Revolturas: resisting multinational seed corporations and legal seed regimes through seed-saving practices and activism in Colombia

Drawing on ethnographic research, we analyze the motivations, conditions of possibility, and strategies of seed saving among different farmers in Colombia. For indigenous agroecological farmers, seed saving represents a form of resistance mobilized through narratives of tradition, sovereignty, freedom, and environmental protection. In contrast, industrial farmers, who grow genetically-modified cotton, carry out seed saving surreptitiously to minimize production costs and to resist the enclosure of seeds by corporations. Despite these two groups of farmers' different political motivations and strategies, both types of seed saving practices challenge corporate seed control. Can these seed-saving practices be considered forms of seed sovereignty activism?.