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Full-Text Articles in Agronomy and Crop Sciences
Keeping What You Sow: Intellectual Property Rights For Plant Breeders And Seed Growers, Paulina B. Jenney
Keeping What You Sow: Intellectual Property Rights For Plant Breeders And Seed Growers, Paulina B. Jenney
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
Over the last 150 years, the food system in the present-day United States has undergone a transformational restructuring, from a diversified, decentralized, network of farmers and seed growers, to one in which the majority of crop production is controlled by a few industrial corporations. The consolidation of power has been under-girded by the application of intellectual property rights (IPR)—especially utility patents—to plant varieties and genetic traits, which are leveraged to exclude small-scale seed growers from accessing quality germplasm. Patents and restrictive licensing agreements recapitulate colonial structures by appropriating common and traditionally community-held resources for profit, and by creating reliance on …