Ecologically Sustainable Food Production - Annotated Bibliography (original) (raw)
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Restoring farmers’ sovereignty over food, seed and genetic resources in Guaraciaba, Brazil
2016
Access to quality seed has become one of the underlying developmental needs of farming communities for achieving food security and sustainable development. The advent of the green revolution in Brazil heralded a massive loss of farmers’ varieties, which were replaced by a few high-yielding and hybrid varieties. Small-scale farmers in Guaraciaba, in the western part of the state of Santa Catarina (Figure 1.5.1), recall that up until as recently as the 1970s they were only growing their own local varieties of major staple crops. However, by the 1990s these had already vanished from most of their farms. The resulting dependency of farmers on the seed of external sources has been a burden for them, in terms of the high costs involved with such cultivation. The Micro-watershed Development Programme was implemented by Santa Catarina State Enterprise for Rural Development and Extension (Epagri), from 2004 to 2009, with funding from the World Bank. In the municipality of Guaraciaba, communi...
Community Biodiversity Management, 2013
The decline in use of farm-saved seed and varieties Access to quality seed has become one of the underlying developmental needs of farming communities for achieving food security and sustainable development. The advent of the green revolution in Brazil heralded a massive loss of farmers' varieties, which were replaced by a few high-yielding and hybrid varieties. Small-scale farmers in Guaraciaba, in the western part of the state of Santa Catarina (Figure 1.5.1), recall that up until as recently as the 1970s they were only growing their own local varieties of major staple crops. However, by the 1990s these had already vanished from most of their farms. The resulting dependency of farmers on the seed of external sources has been a burden for them, in terms of the high costs involved with such cultivation. The Micro-watershed Development Programme was implemented by Santa Catarina State Enterprise for Rural Development and Extension (Epagri), from 2004 to 2009, with funding from the World Bank. In the municipality of Guaraciaba, communities associated with micro-watershed areas decided to dedicate several activities
Agricultural biodiversity, knowledge systems and policy decisions: the case of farmers' seeds
2014
Since the Earth Summit (1992), there has been an epistemological shift in research on the diversity of living organisms: there has been a switch from the sphere of biology to the sphere of society and the political and human sciences. Managing agricultural diversity, which mainly concerns varietal creation methods, intellectual property rights over genetic resources and access to seeds, does not raise any new challenges but these latter aspects are highlighted due to ecological urgency. We shall show this through the history of maize hybrids. Indeed, there are two major options. In the first option, so-called productivist agriculture, the aim will be to try and modify the environment, to make it more uniform while, at the same time, introducing and marketing a new genotype with broad adaptability or specific adaptation, though in both cases the environment will be artificialized. The second alternative, defended by the champions of smallholder agriculture, consists in growing a rang...
There is a strong link between formal plant breeding and seed supply. In developed countries, it was the emergence of systematic plant breeding that generated new named varieties and stimulated organized seed multiplication and marketing by commercial companies. In developing countries likewise, the experience of the 'Green Revolution' in the 1960's led to the establishment in the following decade of national seed projects which could deliver the products of plant breeding more eVectively from breeder to farmer. The provision of a secure conduit leading from research to agriculture remains a major justiWcation for formal seed systems. The limitations of formal breeding approaches have been recognized in recent years, especially for crops grown in marginal and diverse environments, where farmers' requirements are more complex. This has prompted interest in alternative participatory plant breeding strategies in which farmers can play an active role in the selection process. There has been a parallel recognition of the role of the informal seed sector, as the major seed supplier in many crops and areas where the regular sale of seed by formal organizations is diYcult. The question which arise therefore is-"How do participatory breeding approaches relate to both formal and informal seed systems?" The purpose of this paper is to examine the technical, regulatory and policy aspects of this question, with emphasis on the following issues: • The nature and deWnition of participatory plant breeding (PPB) outputs, • Maintaining the identity and integrity of PPB outputs • The relevance of oYcial variety evaluation and registration procedures • Maximizing the diVusion and impact of PPB outputs • Innovative seed supply systems linked to PPB activities • The role of policy in facilitating alternative seed delivery systems
Farmers’ rights to seed: Conflicts in international legal regimes
Right to Food and Nutrition Watch, 2016
The human right to adequate food and nutrition has not paid enough attention to seeds and agricultural biodiversity, but the time has now come to turn this trend around. Peasant seed systems feed the world and are resilient in times of natural disasters. Yet they face severe threats due to the increasing corporate capture of seeds and nature on the one hand and the accelerated destruction of agricultural biodiversity on the other. Right to food and nutrition activists can strengthen the work of small-scale food producers to protect their agrarian, fishing, pastoral and agro-ecological systems by granting seeds and agricultural biodiversity their well-deserved place. WHAT ARE THE MAIN THREATS TO SEEDS AND AGRICULTURAL BIODIVERSITY TODAY? Peasants are steadily losing their seeds: Their collective seeds systems are being made illegal and are destroyed and contaminated by genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The Green Revolution's agricultural policies, trade agreements, and more recently, the national and international legal frameworks protecting intellectual property rights (IPR) are behind this encroachment on peasants' seeds. 2 IPR protection regimes such as the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) have been devised so as to protect the interests of the seed and breeder industry. 3 They severely impair access to seeds outside of UPOV by restricting peasant practices and seed management systems. In Tanzania and Colombia, among other countries, peasant practices have been declared illegal, and criminalized. Furthermore, IPR protection regimes tend to create monopolies, which then place them in the position to reap profits and to enlarge their market power. It is estimated that Monsanto, DuPont, and Syngenta control 53% of the global commercial market for seeds. 4 The big six agro-chemical corporations (BASF, Bayer, Dow, DuPont, Monsanto, Syngenta) have recently announced that mergers are in the pipeline, leading to even more market concentration. 5 The economic, ecological, and socio-political risks of a monopolized seeds and breeds supply system are innumerable. Other major threats relate to the destruction of agricultural biodiversity. This sad state of affairs is the result of land clearing, population pressure, overgrazing, environmental degradation, and industrialized farming, fishing and livestock keeping practices. 6 The industrial seed and breeding systems favor standardization and homogeneity. These have a negative impact on the very variables that underpin biodiversity. 7 The destruction of agrobiodiversity is particularly problematic given the challenges that climate change is posing on the realization of the right to food and nutrition.
potential to support the collective pooling and management of PGRFA. We conclude with an overview of the structure and logic of the book. Collective pooling of PGRFA Farmers have been engaged in collective, open systems of conservation and innovationopenly sharing planting materials and conserving them through usesince the earliest crop domestications. Relatively open flows of plant germplasm have attended the spread of agriculture and have subsequently followed (or been driven by) imperialism, colonization, emigration, trade, development assistance and climate change. As crops have moved around the world, and as the scope of agricultural innovation and production systems have shifted and expanded, so too has the scope and coverage of pools of shared plant genetic resources that support those systems. Farmers' ancestral practices in germplasm conservation and innovation can still be found in small farming systems and in remote areas. These practices rely, to a great extent, on the exchange of planting materials between farmers. Although farmers prefer to select and save seed from their own harvest, seed and harvest loss, experimentation and the establishment of new households make them acquire seed from other farmers or from the market (
New strategies and partnerships for the sustainable use of plant genetic resources
2012
The challenge Estimates suggest that globally 80% of the seeds on which smallholder farmers in developing countries depend are produced by the farmers themselves or obtained through informal channels. This high level of farmer seed autonomy masks the fact that almost everywhere local seed systems and the diverse agricultural production practices that depend on them are under some form of stress. Factors impacting on local seed systems include pests and diseases, loss of soil fertility and droughts and floods. Other factors include socio-economic and institutional forces, such as the inefficiency or absence of agricultural research and extension services, and formal seed systems that are unable to cater to the needs of smallholder farmers who depend on diversity and locally adapted cultivars. Although in many regions of the world farmers continue to try to maintain a diversity of crops and crop varieties, there are concerns that this diversity is declining in terms of both number of ...