Plant Success

Making and Marketing Biocultural Heritage in Agriculture: From the Andean Community to Asia
2025-11-18 05:00 - 06:00 (Australia/Melbourne) | Zoom
Presented by Rosemary Coombe and David Jefferson.
Much socio-legal research on intellectual property in relation to food and agriculture focuses on the influence of global policy norms on domestic law-making and the expansion of new international trade opportunities for small-scale producers. Other studies have examined controversies and contestations around government actors claiming foods as manifestations of their national heritage. We depart from both mainstream analytical approaches, employing perspectives from legal anthropology on how ‘policy travels’ to consider new articulations of human rights and sustainability objectives. We evaluate and synthesise a growing body of ethnographic research (much of it done by and with international NGOs) that explores how Indigenous, ethnic minority, and other communities living in rural areas in the Global South articulate proprietary claims over seeds, crops, agricultural methods, and culinary knowledge as important forms of biocultural heritage in socioecological initiatives. These novel proprietary claims, exist inside, outside, and often alongside conventional intellectual property vehicles. Influenced by environmental development NGOs, farmers’ movements, and food sovereignty aspirations, communities assert biocultural rights norms to identify goods derived from collective territorial enterprise. Drawing from earlier research focused on Andean Community member states, we now consider examples from China, the Philippines, and Nepal of how biocultural heritage territories are designated, agroecology principles are asserted, biocultural goods are made and marketed, and agritourism initiatives promoted. Together, these examples demonstrate interlinkages between Andean and Asian communities as global policy norms of biodiversity conservation, traditional knowledge protection, climate change mitigation, and food security and sovereignty are interpreted through articulations of collective rights to heritage.

Biographies
Rosemary Coombe
Rosemary J. Coombe is a Full Professor in the Departments of Anthropology and Social Science. She held the Tier One Canada Research Chair in Law, Communication and Culture at York University from 2001- 2022. She supervises graduate students in Anthropology and Socio-Legal Studies. Prior to becoming a CRC at York, she was a Full Professor of Law at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. She holds doctoral degrees in law and anthropology and publishes widely in anthropology, cultural studies, law and society and food and heritage studies.
Her early work addressed the cultural, political, and social implications of intellectual property laws. Her book, The Cultural Life of Intellectual Properties (1998, reprinted in 2008) is a legal ethnography of the ways in which intellectual property law shapes cultural politics in consumer societies. She now does research on ‘the work of culture’ in an era of informational capital. Topics include the protection of biological diversity and its relation to cultural diversity, and the emergence of ‘biocultural heritage’ protections. Generally, she explores the ‘culturalisation’ of claims, entitlements, and social justice aspirations under conditions of neoliberalism, sustainable development objectives, and evolving and emerging fields of human rights, particularly Peasants’ Rights.
David Jefferson
Dr David J Jefferson (he/him) is an Associate Professor at the University of Canterbury Faculty of Law, where he teaches Environmental Law, Land Law, and Intellectual Property. David is a legal anthropologist whose research covers a range of issues related to biodiversity conservation, biotechnology regulation, intellectual property in the agricultural and food sectors, ecosystem rights laws, and the protection of Indigenous knowledge systems. The field sites where David works are in Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, and the Andean Community of South America. He holds a PhD in Law from the University of Queensland, a JD from the University of California, Davis, and an MA in Psychology from Suffolk University. David has been the recipient of several competitive research awards, including a United States Fulbright fellowship for work in Ecuador. His first book, Towards an Ecological Intellectual Property: Reconfiguring Relationships Between People and Plants in Ecuador was published in 2020
About People, Plants and the Law Online Lecture Series
The People, Plants, and the Law lecture series explores the legal and lively entanglements of human and botanical worlds.
Today people engage with and relate to plants in diverse and sometimes divergent ways. Seeds—and the plants that they produce—may be receptacles of memory, sacred forms of sustenance, or sites of resistance in struggles over food sovereignty. Simultaneously, they may be repositories of gene sequences, Indigenous knowledge, bulk commodities, or key components of economic development projects and food security programs.
This lecture series explores the special role of the law in shaping these different engagements, whether in farmers’ fields, scientific laboratories, international markets, or elsewhere.
This People, Plants and the Law lecture is brought to you in collaboration with The International Society for the History and Theory of Intellectual Property (ISHTIP).

Honoring the Gift: A Share-Alike Approach to Free Access to Seeds and Collaborative Futures
2026-02-18 09:00 - 10:00
Presented by Claudia Irene Calderón, Jean-Michel Ané and Jorge L. Contreras.
Seeds represent more than just genetic material. They are gifts that embody community stories, cultural memory, and ecological adaptation, serving as the foundation of our food systems. This talk will delve into how we can honor these gifts through ethical frameworks and collaborative practices that safeguard free access and reciprocity. We will begin by sharing lessons from the MaSE project, which promotes mutual learning between Indigenous communities and academic institutions to develop culturally grounded guidelines for seed sovereignty collaboratively. Next, we will explore the scientific and ethical dimensions surrounding research on nitrogen-fixing maize landraces from Oaxaca. This case exemplifies both the promise of agroecological innovation and the risks of biopiracy when Indigenous contributions are overlooked. Lastly, we will examine legal approaches to open seed germplasm transfers, such as Bioleft (in Argentina) or the Open Source Seed Initiative (OSSI), which seek to challenge restrictive intellectual property regimes and foster commons-based stewardship. Together, these perspectives encourage us to envision collaborative futures where diverse forms of knowledge, cultural commitments, scientific advancements, and legal frameworks converge to safeguard biodiversity and promote ethical sharing.

Biographies
Professor Jean-Michel Ané is a Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor in both the Department of Bacteriology and the Department of Plant and Agroecosystem Sciences at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His primary research focuses on elucidating the molecular mechanisms that drive efficient symbiotic relationships between plants and microbes. The ultimate aim of his work is to leverage this understanding to improve agricultural productivity and sustainability for the production of food, feed, and biofuels.

Professor Jorge Contreras is a Distinguished University Professor, the James T. Jensen Endowed Professor for Transactional Law and Director of the Program on Intellectual Property and Technology Law and the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. His research focuses on intellectual property and innovation law, and he has written extensively on patent pledges and other forms of open innovation in the life sciences.

Dr Calderón is an Affiliated Professor at Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala and a Teaching Faculty in the Department of Plant and Agroecosystem Sciences at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her work uses participatory and transdisciplinary approaches to advance just agroecological transitions. With extensive experience at the intersections of gender, indigeneity, health, and agroecology, she is committed to re-centering ancestral knowledge and fostering respectful collaborations that value different ways of knowing. Through initiatives such as MaSE “Maize Sovereignty for Everyone, Mutual Learning for the Defense and Culturally Acceptable Use of Indigenous Biodiversity”, she promotes mutual learning between Indigenous communities and academic institutions to co-create ethical frameworks for seed sovereignty that safeguard biodiversity and strengthen sustainable food systems.

About People, Plants and the Law Online Lecture Series
The People, Plants, and the Law lecture series explores the legal and lively entanglements of human and botanical worlds.
Today people engage with and relate to plants in diverse and sometimes divergent ways. Seeds—and the plants that they produce—may be receptacles of memory, sacred forms of sustenance, or sites of resistance in struggles over food sovereignty. Simultaneously, they may be repositories of gene sequences, Indigenous knowledge, bulk commodities, or key components of economic development projects and food security programs.
This lecture series explores the special role of the law in shaping these different engagements, whether in farmers’ fields, scientific laboratories, international markets, or elsewhere.

Do Sacred Plants Have Standing? Religious Freedom of Expression & Biocultural Recovery of Sacred & Ceremonial Plants
2026-03-11 09:30 - 10:30
Presented by Gary Nabhan.
Indigenous communities and other traditional ethnic enclaves have long integrated sacred and ceremonial plants into their spiritual traditions, but the affirmation of their legal rights to protect and maintain cultural access to such plants has been fraught with outdated conceptions of what “religion” and “legitimate practice of spiritual traditions” entails, especially with respect to plants and animals used in ceremonies and their legal status as “sacred persons”. Case studies from the contested U.S.-Mexico border and war-torn Middle East will suggest some ways that public perception and case law are evolving to accommodate these Indigenous rights more fully.

Biography
Gary Nabhan PhD is a contemplative desert ecologist and Franciscan Brother. He founded the Sacred Plants Biocultural Recovery Initiative and worked with indigenous spiritual leaders and elected officials to declare the saguaro cactus as a sacred sentient being with legal protection on 100,000 ha of Sonoran Desert lands. He is author, Coauthor or editor of 35 books in 6 languages and over 150 scholarly articles and book chapters.

About People, Plants and the Law Online Lecture Series
The People, Plants, and the Law lecture series explores the legal and lively entanglements of human and botanical worlds.
Today people engage with and relate to plants in diverse and sometimes divergent ways. Seeds—and the plants that they produce—may be receptacles of memory, sacred forms of sustenance, or sites of resistance in struggles over food sovereignty. Simultaneously, they may be repositories of gene sequences, Indigenous knowledge, bulk commodities, or key components of economic development projects and food security programs.
This lecture series explores the special role of the law in shaping these different engagements, whether in farmers’ fields, scientific laboratories, international markets, or elsewhere.

Bad to Think With: Plants and Property Relations
2026-04-28 16:00 - 17:00
Presented by Veit Braun.
Animals, Claude Lévi-Strauss famously said, are not just good to eat but good to think with: they elucidate the structure of social relations. But what about plants? In this talk I argue that the ways we relate to plants on the one hand and the matrix of people and things on the other offered by property thought are a bad match. Much of what plants are and do does not neatly fit into the categories of subject and object or body and idea; nor can the problems caused by intellectual and tangible property in plants easily be addressed by the critique of property. To elaborate this point, I want to sketch the trajectories on which plants go astray and slip through our matrices of property (including my own) by exploring some of what has happened in the legal landscape of especially European plant breeding over the last 20 or so years. Whether we should run after plants and leave property behind or, conversely, try to patch up the structure of property relations depends on what we care about more: saving plants or saving property.
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Biography
Veit Braun is a sociologist and Research Associate at the University of Augsburg, Germany. His work is situated at the intersection of law, economics and biology. Veit has studied the contemporary crises of property in plant breeding and the organisational and temporal logics of animal biobanks. He is currently leading the research project ‘More and Less’ on the mutable identity of nitrogen in society. His book At the End of Property: Patents, Plants and the Crisis of Propertization was published by Bristol University Press in 2024.

About People, Plants and the Law Online Lecture Series
The People, Plants, and the Law lecture series explores the legal and lively entanglements of human and botanical worlds.
Today people engage with and relate to plants in diverse and sometimes divergent ways. Seeds—and the plants that they produce—may be receptacles of memory, sacred forms of sustenance, or sites of resistance in struggles over food sovereignty. Simultaneously, they may be repositories of gene sequences, Indigenous knowledge, bulk commodities, or key components of economic development projects and food security programs.
This lecture series explores the special role of the law in shaping these different engagements, whether in farmers’ fields, scientific laboratories, international markets, or elsewhere.
