Which seeds for a just transition to agroecological and sustainable food systems? This question is currently at the center of hot debates about the ideologies, laws and technologies that will shape the future of food. Exploring its multiple facets, the panelist will introduce seeds at the intersection of critical developments in seed policy, human rights and innovative food systems. Circulating within a tight framework of laws and regulations and a seed market dominated by the monopoly of a few corporations, seed diversity has been dwindling before our eyes. According to UN estimates, we have lost about 90% of our species and seed diversity in the last fifty to one hundred years – fewer than 200 species make major contributions to food production and only nine plant species account for 66% of total crop production. Linking “The Planetary Wheat Field” to global challenges related to the loss of seed diversity, the panel highlights pathways that promote an understanding of seeds as a commons through innovative food systems and a human rights perspective.

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Guest Speakers:

Dr. Fulya Batur (Kybele/Geneva Academy), Dr. Christophe Golay (Geneva Academy), Jean-Marc Louvin (University Antwerp), Alexandra Baumgartner

Dr. Fulya Batur

Dr Fulya Batur is a legal consultant and an Associate Research Fellow at the Geneva Academy, where she conducts research on the rights of peasants, more particularly on the rights to seeds. Her expertise and publications relate to all fields of agricultural and environmental law, but more particularly on the conservation and sustainable use of agrobiodiversity, access and benefit-sharing regimes on genetic resources, the protection of traditional knowledge, seed marketing rules, intellectual property regimes on seeds, with a regional focus on the European Union (EU), including the EU’s external policy. Running different capacity-building projects for seed diversity actors, she is also engaged in European research projects and consultancy services to European public institutions as part of Arcadia International.

Dr. Christophe Golay

Dr Christophe Golay is Senior Research Fellow at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, and Visiting Professor at the Geneva Graduate Institute. Between 2001 and 2008, he was Legal Adviser to the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on the right to food. Since 2009, he has been providing legal advice to the UN, States, NGOs and social movements in relation to the negotiation, adoption and implementation of the UN Declaration on the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas (UNDROP). He published extensively on the use of UNDROP to promote the right to seeds in Europe and Africa. More info here.

Jean-Marc Louvin 

Jean-Marc Louvin is a Ph.D. researcher at the faculty of law and part of the research group Law and Development at the University of Antwerp. After graduating in Philosophy at the University of Lyon III with a research thesis on the Slow Food Movement, he did a master’s degree in Ethics, Ecology, and Sustainable Development with a research internship on the Holistic Approaches of Food at the UNESCO Food Chair in Montpellier. Following an internship at an R&D Farm in Minnesota centered on agroecology, he pursued an LLM in Law, Economics, and Finance at the International University College of Turin with a research thesis on food policy councils as a critical institution for food commoning. At present, his Ph.D. research adopts a socio-legal approach to food commons and property to unveil how food commoners on the ground relate to property in their attempt to build non-commodity-based food systems. 

Alexandra Baumgartner

Alexandra Baumgartner (* 1991, Zurich) is a Swiss-Italian artist based in Biel/Bienne. Embracing her subject’s complexity, Baumgartner uses various forms of storytelling while building on photography as a key tool within her research-led practice. Her latest works expand on sound, gardening, performance, and food, in response to a multifaceted world of intra-actions between cultivated plants and humans. Exploring the ambiguous relationships towards what is commonly referred to as ‘nature’, Baumgartner navigates between the emotional and political realms of resource management, conservation strategies and knowledge production, responding to the biodiversity crisis.

Alexandra Baumgartner received her BA in Camera Arts from the Lucerne School of Art and Design in 2019 and holds a BA in Middle Eastern Studies and Modern History (University of Zurich). She is currently studying for her MA in Social Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Bern.