Bienes comunes vs. mercancías: las semillas en disputa. Un análisis sobre del rol de la propiedad intelectual en los actuales procesos de cercamientos

Abstract

Historically, seeds were considered as commons, becauses since agriculture began, peasants and indigenous communities have collected, kept, conserved, and exchanged seeds freely, keeping their control. In recent years, we see a new kind of enclosure. This process turns everything which is common, and keeps outside the market, into a commodity. Seeds are not out of this, and their enclosure is given by two articulated mechanisms: technical changes in seeds, which allows their appropriation, and changes in legal frameworks of intellectual property. Although that, we are not confronting the overwhelming force of capital trying to appropriate seeds. In the paper I try to analize the seeds dispute.  On one hand, the concrete advances in its commodification. On the other, senses and actions of social movements, especially indigenous and peasants, trying to consider them as commons.