Growing Resistance

This section of the GRAIN website is devoted to on-the-ground initiatives and coalitions of people working to strengthen their control over livelihoods and biodiversity. It is GRAIN's intent to see this as a growing section. If you know of resources, groups or projects that fall within this area of interest and want them featured here, drop us a note at gr (at) grain.org.

The commodification of biodiversity has not only led to genetic erosion and monoculture. Alongside disappearance of plant and animal species were erosion of diverse food and farming cultures that in turn weakened the social institutions of farmers, forest hunters, pastoralists and traditional healers.

But just at a point where it seems to be going downhill, there is a new wave of resistance that is also building across the globe. Local people are mobilising to counter monoculture as communities embark on broad range of initiatives to reverse the privatisation of genetic resources and traditional knowledge. Informal networks and alliances are being formed around seed saving, on-farm breeding, farmers' research, food sovereignty - all of them articulating the importance of constructive actions in reclaiming space for peoples' control of biodiversity. People are coming together to challenge old perspectives and infuse new ways of thinking and working. Others are looking for ways to bring agricultural research back into the hands of farmers and communities.

For all of it, there appears a dynamic rediscovery of local cultures that leads to redefining of self-identities, a recultivation of local economies that contributes to building of autonomies. It is a growing resistance that is both reaction and proaction, construction and formation. The seeds that are being saved, passed and exchanged accross communities obviously do not end up being grown merely as crops. Along with the farmers knowledge and experience, they are being sown to secure the future of agriculture.

There are three main themes under this section. Asserting autonomy & sovereignty highlights a broad spectrum of community initiatives that question monocultural orientation of production, explore diverse options and alternatives, promote self-identities, develop profound sense of agriculture, and promote bottom-up, process-oriented development. Confronting GM agriculture focuses on people's efforts to keep GM out of their farms, communities and markets, as well as GM-focused activities meant to compliment initiatives to reconstruct genuine, biodiversity-based, farmer-developed agriculture. Freedom from IPR features some successes of circumventing monopoly control as well as looks at the potentialities of a cross-sectoral movement to challenge the concept, legitimacy and regime of intellectual property rights.