{"title":"Farmers' rights and food sovereignty: critical insights from India","authors":"Karine Peschard","doi":"10.1080/03066150.2014.937338","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Farmers' access to and rights over seeds are the very pillars of agriculture, and thus represent an essential component of food sovereignty. Three decades after the term farmers' rights was first coined, there now exists a broad consensus that this new category of rights is historically grounded and imperative in the current context of the expansion of intellectual property rights (IPRs) over plant varieties. However, the issue of their realization has proven so thorny that even researchers and activists who are sympathetic to farmers' rights now express growing skepticism regarding their usefulness. In this article, I explore this debate through a case study of India's unique Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers' Rights (PPV&FR) Act. Based on an analysis of advances and setbacks in implementing the PPV&FR Act and a discussion of other relevant pieces of legislation, I argue that the politics of biodiversity and IPRs in India in recent years has been characteristic of the cunning state, and that this has seriously compromised the meaningful implementation of farmers' rights.","PeriodicalId":48271,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Peasant Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.4000,"publicationDate":"2014-10-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/03066150.2014.937338","citationCount":"27","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Peasant Studies","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2014.937338","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ANTHROPOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 27
Abstract
Farmers' access to and rights over seeds are the very pillars of agriculture, and thus represent an essential component of food sovereignty. Three decades after the term farmers' rights was first coined, there now exists a broad consensus that this new category of rights is historically grounded and imperative in the current context of the expansion of intellectual property rights (IPRs) over plant varieties. However, the issue of their realization has proven so thorny that even researchers and activists who are sympathetic to farmers' rights now express growing skepticism regarding their usefulness. In this article, I explore this debate through a case study of India's unique Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers' Rights (PPV&FR) Act. Based on an analysis of advances and setbacks in implementing the PPV&FR Act and a discussion of other relevant pieces of legislation, I argue that the politics of biodiversity and IPRs in India in recent years has been characteristic of the cunning state, and that this has seriously compromised the meaningful implementation of farmers' rights.
期刊介绍:
A leading journal in the field of rural politics and development, The Journal of Peasant Studies (JPS) provokes and promotes critical thinking about social structures, institutions, actors and processes of change in and in relation to the rural world. It fosters inquiry into how agrarian power relations between classes and other social groups are created, understood, contested and transformed. JPS pays special attention to questions of ‘agency’ of marginalized groups in agrarian societies, particularly their autonomy and capacity to interpret – and change – their conditions.