A group of women farmers ready to head out to the plots they farm on the community lands outside of Huasao, a rural town in Peru’s Andes highlands department of Cuzco. Credit: Nayda Quispe/IPS

By Nout van der Vaart
ROTTERDAM/THE HAGUE, Jul 23 2020 (IPS)

At last week’s 2020 High Level Political Forum (HLPF), UN member states discussed how to get back on track to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in light of the Covid-19 pandemic. They focused on a dire need for “accelerated action and transformative pathways to realize the decade of action and delivery for sustainable development.”

Given the fact we’re also entering an unprecedented climate emergency, let’s be specific about what’s needed. Responding adequately to Covid-19 and achieving the SDGs in the next ten years will need to include serious efforts to rein in and adapt to the impacts of climate change.

Agricultural biodiversity is the key to thriving, resilient food systems. So governments, agribusinesses and civil society organizations should promote food production practices that create and maintain agrobiodiversity – including indigenous foods and knowledge

Climate change is already hitting low-income and marginalized groups the hardest. If we want to realize a just and rights-based transition to climate-resilient and inclusive societies, we need to make sure of one important thing. That all those in today’s food system – especially those hit hardest – are involved in re-shaping our future food system.

Why transforming our food systems will be essential

Food production systems are among the largest contributors to climate change. Last year’s IPCC special report on climate change and land stated that an estimated 21 to 37 percent of greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activities come mainly from animal production and deforestation.

At the same time, the changing climate is also adversely affecting food production systems and food security worldwide.

Who is caught up in the vicious circle of climate change? Everyone. From smallholder farmers and informal food vendors to factory farms and powerful multinationals. Yet marginalized groups are impacted the most. Groups like low-income consumers, ethnic minorities, indigenous peoples, and women in particular. The problem is, the powerful – who are the most responsible – have the resources to dodge the bullet, while the marginalized need support to adjust and adapt.

What many people ignore – or don’t realize – is that these groups are vital elements of local food systems. Smallholder farmers and informal food vendors largely shape and sustain these systems. We simply cannot overlook this fact as we enter the “decade of action and delivery for sustainable development.”

Food Parliament in Uganda, photo courtesy of Slow Food Uganda.

How civil society enables marginalized groups to transform food systems

As the climate emergency advances, it’s clear that those who are least responsible for climate change suffer from it the most. In this context, the SDG mantra “leaving no one behind” is also a call to enable marginalized groups – smallholder farmers, low-income consumers, and informal vendors – to become resilient to climate change.

That will help bolster everyone’s food security and protect food systems worldwide. Hivos and our partners recognize the pivotal position of these groups. At the same time, “leaving no one behind” must go hand in hand with broader climate mitigation efforts, including structural changes to food production practices and marketing, and food consumption patterns.

Our new paper with IIED shows how our Sustainable Diets for All (SD4All) program has empowered CSOs and low-income groups to advocate for more inclusive, sustainable food system policies that integrate climate resilience. We can highlight two examples here.

In Zambia, monoculture production of maize is encouraged by national agricultural policies. This has led to soil degradation and biodiversity loss, leaving many smallholder farmers vulnerable to climate change. Our SD4All partner Civil Society for Poverty Reduction worked with the government to create an e-voucher system that helps smallholder farmers access seeds and other inputs for different crops than maize.

In Uganda, our SD4All partner Volunteer Efforts for Development Concerns (VEDCO) has trained and deployed what they call “diet champions.” They go into the field, visiting farmers and local authorities alike. Their mission is to promote the production and consumption of local vegetables among farmers. And to convince local authorities to adopt policies and pass regulations that stimulate the same behavior. The champions have special advice for both: indigenous crops are often better suited to the local climate and more resistant to climate shocks.

How government can multiply civil society’s efforts to change our food systems

The good work civil society does to tackle the climate crisis and transform our food system can only go so far. For truly effective global change, governments, international institutions and other relevant stakeholders must scale up these efforts. In light of upcoming international conferences like the UN 2021 Food Systems Summit and the Nutrition for Growth Summit, we urge them to prioritize three action areas:

1. Strengthen the role of citizens and CSOs in food governance. Lasting results are only possible if you include the voices normally left out of decision-making. So governments need to hold transparent and inclusive dialogues with everyone who has a vested interest in food systems. Only then will the needs and opinions of the most marginalized and underrepresented groups be included.
2. Promote and invest in diverse, climate-resilient food systems. Agricultural biodiversity is the key to thriving, resilient food systems. So governments, agribusinesses and civil society organizations should promote food production practices that create and maintain agrobiodiversity – including indigenous foods and knowledge.
3. Embrace and empower smaller, local players in food systems. Most underprivileged citizens in low-income countries buy their food at local informal markets and smaller businesses (formal and informal SMEs). At the same time, these are the main outlets smallholder farmers use to sell their produce. Governments need to acknowledge the vital role these local markets and SMEs play and encourage them. They can do this in two ways. Through policies that allow a wide range of local food producers and sellers to thrive within food systems. And by adopting legislation that prevents large companies from monopolizing the food system.

It’s now or never

The next “decade of action” for sustainable development and combatting climate change is here – and the time to act boldly is now. With Covid-19 amplifying the imbalances and unjust structures of our food system, the need for an inclusive and green recovery is staring us in the face.

Failing to shift towards climate-proof food systems risks collapsing the ecological and social-economical support structures our societies are based on. For the benefit of future generations, we must prevent the climate crisis from worsening any way we can. Radically transforming the food system by putting citizen’s voices and needs – so often ignored – at the center of the transformation is crucial.

This opinion piece was originally published here

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Farmers planting sweet potato seedlings at the Seed Savers Bene Bank. Credit: Seed Savers.

By Nout van der Vaart
Rotterdam/The Hague, Dec 9 2019 (IPS)

People have a right to define their own food system. This includes which seeds they use. Last week, farmers in Nakuru County, Kenya, celebrated the launch of “Ten rich, underutilized crops,” a publication and documentary that capture their efforts to promote and sustain the varieties they grow.

Farmers’ diminishing access to seeds

Access to seeds for smallholder farmers has become an issue of concern in Eastern Africa. Mirroring the trend in which control of global food production is falling into ever fewer private hands, it’s getting increasingly difficult for farmers to use and exchange their own, farm-saved seeds. Eighty percent of seeds used by smallholder farmers are sourced through farmer-managed seed systems. But these systems are largely ignored by governments whose agricultural budgets are mostly used to promote hybrid or improved seeds through the commercial or formal seed system.

African governments are also pressured by regional, international and bilateral trade agreements to adopt discriminatory policy and legal frameworks that are very unfavorable to smallholder farmers. These seed laws protect exclusive ownership rights – like patents and breeders’ rights – while overlooking farmers’ rights. The resulting privatization of seeds greatly restricts the majority of smallholder farmers, who depend on the free and open use, reuse, saving, and exchange of (farmer-managed) seeds.

Food security, climate resilience, biodiversity – and seeds

There are three reasons why farmer-managed seeds help solve problems like food scarcity, climate change and loss of plant species.

1. In the face of a rapidly worsening climate crisis, smallholder farmers need seeds that are resilient to changing and unpredictable weather conditions, like prolonged periods of drought or heavy rains. Free seed exchange increases resilient sorts of seeds, and therefore farmer’s own resilience to climate change.
2. Farmer-managed seed systems provide the majority of food produced in sub-Saharan Africa. Smallholder farmers as such play a considerable role in keeping themselves and their communities food secure.
3. By growing, breeding, and fostering farmer varieties (“underutilized varieties”), farmers greatly help preserve agricultural biodiversity in their countries.

Delicacies made from the 10 rich, underutilized crops. Credit: Seed Savers.

Documenting and registering farmer seed varieties

The Kenyan Seed Savers network, with support from Hivos and our Sustainable Diets for All partners, has documented and characterized 60 underutilized varieties grown by smallholder farmers in Nakuru county. Ten of these varieties are described in the publication “Ten rich, underutilized crops.” They are considered most promising in terms of nutritional value, climate resilience, and popular taste. The next step is for them to be produced and marketed on a larger and more commercial scale by the farmers themselves.

As put by Francis Ngiri, a farmer in Nakuru involved in the documentation project, “These varieties will allow us to grow and diversify our production and eat more healthy.”

Hivos and Seed Savers’ booklet demonstrates the rich diversity that grows in farmers’ fields in Kenya. More importantly though, it’s part of a direct appeal to Kenyan authorities to recognize that these varieties exist, that they belong to farmers, and hence should never be subject to private control.

There is an urgent need for countries like Kenya to adopt legal frameworks on seed and intellectual property rights that allow farmers’ varieties to be registered as such, protecting them from privatization. One way to avoid corporate control of seeds is to have them  registered as open source, which would grant them the status of protected commons. This would not only safeguard national agrobiodiversity, farmers’ own food security and ensure their ability to adapt to climate change, but would clearly recognize farmers’ own vital contributions to these efforts.

The time for Open Source Seeds has come!

This opinion piece was originally published here

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