|  ElCiudadano.cl |  Noticias

El Ciudadano

Original article: Escuela campesina: “Las semillas no son mercancía, son vida, memoria y soberanía de los pueblos”

Seeds, Identity, and Sovereignty: José Bengoa Peasant School Encourages Critical Reflection on the Future of Seeds

The José Bengoa Cabello Peasant School has published a reflective piece titled “Seeds, Identity, and Sovereignty: A Reflection from the Critical Pedagogy of the José Bengoa School”, created amidst a public consultation initiated in 2026 by the Agricultural and Livestock Service (SAG) regarding the commercialization of common seeds.

The document asserts that education is not merely about conveying information or instructing individuals on what to think. From the José Bengoa School’s viewpoint, popular education should collectively build tools that allow individuals to understand reality, question why things are the way they are, recognize who makes decisions affecting community life, and discover their own capacity to change those realities.

In this context, the institution situates its reflection in relation to the SAG’s public consultation, proposing to understand what is being discussed, what the proposal truly entails, clarify complex terminology that often alienates communities from public discussions, and gain insight into the treaties and commitments that Chile has undertaken.

Simultaneously, it poses fundamental questions: Who decides? Who really participates? Who is excluded? Who possesses the information? Who controls the seeds? And what can we do collectively in response to what we perceive as a threat to our sovereignty?

For the Peasant School, transformative education does not end with understanding a problem. It begins anew when that knowledge transforms into awareness, organization, and the capability for change and struggle.

Peasant Identity, Seeds, and the Right to Decide

The reflection maintains that defending peasant and popular identity does not equate to being stuck in the past. On the contrary, it reminds us that communities have always transformed, and their seeds have also evolved.

For generations, peasants and indigenous peoples have observed their territories, selected plants, preserved seeds, experimented, exchanged knowledge, and adapted crops to various conditions. The School points out that a peasant seed represents, in a way, a living memory, while cautioning that this memory has never been static.

From this perspective, identity should not become a museum piece. The aim is to construct an identity that understands its roots in order to harness the strength necessary to confront the present while simultaneously maintaining the capacity for transformation in the struggle.

The reflection places today’s discourse around seeds within a much broader context than a merely technical issue. It recalls that the SAG opened a public consultation in 2026 regarding a proposal that outlines requirements for the commercialization of common seeds, but insists that when discussing seeds, we are also addressing food, biodiversity, culture, knowledge, territory, and autonomy.

When new regulations concerning seeds are established, the document argues, the peasant world has the right to understand, comprehend, and discuss them.

However, the School identifies an initial contradiction: the invitation to participate is extended through digital mechanisms in a matter that directly impacts the rural community. In response, it raises questions about rural individuals who lack reliable internet connections, who have preserved seeds for fifty years but do not know how to fill out a digital form, the remote communities, and the value assigned to knowledge not contained within a platform.

The reflection also differentiates between consulting and deciding. An institutional consultation allows for observations to be made and can be beneficial, but according to the School, it is crucial to distinguish between being consulted and having decision-making power.

Deep democracy, it asserts, is not just about an institution asking for citizens’ opinions. It means that communities must have real capacity to influence what affects their territories, food, knowledge, and ways of life.

For this reason, the School expresses a critical stance toward institutional mechanisms that present themselves as participatory but do not necessarily provide communities with binding power over the final decision.

The question then becomes Why participate? The response proposed in the reflection is that participation can also serve to contest these spaces: utilizing a consultation to document a position, present arguments, pose questions, and demand rights. Participating does not necessarily mean legitimizing the mechanism; it can be an entry into an institutional space precisely to assert that the space is inadequate.

Moreover, participation can be a tool to demand territorial, face-to-face, intercultural processes that are truly impactful.

UPOV 91, Trade Treaties, and the Debate on Seed Sovereignty

The reflection dedicates a significant portion of its content to explaining, in accessible language, the implications of UPOV 91, which stands for the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants.

The School clarifies that a “new variety” can be understood simply as a plant variety developed or refined by a breeder, which could be an individual, company, or institution. If this variety meets specific legal conditions and gains protection, its breeder gains rights over certain uses for a period.

The document explains why it is called UPOV 91: 1991 refers to the year of this version of the Convention. There is also UPOV 78, related to the 1978 Act, which Chile is a party to under the same Act. UPOV 91 represents a subsequent version that broadened and strengthened certain breeder rights over protected varieties.

To relate this debate to everyday language, the reflection uses a commonplace scenario: a family preserves beans for generations and selects seeds each year. One person may say: “This plant survived the drought better”, another: “This one produced more”, yet another: “My grandmother had this seed”, while another mentions it was given by a neighbor. Some seeds are saved, others are shared, and eventually, they are replanted.

In this manner, for generations, communities have generated diversity and knowledge.

The situation changes when a company, university, institution, or individual develops a new variety, meets specific requirements, and obtains a breeder’s right over it. That variety becomes protected, and certain actions related to its reproduction or commercialization may be subject to the rights of its owner.

The School warns that this allows for a straightforward understanding of what lies behind UPOV, but emphasizes the need for rigor: UPOV 91 does not mean that all peasant seeds automatically become privately owned.

The political question posed by the reflection is deeper: What happens to peasant autonomy when an increasing portion of the seed world enters exclusive rights systems, intellectual property, and markets?

The document also asserts that free trade treaties are part of this discussion. When talking about these agreements, people usually think about exports, imports, copper, fruits, or cars. However, the reflection warns that these treaties may also set rules about intellectual property where seeds come into play.

In particular, it mentions the Chile-United States Free Trade Agreement, signed in 2003, noting that it explicitly incorporated a commitment related to the parties’ adherence to the UPOV 91 Convention.

It also highlights that the new trade framework between Chile and the European Union contains provisions regarding the protection of new varieties in accordance with UPOV 91.

The School further clarifies: this does not automatically imply that the treaty converts all traditional seeds into private property. What it argues is that the intellectual property rights protection over vegetable varieties is part of the international commercial agreements that Chile has embraced.

Based on this, it raises a question directly linked to food sovereignty: Why does something so fundamental to the food sovereignty of peoples end up being a subject of trade agreements?

The reflection concludes with a political definition of what it seeks to protect: the rights of peoples to store, plant, reproduce, select, exchange, and maintain knowledge associated with their seeds, as well as the right to collectively decide what information to share, to genuinely participate in decisions that affect their territories, and to retain sovereignty over their food systems.

In this outlook, the José Bengoa Cabello Peasant School summarizes its proposal with a statement that permeates the entire reflection: “From the people and for the people, because we are that people.”

This press release is based on the written reflection issued by the José Bengoa Cabello Peasant School, respecting the content, concepts, questions, and central propositions expressed in that document.

La entrada Peasant School Advocates for Seeds as Life, Memory, and Sovereignty of Communities se publicó primero en El Ciudadano.