Week 13 Food sovereignty

First watch The future of food 

(please note, the potato blight was only part of the reason people starved to death.  British policies to export food from Ireland to England was a significant part of the famine. Remember the Mike Davis' reading)

Second, read Schurman and then Kloppenburg.
      Schurman, Rachel and Munro, William. 2010. Fighting for the future of food: activists vs. agribusiness in the struggle over biotechnology Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, Introduction.

      What are the concerns about patenting life, the response of the regulatory agencies and the impact of Monsanto's genetically modified seeds on farmers? What has been the argument proposed by farmers and the NGO community? For Schurman's piece, pay attention to her discussion of the competing perspectives of the agribiotech industry and activists' orientation.

     What is accumulation by dispossession? How has this happened? Why is patenting germplasm dangerous? What is food and seed sovereignty? Why is seed saving and plant biodiversity important? How does Kloppenburg suggest things might change?Why does the General Public License for Plant Germplasm make sense? Do you think patents on plants are a good idea or bad idea? Back up your argument.

      In your answer, be sure to show how things have changed.  For full points, incorporate material from other readings and answer these questions as part of your blog post. Please write about both articles and the film in one blog post in which you relate the material to each other due THURSDAY.

      

      Kloppenburg, Jack. 2010. Impeding Dispossession, Enabling Repossession: Biological Open Source and the Recovery of Seed Sovereignty. Journal of Agrarian Change, 10(3):367–388.