The rise and global spread of industrial capitalism through trade liberalization depended upon the expansion of intellectual property systems into new regions and over new subject matters justified by modern ideals of economic development premised on narratives of ‘progress’. The encroachment of proprietary logics into the realm of food and agriculture, however, was contentious, with opponents decrying perceived threats to food security, the possible erosion of agrobiodiversity, and threats to ancestral agricultural knowledges necessary to preserve biodiversity. More recently, the conventional assumption that subaltern peoples including Indigenous communities, ethnic minority groups, and peasant farmers are unlikely to benefit from the expansions of intellectual property has been challenged by the emergence of collective claims to ‘rights from below’ pertaining to plants, farming practices, post-harvest processes, and local cuisines. These collective stewardship rights are influenced and animated by environmental NGOs, ‘post-development’ social movements, and global peasant organizations, who articulate norms of biocultural heritage and biocultural territories to assert new indications of geographical provenance (marks indicating conditions of origin) to identify collective enterprises that protect ecosystems characterized by multi-species relationships. In this socio-legal paper, we explore ethnographically based research across academic disciplines that reveal a growing terrain of ‘territorialized life projects’ centred upon food and agriculture in the member states of the Andean Community (Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru). We demonstrate how the creative use of marks indicating conditions of origin are being deployed by Indigenous, ethnic minority, and peasant producers to assert rights to heritage foods and explore novel livelihood opportunities in new markets, while supporting biodiversity conservation and food sovereignty objectives. Our work suggests that territorialized, non-Western cultural traditions, spiritualities, and values may be used to interpret and articulate new intersections of intellectual property and human rights norms by commercially expressing local relationships to food as a source of identity, livelihood, and sustenance.