campaigning against seed patents for 30 years. His reasons go beyond
Goldman’s.

He says turning seeds into private property has contributed to the rise of big seed companies that in turn promote ever-bigger, more specialized farms. “The problem is concentration, and the narrow set of uses to which the technology and the breeding are being put,” he says.

Kloppenburg says one important goal for this initiative is simply to get people thinking and talking about how seeds are controlled. “It’s to open people’s minds,” he says. “It’s kind of a biological meme, you might say: Free seed! Seed that can be used by anyone!”

The practical impact of the Open Source Seed Initiative on farmers and gardeners, however, may be limited. Even though anyone can use such seed, most people probably won’t be able to find it.

The companies that dominate the seed business probably will keep selling their own proprietary varieties or hybrids. There’s more money to be made with those seeds.

Most commercial vegetable seeds are hybrids, which come with a kind of built-in security lock; if you replant seed from a hybrid, you won’t get exactly the same kind of plant. (For this reason, some seed companies don’t bother getting patents on their hybrids.)

John Shoenecker, director of intellectual property for the seed company HM Clause and the incoming president of the American Seed Trade Association, says his company may avoid using open source seed to breed new commercial varieties “because then we’d … have limited potential to recoup the investment.” That’s because the offspring of open source seeds would have to be shared as well, and any other seed company could immediately sell the same variety.

The initiative is probably more significant for plant breeders, especially at universities. Goldman says he expects many plant breeders at universities to join the open source effort.

Meanwhile, two small seed companies that specialize in selling to organic farmers — High Mowing Organic Seeds in Hardwick, Vt., and Wild Garden Seed in Philomath, Ore., are adding some open source seeds to their catalogs this year.

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