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Journal of Agrarian Change, Vol. 16 No. 4, October 2016, pp. 711719.

The Red de Semillas Libres: Contesting Biohegemony

in Colombia

LAURA GUTIRREZ ESCOBAR AND ELIZABETH FITTING

The Red de Semillas Libres (Network of Free Seeds) in Colombia contests the expansion of,
and dominant narratives on, agricultural biotechnology and intellectual property rights (IPRs)
protections on seed or what has been called biohegemony. We argue that despite its chal-
lenges, the Network contests biohegemony through lawsuits, supporting seed sovereignty,
and reframing the often taken-for-granted discourse on local seed varieties as raw material and
a resource to be discovered, invented and commodied by industry and Western-based
technoscience. Based on ethnographic research, we extend the concept of biohegemony to include
struggle and contestation by examining how the Network pursues seed sovereignty.

Keywords: seed sovereignty, activism, Colombia, biohegemony, intellectual

property rights

INTRODUCTION
This is a pivotal moment in the debates and regulation of seed and genetically modied (GM)
crops in Colombia. Since 2013, there has been a shift from silent or supportive media coverage of
genetically modied organisms (GMOs) to more critical coverage of agricultural biotechnology.
We argue that the Red de Semillas Libres (Network of Free Seeds, or RSL) a network made up
of grassroots and activist organizations challenges biohegemony or the expansion of, and domi-
nant narratives on, agricultural biotechnology and intellectual property rights protections on seeds.
Biohegemony refers to the alignment of material, institutional and discursive power which sustains
a coalition of forces which benet from the prevailing model of agricultural development (Newell
2009, 38).
We briey analyse changes to intellectual property rights (IPRs) and seed regulation, and focus on
three main, and overlapping, ways in which the RSLs mobilizations challenge biohegemony: rst,
through lawsuits; second, through enhancing and supporting seed sovereignty in rural communi-
ties, notably indigenous territories; and third, through reframing the debate about seed and biodiver-
sity as commodities and inventions. These issues are central to the current international food system
or food regime the policies, norms, institutions and trade relations related to food and agriculture
between unequal nations (Friedmann 1987; McMichael 2009). As Otero and Lapegna point out in
their introduction to this symposium, the neoliberal food regime is characterized by a shift in agricul-
tural policy from a national to global focus via trade; the rise of genetic engineering as a key technol-
ogy for capitalist agriculture and by changes in regulation that accommodate this technology, at the

Laura Gutirrez Escobar, PhD candidate in Anthropology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA.
Mailing address: Avenida Cra. 30 # 60-49, Edicio Anarez 2, Apto. 502, Bogota, Colombia.
E-mail: laurittag@yahoo.com. Elizabeth Fitting, Associate Professor in Sociology and Social Anthropology,
6135 University Ave, Dalhousie University, PO Box 15000, Halifax, NS, Canada, B3H 4R2. E-mail: elizabeth.
tting@dal.ca.
We would like to thank our interviewees and the RSL for sharing their perspectives with us, and Pablo Lapegna,
Gerardo Otero and the anonymous reviewers for their feedback.

2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd doi: 10.1111/joac.12161

712 Laura Gutirrez Escobar and Elizabeth Fitting

national and supra-national levels (Pechlaner and Otero 2008); and an increase in state support for
agribusiness multinational corporations. Our ethnographic research contributes to this literature by
providing insight into the ways in which the so-called harmonization of legal and regulatory frame-
works for plant genetic resources play out on the ground in particular ways.
GMOs and the issue of protecting farmer-saved seed have garnered media discussion and in-
creased public debate in Colombia thanks to the free trade agreement (FTA) with the United States
(US) which required minimum intellectual property rights standards, and took effect in 2012 the
national agrarian strike of August 2013 and the controversial documentary 9.70, which criticizes
Resolution 970 of the Colombian Agricultural Institute (ICA) for criminalizing the informal sale
of farm-saved seeds. The documentary denounces how the riot police unit seized 62 tons of rice
seed in the town of Campoalegre, and threw them into a landll, after the ICA declared that it
was non-certied and illegally saved seed that posed phytosanitary and health risks for the rice sector
and consumers. The documentary caused public indignation and went viral, with over 10,000
visitors in the rst two days after it appeared on the web (Ruz Navarro 2015).
In Colombia, the regulation of GMOs began in the late 1990s. As a branch of the Ministry of
Agriculture and Development, the ICA is responsible for the regulation and control of GM crops
(ICA 2012). Colombia is one of 19 countries in the world growing more than 50,000 hectares of
transgenic crops (ISAAA 2014, 5). In 2014, GM crops were grown on just over 100,000 hectares,
consisting largely of GM maize and cotton.

BIOHEGEMONY
In his work on Argentina, Peter Newell (2009) argues that agribusiness and biotech interests had
broad-based consent in the country because of the economic importance of export-led agribusiness
and the extensive participation of biotech corporations in trade and biosafety regulatory decisions
(p. 48). Drawing on Antonio Gramsci (1971 [192935]), Newell argues that biohegemony involves
the successful projection of particular interests as general interests such as that the benets
and value of agricultural biotechnology acquire the status of common sense and go largely
unquestioned (p. 38).
We nd the concept of biohegemony helpful because it asks us to think about both how the
state or a set of government ofces and actors contributes to the making of GMOs and IPRs
on seed as common sense, in discourse and institutional and material arrangements. It also asks us
to consider how non-state actors, such as transnational corporations, activists and non-prot organi-
zations, may support or contest such ideas and arrangements. Additionally, we nd the concept
useful because we see the prex bio as foregrounding how, at this moment in capitalism and the
neoliberal food regime, what often goes unquestioned is the commodication and usurpation of
biological resources, or life itself, in this case seed.
The commodication of seed through new biotechnologies, regulations and IPRs is a prime
example of what David Harvey (2003) calls accumulation by dispossession, or a renewed process
of capital accumulation through the enclosure of the commons. In the case of seeds, biological
reproduction constitutes a natural barrier to commodication and guarantees farmers capacity to in-
dependently reproduce a part of their means of production. Capital has pursued farmers disposses-
sion of their seeds through commodication in two ways: a technical solution that involved
hybridization during the Green Revolution and currently genetic engineering, and a legal solution
through seed regulations and IPRs on plants and their genes (Kloppenburg 2004).
We contend that the Red de Semillas Libres challenges the often taken-for-granted discourse about
local seed varieties (or landraces and creolized varieties, called criollos in Spanish) as raw material and a
resource, to be discovered, invented and commodied by industry and Western-based science. In
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 Contesting Biohegemony in Colombia 713

this way, we not only apply Newells concept of biohegemony to the Colombian case, but we also
extend the concept. We provide empirical illustrations of the RSLs collective mobilizations, and the
opportunities and challenges that it faces.
In the Colombian media, the biotech industry and government ofcials reproduce common ideas
found in the IPR system about seed, and even earlier ideas that privilege Western science, including
plant breeding, over other knowledge systems (Nader 1996). The advance of scientic plant
breeding in the late nineteenth century helped distance local, traditional and landrace seed from
scientic seed, or modern cultivars (Zeven 1998). As Van Dooren (2008) importantly points out,
IPRs on plants recognize the scientic knowledge and labour in the Western tradition as genuinely
inventive while rendering the labour and knowledge of indigenous and peasant communities invis-
ible, as natures raw material. IPRs are granted to improved and certied seeds, such as GM vari-
eties, because they involve modern scientic techniques.
Similar to discussions of seed and IPRs elsewhere, the biotech industry and some government
ofcials in Colombia describe local seed (criollos) in a way that distances such seed from the human
labour involved in its creation and maintenance, as a raw material for science and industry. The ICAs
General Director, for example, contrasts native, natural seed with scientically improved and
certied seed (Beltrn 2013). The Colombian Seed Trade Association, Acosemillas (2013), which
represents both domestic and transnational seed companies, has portrayed uncertied seed as illegal,
and as a phytosanitary risk that diminishes crop productivity, and affects peasants incomes and the
food security of all Colombians. As discussed below, RSL members challenge such descriptions.

Biohegemony in Colombia: Protecting Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs)

A key component of biohegemony in Colombia is the alignment of the countrys IPRs on plants and
seed with that of the World Trade Organizations Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights
(TRIPS). Transnational seed and biotech companies have supported modications to Colombian
legislation that advance their economic interests and further commodify seed, notably through seed
regulations and IPRs. As part of its free trade agreement (FTA) with the US, Colombia committed to
signing an extended version of the TRIPS, or what has been called a TRIPS-Plus agreement (Sell
2009, 194).
There were major differences between the US and the Colombian Intellectual Property Rights
and Sanitary and Phytosanitary systems at the time they started negotiating the FTA in mid-2004.
Colombia was a signatory to the International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of
Plants (UPOV) 1978, the Convention on Biodiversity, the Cartagena Protocol and the Andean
Community (CAN, according to its Spanish acronym) Common Regime on Access to Genetic
Resources. The US, in contrast, was not a member of any of these agreements but only the UPOV
in its 1991 version and, like Colombia, had signed but not ratied the International Treaty on Plant
Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA).
In concrete terms, these differences meant that the US allowed the patenting of living organisms,
including plants and their parts, such as seeds, and of a wide range of genetic engineering methods
and products. In contrast, Colombia not only forbade patenting of living organisms and allowed a
much more limited patenting in the eld of biotechnology, but also guaranteed farmers rights to
use, save and exchange seed, as well as committing to the fair and equal distribution of benets
derived from the use of genetic resources (Nemog Soto 2009; Grupo Semillas 2011). By adhering
to UPOV 91, the USColombia FTA is a TRIPS-Plus agreement that contravenes the Cartagena
Protocol, ITPGRFA and CANs decisions.
In 2005, Colombia began to adjust legislation to FTA requirements on intellectual property and
phytosanitary controls. These include the ICAs Resolution 970 of 2010 and Law 1518 of 2012.
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714 Laura Gutirrez Escobar and Elizabeth Fitting

Resolution 970 required that all seeds in Colombia are registered and certied for reasons of quality,
productivity and plant disease management and prevention, following the WTOs Sanitary and
Phytosanitary Agreement. In effect, this means that farmers who wanted to use their seeds needed
to register and certify them at the ICAs ofces, an expensive and time-consuming process. The
resolution enforced phytosanitary and quality standards that favoured the use of certied over local
seeds. It granted patent-like protections to plant breeders by stating that farmers can only save and
reuse certied seeds once, in elds up to 5 hectares, and for self-consumption only; and they cannot
exchange or sell certied seeds without the breeders permission. Between 2010 and 2012, the ICA
ordered the conscation of close to 5,000 tons of seeds, mostly rice, and the destruction of about half
of them (ICA 2013).
In 2012, Law 1518 approved Colombias adherence to UPOV 91. This law maintains breeders
rights rather than patents as the IPR system for plants. However, both kinds of IPRs are similar,
because the breeders rights in Law 1518 restrict farmers rights to freely use, save and commercialize
certied seeds.
Such property rights benet biotech companies: they help monopolize the seed market and
increase revenues from IPR royalties. Transnational companies such as Monsanto and Syngenta
own the majority of patents and breeders rights for commercial seeds worldwide, both hybrids
and GM (ETC Group 2013). In Colombia, the market power of such companies is growing.
The fact that the USColombia FTA does not comply with the treaties mentioned above does
not mean that we believe and nor does the RSL that adherence to such treaties constitutes an
adequate system to protect local, agricultural biodiversity and related scientic and traditional
knowledges of communities from the global South. All of these treaties allow for the patenting of
microorganisms and contain ambiguous language in regard to protection of farmers rights. Further-
more, these treaties are framed within the modern capitalist regime that holds the commodication
and exploitation of nature and the primacy of monopolized technoscientic knowledge as the basis
for progress and development.

CONFRONTING BIOHEGEMONY IN COLOMBIA

The Red de Semillas Libres (RSL) is the articulation of multiple groups and communities that seek to
strengthen and promote local, regional and national processes to produce, conserve, recuperate and
freely exchange criollo seeds. The RSL has a presence throughout the country, although it is strongest
in the Andean and Caribbean regions, where the most active communities and organizations are
located. It brings together indigenous, afro-Colombian and peasant communities and organizations;
national and international environmental and human rights NGOs; academic researchers; artists
collectives; and consumers and urban agriculture groups. This network draws from the experience
of other seed sovereignty movements, particularly the Network for a Transgenic-Free Latin America
(RAALT), the Biodiversity Alliance, the Mexican coalition Sin Maz No Hay Pas and La Va
Campesina.
The RSL defends seed sovereignty or farmers control over biodiversity and seeds, which is an
integral part of their right to democratic models of agricultural production that respond to peoples
food needs, and are culturally appropriate and socially and environmentally sustainable what the
transnational social movement La Va Campesina terms food sovereignty (LVC 2008).
For the RSL, seeds are a collective patrimony of farming communities for the benet of
humanity (2013). In other words, small-scale farmers ought to have priority rights over the use
and control of seeds because they have domesticated and developed the majority of crops available
today. Seeds are considered living beings belonging to specic agricultural systems and access to them

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 Contesting Biohegemony in Colombia 715

should be ruled by communitarian norms. The Reglamentos (regulations) of the Transgenic-Free Ter-
ritories and the Communitarian Seed Houses discussed below are key examples of such norms.
The network pursues seed sovereignty through two main strategies: (1) opposition to GM crops
and to the system of IPRs; and (2) strengthening live seed systems characterized by seed
development on-farm and at communitarian seed houses, and based on handed-down knowledge
and eld experience combined with agro-ecology, collective seed ownership and sharing, and
alternative seed markets.
Among the RSLs many activities, members have attended public hearings at the Lower House of
Congress on the issue of agricultural crisis and food sovereignty and lobbied representatives to debate
IPRs and GMOs; as well as participated in public consultations to draft municipal development
plans that promote the use of criollo seeds in food aid and agricultural programmes, and anti-GM
and IPR policies.
During the agrarian strike of 2013, the RSL joined the marches in Bogot and released a list of
demands to the government calling for public policies to promote and protect IPR-free seeds under
farmers control, and invalidate all IPR legislation applicable to seed, including Resolution 970. After
its rst national meeting, the RSL released a manifesto (2013) afrming its commitment to civil
resistance against GMOs and IPRs on seeds, and to the defence of criollo seeds as an integral part of
the defence of communities territories, livelihoods, biodiversity and identities. The manifesto ends
by stating: For each seed that is seized, we will make them sprout and bloom again, multiply, spread,
and walk freely with farmers in the elds of Colombia.

The RSLs Legal Demands

Since 2005, organizations within the RSL have taken legal action to contest the governments
framing of seed as potential material for IPRs. The network sees legal action as a strategy that
complements, but does not replace, civil resistance.
In 2008, the RSL led two lawsuits to revoke the approval for the cultivation of two varieties of
transgenic corn and a lawsuit against Decree 4525 that approved the Cartagena Protocol; however,
the Council of State has not yet ruled on these cases. In 2012, when Law 1518 approved Colombias
adherence to UPOV 91, the RSL collected 7,000 signatures and solicited the Constitutional Court
to consider the law unenforceable on several grounds. Such grounds included its restriction of
farmers rights to freely use, save and commercialize certied seeds, and that it was enacted without
previous consultation with indigenous and afro-Colombian communities, required under the
Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention of the International Labour Organization (ILO),
Convention No. 169. In December 2012, the RSL had a landmark victory when the Constitutional
Court declared Law 1518 unconstitutional for not having previously consulted indigenous and
afro-Colombian communities. The courts summary of its decision recognizes that IPRs on seed
under UPOV 91 might affect the biodiversity, culture and ecosystems of such communities
(Campaa por las Semillas Libres en Colombia 2013).
The RSL also submitted an accin de tutela to the Constitutional Court about Resolution 970,
arguing that it had not previously consulted indigenous and afro-Colombian communities. In
2013, they were supported by agrarian strike leaders who included the repeal of Resolution 970
on their own list of demands forwarded during negotiations with the government. Following the
public attention given to Resolution 970 by RSL campaigns, the documentary and the agrarian
strike, the government suspended it for 2 years in order to rewrite it.
In September 2015, ICA released Resolution 3168 to replace Resolution 970. It contains small
changes that address some of the concerns articulated by activists and farmers. For instance, the
ICA eliminated the requirement to register seed in its information system. The new resolution also
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716 Laura Gutirrez Escobar and Elizabeth Fitting

states that it does not apply to creole or native seed, but yet it does not dene these kinds of seeds.
The RSL argues that Resolution 3168 is similar to its predecessor in at least two ways: it mandates
that all seed used in the country must be certied seed (indirectly making creole and native seed
illegal); and it maintains the restrictions on saving and commercializing certied seed (helping to
ensure market control and IPRs for seed companies).
It appears that the ICA is also attempting to control the commercialization of criollos by other
means. Under the banner of the UNs declaration of 2014 as the International Year of Family
Farming, the Ministry of Agriculture created the Programme on Family Farming, which includes
a section on native and creole seeds. The objective is to support local processes of seed development
through training and technology transfer in order to help farmers be more competitive and certify
their local seeds. However, the RSL argues that the programme encourages communities to adopt
a system of IPRs, creating a division between legal, certied seed and non-certied, illegal seed
(RSL 2015).

Seed Sovereignty in the Resguardo of Caamomo and Lomaprieta

Caamomo and Lomaprieta together are one of four resguardos or indigenous territories of colonial
origin that are endowed by the Constitution with the right to self-government of the Embera
Cham indigenous communities located near the town of Riosucio, in the Department of Caldas.
This region is characterized by small-scale coffee and sugar-cane farming, and the average farm size
is between 1 and 2 hectares, although many families own less than a hectare of land.
From the mid-twentieth century, and particularly since the 1991 Constitution that granted
ethnic-based rights, there has been a process of recovering the resguardos lands, reconstituting
indigenous identities and political autonomy after centuries of colonization that expanded mining
and export-oriented agriculture on their territories, particularly coffee monocropping. Resguardo
residents link defence of criollo seeds, especially maize and beans, to the defence of territory and
culture. Due to its cultural signicance and importance as a subsistence crop, maize has been the focal
point for Colombian anti-GM campaigns (Campaa Semillas de Identidad and Grupo Semillas 2011;
Fitting 2014).
With the impending approval of GM crops, the Caamomo and Lomaprieta resguardo declared
itself as a Transgenic-Free Territory (TFT) one of six such territories in the country. The resguardo
also created a Seed Savers Network and built a Communitarian Seed House. These initiatives are ex-
amples of seed sovereignty, or how this community strives to exercise local control over which kinds
of seeds are considered valuable, and how they are grown, owned and circulated. These initiatives
have been actively supported by the RSL and member organizations, notably the Colombian NGOs
Corporacin Custodios de Semillas and Grupo Semillas, and by SwissAids Seeds of Identity Campaign.
They have also received support from the autonomous indigenous government or cabildo and the
municipal government. Riosucios current mayor is the rst indigenous person elected to this posi-
tion in 25 years, a period in which three indigenous candidates were assassinated.
The resguardos declaration as a Transgenic-Free Territory states that indigenous peoples seeds and
knowledges are their collective patrimony and belong to mother earth. Seeds cannot be altered in
their natural condition of being, contaminated nor privatized through any form of intellectual prop-
erty rights.1 The declaration also forbids the implementation of any food security and agricultural
development programs that contain GM seeds, food, or technological packages that put at risk our
traditional seeds, ancestral knowledges, and territory. Finally, the declaration says that the resguardo
1
This might suggest that the community considers seeds as natural rather than as socio/cultural-natural entities.
However, the wording of the sentence is strategic, as part of strategy to reject GM seeds.

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 Contesting Biohegemony in Colombia 717

is committed to growing and conserving their criollo seeds and related knowledges, supporting seed
savers and strengthening their traditional systems of cultivation and food sovereignty.
Seed savers and authorities from Caamomo and Lomaprieta are conscious that declaring their
resguardo as TFT is largely a political statement that is difcult to implement. First, it is not easy to
distinguish between GM and non-GM seeds and food, particularly when labelling of food is not
required, and the labelling of seed is implemented at entry ports and gets lost as it goes down the
commercial chain. Second, seeds circulate rapidly and informally among farmers, and through the
market and institutional programmes, making it difcult to control their use and propagation. Third,
because there are no large markets for criollos, growing them, rather than hybrid or GM seeds,
requires sacrices on the part of already marginalized farmers.
The Communitarian Seed House strives to maintain criollos outside the IPR system, create alter-
native markets that allow for barter and reciprocity, and provide a space for selling seeds without
commodifying them. Their seed bag labels state: This seed is not a commercial product. Its cost is
to recognize the seed savers effort and dedication. Local seed savers and other indigenous farmers
may sell their criollos to the Seed House. Seeds are then reproduced and sold or redistributed to local
families or to other seed-saving networks. The cabildo supports seed savers by allowing them to
cultivate on communal land, providing them with criollo seeds bought from or exchanged with seed
savers from other indigenous communities and organic inputs, such as green manure.
The Communitarian Seed House has implemented a system of safety and quality standards or
Participatory Guarantee System (PGS) as a rejection of the ICAs mandate to regulate seeds and
conventional certication schemes for the production of hybrid and GM seeds, based solely on pro-
ductivity and genetic homogeneity.
Seed savers from the resguardo, and the RSL more generally, often refer to hybrids and GM seeds
as degraded seeds as a way of challenging the superiority of conventional scientic breeding. They
believe that criollos are well adapted to local conditions, and that they help support agro-ecological
farming, traditional knowledges and food sovereignty (Gutirrez Escobar 2015; RSL 2015). The
RSL views small-scale agriculture and peasant subjectivities not as inefcient and backward in com-
parison to biotechnology and corporate agriculture, but as maintaining biodiversity and contributing
to food sovereignty.

CONCLUSION
Seed sovereignty and anti-GM activism are not among the main issues currently on the political
agenda of Colombian agrarian organizations, as land reform, the peace process, and opposition to
mega-mining and FTAs continue to be more salient issues. This may prove challenging for ongoing
and future alliances between the RSL and other grassroots organizations, particularly in times of
economic crisis.
Small-scale farmers, on the brink of bankruptcy and expulsion from their lands, are often not in a
position to reject GM seeds and food, be they in the form of donations or credits and aid
programmes. Some peasants and indigenous farmers are reluctant to grow criollos. This is even the
case among non-seed savers in Riosucios resguardos, who may not reject GM seeds or hybrids, or
be willing to plant part of their small plots with criollos for which there are no large markets. With
the coffee bonanza of the 1970s, farmers in Riosucio, and across the country, had been encouraged
by high prices and the Colombian Coffee Growers Association to shift to a high-input, monetized
model of coffee monocropping. Farmers grew accustomed to growing coffee right up to the houses
kitchen and buying food in town. With the current coffee crisis and the strengthening of indigenous
politics, farmers in Riosucio are diversifying their production and increasing the cultivation of
subsistence crops, but this may not be as fast and steady as seed savers and the RSL hope for.
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718 Laura Gutirrez Escobar and Elizabeth Fitting

Despite these difculties, the Red de Semillas Libres is contesting biohegemony in signicant ways.
Although an increasingly homogenized international legal framework for biological resources treats
certain seeds as inventions and thus available for protection under IPRs, the RSL is shifting public
debate around seed through their activism, and in the way members discuss local criollo seeds. Local
varieties are not treated as natures raw material, illegal inefcient and backward, but as the result
of generations of labour and knowledge, adapted to local conditions. For the seed savers, seeds are
neither a collection of genes that can be privately owned nor a commodity for capital accumulation,
but living beings intimately related to humans and that belong to specic agricultural systems. Seed
savers follow the RSLs call for an integral defence of seeds, which highlights the cultural, political
and economic importance of seeds. Their claim that seeds are neither things nor commodities is a
powerful rejection of conventional approaches to rural development that seek to turn peasants into
entrepreneurs, and their biodiversity into environmental services to be sold in nancial markets.
Even when communities such as Caamomo and Lomaprieta sell seed, they do so in ways that sup-
port alternative markets, the elimination of IPRs and the conservation of local seed.
On a nal note, we suggest that it is important to situate the adoption of legal and regulatory
frameworks for plant genetic resources in particular contexts of negotiation and resistance. Similar
to other places in Latin America, seed activists in Colombia see their work as a continuation of a long
history of struggle against imperialism and (neo)colonialism. They pursue seed sovereignty because
they see defending criollo seeds not only as a form of resistance to corporate agriculture and the com-
modication of life, but as part of a larger struggle for political autonomy, cultural survival and food
sovereignty.

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