In how far can local Seed Commons initiatives address the shortcomings identified in the knowledge governance by the Seed Treaty? This section investigates knowledge governance by an in-depth study of two local Seed Commons. Before presenting the cases and empirical findings, we develop a set of analytical criteria to investigate knowledge governance in different local and regional Seed Commons arrangements.
Methodology
Local and regional Seed Commons differ from the Seed Treaty with regard to their emphasis on social practices of commoning (see Section Seed Commons).To analyze knowledge governance in local Seed Commons and its interlinkages with material aspects, we thus use a distinct analytical frame, the framework by Kostakis and Bauwens (2014, 39) and adapt it with respect to the focus on seed/ knowledge commoning. The framework can be applied to the collective governance of both material and immaterial goods. Thus, it allows us to study the governance of knowledge aspects in their interaction with material aspects. Thereby we can overcome the material-immaterial divide in Commons studies (see Section Beyond the conceptual dichotomy between the material and immaterial in
commons studies). Furthermore, Kostakis and Bauwens (2014, 39) view commons as social processes; this demonstrates the compatibility of the intended application of their commons conceptualization with our definition of Seed Commons as practices of commoning (see Section Seed Commons).
Kostakis and Bauwens (2014, 39) structure the analysis of commons arrangements around four interlinked components: (i) resource, (ii) community which shares it, (iii) use value created through social reproduction or preservation of the resource as a common good, and (iv) rules and property regimes that govern people's access to the resource. We specify relevant aspects of those four components for our analysis: According to the focus on social practices instead of institutional analysis we replace point (iv) with knowledge commoning (see Fig. 1). Additionally, we adapt and specify the components with regard to their applicability to the special case of Seed Commons.
We will analyze two cases that reflect the diversity of local Seed Commons and their knowledge commoning in practice. The first is MASIPAG, a Philippine farmer-led network, which includes community seed banks, seed exchange practices and farmer-led breeding of locally adapted rice cultivars. TAeK is of high relevance for this community of the Global South. The second case study describes Kultursaat, a German association of farmer-breeders, which breed organic vegetable varieties on farm and makes them accessible to farmers and breeders without claiming variety protection. To describe the knowledge governance in these local Seed Commons, we collected and analyzed qualitative data. For MASIPAG eight semi-structured interviews with farmers and staff were carried out during a research visit in 2019, supplemented by daily minutes from a weeklong workshop during that time. For Kultursaat, ten semi-structured interviews were conducted in 2018, with both breeders and coordinators of the organization. These interviews were complemented by minutes on the association’s biannual meetings in 2017 and 2018, where the researchers were present as observing participants, and by Kultursaat’s own brochures and online self-presentation.
Farmer-led breeding in the Philippines: The case of MASIPAG
Community
Characterization of community (actors involved, seed activities, core governance elements, structure of the social network)
MASIPAG is a farmer-led network in the Philippines consisting of over 30.000 farmers and farmer-breeders, as well as scientists and non-governmental organizations (MASIPAG 2019). The organization was founded in the 1980s and is financially supported by European non-governmental organizations to employ a necessary minimum of staff. The network’s goals are to improve the livelihood of small-scale farmers and sustain agrobiodiversity. Its main conservation and breeding efforts are directed towards rice, but they also breed corn, poultry and other farm animal species. To date, MASIPAG’s national backup farm (BUF), where all of their varieties are collected and regularly replanted, holds over 2.500 rice varieties – traditional varieties and new varieties bred by MASIPAG’s farmers and scientists. To join MASIPAG, farmers have to organize to form independent People’s Organizations (POs), with about ten to fifteen members each. The POs are completely independent in their decision-making and agenda setting, as long as they comply with MASIPAG’s core values. This gives MASIPAG a polycentric structure.Footnote 17 Each PO sends a representative to meetings of Provincial Consultative Bodies (PCBs), the basic unit of MASIPAG. They additionally organize in regional and national committees, which meet regularly. This allows knowledge to be dispersed throughout the organization. Each meeting includes informal seed exchanges and agricultural knowledge sharing.
Role of farmers and breeders in knowledge creation and transfer
Small-scale farmers, who autonomously conserve rice varieties, are at the heart of the network. More experienced MASIPAG farmers conduct training programs for new POs to share their knowledge, skills and attitude. This training spans a range of topics, from organic farming knowledge to rice breeding. Their common ground is to promote a “farmer-scientist” approach, where farmers learn to develop new farming knowledge by structured observation and thereby gain autonomy. While this primarily falls under TAeK in the creation process, the semi-professional formalization and dissemination leans toward scientific knowledge.
Seeds and knowledge are managed and exchanged both formally, by staff and backup farms, and informally, through seed exchange practices and decentralized knowledge creation (resource knowledge and participatory property regime). The POs each maintain a trial farm with at least 50 landraces, where they screen rice varieties for their adaptability to local environmental conditions and report findings back to the BUF. In this way, farmers create new knowledge for themselves and the network.
Resource: knowledge
Relevance and mobilization of traditional agroecological knowledge
Both TAeK and scientific knowledge are collected and developed by MASIPAG’s farmers and volunteering scientists. Small-scale Filipino farmers have little scope for monetary advantage, so knowledge is a prime resource of the network. To make it available to MASIPAG’s members, structures have been developed to formalize relevant (traditional) ecological knowledge. For example, newly developed farming techniques are recorded by area coordinators through a formalized scheme (FDAT—Documentation and Dissemination of Farmer Developed/Adapted Technologies), and rice knowledge is centralized and professionalized through the Collection, Identification, Maintenance, Multiplication and Evaluation (CIMME) programme. On an individual level, the farmer-scientist and farmer-led breeding approaches encourage critical reflection on everyday farming tasks and make formerly tacit knowledge explicit for farmers and thereby shareable. The prime example for this is the experimental approach to seed saving and breeding applied in the PO-managed trial farms. Not only farming and breeding knowledge are deemed relevant, however, but also social (cooperation, negotiation), organizational and political-tactical knowledge. Traditional knowledge also includes beliefs and practices (Reyes-Garcia et al. 2018). An important belief of MASIPAG is that seed is sacred and therefore should not be sold, but shared and kept accessible to farmers.
Relevance of scientific ecological and formalized (legal) knowledge
Scientific knowledge is used for internal professionalization and as a tool for political positioning at national level. For this purpose, scientific studies about MASIPAG and Philippine rice farming are collected and research cooperation is welcomed on MASIPAG’s terms. At the same time, formalization of knowledge is experienced as a threat to MASIPAG’s goals in some instances. For example, the network refrains from including their varieties in local and national seed registries. As mentioned above, most of MASIPAG’s knowledge is semi-formalized and can thus be seen as semi-scientific. It goes beyond the confined local scope of TAeK, while acknowledging its contextual embeddedness: practices are never copied as blueprints from one PO to another, but are always carefully adapted to specific, local conditions.
Philippine seed legislation does not require MASIPAG to register its varieties in order to disseminate them through non-monetary sharing and exchange. The network has therefore decided to keep its seeds unregistered to serve as an alternative to the formal seed system, with as little connection as possible to this regime. For the same reason, the term variety is not used by MASIPAG staff and members, as it describes a registered, narrow population of plants which comply to formalized legal criteria. Instead, they talk only about seeds.
Relation between knowledge and material aspects in seed governance
Knowledge aspects link directly to material and cultural features of MASIPAG’s Seed Commons. They often reinforce each other. For example, MASIPAG is careful to protect seeds from appropriation. Both intellectual property rights and breeding methods that limit the reproducibility of varieties can serve as instruments to limit farmers’ autonomy, as these instruments individualize knowledge. For this reason, the network is careful to restrict external access to their seeds and seed knowledge, and refuses genetic registration of their landraces in international databases. It does not send seeds to national or international genebanks, even when these institutions request them.
Seed are sacred and must not be sold is the main principle of the network. Whenever material seeds are given to non-members, they are given an “orientation”, which imparts MASIPAG’s core values of sacred seed and organic agriculture and knowledge on seed saving. By making this a mandatory practice, MASIPAG reconnects seed knowledge with (physical) seeds. Within the organization, each meeting on all levels serves as a formal and informal seed and knowledge exchange. By practicing this, farmers recreate and consolidate a seed sharing culture.
Social and environmental use values
Use value for individual farmers/ breeders
The network’s goals are to sustain rice diversity and improve the livelihood of small-scale farmers (use value). MASIPAG farmers regain control over agricultural inputs and farming knowledge by preserving, sharing, collecting and breeding rice landraces. This is especially crucial in light of the financial and social constraints small-scale farmers face in the Philippines, as mentioned above. Once farmers have shifted to organic production for their main crop (in most cases rice), MASIPAG teaches them to implement diversified and integrated farming systems (DIFS) to achieve food security and greater resilience to the vagaries of market and climate. This strategy of farmer-led sustainable agriculture has proven successful in increasing food security and diet diversification for farmers, along with a more diverse selection of planted crops and improved health (Bachmann et al. 2009).
Support for environmentally sustainable and culturally adapted food systems
MASIPAG’s seeds are specifically adapted to organic farming systems and are assessed by farmers for their tolerance to climate-change-related stresses. They thereby contribute to conserving agro-biodiversity, supporting food sovereignty, climate resilience and environmental sustainability. MASIPAG’s most important variety preservation mechanism is the nationwide distribution of as many landraces as possible to as many POs as possible. The POs, in turn, choose or breed varieties adapted to their local conditions and cultural preferences.
Knowledge commoning
Can MASIPAG’s practices be understood as (knowledge) commoning? First, all farmers join the network voluntarily. As the network is large, self-organization is organized in various governance levels. By encouraging farmers to establish POs rather than participating in the network’s Seed Commons individually, smaller communities are created where every farmer directly engages in self-organization and mediation on eye level with peers. The trial farms serve to satisfy farmers’ needs: find suitable varieties for their region and obtain knowledge on how to reproduce quality seeds for their own fields. The social practices which shape MASIPAG can therefore be understood as commoning. The remainder of the paragraph goes deeper into how their commoning is linked to knowledge.
Commoning is in visible three principles, which are pillars of the network’s success: individual autonomy, community resilience and the protection of seeds from privatization. MASIPAG emphasizes the value of autonomy to ensure and improve the livelihoods of small-scale Filipino farmers. Materially, this means striving for individual and communal self-sufficiency in agricultural inputs (such as on farm production of organic seed, organic fertilizers and pesticides). Furthermore, sharing is a central practice to create polycentric resilience in case seeds are lost in one region due to natural calamities. A precondition for this autonomy is farmers’ continual improvement of farming and seed saving knowledge.
MASIPAG’s success is grounded in the creation of POs as communities. Knowledge is made explicit through discussions of farming practices and technology in training sessions, and later in group meetings. This transparency is a precondition for further autonomous, structured, and reflective group learning, supported by the self-concepts of farmer-scientists and farmer-led breeding. These tightly linked groups ensure community resilience through the exchange of materials (seeds), cultural services (community work), and knowledge resources (trial farms, sharing of best practices).
As mentioned above, MASIPAG is careful to protect seeds from appropriation to ensure long-term self-organization. Varieties are bred with methods which preserve the plants’ ability for reproduction and intellectual property rights are waived. Finally, MASIPAG does not formally register seeds, because its members believe that free access to seeds is part of Farmers’ Rights. At the same time, sharing MASIPAG varieties with small-scale farmers outside the network is a common practice. As seeds tend to be (materially) a non-rival good, decisions about sharing seeds with outsiders are left to the farmers.
Developing organic varieties: the case of Kultursaat e.V.
Community
Characterization of community (actors involved, seed activities, core governance elements, structure of the social network)
Kultursaat e.V. is an association of independent biodynamic vegetable breeders based in Germany. The association formed in 1994 with the aim of increasing the diversity of varieties through breeding and promoting open-pollinated varieties, specifically suited for organic farming conditions. Kultursaat breeds varieties for both commercial and hobby gardeners. Today, the association has more than 90 new and 19 conservation varieties registered with the German Federal Plant Variety Office. These have been bred by over 30 independent breeders (Kultursaat e.V. 2017). The initiative is organized in a decentralized network structure with breeders working on farms in Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. The community employs polycentric governance structures, characterized by flat hierarchies, collective decision-making, and considerable autonomy for the individual breeders. Their shared purpose, objectives and values are laid out in the organization’s guiding principles (see Kultursaat e.V. 2018). Kultursaat works closely with Bingenheimer Saatgut AG, a seed company that multiplies and markets organic varieties, including Kultursaat varieties, to farmers and gardeners. The company’s shareholders are mainly farmers, including many Kultursaat breeders. This close cooperation facilitates knowledge integration along the value chain. A guiding principle of the association is that varieties are seen as cultural assets and common goods which should be managed collectively (Kultursaat e.V. 2019a). This has consequences for Kultursaat’s organizational structure, including the governance of knowledge and collective learning processes.
Role of farmers and breeders in knowledge creation, and transaction
All breeders in the network are trained farmers or gardeners, and often primarily earn their income through biodynamic horticultural cropping. Their practical knowledge on vegetable cultivation is an integral part of their breeding expertise. Breeders organize themselves in smaller working groups on specific vegetable crops and are experts on these cultures within the association. As such, they have substantial scope for decision-making and agenda-setting. It is assumed that, over time, farmers develop a so-called breeders’ eye for the crops and varieties they have worked with intensively. This refers to the expertise and intuition farmers develop to identify plants with promising characteristics in the process of selection.
Resource: knowledge
Relevance and mobilization of traditional agroecological knowledge
Kultursaat breeders consider varieties to be cultural goods, in which the knowledge and practice of generations of farmers and breeders is accumulated. Breeding as a collective practice therefore entails a social and cultural responsibility. Following this tradition, Kultursaat members breed open-pollinated varieties, which can be maintained on-farm and whose seeds can easily be saved by farmers for future growing seasons. Besides contributing to the independence of farmers, who do not need to purchase new seeds each year, these varieties can be used as starting points for future breeding processes. The development of open-pollinated varieties relies on breeding techniques that have been traditionally practiced by farmers, such as crossing and selection. Kultursaat encourages its members to get to know the cultural value of traditional practices and related values and norms. The association has made a conscious decision against modern breeding techniques that interfere with the integrity of plants, such as hybrid breeding, genetic engineering or genome editing (Kultursaat e.V. 2018).
Relevance of scientific ecological and formalized (legal) knowledge
The work of Kultursaat e.V. is grounded in the scientific understanding of the ecological benefits of organic farming practices and the threats for agriculture associated with climate change. Scientific ecological knowledge is integrated into breeder training and is specifically relevant in the context of breeding projects carried out in cooperation with research institutions such as universities. However, in addition to scientifically validated knowledge and methods, Kultursaat also encourages spiritual and antroposophic practices such as eurythmy and meditative practices (Kultursaat e.V. 2019a).
Knowledge on breeding, agrobiodiversity conservation and political developments is disseminated throughout the network via informal as well as formal channels. Knowledge management is formalized using an online database with detailed information on varieties, the breeding process, parent varieties and cultivation practices. The information is shared (remotely) within the network of breeders and variety biographies are freely accessible on the association’s website (see Kultursaat e.V. 2019b). Making this information transparent, is not a common practice in the seed industry. Institutionalized forms of knowledge exchange occur through regular multi-day collective meetings, which include farm-visits, trainings and presentations on agricultural and political topics. The association also runs a two-year part-time training program for new breeders, which allows members to pass on both theoretical and practical breeding expertise between generations of breeders (Kultursaat e.V. 2019c).
Relation between knowledge and material aspects in seed governance
In the European Union, it is mandatory to register any commercially grown varieties. The registration of newly developed varieties has consequences for materiality. Variety registration demands a high degree of uniformity, which—according to the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties and Plants (UPOV) convention (see UPOV TG/1/3)—depends on the pollination type (self and cross-pollinated) and the cycle of reproduction (e.g. open pollinating and F1 hybrid). Further, the polycentric structure of Kultursaat, including decentralized breeding locations, integrates material and informational aspects: site-specific agroecological knowledge is needed in order to breed locally adapted varieties. In the long-term, the initiative thus contributes to the conservation, promotion and further development of both agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge on breeding methods.
Social and environmental use values
Use value for individual farmers/ breeders
The network supports farmers and breeders in their efforts to develop new varieties. The funding individual breeders receive through Kultursaat allows them to carry out breeding projects that would otherwise not be financially viable. Furthermore, the network's high degree of formal and informal knowledge exchange supports breeders in building up knowledge and expertise in the development and conservation of varieties. The focus on open-pollinated varieties also decreases farmers’ and breeders’ reliance on agribusinesses and thereby contributes to their autonomy.
Contribution to environmentally sustainable and culturally adapted food systems
Kultursaat supports the development of sustainable food systems through its focus on organic varieties and the diversification of plant genetic resources. Given the limited number of varieties specifically bred for the organic sector, and the even smaller number of varieties bred under organic conditions (Wilbois and Messmer 2016), Kultursaat breeders aim to address this gap by exclusively breeding varieties specifically adapted to organic cultivation practices (Kultursaat e.V. 2018). Furthermore, to address the future challenges of climate change, the association emphasizes the need for a broad genetic basis and regionally adapted varieties. Varieties developed by Kultursaat breeders are cultivated and tested at various locations and bred on-farm under biodynamic cropping conditions (Kultursaat e.V. 2019a). This requires breeders to have regional and site-specific knowledge about the environmental conditions under which the cultivars they work with flourish.
Knowledge commoning
Kultursaat’s social practice largely fulfills the characteristics of commoning. It is an association of independent breeders who voluntarily joined together to self-govern their breeding efforts. By forming a decentralized network structure, Kultursaat aims to keep flat hierarchies. In annual meetings and working groups focused on specific crops, decisions on finances, organizational matters and breeding goals are discussed and taken collectively. Social practices are guided by values of trust, transparency, appreciation and respect. The Kultursaat breeders aim to serve the need for an independent organic agricultural sector, by developing varieties that are coherent with the values of organic agriculture and meet the specific breeding goals and trait needs of organic cultivations systems.
How does Kultursaat engage in (knowledge) commoning? First, Kultursaat protects seeds from appropriation through rejecting private property rights over varieties. No legal variety protection is claimed for new varieties, i.e. the members of the initiative wave any royalties and make their varieties freely available. Kultursaat registers its varieties to its non-profit association (legal person) rather than to individual breeders (natural person) or third-party companies in order to limit appropriation and ensure free access to the varieties and the knowledge connected to the breeding process (Kultursaat e.V. 2018).
Second, the regular meetings of the association cultivate a strong sense of community amongst its members, contributing to informal knowledge exchanges on breeding and seed production. These foster the long-term circulation of TAeK within the network. Kultursaat’s understanding of the link between knowledge, intellectual property rights and varieties and seeds as material goods, leads the organization to adopt a practice of seed governance where newly bred open-pollinated varieties fall under collective responsibility and knowledge on both the breeding process and variety characteristics is openly shared. While the dissemination of knowledge is not a central aim of the initiative, the network encourages collective learning and empowers individual farmers and breeders to contribute to a growing base of knowledge and varieties.
Third, the polycentric structure of Kultursaat, including decentralized breeding locations and decision-making capacities, contribute to knowledge commoning: site-specific agroecological knowledge is drawn upon to breed locally adapted varieties and autonomous decision-making structures allow to attend to local environmental and social circumstances flexibly.
Just like MASIPAG, Kultursaat thus allows for individual autonomy, fosters a strong network of knowledge exchange, and protects seeds and knowledge from privatization. As such, Kultursaat’s approach to (knowledge) commoning contributes to the conservation, promotion and further development of both agrobiodiversity and (traditional) agroecological knowledge on seed production and breeding.