Mexico 2025: Semillas en Resistencia Global
Peoples Confronting Transnational Tech Giants and the Dispossession of Genetic Resources
In November 2025, Navdanya International returned to Mexico — a territory at the heart of global struggles for seed sovereignty — to take part in Semillas en Resistencia Global. The gathering marked an important moment of convergence, bringing together farmers, Indigenous communities, grassroots movements, researchers, and activists from across Latin America, Africa, and Europe to collectively reflect on the future of seeds, food systems, and life itself.
This gathering grew out of more than a decade of shared organising with Latin American movements and a long-standing presence in Mexico, from the 2014 Seed Freedom mobilisation and the Permanent People’s Tribunal against GMO maize to subsequent forums, hearings and movement exchanges that helped weave and strengthen the Red Semillas de Libertad coalition across the region.
This year’s meeting did not emerge in isolation. In 2024, Navdanya International had already been deeply involved in Mexico, organizing a series of events with Dr. Vandana Shiva to support the defense of native maize varieties and their protection in law. Mexico, as a center of origin of maize, stands on the frontline of resistance against the erosion of agrobiodiversity and the corporate capture of seeds. Semillas en Resistencia Global invited us to look one step ahead — toward the challenges that small-scale farmers, food sovereignty, and seed freedom will face in the short and long term, particularly in light of the rapid political and technological push surrounding so-called “New Genomic Techniques.”
Thirty Years of Failed Promises, Thirty Years of Resistance
Navdanya International has been engaged in the struggle for seed freedom since the 1980s, beginning in India at the onset of the global push for industrial agricultural technologies. Over the past decades, we have witnessed the failure of the Green Revolution model and its extractive logic — a model based on monocultures, chemical dependency, fossil fuels, and the privatization of life.
We have been present throughout the first wave of GMOs, opposing the patenting of seeds and genetic material and exposing the ecological, social, and economic harm caused by genetically modified crops and chemical-intensive farming. Far from ending hunger or increasing resilience, this model has deepened farmers’ dependency, eroded biodiversity, depleted soils, and undermined food sovereignty.
Despite the persistent narrative promoted by multinational corporations — that uniformity, industrial breeding, and genetic manipulation are the path toward sustainability and food security — decades of lived experience tell a different story. From pesticide-tolerant crops to biofortified promises such as Golden Rice or GM sweet potato, GMOs have failed to deliver resilience. Instead, they have increased vulnerability, reduced agrobiodiversity, and locked farmers into cycles of debt and chemical dependence.
True resilience is not built through uniformity, but through diversity.
Seeds, Diversity, and Real Resilience
Navdanya’s work offers living proof of this alternative. Through community-led seed banks — more than 200 across India — Navdanya has conserved over 4,000 varieties of rice alone, each carrying unique traits developed through centuries of farmers’ knowledge and ecological co-evolution.
In Odisha, when a cyclone flooded rice paddies with saline water, it was not a laboratory-designed seed that restored production, but a traditional rice variety naturally tolerant to salinity. This is resilience rooted in biodiversity, not technological control. We already possess the diversity needed to face climate instability — if it is protected, shared, and allowed to flourish.
Technology without participation, and legislation driven by financial interests rather than ecological and social responsibility, will never deliver food sovereignty.
A Second Wave of Biopiracy
Today, we are witnessing what can only be described as a second wave of attempted privatization of life. After the first generation of GMOs failed socially and ecologically, a new narrative has emerged — one that rebrands genetic engineering under the name of “New Genomic Techniques.”
At Semillas en Resistencia Global, Navdanya International presented its new report on recent developments in GMOs and so-called NGTs. The report traces alarming political shifts that seek to deregulate these technologies by exempting them from biosafety assessments, labeling, and traceability, while simultaneously maintaining their eligibility for patents.
Despite being presented as “nature-like” and precise, NGTs reproduce the same industrial logic: minimal genetic alterations designed to extract genetic material from its ecological and cultural context, claim it as innovation, and enclose it under intellectual property regimes. If these seeds were truly equivalent to natural varieties, they would not be patentable. This contradiction reveals the true objective — the privatization of the living commons.
The techniques themselves, including CRISPR/Cas9, are far from the precision tools they are claimed to be. There is no scientific consensus on their safety, accuracy, or long-term ecological impacts. Yet they are being fast-tracked politically as solutions to climate change and sustainability, while agroecological alternatives are systematically sidelined.
A Global Struggle, A Shared Understanding
What emerged clearly from the gathering in Mexico was a shared understanding across scientific, political, cultural, and social perspectives: a new global push is underway to enclose seeds, genetic material, and biodiversity under corporate control. This struggle is unfolding worldwide — from Argentina and Brazil to Europe, Africa, and Asia.
At the same time, resistance is growing. Grassroots movements, Indigenous peoples, farmers’ networks, and researchers are strengthening alliances, sharing knowledge, and defending existing legal frameworks that protect biodiversity and farmers’ rights. From community seed banks to GMO-free territories, agroecological alternatives continue to demonstrate that GMOs are not only unnecessary — they are obsolete.
Life is a web of relationships. Seeds, soils, cultures, and communities are inseparable. To live well, we must protect this web with care, responsibility, and respect.
A Convergence of Knowledges, Territories, and Relationships
Semillas en Resistencia Global was a true convergence — of long-standing relationships and new encounters, of shared struggles and emerging alliances. Old friends met again, new connections were formed, and a growing network took shape, rooted in trust, care, and collective responsibility.
Researchers from different regions shared grounded insights into how New Genomic Techniques actually function and where genetic modification science truly stands today. Their contributions helped demystify dominant claims of precision and innovation, opening space for honest discussion about uncertainty, risks, and limits. From Africa, expert voices ( name ) warned about genome sequencing and the dangers it poses when controlled by multinational corporations — not only for seeds, but for entire food systems and livelihoods.
Farmers’ voices were equally central. Rural networks from Chile ( name ), Mexico, and across Latin America shared concrete experiences of seed conservation, community breeding, and collective stewardship. Indigenous and small-scale farmers spoke of milpa systems, agrobiodiversity, and healthy food not as concepts, but as daily practices rooted in territory, culture, and autonomy — and as the first line of defense against contamination and enclosure.
Semillas de Vida, the organizing collective, acted much like the milpa itself: holding diversity together without forcing uniformity. Scientists, farmers, activists, and Indigenous peoples thought and worked side by side, recognizing that those who suffer first from decisions taken far away are rural communities — and that they must be at the center of any discussion about seeds and food.
A shared understanding emerged clearly: agrobiodiversity is right for people and for nature. It is the foundation of resilience. Seeds make us live. The destruction of seed diversity and the exploitation of people and ecosystems for short-term profit leads inevitably toward the privatization of all natural resources — from animal species to seeds themselves.
Against this trajectory, the gathering affirmed another path: one rooted in diversity, collective knowledge, and the defense of life as a commons.
Thinking ahead, acting together
Semillas en Resistencia Global is an important step toward strengthening collaboration between farmers, Indigenous peoples, movements, and researchers. Our main focus in the coming years will be on dismantling narratives of false solutions and bringing the results of research directly to the fields. Questions such as “What does drought resistance really mean?” and “How do new and old technologies actually work?” will guide our information and education efforts in the year ahead.
A shared publication of the outcomes of Semillas en Resistencia Global, led by Semillas de Vida, is planned for 2026, along with educational projects for youth, movements, and farmers focused on agroecology and GMO threats. Navdanya International will continue to work with and stand alongside movements resisting biopiracy, exposing false solutions, and cultivating real alternatives rooted in diversity, democracy, and collective sovereignty.