The article aims to highlight local norms that affect seed security and to assess their coexistence with national and international legal orders. It is based on the results of an empirical study conducted between 2018 and 2021 in two villages, located respectively in the Centre-West region of Burkina Faso and the Fatick region of Senegal. The article shows the extent to which i) the local norms of these villages are based on rules of reciprocity, alliance and filiation that structure the local production and circulation of seeds, and ii) these local rules reveal an interdependence between object and subject, nature and culture. It then highlights the issues of coexistence of these norms with the national laws of Burkina Faso and Senegal, in particular the 2006 Plant Seeds Act in Burkina Faso and the 1994 Registration of Varieties, Production, Certification and Trade of Seeds or Plants Act in Senegal. Inspired by international models, these laws organize a seed sector focused on cross-border exchanges. They exclude farmers who practice mass selection and use non-certified seeds from the status of seed breeder, producer and seller. Solutions are proposed to encourage collaboration among all actors. The Crop Diversity Commons is identified as a relevant conceptual framework to discuss the recognition of a community of rights and the interdependence between humans and plants, from the perspective of sustainable global seed security.

La question de savoir qui est, ou non, agriculteur peut a priori sembler anodine, mais il n’en est rien du point de vue du droit. En effet, les définitions juridiques de l’agriculteur façonnent le métier de même que les enjeux agricoles. L’article qui suit présente une analyse historique des définitions juridiques de l’agriculteur au Canada et au Québec, et ce, de la fin du régime seigneurial jusqu’à aujourd’hui. Il se fonde sur les lois canadiennes et québécoises qui comprennent une définition juridique de l’agriculteur (versions historiques et actuelles), sur le matériel législatif disponible (règlements, décrets, etc.) et sur les débats de l’Assemblée nationale du Québec qui éclairent l’intention du législateur derrière les définitions adoptées dans les textes juridiques. Il en ressort une analyse des définitions juridiques de l’agriculteur qui ont durablement marqué la profession au Québec au cours de trois périodes charnières de l’agriculture québécoise, soit celles de la colonisation agricole, de la professionnalisation de l’agriculture et de la spécialisation agricole. Les résultats révèlent que les définitions juridiques de l’agriculteur sont tributaires de la double compétence juridique des législateurs, à la fois canadienne et québécoise, et qu’elles se sont essentiellement développées au regard des enjeux économiques de la filière agricole. Les mettre en perspective avec les trois dimensions du développement durable semble plus que jamais nécessaire pour assurer la transition des systèmes alimentaires québécois et canadiens vers plus d’équité et de durabilité.

« Le droit a tout changé ! ». Cette citation extraite d’un entretien avec un habitant de la périphérie de Yaoundé en janvier 2023 se rapportait à l’histoire d’un arbre auquel les villageois étaient attachés et qui fournissait plusieurs services (écorces, fruits, ombrage, lieu de discussion) qu’aucun ne pouvait refuser à quiconque, ni même la personne qui avait installé sa maison à côté et l’avait peut-être même planté. L’achat de la parcelle par un citadin a transféré de jure la propriété de l’arbre à cette personne qui désormais, en vertu des règles du droit positif camerounais, peut en disposer à sa guise et même le couper s’il le veut, sans qu’aucun dans le village ne puisse s’y opposer. Au-delà de la nostalgie émanant de la citation ci-dessus, celle-ci soulève plusieurs questions : 1

AbstractEstablishing linkage among data of diverse domains (e.g. biological, environmental, socio-economical, and geographical) is critical to address complex multidimensional issues such as food security or sustainable agriculture. The complexity of this challenge increases with the level of heterogeneity of the data but also with the social context of production of datasets, a dimension usually less considered. Building on the experience of a transdisciplinary project on the diversity of crop diversity management systems in West Africa (CoEx), this chapter reflects on the importance to better account for agency for more meaningful, responsible and efficient plant data linkage. The chapter addresses sequentially the cognitive and political challenges related to data work and the way they could be addressed simultaneously within the same social unit. To do this, we rely on the concept of community of practice (CoP) which gained enormous popularity in relation to data and knowledge management. More than simply a social mechanism for community knowledge management, we show in this contribution that CoP needs to be approached as a social experiment and a terrain of collective situated learning in order to address each challenge and their linkages with respect to data work.

The article aims to highlight local norms that affect seed security and to assess their coexistence with national and international legal orders. It is based on the results of an empirical study conducted between 2018 and 2021 in two villages, located respectively in the Centre-West region of Burkina Faso and the Fatick region of Senegal. The article shows the extent to which i) the local norms of these villages are based on rules of reciprocity, alliance and filiation that structure the local production and circulation of seeds, and ii) these local rules reveal an interdependence between object and subject, nature and culture. It then highlights the issues of coexistence of these norms with the national laws of Burkina Faso and Senegal, in particular the 2006 Plant Seeds Act in Burkina Faso and the 1994 Registration of Varieties, Production, Certification and Trade of Seeds or Plants Act in Senegal. Inspired by international models, these laws organize a seed sector focused on cross-border exchanges. They exclude farmers who practice mass selection and use non-certified seeds from the status of seed breeder, producer and seller. Solutions are proposed to encourage collaboration among all actors. The Crop Diversity Commons is identified as a relevant conceptual framework to discuss the recognition of a community of rights and the interdependence between humans and plants, from the perspective of sustainable global seed security.

This article discusses the emergence and contours of farmers’ rights to save, use, exchange and sell farm-saved seeds and other propagating materials, including from protected plant varieties, enshrined in Article 9 of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) to modulate the exclusive rights of patent and plant variety certificate holders. Second, the article raises the challenges of transposing farmers’ rights to seed practices into national legislation to make these rights effective and enforceable. Indeed, when transposing these rights, World Trade Organization (WTO) member states must act within the scope of Article 27:3(b) of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement), which establishes international obligations for the protection of plant varieties through intellectual property rights. Finally, this paper argues that the adoption of sui generis plant variety protection legislation, as enshrined in both Article 27.3(b) of the TRIPS Agreement and Article 9 of the ITPGRFA, is a means of ensuring the coexistence at the national level of the international regime of farmers’ rights and the international regime of intellectual property rights on plant varieties, as well as a solution to recognize the plurality of plant variety breeding methods and practices.

This paper rethinks the governance of genebanks in a social and political context that has significantly evolved since their establishment. The theoretical basis for the paper is the commons conceptual framework in relation to both seed and plant genetic resources. This framework is applied to question the current policy ecosystem of genetic research and breeding and explore different collective governance models. The concept of crop diversity management system (CDMS) commons is proposed as the new foundation for a more holistic and inclusive framework for crop diversity management, that covers a broad range of concerns and requires different actors. The paper presents a multi-stakeholder process established within the context of the two recent projects CoEx and Dynaversity, imagining possible collective arrangements to overcome existing deadlocks, foster collective learning, and design collaborative relationships among genebanks, researchers, and farmers’ civil society organizations involved in crop diversity management.