From variety selection practices to ecological justice

Via the « Distinction Uniformity Stability - DUS » criteria, the legislative framework of the European Union imposes a norm of standardisation for the registration of plant varieties in the catalogue allowing for the marketing of respective seeds. As practitionners of “crop biodiversity”, very few farmers register their crop varieties, despite the existing derogation system. Starting from a set of four case studies – Semailles (Belgium), Kokopelli (France), Kaol Kozh (France) and Conaterra (Brazil)– we demonstrate that these crop diversity farmers develop numerous strategies to enable the circulation of their seed (sometimes kept invisible), but also, at the same time, to render visible their public demands (Dewey 1927) (Zask 2008)(Zask 2003). Behind these heterogenous strategies, we identify a common claim for ecological justice (Bosselmann 2008; Schlosberg 2016), which is composed of the right to existence, to recognition and to participation in the redefenition of the criteria for seed marketing (Coolsaet 2016), as well as the inclusion of the “non-human” in the debate.