Environmental for Food Justice

Campaign for Seed Sovereignty , La Via Campesina Moderator’s Note: Continuing a series related to the movement for seed sovereignty, we are presenting an insightful and timely analysis of U.S. seed law and its implications for the organization and exercise of the right of citizens and residents to participate in seed saving and exchange networks. The Sustainable Economies Law Center ( SELC ) in California prepared the analysis and the primary conclusion they arrive at is that we need to … change laws to create a clear legal space for seed libraries, we should perhaps also do so for small-scale seed enterprises….[D]uring times of food insecurity, climate disruption, and genetic consolidation of the sources of our food (seeds!), the benefit of seed libraries is enormous as compared to the potential harm of a seed packet gifted within a community. Let’s make sure our laws get with the times! This is a timely analysis given the recent actions that we reported on last week involving seemin...

Heilig’s ‘Thrillerama’ | The subject position of the observer-as-producer. Source |   hyperbate.fr Pennsylvania goes Big Brother over local seed library PATHOLOGIES OF SOVEREIGN POWER IN THE (UN)CIVIL SOCIETY Devon G. Peña | Seattle, WA | August 4, 2014 This is a parable about how the state attempts to govern the tradition of seed saving and exchange. There are a good many lessons to be drawn from the unfolding case of the recent closing by the state government of a Pennsylvania seed library. Most obviously, it seems like an example of utterly absurd overreach by the national security state and also reveals how insidious this has become as the leading force fomenting a particular kind of militarized civic culture dedicated to fighting terrorism as the central focus of national identity politics. In this post, I argue that this act of governmentality reproduces an un civil society in which even the innocent and free act of saving and exchanging garden seed can be rendered as a ...