BIOPOLITICS, SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND GENETIC RESOURCES: THE CASE OF PAA SEEDS BIOPOLÍTICA, MOVIMENTOS SOCIAIS E RECURSOS GENÉTICOS: O CASO DO PAA SEMENTES BIOPOLITICA, MOVIMIENTOS SOCIALES Y RECURSOS GENÉTICOS: EL CASO DE PAA SEMILLAS

Genetic resources are strategic elements for the control and organization of the capitalist agriculture’s production chain. In Brazil, this process is not devoid of conflicts, as rural social movements resist the manipulation of genetic resources through contestatory and propositional actions. Seeking to analyze a recent Brazilian public policy, the Food Acquisition Program (PAA), which has a new modality – “PAA Seeds”, this study departs from the operationalization of the concept of fungibility of power, which considers that power has expanded to all dimensions of life. Thus biopolitics, in a context of pluripotent life, becomes exercised at the intracellular level through biotechnology. In this perspective, power is no longer exclusively of a territorial nature becoming possible to exercise by the manipulation of the temporality of life in order to control the territory. Through this system of concepts, we seek to verify if “PAA Seeds” can be considered a form of reappraising forces in a biopolitical contentious for the control of the manipulation of genetic resources, specifically the seeds. Based on the instances of dispute between agribusiness and peasant agriculture, we identify along the established analytical movement that “PAA Seeds” is presented as a rebalancing mechanism between these two different biopolitical projects.


Introduction
Knowing that no country is completely self-sufficient, exchanges between the various regions of the world are important in our reality. In accordance with natural laws, genetic variability is a key factor for the strengthening and perpetuation of life. However, in the opposite direction to what one might expect, the neoliberal international trade regime has, contrary to promoting a greater exchange of genetic resources, resulted in a drastic erosion of these. To put this in perspective, according to estimates from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) (1999), between 1990 and 2000, 75% of genetic resources have been lost.
Conversely, this movement has found resistance from peasants who depend on agricultural biodiversity to maintain their way of life and production, since genetic resources are the basis of all agriculture. Thus, in this work we investigate the relationship between genetic resources and rural social movements, identifying that in Brazil the state has been pressured by some of these movements to mitigate this relation through public policies. The Food Acquisition Program (PAA), for example, has a new modality -"PAA Seeds" -that aims to recover, store and multiply seeds and seedlings. This program, that is innovative in the reduction of rural inequalities, creating an institutional market for peasant farmers while contributing to the food security of rural and urban populations (De Schutter, 2014;FAO, 2015), evolved to incorporate this new concern. In this way, we explore that question by realizing that while the PAA has been widely studied, the academic literature, which addresses about this new modality, is still incipient.
The reflection below is essentially characterized as a case study to ascertain, through the circumstance of "PAA Seeds", if the focus of tensions between the state and rural social movements have incorporated a new dimension beyond the land question, to call upon the exercise of power through the control of genetic resources. As a question, secondary to the purposes of the general premise, we wish to verify if Foucault's concept of biopower has transferred from the scale of the species to the instracelular scale as a control mechanism over bodies, beginning what Rose (2007) called molecular age.
This expansion of the power from the territorial dimension (land question) to the dimension of life (genetic resources), according to Braun (2007), implies the assertion in the theoretical field biopolitics and geopolitics are nothing more than different sides of the same coin: a fungible power. This conceptual framework is intended to encompass the expansion of politics to all dimensions of life through the instrumentalization of biotechnological techniques. Thus, this study seeks to operationalize this conceptual system and reflect upon the dispute between different projects in relation to the genetic manipulation of seeds through "PAA Seeds" and its consequences. The timeframe established is situated in the context of an expansion in social demands and policies during the governments of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers Party, PT -2002PT - to 2015. It is important to note that data relating to "PAA seeds" is still lacking as it is a recent public policy. Most of what is available was collected from secondary sources of federal, state and municipal agencies and are organized on the web page "PAA Data". This information is not substantial, but we used what was avalible as a way to test the hypotheses.
This article is divided into three parts. Initially, we present a conceptual framework that allows for the exploration of the genetic resource contentious through the concept of fungibility of power. In sequence, we discuss the peasant resistance for the control of seeds and how it is reflected in the process of dispute for the state. Lastly, we explore the capacity of "PAA Seeds" to promote peasant control of genetic resources by facilitating the access of these to the institutional market under special conditions.
From the geopolitics to the biopolitics of genetic resources in the international grain trade In this section of the article we seek to assess the instrumentalization of the techniques of fabrication and commercialization of life (Rose, 2007) through the logic of capital. We departed from the initial perception that the use of biotechnology and genetic patents legitimizes the biopolitics logic of making some live and letting so many die (Foucault, 2003). Thus, the expansion of biopolitical mechanisms to all areas of biological life is characterized as one of the main procedures of control over the (re) production of life. This phenomenon directly involves the flexibilization of the temporalities and spatialities of instruments that allow for the artificialization as an agricultural commodity since the biotech revolution agriculture, as the core of the dispute between various actors.
Perhaps one of the most striking aspects of contemporary consumer society is the continuous expansion of a market logic to all dimensions of human life, including the biological dimension of the very fabrication of life (Rose, 2007), namely, the field of biotechnology. In this sense, power in the contemporary world cannot be envisioned only through the magnitude of territorial sovereignty. It was no mere coincidence that the concepts of geopolitics and biopolitics were coined by the germanophile author Rudolf Kjellén, which in a certain way implied in a system of analysis where territorial power could merge with populational power and vice versa. Authors such as Ingram (2009) andBraun (2007) explain the fusion mechanisms of geopolitics and biopolitics. This way, the idea of the territorial state is not separated from the idea of the populational state, as Foucault (2003) affirmed that in order to make live or let die, the organization of a specific spatial arrangement is required. In the perspective of biopolitics 1 , the state is established as an entity that 1 In the conceptual system of biopolitics there is for Foucault a bipolar diagram, a pole focuses on a anatomo-politics of the human body seeking to maximize their strengths and integrate them into efficient systems. A second pole consists of regulatory controls, a biopolitics of population, focusing on the spices and body, the body imbued with the mechanism of life. For Pogrebinschi (2004, p. 197) there is "a common element that travels between the disciplinary power and biopower, manages life through governamentality, a notion that seeks the self discipline of beings over bodies but also wishes to maximize the vitality of a population, making the exercise of power less costly (Rabinow;Rose, 2006).
In this sense, the logic of the struggle for the international market assumes that the conquest of new spaces of production, circulation and consumption across the global space is of special importance. However, these new spaces do not refer only to traditional spaces such as territorial extensions. Since, with the advance of the capitalist logic and detachment of the temporalities of (re)production and consumption, power has become feasible not only on territorial extensions but also over life itself, in of itself, as a space of dispute. In this sense, we depart from the idea that control over life is a way to control time and in this sense the traditional territorial sovereignty can be transformed into sovereignty over life through the appropriation of saberes (knowledges) and expertises, as in Foucault's reflections knowledge is power.
To discuss the postmodern condition, Harvey (1992) speaks of the phenomenon of space compression by time. In this context, controlling the temporality of life is characterized as a control mechanism of territorial dynamics through the flexibilization and manipulation of everydayness which Lefebvre (2004) frequently refers in his studies. That is, controlling the spatiotemporal dynamics of life through the instrumentalization of biotechnology in accordance with the logic of capital (re)production presents itself as the newest face of biopolitics. In this way, biotechnology has expanded to all sectors of the fabrication of biological life, not just human, forging what Rose (2007) determinated a market of life by means of a bioeconomy that establishes through biopolitical manipulation, no longer at the level of species, but, intracellularly. As the author explains, the molecularisation life has brought a new moment in the history of biopolitics, in which the bodies are understood in terms of their genetic inheritance. Rose (2007) also states that this is not the only way in which the molecularisation of life was seized, since it has also ocurred as the global biopolitics of biosecurity. In this perspective, Braun (2007) advises that the principal security response to the problem of the unknown is the speculative act, that is, preemptive action. In this instance, all life can be between discipline and regulation, and that enables the maintenance of the balance between disciplinary the order of the body and the aleatory order of population". modified by the manipulation of genes as building blocks of pluripotent life (Dillon;Lobo-Guerrero, 2008), in order to face any possible security risk.
Naturally, in the global agricultural market, various power strategies are established and the mechanism of compression of space by time would not be the only one, since the opposite process of compression of time by the organization of space is also possible and, of course, that would be, in this case, geopolitical. In this work, we are interested essentially in the opposite mechanism, to be installed, the manipulation of fabrication of life techniques as a way to manipulate the temporality of a given place, and hence, the spatiality experienced in daily life. In a way, the genetic manipulation of seeds as potential life allows for the construction of another spatiality that would not be possible if the seeds were not genetically modified to demonstrate ontically certain characteristics.
In capitalist agriculture, the core of strategies of control over the life fabrication revolves around the genetic manipulation of seeds. Genetically manipulating seeds, by flexiblizing time, either by acceleration or through the interruption of the process of life`s (re)production are essential in order to adapt the ecological temporality to the capital's temporality (Gurvitch, 1964). Thus to manipulate life's time also entails in the production of multiple spaces in a different manner from those previously possible by physiographic and technological conditions. From this premise, it can be said that the control of the fabrication of life is established as a control mechanism of space production, be it by the acceleration or retardation of life's (re)production time. Castree (2001) shows that genetic manipulation allows for the production of new consumption requirements from those who use it for agricultural production. In this perspective, the British geographer shows that agribusiness corporations such as Monsanto, among others, make seeds infertile for the purpose of forcing farmers to buy new seeds instead of replanting part of those that have been produced.
Genetic manipulation also creates a number of other "innovations", to not say obligations, for rural producers. Essentially, Whatmore (2002) explains how the use of the herbicide Roundup (R) can only be successfully applied to transgenic seeds produced by Monsanto, otherwise the product referred to will yield a deleterious effect on the crop with seeds from other brands.
According to the ETC Group (2015), the seed market, even not being the most profitable, is the one that controls the agribusiness chain, as through the genetic transformation of seeds one can produce many forms of new products to be necessarily consumed under the risk of resulting in low productivity or even in making production unviable.
Another important mechanism of control over life refers to patentization of products meant to be commercialized in the global agricultural market. Under the perspective of quality control, agricultural commodities are standardized. In this respect, the obligation of the genetic modification of seeds in order to meet the standard required by the global agricultural market is established as a mechanism to legitimize the intellectual property rights of large companies located in developed countries. This process, therefore, implies the loss of biodiversity in agricultural production especially in major commodity exporting countries. Shiva (2001) draws attention to the idea of colonization of life by using an analogy. If in the colonial period large extensions of land were colonized by the metropolises because they were not of a private nature and thus considered no man's land (terra nullius), in the contemporary period the same can be said, according to the author, about biodiversity and life itself, as nobody's life (bio nullius). Since, in many circumstances biological resources are not private, they are susceptible to appropriation by private entities on the grounds that their property has been patented. For the Indian author, this mechanism constitutes a form of disguised biopiracy.
In view of this process, peasants have been articulating and as social movement resisting such a course. Further on, we will discuss the evolution of the struggle in the countryside and how they have incorporated this agenda, as well as in what way the state, understood as a space of dispute for power, has been mobilized to action.

Peasant resistance to the control of seeds by large corporations
As noted in the previous section one of the ways through which capitalist agriculture maintains its hegemony in directing the development model for the countryside is through the control over genetic resources, especially seeds. This fact has been extremely detrimental for peasants, B G G 228 contributing to their subordinate position in relation to large agribusiness corporations. As Kloppenburg (2008) explains, peasants have lost their sovereignty over seeds, such that they can no longer choose which of them to plant nor which ones to save. This is due to the following factors: [...], the seed industry has pursued both of these routes -technical and social -to further restrict farmers' access to seed to the confines of an increasingly narrow set of market mechanisms. [...] Both national and international structures of governance -that is, institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) as well as national legislatures -have been used for the global elaboration of a set of intellectual property rights (IPRs) based on the principle of exclusion. By making saving of patented seed illegal, these arrangements are effectively an enclosure of farmers' practices as well as their seed. (Kloppenburg, 2008, unpaginated). Therefore, as a consequence of to unequal access to technology, seeds have ceased to be a social good to become property of large corporations that invest large sums of money in order to carry out research on genetic enhancements. Its commodification and instrumentalization for capitalist interests, has become increasingly evident. To the extent that the intellectual property rights over seeds are acquired and exercised by large corporations, resulting in a greater concentration of power, a fact that negatively affects the struggle for the permanency on the land by peasants the peasant struggle to remain on the land.
As can be seen in the collection organized by Carvalho (2003), for peasants seeds have an importance that goes beyond its commercial aspect, also possessing cultural and spiritual values. For example, knowledges about the correct use of seeds in agricultural production is transmitted in peasant families mostly orally, from generation to generation. This indicates that the seeds are elements of great importance in the cosmovision of peasants and not just a productive resource. This statement reinforces Chayanov's (1981) classical theory that family based farming cannot be interpreted by the capitalist laws because it does not have expanded profits as a main objective, but rather, their own reproduction. This cosmovision is founded on an everydayness, different from that produced by the logic of capital (re)production.
In this context, the peasantry manifests a resistance to technified temporalities of acceleration or suspension of life's (re)production. It is important to note that biotechnology itself is not perverse, what makes it either positive or negative are the intentions in its use. In this sense, the manipulation of the mechanisms of life reproduction by the logic of capital are primarily used especially for the (re)production of large-scale capital. An example of this can be seen in the fact that most of the international grain trade is directed towards feeding animals, instead of being directed to the population in situation of starvation. Thus, the manipulation of this temporality also allows the construction of a different spatiality were, with the manipulation of the temporality of life (re)production, it is possible to achieve the commercialization of perishable products on a global scale through the genetic manipulation of these. Naturally, the expansion to a global scale is aimed at producing products for major consumer markets abroad.
This intentionality presents itself as fundamental for both for the populational state, since the manipulation of life produces a greater amount of crops to feed the local population, and for global biopolitics to increase the generation of energy from renewable biological material to ensure life elsewhere. According to Rabinow and Rose (2006) in the new political economy of vitality transnational flows of knowledge, cells, tissues and intellectual property are associated with local intensifications and regulated by transnational institutions.
As a result, La Via Campesina -the main coalition of peasant movements in the world, gathering 164 members, who are present on every continent -has qualified the control over seeds as one of its main goals for the struggle. In the quest to build and implement a development model for the countryside that takes into account the livelihoods and production of the peasants and indigenous peoples, it has noted that seeds should be thought of as fundamentally important.
In 2002, during the United Nations' (UN) World Food Summit, La Via Campesina decided to implement the campaign "Seeds: Patrimony of Rural Peoples in the Service of Humanity". This was consolidated at the World Social Forum held in Porto Alegre, in 2003. They pursued among the campaign goals to: i) enable peasants to control their own "varietal" seeds either individually or in community; ii) ensure the production of seeds in a democratic way and not exclusively by large corporations; iii) prevent the supplying of seeds just on an economic basis, and; iv) prevent the transmission of transgenic seeds (La Via Campesina, 2003). Through this action, these rural social movements aimed to highlight the dangers of the production and sale of genetically modified seeds. As an example of the latter, the creation of a homonymous booklet derived from the campaign conducted by La Via Campesina by the Small Farmers Movement (MPA), in which it presents several procedures that can be adopted by its members to prevent the use of hybrid seeds and privilege the use of native seeds, may be mentioned (MPA, s/d).
From these experiences in Brazil it is worth noting that, increasingly, the struggle for land, and in the land, acquire a broader spectrum. The goal has not been, almost entirely, to overcome the large estates by creating rural settlements, as was the case until the end of the 1990s. Currently, new issues have been incorporated, such as seeds, due to the fact that the Agrarian Question is of structural nature, and it can only be overcome by implementing an alternative development model. Fundamentally, social movements seek to mobilize political resources to take advantage of opportunities constituted by tate action to making use of a security device (Tilly, 2008). More specifically, the discourse of the truth about the sovereignty of national genetic resources, can be mentioned. In a conjunctural horizon, rural social movements seeking to capitalize upon political resources, which in a certain way leads to a point of tension in this form of perverse alignment between the national sovereignty discourse about genetic resources and the idea of collective control by social movements.
Within strucures of rural social movements, there are still those who argue that it will be through a revolutionary process that the denial of the state will occur, following an orthodox Marxist perspective. Nevertheless, in recent years the option to pressure the state has been increasingly vehement, leading it to implement policies that are not fixed to the agricultural model expected by agribusiness (Akram-Lodhi, 2015).
In Brazil, this contributed so waht when in 2003 with the arrival of Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, from PT to the presidency, rural social movements would see some of their demands for changes in the food systems being met. Although agribusiness has remained hegemonic in the countryside, an institutional environment that enabled the implementation of public policies for the countryside, with an emancipatory appeal was created. That is, as part of the conflictuality that characterizes the Brazilian Agrarian Question currently, there was an intensification of the tension for the state between agribusiness and the peasantry (Barbosa Júnior;. For the purpose of this work, it is important to emphasize this context as the demand from rural social movements for control over seeds as opposed to transgenics materialized in a public policy, in this case the Food Acquisition Program (PAA) in its modality "Seeds", as we explore in the following section.

PAA seeds as a form of biopoliticaly equating the dispute for genetic resources
In 2003, as part of the Zero Hunger Program (PFZ), the Lula da Silva administration implemented PAA, in order to meet a long-standing demand of rural social movements, especially those linked to La Via Campesina (Muller, 2007). This public policy is designed to operate structurally, serving two main objectives: i) government purchase of food produced by peasant farmers who are identified as such through PRONAF's (National Program for the Strengthening of Family Farming) Declaration of Aptitude (DAP) and; ii) the donation of a portion of these products to people in conditions of social vulnerability that are attended by entities of the social assistance network such as hostels, recovery homes for drug users, hospitals, schools, daycares, nursing homes and others; seeking therefore to comply with the Human Right to Adequate Food (HRAF). In this way, PAA constitutes the only public food procurement policy in the world that identifies peasants as a priority producer group (De Schutter, 2014).
Over time, PAA underwent through changes, and among the main features that currently stand out are: i) the preference for the procurement of products from associations and cooperatives which are exclusively or mainly managed by women, contributing to the overcoming the patriarchal standard of social relations in the countryside Siliprandi;Cintrão, 2014); ii) the payment of a special price for products that are certified as organic or agroecological, contributing towards sustainable farming practices and to the consumption of better quality food by consumers (Galindo;Sambuichi;Oliveira, 2014); iii) the purchase of a diversified array of products and in accordance with the season, a fact that contributes to the development of polyculture in the production units of the proponents   For the purpose of this work, it is worth mentioning the innovative nature of the modality "Seed Acquisition" that was implemented by the Decree 8,293 of August 12th 2014, which modified Decree 7,775 of July 4th 2012. It is aimed at the purchase of seeds, by the Federal Government, that are not genetically modified and their donation to low-income peasants; namely, there is a clear intention of breaking the hegemony of big agribusiness corporations in control of genetic resources in the countryside.
It is interesting to note the spatio-temporal consequences of these initiatives, since projects of this nature maintain the temporality of the countryside, especially for the (re)production of practices that respect ecological temporalities. Moreover, the spatial dimension, as the initiative would link spaces not connected to the international grain trade, creating a relationship of interdependence between spaces outside the international circuit through regional or local initiatives. Thus, constituting a mechanism that produces an economy parallel to the flows of international trade.
In "PAA Seeds", applicant peasants can perform sales of up to R$ 16,000 annually. Nevertheless, they must be organized in cooperatives or associations that maintain a Legal DAP and these entities have an annual sales limit of up to R$ 6 million. Recognizing that since 2014 it has been possible for peasants to participate in more than one of PAA`s modality, one reaches the conclusion that through only this public policy proponents may have an yearly income of more than R$ 60 thousand, that is, we realise that PAA has a great potential to contribute towards the assurance and improvement of income in rural areas.
The beneficiary peasants, those who are the ones who received the donation of seeds, should have an individual DAP. Preference is given to those that are part of the Federal Government`s Single Registry for Social Programs (Cadastro Único) -an instrument wich has the objective of identifying Brazilians in conditions of social vulnerability. Due to this feature, "PAA Seeds" also has the task of assisting in the fight against poverty, which is a major problem in the Brazilian countryside.
As can be seen in Table 01, in 2015 corn and bean seeds were already acquired. As beans were sold only in Bahia, its data is far less significant than those of corn, which, in addition to this federative unit was also commercialized in Parana, Santa Catarina and Sao Paulo, more extensively in the last two. In this way, we observe that "PAA Seeds" is still underrepresented through the Brazilian states and is concentrated in the Central-South regions of the country. In part, this can be explained because these states are within those where rural social movements are better organized through coorperatives and associations that have a strong capacity of mobilization. The fact that such a public policy prioritizes the acquisition of native seeds which are characterized by being produced by peasants, maintained and selected through traditional knowledges, also draws attention. Generally, native seeds carry a repertoire of natural selection that surpasses thousands of years. The permanence of these denotes that peasant agriculture has played an important role in biodiversity conservation (Carvalho, 2014;Scoones, 2009). This initiative thus promotes the appreciation and recognition of traditional knowledges and practices, which in some way acts as a protective mechanism of intellectual property. Moreover, the initiative allows for the maintenance of biodiversity, as it encourages the production of other crops in addition to the standard for the purpose of export as a commodity for the global grain market. In this sense, this mechanism allows for the (re)production of other temporalities, other rhythms beyond what is necessary for the (re)production of capital.
However, this alignment between social movements' interests of controlling the genetic resources and the need to ensure vitality by generating energy from biological material by the state, may at first be confluent in a positive way, but at a later time can engender their loss of the control of genetic resources to the state apparatuses.
Thus, it was observed that through the "PAA Seeds", the institutional market has contributed towards reducing the hegemony that large agribusiness corporations have exercised over genetic resources. This public policy breaks with the principles of neoliberalism, because through it the state interferes in the seed market. In addition to the commercialization of seeds, their ethical importance also becomes evidence, as it relates not only to the agricultural practices of peasants, but also with the general population's feeding model.

Final considerations
It is important to note that through this public policy, peasants can maintain control over their traditional form of agriculture and the food yielded. Placing them in opposition to agro-export model hegemonic in Brazil, contributing to a lesser extent towards the conservation of agricultural biodiversity. This tension that exists between different intentionalities, social movements and the state for the control, or even the use of genetic resources refers to a colonial struggle (Crosby, 1986;Mazoyer;Roudart, 2006). However, this does not happen in the traditional course of being colonized by a country, but by colonizing the space of production and the food system perpetuated by companies that are not limited or regulated by states in a way that they are transforming public spaces into private enterprises.
First, it can be said that control over genetic resources has become a new locus to exercise power. Fundamentally, the state seeks to make use of a security device in order to ensure sovereignty over genetic resources and at the same time intends to generate increased production of energy from biological material to be exported as economic capital.
Regarding the secondary premise, it can be inferred that although a molecularisation of life has ocurred, a greater number of research needs to go through the scrutiny of two observations. In the first, Braun (2007) wonders whether the genetic body of the XXI century truly differs the eugenic body and clinic reported by Foucault. In further observation, while it is undisputed that one can visualize the phenomenon of life in a submicroscopic level, Braun (2007) questions whether the biological life of the body is conceptualized only in terms of genetic heritage and its technological improvement, if not genetic.
This new form of colonialism and loss of sovereignty can, in the perspective of this study, be better understood by the fungibility mechanism between the territorial power (geopolitical) and the power over life (biopolitics). Thus, mechanisms of control over the temporality of life, through techniques of life fabrication, makes the manipulation and production of a new spatiality possible. More specifically, the use of genetically modified seeds to fulfill the standardization mechanism of the international market, in a way that the use of native seeds, allows for the construction of multiple spatialities. It is true that the construction of these multiple spatio-temporality comply with divergent and conflicting intentionalities. To this end, it remains, in part, the state's role to produce mechanisms that balance and equate the dynamics between these two projects. Preliminarily, it can be said that PAA is presented as one of these mechanisms.