As GRAIN has been active fighting corporate control of our food systems since 1990, our work has grown and it can become hard to find older materials. This new “archives” section of our website aims to make it easier to find important earlier works of GRAIN and allies.

Books

Biotechnology and the future of world agriculture (1991) (12.5 MB) A deeper analysis of the impact of biotechnology on global agriculture, by Henk Hobbelink
Growing Diversity (1992) (12 MB) A collection of articles by grassroots activists around the world on local efforts to conserve and use agricultural biodiversity
New hope or false promise (3.34 MB) A small booklet with an early analysis on the impact of biotechnology on agriculture.
Oryza nirvana (1997) (15 MB) An NGO review of the functioning and impact of the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines. Published by SEARICE.
Saving the seed (1992) (13.2 MB) A look at the state of genetic diversity in Europe, the policies that affect it, and the role of grassroots organisations to save it. By Renée Vellvé
Seeds of the earth (1979) (23.2 MB) A foundational book by Pat Mooney, who ran ICDA Seeds Campaign (which later became GRAIN) at the time, that got many of us going on the seeds issue and challenging the corporate control of genetic resources.
The Great Climate Robbery (2016) (15.4 MB) An analysis of how the industrial food system drives climate change, and what we can do about it.
The great food robbery (2012) (2.86 MB) A collection of GRAIN articles on ‘how corporations control food, grab land, and destroy the climate’.

Major publications

Fighting FTAs (2008) (8.49 MB) A collection of original articles from the participants of the 2006 ‘Fighting FTAs’ workshop on the impact of free trade agreements and the struggles against them. Co-published by bilaterals.org, BioThai and GRAIN.
Hungry for land (2014) (924 KB) A study on how small farmers are losing land across the world, often pushed out by industrial agriculture, and what this means for the future of food production.
Patenting Life Forms in Europe 1989 (8.12 MB) Report of the first conference on the patenting of life forms in Europe, will all the speeches presented there. It helped lead to the rejection of the EU Commision’s patent directive in 1995.
Planet palm oil (2014) (8.8 MB) Report on the impact of the expansion of industrial oil palm plantations, and the importance of palm oil production for small scale farmers in West and Central Africa.
Seed laws that criminalise farmers (2015) (4.29 MB) A report by GRAIN and La Via Campesiona on the impact of seed laws on the rights of farmers across the world.
Ten reasons not to join UPOV (1998) (127 KB) An issue of the Gaia/GRAIN project publication series analysing the impact of plant breeders rights legislation
The real seed producers (2018) (9.84 MB) An AFSA/GRAIN report on how small-scale farmers save, use, share and enhance the seed diversity of the crops that feed Africa

Closed projects

Bio-IPR was an information service about intellectual property rights that GRAIN published from 1997 to 2009
The Growing Diversity Project, launched in January 2000, was a three-year process involving many partners across the world to document and strengthen on-farm biodiversity conservation and use. It culminated in a major conference in Rio Branco, Brazil.

The Gaia/GRAIN project was a three-year collaboration with the Gaia Foundation in London in the mid-2000s to produce a series of reports called Global Trade and Biodiversity in Conflict.

Seedling was a quarterly magazine published by GRAIN on a regular basis from 1990 until 2011. It was GRAIN’s flagship publication for long, delving into all the issues we worked on.