KEDAULATAN BENIH DAN ETIKA PENGETAHUAN: MENGKRITISI GLOBAL FORUM ON FARMERS' RIGHTS DALAM PERSPEKTIF KEADILAN EPISTEMIK

Abstract

ABSTRACT

On 12 September 2026, BRICS leaders signed the New Delhi Declaration, which proposes a Global Forum on Farmers' Rights in Seed Systems to safeguard farmers' rights over seeds and to document traditional agricultural and seed knowledge. Documenting knowledge, however, is never neutral: it presupposes who may speak, which knowledge counts as legitimate, and who controls what has been documented. This conceptual review combines a critical close reading of the Declaration with the framework of epistemic justice, drawing on recent literature (2022–2026) on farmers' rights, the international seed regime, and genetic data governance, together with the Indonesian legal context. The analysis shows that a non-binding, state-based documentation forum risks repeating an old pattern in which farmers become data sources rather than knowledge partners. This risk is amplified by the weak legal force of farmers' rights, the shift to digital sequence information, and the criminalization of farmer-breeders in Indonesia. The article proposes a framework of "substantive recognition" with four ethical prerequisites: farmers as negotiating subjects, free, prior and informed consent, collective ownership of documentation results, and benefit sharing that reaches communities. Participatory and ethnographic research is recommended to test the framework.