As a result of the concluding observation in the last section, indigenous and local
communities' interests in food security transcend conventional concern in that parlance about food
availability, accessibility, adequacy and agency. Indeed, traditional farmers' contribution to PGRs
which has been the focus of farmers' rights movement is only secondary to the importance of
traditional agriculture as a vehicle for indigenous socio-cultural survival and for safeguarding
their human dignity.
It is hardly surprising that the ITPGRFA associated farmers' rights with traditional knowledge.
From this perspective, conceivably the most critical concern of indigenous and local communities
in regard to food security is one of acceptability. Indigenous and local communities are interested
in culturally acceptable food within an environment and process that is respectful of human
dignity and socio-cultural norms.
The use of intellectual property rights in the PGRs arena to promote scientific plant breeding
and other agro-biotech innovations at the expense of traditional farmers' contributions advances a
food culture anchored in the Western scientific model. This phenomenon is consistent with the
colonial approach which relegated agricultural production in indigenous communities to the
provision of raw materials for the core industrial countries.
One of the principal motivations of colonialism is the control of natural resources. This
is evident in the so-called international division of labor in which colonized regions supplied raw
materials for the colonizing powers. Generally, colonialism promotes the idea of nature
exploitation for the servicing of manufacturing concerns or factories, commerce and the market
economy. The Western knowledge system which drives the colonial framework is associated with
a set of values based on power and industrial capitalism. In the neo/post colonial era, intellectual
property rights are a crucial weapon in the sustenance of the colonial status quo in which
indigenous resources or contributions to knowledge are deployed and coveted as raw materials to
advance Western proprietary interests.
It has rightly been observed that the knowledge and power nexus which constitutes part of the
hallmark of colonial and post/colonial experiences of indigenous and local communities
“generates inequities and domination by the way such knowledge is generated and structured, the
way it is legitimized and alternatives [i.e. indigenous knowledge systems] are de-legitimized, and
the way in which such knowledge transforms nature and society.” In the postcolonial era,
indigenous agricultural practices have continued to contribute to the enrichment and supply of vital plant genetic diversity which constitute core raw materials for agro biotech industries in
developed countries. Under this framework, as in the colonial era, sustainable agricultural
practices and food security in indigenous communities are hardly a priority. Rather, via
the instrumentality of agro-biotech, effort is expended on how insights deriving therefrom can be
exploited and reframed in Western scientific narrative, for instance, to secure vital utility patents
or PBRs in order to ensure external control of local food supply. Consequently, those
communities are rendered dependent on industrialized countries for food while they also gratify
the much-needed export food market.