Colonisation Never Ended
Seed patenting laws are a global threat, but people are fighting back.
For over 10,000 years, seeds have been the bedrock of human civilisation. From the moment our ancestors traded their nomadic hunter-gatherer ways for a life rooted in place, communities have freely collected, cultivated, saved, exchanged, and sown seeds as acts of sustenance and connection.
Far from being mere tools of production, seeds are vessels of history, culture, and innovation, carrying the wisdom of countless generations who freely exchanged knowledge, preserved biodiversity, and rooted their communities in reciprocity. These remarkable travellers have crossed continents, bringing life to distant lands and adapting to diverse environments—flourishing in deserts and flood-prone valleys, lowlands and highlands, even in seawater.
Each seed tells a unique story, holding within it the infinite potential to sustain, transform, and nourish the world. From wedding rituals to acts of survival during war and famine to being braided in women's hair during slavery, seeds carry the cultural memory of communities, binding generations together through care and hope for new life.
Ultimately, the evolution of seeds has enabled our own.
For millennia, communities have carefully nurtured, selected, and saved seeds from the most climate-resilient, high-yielding, nutritious, and flavourful crops each season. But today, this sacred basis of our sustenance and autonomy is under unprecedented threat, as corporations and governments move to privatise what has always belonged to the commons.
Through UPOV (International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants), corporations are imposing intellectual property rights over "protected" plant varieties (which are often produced or modified by corporations). In many corners of the world, if communities are suspected of engaging in their traditional practice of saving and exchanging these protected seeds, they can be fined, imprisoned, and have their harvest seized.
UPOV is an international legal framework that gives corporations monopoly rights over seeds—while restricting the rights of farmers to save, reuse, exchange, or sell them.
Established in 1961 and most aggressively expanded in 1991, UPOV created the blueprint for treating seeds not as a common heritage, but as private property. Under the 1991 Act (UPOV '91), companies that develop or modify a plant variety can claim Plant Variety Protection (PVP)—granting them exclusive rights over the seed for 20–25 years.
Since 1961, UPOV's founding countries have used trade agreements, neoliberal reforms, and corporate pressure to force Majority World countries into its framework for seed privatisation. Today, the treaty is made up of 80 member countries across five continents.
What does its expansion mean for farmers and communities across the globe?
• UPOV criminalises farmers.
In countries where UPOV '91 is enforced, farmers can be fined, prosecuted, or imprisoned simply for practising what they've done for generations. In Ghana, the 2020 Plant Variety Protection Act enforces a minimum 10-year prison sentence for farmers found sharing protected seed.
• UPOV legalises biopiracy.
Corporations can patent seeds based on traditional varieties bred by Indigenous and peasant communities — without acknowledgement or benefit-sharing. With minor modifications, ancestral seeds become corporate assets.
• UPOV is being imposed on countries through pressure and coercion.
UPOV membership is often a mandatory condition in free trade agreements or development aid packages. Countries like Kenya, Peru, and Malaysia have been pushed to adopt UPOV '91 against public resistance.
• UPOV undermines biodiversity and climate resilience.
UPOV promotes genetically uniform seeds designed for large-scale industrial farming — at the expense of diverse, locally adapted varieties nurtured by peasants over many generations. This uniformity erodes seed biodiversity and weakens our capacity to withstand climate crisis, pests, and soil degradation.
• UPOV benefits a few.
Today, just four corporations — Bayer-Monsanto, Syngenta (ChemChina), Corteva, and BASF — control almost 60% of the global seed market.
UPOV strengthens their grip, turning every planting season into a profit stream. These companies market UPOV as "innovation protection." But what it really protects is their control over the first link in the food chain.
• UPOV reduces seeds to a commodity.
UPOV shifts seed laws from systems of collective stewardship to individual ownership. It severs cultural, ecological, and intergenerational relationships with seed — and replaces them with contracts and courts.
UPOV, and its attack on seed sovereignty, is both an example and a mechanism of a corporate-driven economy that threatens our fundamental right to feed ourselves to enrich the few. But the resistance is growing.*
La Vía Campesina, a movement encompassing 182 member organisations across five continents and representing 200 million farmers, stands at the forefront of the global struggle against corporate agriculture. The movement opposes corporate-controlled agriculture and laws like UPOV that privatize seeds, instead championing food and seed sovereignty, agroecology, and community-led farming systems that protect biodiversity and local knowledge.
In 2021, a STOP UPOV ALLIANCE was formed to confront corporate control of life and reclaim seeds as a living commons. Together, they are exposing the harm of seed privatization, spreading awareness about the threats of seed patenting laws, and amplifying the victories of the communities at the forefront of the resistance.
The STOP UPOV Alliance unites over 400 groups across Africa, Latin America, Asia, Europe, and beyond, including grassroots farmers’ organisations, Indigenous and peasant networks, civil-society groups, environmental activists, and seed-sovereignty advocates.
Challenging UPOV and corporate control over seeds is a fight not only for legal rights, but for ecological resilience, cultural heritage, and community self-determination.
A recent landmark example comes from Kenya, where 15 smallholder farmers — supported by organisations such as Greenpeace Africa, Seed Savers Network, and BIBA Kenya — successfully overturned provisions that criminalised the sharing of traditional seeds. In a historic ruling, the High Court affirmed that exchanging indigenous seeds is not a crime, restoring farmers’ autonomy to save, share, and cultivate their own varieties. This victory reinforces local food sovereignty and highlights the strength of grassroots resistance to corporate and legislative pressures that undermine community-controlled agriculture.
Reclaiming this freedom is central to building resilient, equitable, and sustainable food systems. By localizing production, strengthening small-scale farming, and rejecting corporate dominance, we can decolonize our food systems and shape a food future rooted in community self-determination — and rebuild the vital connections between people, seeds, and the land that sustain both our wellbeing and our survival.
The article was originally written by A Growing Culture. Find the original article here.
* This version has a new conclusion written by Local Futures' Anja Lyngbaek, with permission from A Growing Culture, and starts at 'UPOV, and its attack on seed sovereignty, is both an example and a mechanism...'
Photos by Alex Jensen.
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Author: A Growing Culture
Author: Anja Lyngbaek
Overpopulation has not ended. We cannot end something without addressing what causes it.