The corporate capture of seeds: Who controls our food? | Lucas Micallef

For thousands of years, saving seeds was a farmer’s natural right. It was how families built resilience, preserved diversity, and kept culture alive. Today, that right has been eroded. A handful of corporations now dominate the seed supply and Europe is no exception. 

Seeds may look small, but they carry immense power. Without them, there is no harvest, no bread, no wine, no culture. Generations of European farmers selected and saved seeds adapted to their soils, climates, and traditions. But in just four decades, this system of shared abundance has been dismantled, replaced by corporate ownership. As climate change accelerates and food security becomes fragile, the question of who controls seeds is a defining one. 

From commons to commodity 

The turning point came in 1980, when the US Supreme Court allowed life itself to be patented. What had always been common suddenly became property. Farmers who had saved seeds as their ancestors did were told they could no longer do so. 

Corporations raced to patent, purchase, and consolidate. Monsanto—once just a chemical producer—became the symbol of this shift. Between 1985 and 2009, it swallowed dozens of seed companies, patenting herbicide-resistant crops like soybeans and maize. 

By the late 2010s, mergers produced today’s Big Three: Bayer (which took over Monsanto), Corteva, and Syngenta. Together, they now control more than 60% of the global commercial seed market. Their reach extends into Europe’s fields, shaping what farmers can plant and what citizens can eat. 

What Europe risks losing 

This concentration of power carries heavy costs: 

• Biodiversity decline: Traditional varieties are disappearing. Three-quarters of global plant diversity is already gone. In Malta, heritage tomatoes are increasingly rare. In Italy, ancient grains like einkorn survive only thanks to dedicated farmers. In Greece, hardy olive varieties face replacement by uniform, high-yield clones. Uniformity leaves us dangerously exposed to 

pests, disease, and climate shocks. 

• Farmer dependency: Farmers tied to patented seed-and-chemical packages must purchase fresh every year. What was once self-sufficiency has become dependency. 

• Innovation stifled: Corporate research chases patents and profits, not resilience. Herbicide tolerance and pest resistance dominate, while traits Europe urgently needs—drought adaptation, nutrition, flavour—are neglected. 

• Biopiracy: Europe’s own heritage crops risk being mined for traits, patented, and sold back to us. Centuries of farmer knowledge reduced to commodities. 

Seeds as power 

Seeds are not just agriculture. They are carriers of memory, culture, and sovereignty. Each seed holds centuries of adaptation and the promise of renewal. When control shifts from farmers to corporations, it is not only an economic matter—it is about power. Whoever controls seeds controls food. And whoever controls food controls people. 

For Europe, where farming is entwined with cultural heritage, the erosion of seed sovereignty is not just about agriculture. It is the loss of identity, story, and flavour. 

The EU debate 

The EU is revisiting seed laws under the Green Deal and Farm to Fork Strategy. But corporate lobbying is fierce. The question is simple: Will farmers regain the right to save, exchange, and market their seeds, or will rules continue to favour monopolies? 

What Europe needs is clear: 

• Strong antitrust enforcement to halt consolidation. 

• Seed laws that empower farmers, not corporations. 

• Public programmes that support climate resilience, nutrition, and local adaptation over patents. 

Fighting back 

Across Europe, resistance is alive. In Italy, Spain, and Greece, networks protect heritage wheat, beans, and olives. In France, seed houses safeguard thousands of varieties. In Spain, Red de Semillas links farmers in a living web of exchange. 

These efforts remind us that diversity is resilience. Farming rooted in tradition and adapted to place is not backward—it is the future. Consumers also carry power. Choosing regional produce sustains biodiversity and supports the farmers who protect it. Every purchase can be an act of resistance. 

The corporate capture of seeds has narrowed our choices and weakened our food system. But across Europe, people are proving another path is possible. It is a path rooted in diversity, sovereignty, and justice. 

The EU now faces a choice: Defend monopolies, or defend seed sovereignty as part of Europe’s legacy. Citizens, too, must choose between passive uniformity or active diversity. 

Because in the end, whoever controls seeds controls the future. And Europe must ensure that future belongs to its people.