Did you know that all seeds in the world are registered? Did you know that these patents belong to multinational companies, in the farming and pharmaceutical industries, without any social or ecological concern?

colored seeds in a market stall

There is an amazing seeds bank, where all known seeds are kept and catalogued. But the goals are not to protect, improve or research the seeds for our benefit. These seeds are registered, and belong to multinationals of the farming industry like Monsanto. In other words, the seed that I grow in my garden, that has been used and selected by dozens of generations before us, who took care of them and gave them to us, has become a private property according to the law. No fantasy, no joke, this is the way it is.

Organizations from all over the world are fighting against this, to keep seeds as the people’s heritage, serving us, beyond privatization. A clear example is the worldwide farmers’ movement, called “vía campesina”- the peasants’ way-, which shows us that there are people fighting against laws that punish you just for keeping the seeds for the following year, as it has always been done, as you can see in this article about the Landworkes´ Alliance (in Europe), or in this other about the fight for the right to life in Zimbawe (Africa).

germinating seed

This privatization of seeds could ruin biodiversity and traditional farming. We have found a documentary, called “Freedom seeds”, which lasts 30 minutes that covers all of this. We think that it is important to share, because understanding this means that there will be more people willing to defend seeds, by buying fair trade foods, from organic farming, without buying those from the global farming industry.

Being selective, and demanding, not just about what we buy, but also about who we are buying it from, is an important step in defending quality farming. The shopping basket is powerful. More than we can imagine!