The Chilean documentary “La Ruta de las Semillas” (The Seed Route) helps reveal, share and strengthen the cultural heritage linked to the ancestral practice of exchanging seeds, which is carried out today by various agricultural and agroecological groups.
The documentary contributes to the debate on the various socio-environmental conflicts that occur in the Biobío territories, where problems such as lack of water, forest monocultures, the use of pesticides by the agro-export industry and urban densification (common problems today in the small farming sector throughout Latin America) are becoming more acute.
The production team developed the documentary in 2015 with urban-peasant organizations in the Biobío region and it constitutes a recognition of the work carried out by these organizations to maintain peasant seeds at the community level,
Manu Correa, from Latin American Noises, says: “Documenting the seed route is a task whose value lies in making visible productive dynamics denied by the market. It demonstrates the respect for biodiversity that the heirs of native seeds propose to instill in future generations.”
The release of the documentary “The Route of Seeds” is very timely considering the signing of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) signed by Michelle Bachelet’s government on February 4 in New Zealand. The biogenetic heritage of peasant and indigenous communities is threatened with being the latest process of colonization based on the denial, invisibility and elimination of ancestral knowledge and practices, as various organizations at national and international level have denounced. The signing of this agreement has multiple implications for the exercise of sovereignty of peoples and territories, and will impact the biogenetic heritage of peasant and indigenous communities.
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