Seed Geographies as Body Politics in Paraguay

Abstract

As the weight of the agro-industrial model of agriculture becomes abundantly evident, the role of seeds inserted into either capitalist or agroecological production models has become a central way that scholars and activists conceptualize food sovereignty struggles. This is no less the case in Paraguay, where peasant and Indigenous movements like CONAMURI articulate that having seeds is a political question. While often such politics are conceptualized in terms of land, I utilize multi-scalar seed geographies to argue that politics over seeds are also a body politics that contest agro-industry on the grounds of health, ecological changes, and generational reproduction.