The Future Control of Food is a valuable addition to the vast literature on the commoditization of food and its effects on the livelihoods of poor people in ‘developing’ countries. Like related works, the contributors to the volume attempt to contrast individualized and short-term ideas of nature, property and benefits upheld by powerful actors in ‘developed’ countries with more localized understandings of and access to nutritious foodstuffs and biodiversity. The volume not only explains the bewildering array of rules and forums related to intellectual property (IP) and biodiversity in place as of the date of its publication (parts I and II), but also refers to a series of civil society movements that attempt to counteract market-oriented policies guiding the production, distribution and consumption of Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture or PGRFA (part III). While the chapters are more descriptive than analytical, broad ethical issues of IP arise such as the incompatibility of ideas of nature, property and ownership in the farming and breeding sectors, contradictions and interrelations between public and private domains, and power struggles that have emerged between individuals, communities, nation states and international bodies.

In chapter 1 Geoff Tansey introduces the chief paradox of IP, which he sees as a ‘legal fiction’ based on the Western principle that human modifications of nature become the property of the inventors. As implicated in his argument and throughout the book, ideas about what should and should not be patented or protected, as well as key concepts such as innovation and liability, depend on how one distinguishes nature from culture or technological innovation. The legitimizing effect of assigning property rights to living beings only goes so far in IP as the non-human sphere may not always be as controllable as most IP advocates suppose. One representative example, mentioned by Geoff Tansey (chapter 1) and further explained by Susan Bragdon, Kathryn Garforth and John E. Haapala Jr (chapter 5), is the case of Monsanto v. Schmeiser in which a breeder's right under IP to prohibit the spread of patented transgenetic seeds (which was, in this case, unintended) undermined a Canadian farmer's right as a landowner to save seed and manage his farm. The authors use this case to illustrate that long-held assumptions concerning private property rights, such as freedom of choice and the promotion of innovation, are being re-formulated in legal battles over IP.

The problem of definition in IP not only impedes understandings of what is meant by private property but also hinders attempts to draw borders around the commons. As Pedro Roffe (chapter 3) notes, exceptions to patentable life forms under TRIPS (Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) rest on an ambiguous and narrow distinction between socially valued products that cannot be commodified and patentable inventions. Such contrived boundaries exclude those who regard all claims to ownership over life as immoral (e.g. indigenous peoples, see Box 5.4, p. 93). Moreover, even policies and movements which challenge unequal access to genetic resources cannot agree on how to delineate public and private realms. Where one draws the line has as much to do with values as with legal conventions. Michael Halewood and Kent Nnadozie (chapter 6) and Tasmin Rajotte (chapter 7) point to the difference between the terms laid out in the CBD (Convention on Biological Diversity), under which traditional knowledge (TK) is treated as an economic asset of sovereign states, on the one hand, and those in the ITPGRFA (International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture), on the other. The latter upholds a more encompassing notion of TK as a shared resource that can neither be commodified nor situated, a form of universal heritage that represents long-term relationships between humans and nature rather than an enclosed source of aggrandizement.

Despite the merits of this work, a more profound understanding of what people mean by the commons and how this relates to local ideas and uses of land and its products could have been attained if specific ethnographic accounts had been included. Ethnography of rural livelihoods and food production would provide the necessary counterpart to this kind of book, and should be included in future works of this kind. Indeed, though the contributors give much lip-service to daily realities of rural people in the ‘developing’ world, their legal perspective leads to an emphasis on formal institutions and networks – both market-based and alternative – rather than on the myriad unvoiced versions of justice that may be identified if one steps out of the boardroom and into the farming household.