Events

Presented by Susannah Chapman. Over the past several decades, many fruit breeding programs have begun to commercialize new varieties via the strategic use to two legal techniques: the use of plant variety protection—coupled with contracts to create small “clubs” of select growers—and the use of branding to foster ready consumer demand for the protected fruit that the club would produce.

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

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

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but the affirmation of their legal rights to protect and maintain cultural access to such plants has been fraught with outdated conceptions of what "religion" and "legitimate practice of spiritual traditions" entails, especially with respect to plants and

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