{"product_id":"seed-activism-isbn-9780262544641","title":"Seed Activism","description":"\u003cb\u003eHow lawsuits around intellectual property in Brazil and India are impacting the patentability of plants and seeds, farmers’ rights, and the public interest.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOver the past decade, legal challenges have arisen in the Global South over patents on genetically modified crops. In this ethnographic study, Karine E. Peschard explores the effects of these disputes on people’s lives, while uncovering the role of power—material, institutional, and discursive—in shaping laws and legal systems. The expansion of corporate intellectual property (IP), she shows, negatively impacts farmers’ rights and, by extension, the right to food, since small farms produce the bulk of food for domestic consumption. Peschard sees emerging a new legal common sense concerning the patentability of plant-related inventions, as well as a balance among IP, farmers’ rights, and the public interest.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePeschard examines the strengthening of IP regimes for plant varieties, the consolidation of the global biotech industry, the erosion of agrobiodiversity, and farmers’ dispossession. She shows how litigants question the legality of patents and private IP systems implemented by Monsanto for royalties on three genetically modified crop varieties, Roundup Ready soybean in Brazil and Bt cotton and Bt eggplant in India. Peschard argues that these private IP systems have rendered moot domestic legislation on plant variety protection and farmers’ rights. This unprecedented level of corporate concentration in such a vital sector raises concerns over the erosion of agricultural biodiversity, farmers’ rights and livelihoods, food security, and, ultimately, the merits of extending IP rights to higher life forms such as plants.List of Acronyms and Abbreviations xi\u003cbr\u003eList of Figures xv\u003cbr\u003eSeries Foreword xvii\u003cbr\u003eAcknowledgments xix\u003cbr\u003eIntroduction 1\u003cbr\u003e1 Brazil, India, and Intellectual Property in Agriculture 21\u003cbr\u003e2 Challenging Royalties on Roundup Ready Soybean 37\u003cbr\u003e3 BT Cotton: The Patent that Never Was 57\u003cbr\u003e4 Who Owns BT Brinjal? 77\u003cbr\u003e5 Patent Politics and Legal Activism 93\u003cbr\u003eConclusion 113\u003cbr\u003eAppendix A Timeline of the Court Cases 121\u003cbr\u003eAppendix B Log of Interviews 123\u003cbr\u003eAppendix C BT Brinjal and the International Regime Governing Plant Genetic Resources 129\u003cbr\u003eAppendix D Udupi Mattu Gulla: A Case Study 133\u003cbr\u003eNotes 137\u003cbr\u003eReferences 149\u003cbr\u003eIndex 173“\u003ci\u003eSeed Activism\u003c\/i\u003e offers a fascinating analysis of IP rights and global agribusiness in Brazil and India. Farmers' rights and public goods sometimes triumph over multinational agribusiness, Excellent primary research, highly recommended.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Susan Sell, Professor, School of Regulation and Global Governance, The Australian National University\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Peschard fills a lacuna in the literature with a focus on the courts as a critical nexus in determining how and in what form intellectual property rights are imposed.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Jack Kloppenburg, Professor Emeritus, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Secretary, Open Source Seed Initiative\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Patents on seeds disrupted ancestral farmers’ saving and sharing practices. This book provides a unique and welcome analysis of judicial courts’ role in limiting such patent monopolies in agriculture.”­\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Carlos Correa, Executive Director, South Centre\u003c\/b\u003eKarine Peschard is Associate Research Fellow at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, and Associate Researcher at the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies.","brand":"The MIT Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300685172965,"sku":"NP9780262544641","price":35.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780262544641.jpg?v=1767736299","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/seed-activism-isbn-9780262544641","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}