Risk culture

Agriculture is surrounded by cultural elements, since their implementation is associated with knowledge and wisdom peasants millennial associated with the relationship of the town with its territory, with their ways of feeding and bonding with the earth. Thus, the stages of the cycles of planting, site preparation, planting and harvesting) are accompanied by ceremonies to announce the findings and make the entire community of these tasks. In addition, the communities they make seed fairs where they are displayed, shared, exchanged, and know about the diversity of seeds of several communities, in order to make all the peasants, the community work that involves the permanent cycle of diversification of the seeds.

The seeds are: a commonthe result of the effort of many generations, the accumulation of a vast traditional knowledge, tests of trial and error, the adaptation of the human as part of nature to local conditions, a heritage that cannot be privatised or be assigned to a single person, stories to share, food base, an essential element in the sustainable production of food and inheritance of generations past, present, and future, which are in constant diversification.

The gm, to be innovations expressed as technological artifacts, are capable of being privatized under your intervention biotechnology. However, the privatization of the seed represents the plunder of cultural heritage of the communities, because they are a product of the cultures agricultural past and current, who have been placed at the service of all humanity. 

Recommended sources

Bellon, M., Barrientos, A., Colunga-Garcia, P., Perales, H., Reyes, J. A., Rosales, R. and Zizumbo, D. (2009). Diversity and conservation of genetic resources of cultivated plants. In Sarukhán, J., Dirzo, R. and March, I. (Eds.), Capital natural de México, Vol. II: conservation status and trends of change, (355-382). National commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity.

Bollier, D. (2014). Think Like a Commoner. A Short Introduction to the Life of the Commons. New Society Publishers.

Méndez, C. (2016). Disrupting maize. Food, Biotechnology and Nationalism in Contemporary Mexico [Corn disruptive. Food, biotechnology and nationalism in contemporary Mexico]. Rowman & Littlefield