This is not a problem of seeds. Or, I should say, this is not a problem of seeds alone.
It's a problem of food sovereignty.
The issue of corporate control of seeds and GMOs is not about yields, there isn't a problem yielding crops around the world by any measure (except by the measure of orgs affiliated with corporations that profit by selling their seeds and promoting their GMOs)
The problem is an economic one. As it stands, our food system is hugely globalized, so that most small farmers aren't growing food that feeds themselves/their families, they are growing commodity crops that can be sold to a corporation that will go into the food/feed that it produces. In this system, farmers don't really have much choice what to grow or how to grow it and have to be slaves to the inputs they can find and the price levers pulled by multinational corporations. As local market infrastructure lags, you don't have the opportunity for small farmers to grow actual food that can be part of a healthy diet and thus, through local networks and cooperation, encourage biodiversity. Instead, this system concentrates power in the hands of few and reduces farmers to subsistence and servitude rather than stewardship and cultivation of a rich, landed, agricultural heritage, deeply rooted in culture and history.
If you look at the work of agroecologists or permaculturists, or really anyone who is looking at farming from a perspective of ecological sustainability, you can see that better ways to do all of this exist, and we need to empower small farmers with knowledge and sustainable practices because industrial agriculture has really only made the situation worse at every turn. Maybe then we can reverse the degradation of our soils, our seeds, and our global food system.
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Re: Anonymous, et al
This is not a problem of seeds. Or, I should say, this is not a problem of seeds alone.
It's a problem of food sovereignty.
The issue of corporate control of seeds and GMOs is not about yields, there isn't a problem yielding crops around the world by any measure (except by the measure of orgs affiliated with corporations that profit by selling their seeds and promoting their GMOs)
The problem is an economic one. As it stands, our food system is hugely globalized, so that most small farmers aren't growing food that feeds themselves/their families, they are growing commodity crops that can be sold to a corporation that will go into the food/feed that it produces. In this system, farmers don't really have much choice what to grow or how to grow it and have to be slaves to the inputs they can find and the price levers pulled by multinational corporations. As local market infrastructure lags, you don't have the opportunity for small farmers to grow actual food that can be part of a healthy diet and thus, through local networks and cooperation, encourage biodiversity. Instead, this system concentrates power in the hands of few and reduces farmers to subsistence and servitude rather than stewardship and cultivation of a rich, landed, agricultural heritage, deeply rooted in culture and history.
If you look at the work of agroecologists or permaculturists, or really anyone who is looking at farming from a perspective of ecological sustainability, you can see that better ways to do all of this exist, and we need to empower small farmers with knowledge and sustainable practices because industrial agriculture has really only made the situation worse at every turn. Maybe then we can reverse the degradation of our soils, our seeds, and our global food system.