Maya farmer Leonardo Puc shows an achiote seedling, whose seeds give colour and flavour to a variety of Mexican food recipes, in a cornfield in the municipality of Tadhziú, in the southeastern state of Yucatán. Image: Emilio Godoy / IPS

By Emilio Godoy
CHACSINKIN, Mexico, Nov 25 2024 (IPS)

María Bacab, a Native Maya, considers herself the “guardian of seeds” as she cares for the milpa – an ancestral Mesoamerican polyculture that mixes maize, beans, squash and other vegetables – and promotes its practice and use in Mexico.

“I worked with my parents since I was a little girl, I learned with them. The milpa is a benefit, because we don’t buy corn. I like it, because we’ve been doing it since we were children,” she told IPS in the community of X’box (the black one, in the Mayan language), in Chansinkin, a municipality in the state of Yucatán, southeastern Mexico.

The peasant farmer combines family care work with agriculture. After cooking breakfast and taking her children to school, Bacab, 41, who is divorced and has seven children, works on her one-hectare plot of land, returns at 11 a.m. to care for her children who go to secondary school, and then goes back to planting.

Each year, she grows 750 kilograms of grain for her own use, raises a pig, a native species of this Mexican region, and weaves hammocks to supplement her income. Her three eldest children help on the plantation.

Bacab is the only woman in a group of 11 milpa producers in X’box who store and exchange seeds. They select the best and save them for a year, which prepares them for shortages or losses due to flooding or droughts. The municipality has at least two seed banks .

Each farmer in the group plants different varieties, so that multiple maize options persist, including several drought-resistant ones, and some have hives for sale and self-consumption. They have adopted seeds from the southern state of Chiapas, and theirs have reached neighbouring Campeche, with which they share the Yucatan peninsula.

The peninsula is home to the majority of the Maya population, one of Mexico’s 71 indigenous groups and one of the most culturally and historically representative.

Maize is not only a native and predominant crop in Mexico, but a staple product in the diet of its 129 million inhabitants that transcends the culinary to become part of the country’s cultural roots, linked to the native peoples.

At harvest time, generally from January to March, the furrows of the cornfield are bright with green canes, from which the ears of corn hang waiting for the harvesting hand. From their rows will come the grains that end up in dough, tortillas (flat breads made from nixtamalised grain), atoles (thick drinks) and various other dishes.

Mexico’s three million corn farmers plant around eight million hectares, of which two million are for family use, in a country that has 64 varieties of the grain, 59 of which are native.

Mexico is the world’s seventh largest producer of maize, the world’s most widely grown cereal, and its second largest importer. It harvests some 27 million tonnes annually, but still has to import another 20 million tonnes to meet its domestic consumption.

As in the rest of the country, the milpa is key to the diet in the municipality of Chansinkin. Inhabited by 3,255 people, nine out of 10 were poor and one third were extremely poor in 2023.

Mayan farmer Ricardo Piña grows 14 varieties of maize, and stores the seeds for future planting and exchange, in the community of X’box, municipality of Chacsinkin, in the state of Yucatán, southeastern Mexico. Image: Emilio Godoy / IPS

Seeding the future

The Milpa para la Vida project, implemented by the US non-governmental organisation Heifer International since 2021, with funding from the US-based John Deere Foundation, promotes the improvement of milpa collectives such as the one in X’box.

The initiative is one of several in Yucatán that seeks to defend the territory and offer economic options in rural areas.

It aims to increase incomes by at least 19%, milpa productivity by at least 41%, and the amount of land under sustainable management by 540 hectares among participating farmers in 10 communities from Yucatán and two others in Campeche.

Since 2021, the project has benefited 10,800 people and the goal is to reach 40,000 by 2027.

Demonstration plots have achieved a production of 1.3 tonnes of maize per hectare, through agroecological practices such as the use of native seeds and biofertilisers, compared to the 630 kilograms harvested in 2021 with conventional practices.

But constraints remain, such as the application of pesticides and fertilisers donated by the Ministry of Agriculture.

Mayan farmers check a milpa, an ancient system of polyculture of maize, beans, squash and other vegetables that has spread from Mexico throughout Mesoamerica, in the municipality of Tadhziú, Yucatán state, in southeastern Mexico. Image: Emilio Godoy / IPS

In the neighbouring municipality of Tahdziú (place of the zui bird, in Mayan), 65-year-old Maya farmer Leonardo Puc treasures his seeds as his most precious commodity.

Although there was enough rain this year after an intense drought in 2023, “we face many difficulties, a lot of budworm (which eats the maize plant). We need maize to feed ourselves, producing it is what we do. We can’t just sit back and do nothing,” the farmer told IPS.

“That’s why nature teaches us,” said the married father with six children and coordinator of the 28-member Flor de Tajonal group, named after an emblematic local flower.

There are five seed banks in the Tahdziú area. In a hut with a high roof of huano, a local palm tree, and walls of wooden beams, transparent plastic jars with white lids line a shelf. They hold a key part of peasant life: seeds of yellow and white maize, squash and black beans.

Tahdziú also lives amidst deprivation, as its 5,502 inhabitants are practically all poor, and half of them live in extreme poverty.

Flora Chan inspects a hen in the pen at her home in the municipality of Maní, in the southeastern Mexican state of Yucatán. Image: Emilio Godoy / IPS

Chickens that change lives

Flora Chan’s mother used to buy and raise chickens, so she was no stranger to the cage-free poultry egg farmer programme she joined in 2020 to improve her family’s economy.

“When we started, it was hard because people didn’t know about our eggs. Now they buy every day,” she told IPS in the courtyard of her home in the municipality of Maní (where it all happened, in Mayan), near Chacsinkin.

Chan, who is single and childless, has 39 hens and wants more. Every day she collects between 40 and 50 eggs. She cleans the henhouse early, checks the water and feed and rate of production. She also weaves textiles and oversees 100 hives of stingless melipona bees, a species endemic to the region and with highly prized honey.

A group of 217 women farmers, 19 in Maní, formed the Kikiba Collective (something very good, in Mayan) and whose seal, a hen, goes on each unit.

The breeders belong to the Mujeres Emprendedoras initiative, which began in 2020 in 93 communities from 30 municipalities in Campeche, Quintana Roo and Yucatán, with the help of the organisation Heifer.

A group of 19 women egg farmers make up the Colectivo Kikiba in the municipality of Maní, in the state of Yucatán, in southeastern Mexico. Image: Emilio Godoy / IPS

The programme aims to strengthen local livelihoods in order to alleviate hunger, poor nutrition due to lack of animal protein and low incomes due to lack of market access.

In Mani, three quarters of the 6,129 inhabitants suffer from poverty and one fifth from extreme poverty.

Each participant receives training in the installation of backyard chicken coops, animal care and business management. Each year they replace the batch of 50 birds they receive and pass theirs on to a new member, until the birds stop laying and the women then use them at home or sell them at local markets.

The programme has covered 796 women farmers, with the goal of reaching 1,000 by 2026. The Kikiba Collective delivers 4,300 free-range eggs each week to two restaurants of a well-known Mexican restaurant chain in Merida, the capital of Yucatan. In addition, it sells retail and allocates 30% for family consumption.

At first, Chan’s neighbour Nancy Interiano was not interested in the project, but her friend convinced her to check it out. Today, the 43-year-old businesswoman, who is married with three children, has 60 laying hens.

“Seeing the results, other women are interested in joining and those who are already involved want to increase their poultry houses. With our knowledge and experience, we advise the new ones,” she told IPS.

In Mexico, 14.7 million women live in rural areas, representing almost 23% of all women and 12% of Mexico’s total population.

Due to a lack of suppliers of laying hens, breeders are limited in their ability to meet growing demand.

While solving this is out of their hands, Chan and Interiano enjoy every day watching their hens scratching the ground, climbing on wooden beams or settling into nests to lay the eggs that have changed their lives.

Ligoria Felipe dos Santos poses for a photo on her agroecological farm that mixes corn, squash, fruits, vegetables and medicinal herbs. She is part of the women's movement that is trying to prevent the installation of wind farms in the Borborema mountain range, in the northeastern Brazilian state of Paraíba. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

By Mario Osava
ESPERANÇA, Brazil , Jul 14 2023 (IPS)

Zé Pequeno cried when he learned that the heirloom seeds he had inherited from his father were contaminated by the transgenic corn his neighbor had brought from the south. Fortunately, he was able to salvage the native seeds because he had shared them with other neighbors.

Euzébio Cavalcanti recalls this story from one of his colleagues to highlight the importance of “passion seeds” for family farming in Brazil’s semiarid low-rainfall ecoregion which extends over 1.1 million square kilometers, twice the size of France, in the northeastern interior of the country."These are seeds adapted to the semiarid climate. They can withstand long droughts, without irrigation." Euzébio Cavalcanti

Saving heirloom seeds is a peasant tradition, but two decades ago the Brazilian Semiarid Articulation (ASA), a network of 3,000 social organizations that emerged in the 1990s, named those who practice it as individual and community guardians of seeds. By September 2021, it had registered 859 banks of native seeds in the region.

Cavalcanti, a 56-year-old farmer with multiple skills such as poet, musician and radio broadcaster, coordinates the network of these banks in the Polo de Borborema, a joint action area of 14 rural workers’ unions and 150 community organizations in central-eastern Paraíba, one of the nine states of the Brazilian Northeast.

“These are seeds adapted to the semiarid climate. They can withstand long droughts, without irrigation, that is why they are so important,” he explained. They also preserve the genetic heritage of many local crop species and family history; they have sentimental value.

“Don’t plant transgenics, don’t erase my history”, is a slogan of the movement that promotes agroecological practices and is opposed to the expansion of genetically modified organisms in local agriculture. “Corn free of transgenics and agrotoxins (agrochemicals)” is the goal of their campaign.

In Paraíba, the name “passion seeds” has been adopted, instead of native or heirloom seeds, since 2003, when the state government announced that it would provide seeds from a specialized company to family farmers.

“If the government offers these seeds, I don’t want them. I have family seeds and I have passion for them,” reacted a farmer in a meeting with the authorities.

“‘Passion seeds’ spread throughout Paraíba. In other states they’re called ‘seeds of resistance’,” Cavalcanti said.

Agroecology is one of the banners of the Polo de Borborema, as it is for ASA in the entire semiarid ecosystem that covers most of the Northeast region and a northern strip of the southeastern state of Minas Gerais.

“Passion seeds,” as heirloom seeds are known locally, ensure better harvests on semiarid lands, free of transgenics or “agricultural poisons,” according to Euzébio Cavalcanti, a small farmer, poet and musician who helped lead the struggle for agrarian reform and cares for the seeds in the highlands of Borborema, in northeastern Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

Learning to coexist with semiarid conditions

This approach arose from a change in the development strategy adopted on the part of local society, especially ASA, since the 1990s. “Coexisting with semiarid conditions” replaced the traditional, failed focus on “fighting the drought”.

Large dams and reservoirs, which only benefit large landowners and do not help the majority of small farmers, gave way to more than 1.2 million tanks for collecting rainwater from household or school rooftops and various ways of storing water for crops and livestock.

It is a process of decolonization of agriculture, education and science, which prioritizes knowledge of the climate and the regional biome, the Caatinga, characterized by low, twisted, drought-resilient vegetation. It also includes the abandonment of monoculture, with the implementation of traditional local horticultural and family farming techniques.

The Northeast, home to 26.9 percent of the national population, or 54.6 million inhabitants according to the 2022 demographic census, concentrates 47.2 percent of the country’s family farmers, according to the 2017 agricultural census. There are 1.84 million small farms worked mainly by family labor.

Brazil’s semiarid region is one of the rainiest in the world for this type of climate, with 200 to 800 millimeters of rain per year on average, although there are drier areas in the process of desertification.

A stand at the ecological market in the municipality of Esperança, in northeastern Brazil, is a link between urban consumers and family farmers opposed to agrochemicals, monoculture and transgenic products. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

Borborema, the name of a high plateau that obstructs the humidity coming from the sea, making the territory to its west drier, is the scene of various peasant struggles, such as the mobilization for agrarian reform since the 1980s and for small-scale agriculture “without poisons” or agrochemicals, of which the “seeds of passion” are a symbol.

Cavalcanti is a living memory of local history, also as a founder of the local Landless Workers Movement (MST) and an activist in the occupations of unproductive land to create rural settlements, on one of which he gained his own small farm where he grows beans, corn and, vegetables and has two rainwater collection tanks.

Women help drive the expansion of agroecology

Women have played a key role in the drive towards agroecology. The March for Women’s Lives and Agroecology is an annual demonstration that since 2010 has defended family farming and the right to a healthy life.

This year, on Mar. 16, 5,000 women gathered in Montadas, a municipality of 5,800 inhabitants, to block the creation of wind farms that have already caused damage to the health of small farmers by being installed near their homes.

Borborema is “a territory of resistance,” say the women. About 15 years ago, they succeeded in abolishing the cultivation of tobacco.

The president of the Union of Rural Workers of the municipality of Esperança, Alexandre Lira (C) and other leaders pose in front of a poster declaring the union’s current goals: “Agroecological Borborema is no place for a wind farm,” he says about this area in Brazil’s semiarid Northeast region. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

When the citrus blackfly arrived, the government tried to combat it with pesticides, but “we resisted; we used natural products and solved the problem for our oranges and lemons,” said Ligoria Felipe dos Santos, a 54-year-old mother of three.

“That is agroecology, which is strengthened in the face of threats. Farmers are aware, they resort to alternative defenses, they know that it is imbalance that leads to pests,” she told IPS.

“Agroecology is a good banner for union activity,” said Lexandre Lira, 42, president of the Rural Workers Union of Esperança, a municipality of 31,000 people in the center of the Polo de Borborema.

It is also a factor in keeping farmers’ children on the farms, because it awakens the interest of young people in agriculture, said Edson Johny da Silva, 27, the union’s youth coordinator.

Maria das Graças Vicente and Givaldo Firmino dos Santos stand next to the machine they use for making pulp from native fruits little known outside Brazil, such as the umbu (Brazil plum), cajá (hog plum), acerola (Amazon or Barbados cherry), along with cashews, mangos, and guava. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

Pulp, added value

Maria das Graças Vicente, known as Nina, 51, along with her husband Givaldo Firmino dos Santos, 52, is an example of agroecological productivity. On 1.25 hectares of land they produce citrus fruits, passion fruit, acerola (Amazon or Barbados cherry), mango and other fruits, as well as sugar cane, corn, beans and other vegetables.

Grafted fruit tree seedlings are another of the products they use to expand their income, as IPS was shown during a visit to their farm.

Using their own harvest and fruit they buy from neighbors, they make pulp in a small shed separate from their home, with a small machine purchased with the support of the Advisory and Services to Projects in Alternative Agriculture (AS-PTA), a non-governmental organization that supports farmers in Borborema and other parts of Brazil.

“Luckily we have a microclimate in the valley, where it rains more than in the surrounding areas. Everything grows here,” Santos told IPS.

But the couple created three reservoirs to collect rainwater and withstand droughts: a 16,000-liter water tank for household use, another that collects water on the paved ground for irrigation, and a small lagoon dug in the lower part of the farm.

But in 2016 the lagoon dried up, because of the “great drought” that lasted from 2012 to 2017, Vicente said.

The fruit pulp factory has grown in recent years and now has seven small freezers to store fruit and pulp for sale to the town’s stores and restaurants. The couple decided to purchase a cold room with the capacity of 30 freezers.

“I work in the mornings on the land, in the afternoons I make pulp and my husband is in charge of the sales,” she said.

Hiring workers from outside the family to reduce the workload costs too much and “we try to save as much as possible on everything, to sell the pulp at a fair price,” Santos said.

A technician dressed to withstand the freezing temperatures holds a tray of seeds in the Seeds of the Future gene bank. The last phase of the process consists of storing the bags of classified seeds in a room with a temperature of -18 degrees Celsius, awaiting shipment to those interested in using them, from the headquarters of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) in Palmira, in southwestern Colombia. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
PALMIRA, Colombia , Mar 30 2022 (IPS)

As he points to a white shelf that holds bean seeds, Austrian biologist Peter Wenzl explains that one of them, obtained in Ecuador, provided a gene for the discovery that major seed protein arcelin offers resistance to the bean weevil.

The finding made it possible to develop varieties tolerant to this common pest and thus avoid substantial losses in one of the crops that feed humanity.

“Our aim is to do research, to understand the development of improved varieties. The seed bank is genetic insurance for the future,” said the biologist, who directs the germplasm bank of the Alliance of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and Biodiversity International.

They are two of the 15 scientific centers of the CGIAR, formerly the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, a consortium of food research organizations promoting food security that is based in Montpellier, France.

The new gene bank, Seeds of the Future, was inaugurated on Mar. 16 with the presence of Colombian President Iván Duque, in an event that also announced a donation of 16 million dollars from the Bezos Earth Fund, created by the founder of U.S. e-commerce giant Amazon, Jeff Bezos.

The facility represents an architectural, environmental and technological leap forward from the previous bank operated by CIAT in the town of Palmira in the southwestern Colombian department of Valle del Cauca.

Founded in 1973, the former seed bank already stored the largest number of cassava (Manihot esculenta), bean and tropical forage seeds on the planet.

Seeds of the Future, the name of the new gene bank, seeks to safeguard global crop diversity and protect the future of food, as well as to study and understand genetic traits to discover more nutritious crops that are resistant to pests and to the effects of the climate crisis.

It also aims to share seeds, information and technology with partners and vulnerable farmers around the world.

The new seed bank, whose construction began in 2018 with an investment of 17 million dollars, has seed modules, a digital laboratory, a seed health laboratory and a laboratory for in vitro testing of cassava.

Of this total, the Alliance contributed 11 million dollars, the Colombian government provided three million dollars and several donors made up the rest. It employs some 60 people, while around 900 work at the center.

In addition, the new facility plans to deep freeze seeds by means of cryopreservation using liquid nitrogen, for long-term storage.

During a tour of the new seed bank by a small group of journalists, including IPS, Wenzl said that with the new facilities there will be more capacity for storage, research and new projects.

The new germplasm bank Seeds of the Future, inaugurated on Mar. 16 in Palmira, in the southwestern Colombian department of Valle del Cauca, has eco-technologies such as rainwater harvesting, a water recycling system and solar panels. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

Faced with the effects of the climate emergency on agriculture, such as higher temperatures, intense droughts and the proliferation of pests, the work of the gene bank shows the importance of adaptation, such as safeguarding the best seeds, and the search for improved varieties.

In fact, in its report on impacts, adaptation and vulnerability to the climate crisis, released on Feb. 28, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) called for greater diversity in food production.

The IPCC’s demand arises from the fact that climate risks go beyond drought, since by the end of this century almost a third of the world’s crop fields will be unfit for production unless the world reduces polluting emissions.

Since its creation, the bank has distributed more than 500,000 samples from 141 countries to more than 160 nations.

It has done so on the basis of 37,938 bean varieties (46 species from 112 nations), 23,100 forage varieties (734 variants from 75 countries) and 6,600 cassava varieties (the largest number in the world, with more than 30 species from 28 countries).

The material belongs to the nations of origin, but the samples are freely available.

The gene bank also has wild varieties of five domesticated bean species and germplasm from 40 wild specimens. The cassava collection has 250 genotypes of wild species. More than a third of the tuber’s diversity comes from Colombia and almost a quarter from Brazil.

The operations at the new headquarters will strengthen the work with similar collections, such as the 100 gene banks operating in Mexico, 88 in Peru, 56 in Brazil, 47 in Argentina and 25 in Colombia.

The process of storing seeds with the embryos of future plants in the new facility in Palmira, in southwestern Colombia, begins with the analysis of their characteristics, as practiced by researcher Mercedes Parra at the Seeds of the Future gene bank. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

Laborious process

When material arrives from a university, scientific center or grower group, researchers examine its characteristics to verify that it meets quality and biosafety requirements. They then inspect its genetic structure, in a first step to reveal properties that can lead to resistance to pests or drought or to better yields.

This information goes to the center’s database and to the digital laboratory equipment, which performs technological feats to collate, sift and correlate the information. The last step consists of vacuum storage in small bags at -18 degrees Celsius, in a process that takes three to four months.

The bank only collects single seeds, to make the effort of safeguarding the germplasm – of which it creates three backup copies – efficient.

It shares each one with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, another CGIAR partner located in central Mexico, epicenter of the so-called green revolution that increased food production in the developing world at the cost of polluting the soil with synthetic fertilizers.

It also sends another to the Global Seed Vault, the Noah’s Ark of future food built in 2008 and located on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen in the remote Arctic Svalbard archipelago, and managed by the Norwegian government, the Global Crop Diversity Trust and the Nordic Genetic Resource Center.

CIAT, with 400 hectares of land in the municipality of Palmira, near the city of Cali, Colombia’s third largest city in terms of population and economy, has 22 hectares planted with cassava, two with beans and another 10 with forage plants, to test techniques to improve these crops.

CIAT incorporates cutting-edge technology, such as the autonomous robot “Don Roberto”, in a collaboration with Mineral, a sustainable agriculture project of X, the innovation plant of the U.S. transnational Alphabet, parent company of Google. Don Roberto collects data on the status of beans and other seeds critical to global food security. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

In addition, the center has four other research sites on farms in the area to study crops and silvopastoral systems.

A seed holds ancestral secrets and is at the same time memory and inheritance, a reminder of what its family was and a potential announcement of what it can be.

The seed bank also contains a paradox, since the basis of its collection dates back to a time when anyone could appropriate a material and take it far from its place of origin.

But with the advent of biodiversity and species protection treaties in the 1990s, this flow, also intended to safeguard that same biological wealth, stopped.

Today, 20 species are the basis of the world’s food supply, due to the concentration and assimilation of previously more diverse diets. Historically, humankind has used 5,000 species, but another 369,000 could serve as food.

“Many of these materials have been lost in agriculture. In Valle del Cauca there are no longer bean or cassava crops, only sugarcane,” said Daniel Debouck, director emeritus of the germplasm bank.

Another view of the new state-of-the-art building that houses the Seeds of the Future gene bank in Palmira, in southwestern Colombia, at the headquarters of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), where the seeds of the world’s agricultural future are stored in times of uncertainty due to the climate crisis. CREDIT: Courtesy of Ciat-Biodiversity International Alliance

The data revolution in agriculture

One of CIAT’s innovations consists of the use of massive data and artificial intelligence, i.e. the use of computer codes to process the information.

“We work to avoid duplication of seeds and to interconnect the data to improve varieties. If the data yield important information on genes, they can be used for genome editing (cutting out harmful genes),” seed bank researcher Mónica Carvajal told IPS.

Of the total number of materials, 7,000 already have a complete digital sequence; in the case of beans, only 400. This year, the team is concentrating on the series of the entire collection of the common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) and the tepary bean (Phaseolus acutifolius), native to the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico and more resistant to dry climates than the common bean.

“We are interested in finding resistance to heat and drought,” the expert said.

Information from digital sequencing has gained relevance in recent years, due to the advances made by information technology. In fact, CGIAR has a big data platform in place to enhance collaboration between its partners and research.

As part of its strategy to link research and consumption, the Alliance is developing a project to biofortify rice, beans and corn with iron and zinc. Since 2016, they have released more than 40 bean varieties in Central America and Colombia, benefiting some 500,000 people. In Colombia, they have distributed two types of beans, one of rice and one of corn.

The seed bank building holds Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification from the U.S. Green Building Council and the Living Building Challenge from the Seattle-based International Living Future Institute.

Among its innovations, it operates with a rainwater harvesting system that meets its water needs, backed by a water recycling scheme; solar panels that provide half of the electricity; and a pergola made of certified wood that prevents heat accumulation.

By Matthew Newsome
ADDIS ABABA, Oct 9 2013 (IPS)

Ethiopian farmers are learning that seed security is the basis of food security.

After a successful trial, the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations in 2013 began introducing high yielding seeds to Ethiopia’s small-scale farmers.

The farmers are now reporting significantly increased crop yields and greater crop resilience to disease and drought because of the new seed varieties. IPS spoke to the farmers about the improved seeds and how it has impacted their household income and food security.

[podcast]http://traffic.libsyn.com/ipslatamradio07/IPS-FAO-Final-1.mp3[/podcast]

A farmer in Woliyta area of Ethiopia experiences higher yields of taro since adopting disease-resistant and drought-tolerant seed varieties. Agricultural research centres in Ethiopia are cross-pollinating root and tuber seeds to produce higher yielding plant material. Credit: Ed McKenna/IPS

By Ed McKenna
ADDIS ABABA, Oct 7 2013 (IPS)

Datta Dudettu and his seven children know what is like to go hungry. They live in Woliyta, a drought-prone area in southern Ethiopia that has experienced chronic food shortages. But hopefully, thanks to the successful use of hybrid seed, that is now firmly in the past.

“It was common to experience chronic food shortages due to drought or crop disease. My children were even too weak to go to school,” Datta told IPS.

Datta and a number of other farmers in this Horn of Africa nation are experiencing improving food and livelihood security since the introduction of hybrid seed here.

In 2013 hybrid seed trials became long-term strategies to reduce hunger for major agricultural organisations here including NGO Self Help Africa and the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations (FAO).

“Improved seed varieties are produced by cross-breeding seeds from open pollinated varieties [self-producing] to obtain the best traits to create a high-yielding seed; whereas Genetically Modified seeds require the introduction of an organism’s genes into a plant’s genome to achieve desired traits,” John Moffett, director of policy at Self Help Africa, told IPS.

Improved hybrid seeds deliver benefits to smallholder farmers without the dangers that come with GM, said Moffett. “We are concerned that the introduction of GM crops could have an impact on the genetic integrity of open pollinated varieties with negative impacts on farmers reliant on saved seed,” he said.

Ethiopia currently prohibits the use of GM crops.

“The old seeds gave us a small crop. But the new seeds consistently provide us with a much better harvest every year … Since our increased yield they have more energy to attend and get an education,” said Datta who produces tuber crops.

In 2010, the FAO initially gave him 100 kgs of improved taro seeds from which he was able to harvest 800 kgs.

Three out of every four Ethiopians are engaged in agriculture, mainly in subsistence and rain-fed farming. Despite this, more than 31 million out of a total population of 91 million do not have adequate nutritious food in their diet according to the FAO.

The Ethiopian government is trying to transform the country’s agricultural sector through the Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA).

ATA believes “not all seeds are created equal” and has been investing in improved, higher-quality, higher-yielding seeds as a strategy to raise productivity on many Ethiopian smallholder farms.

“High-potential seed varieties can double or even triple a farmer’s yield, which would certainly translate into increased food security on a regional and national scale. It would also lead to savings on foreign exchange – if Ethiopia can grow a higher volume of its own food, there’s less need to import goods at higher costs,” Yonas Sahelu, director of ATA’s Seed Programme, told IPS.

FAO has been working to help farmers in remote villages access the latest scientific research into improved crop varieties by collaborating with Ethiopia’s agricultural research centers for the multiplication and distribution of improved varieties of seeds.

Between 2009 and 2012, the organisation pioneered a three-year trial of improved seed varieties in 12 food insecure districts throughout the country in a bid to boost food security and the household income of small farmers.

The project replaced seeds that farmers normally used with improved seed varieties. According to FAO, 144,000 targeted rural households benefited from the improved high yielding and drought- and disease-resistant seeds. This year, the intervention was established as a leading programme.

“Seed security is food security,” project leader and FAO agricultural expert, Wondimagegne Shiferaw, told IPS.

“We are targeting large poor farming families who don’t have access to improved seeds to grow cassava, sweet potato and enset. Our aim has been to help farmers overcome barriers to access these seeds to increase their productivity and resilience when faced with drought and poor soil,” Wondimagegne said.

He added that the organisation was also providing training to local farmers.

“Improved seeds and improved knowledge,” he said.

Knowledge sharing between farmers plays a major role in community food security. Wondimagegne says that the initiative’s targeted farmers have shared their new seeds, which has increased knowledge transfer exponentially and created “a multiplication effect”.

“There is a good cultural practice of farmers sharing with friends and relatives. We have observed that farmers share the knowledge and the planting material without any imposition.”

Self Help Africa has established 15 improved seed-producing cooperatives in Ethiopia this year with a current membership of 625 smallholder farmers in Ethiopia’s third-largest state, the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples’ Region (SNNPR).

The cooperatives are now responsible for meeting 15 percent of the region’s wheat seed  demand – Ethiopia is currently a net importer of the cereal grain.

“Typically, farmers repeatedly use saved seeds from one season to the next, which tends to reduce the genetic quality of the seed resulting in diminishing yields over time. By giving farmers control of quality assured seed production they have greater confidence of a sustainable supply chain that will lead to improved yields and improved food security,” Moffett said.

The NGO One Acre Fund distributes improved seeds to over 130,000 smallholder farmers in Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, and Tanzania. Stephanie Hanson, director of policy at the fund, told IPS that their farmers have doubled their income per planted half hectare.

“Distributing improved seed varieties to smallholder farmers, when paired with training on how to use them, is one of the most cost-effective ways to increase a farmer’s productivity,” she said.

Happy Shongwe, a smallholder farmer from rural Maphungwane in eastern Swaziland, shows off her seeds. Credit: Mantoe Phakathi/IPS

By Mantoe Phakathi
MAPHUNGWANE, Swaziland, Jun 15 2013 (IPS)

The overcast sky is a sign that it might rain, and Happy Shongwe, a smallholder farmer from rural Maphungwane in eastern Swaziland, is not exactly happy.

Inside a roofless structure made of cement blocks sit different types of legumes – peanuts, jugo beans, mung beans, cow peas and ground nuts – which she has placed in separate containers. “Women also form the majority of farmers and it makes sense to ensure that women have enough inputs to do their farming.” -- FAO assistant representative Khanyisile Mabuza

“If I don’t cover the seeds, the rain will spoil them and they will fail the test at the laboratory,” Shongwe tells IPS. “I have to cover the seeds with a sail to ensure that the rain doesn’t get to them.”

The unfinished structure is where she keeps her harvest for drying, before taking the legumes to the storage containers. An award-winning smallholder farmer who cultivates nothing but legume seeds for planting, Shongwe says the crop is drought tolerant and grows well in the dry parts of the country.

“I always monitor the weather because the little rainfall we get from this part of the country is enough to germinate the seeds,” she says. “You just have to know your weather so that you plant at the right time.”

She is preparing to take samples of her harvest to the Ministry of Agriculture’s Seed Quality Control laboratory for testing. If her seeds are of good quality, then she’ll package and label her stock before it is ready for sale.

“I get a certificate that shows that my seeds germinate at the required standard, therefore good for planting,” explains Shongwe.

One of her major clients is the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations. FAO buys the seed for the organisation’s demonstration plots to promote conservation agriculture.

“FAO has placed an order of one tonne of ground nuts from this harvest which we are supposed to supply by September,” says Shongwe.

On her own she cannot supply such a big order from her four-hectare farm, so she works with a group of 10 women calling themselves the Lutsango Palata Cooperative. In fact, she chairs the association of women she has mobilised herself to go into seed production.

“We make a lot of money from selling the seed inputs compared to farmers who sell for food,” says Shongwe.

The National Maize Corporation buys a 50kg bag of maize at 13 dollars while a 5kg bag of nuts sells for 14 dollars.

There are about 10 associations of women doing similar work, bringing the number of farmers in this project to over 100, all from the drought-stricken Lubombo Region. These farmers produce indigenous seeds which they sell within their communities before offering them countrywide.

“It used to be very difficult for farmers to come across seed inputs for legumes because these are marginalised crops,” according to FAO assistant representative Khanyisile Mabuza.

Mabuza said FAO asked the Ministry of Agriculture to train women farmers in seed production and entrepreneurship back in the 1990s when the drought started. In 2008, FAO introduced Input Trade Fairs (ITF) where poor farmers received 72 dollars in vouchers from FAO to buy farming inputs.

“The community-based seed producers were also invited as vendors at the ITFs and that is where more women started joining in,” Mabuza tells IPS.

In the Kingdom, she says, legumes are considered “women’s crops” and men ignore them. As a result, there was a deliberate effort by FAO to target women to grow seed for themselves for these marginalised crops, which are very important in balancing the diet.

“Women also form the majority of farmers and it makes sense to ensure that women have enough inputs to do their farming,” says Mabuza.

She adds that there was a deliberate effort by FAO to target the dry areas, because legumes tend to withstand drought. For many years, farmers have been persistent in their cultivation of maize, which is the country’s staple food, although they received no yield because of the drought.

“We want our farmers to understand that because of climate change, drought is going to be a part of their lives and they must now learn to adapt,” according to Mabuza.

Farmers from the drought-stricken areas can sell their legumes so that they can afford to buy maize from their counterparts based in wetter areas.

“We’re very happy with the progress these women farmers are making,” says Mabuza.

The community-based seed producers are providing an alternative to the escalating costs of hybrid seed products sold by two multinational companies in the country, Seed Co. and Pannar. According to Seed Quality Control operations manager, Chris Mthethwa, many subsistence farmers do not have enough resources to buy the expensive hybrids.

“The advantage with indigenous seeds is that you can replant their offspring, yet that is not possible with hybrids,” according to Mthethwa.

He said the big companies are also reluctant to sell indigenous seeds because they are not as profitable as their hybrid counterparts. That is why the government, with support from FAO, decided to mobilise smallholder farmers to produce the indigenous seeds, whose taste many Swazis prefer.

There is a possibility that seeds from the smallholder farmers will be exported under the Food Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN) Harmonised Seed Security Programme (HASSP).

Swaziland is among four countries in this programme – Zambia, Malawi and Zimbabwe – working on aligning their seed legislation with the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Seed Regulatory System. According to HASSP programme manager Dr. Bellah Mpofu, this pilot project will ensure easy movement within the SADC region of seeds produced from the participating countries.

“This will improve the access to and availability of quality seed to smallholder farmers,” he tells IPS.

This means by the end of the project this year, Shongwe, who won the 2011 FANRPAN Civil Society Policy Movers and Shakers Award, can expand her customer base.

“I can’t wait to start exporting,” she says proudly.

Vandana Shiva, a scientist and environmental activist, presents plants to schoolchildren as part of the campaign "Gardens of Hope". Credit: Silvia Giannelli/IPS

By Silvia Giannelli
FLORENCE, May 20 2013 (IPS)

As the global agricultural sector is faced with ever-greater challenges, the question of how to reform and improve the sector is a controversial and difficult one. So Terra Futura, a three-day exhibition and conference on agricultural good practises held annually in Florence, brought the debate back to its roots: seeds.

Terra Futura (Future Earth) has been held for ten years as a network for institutions, associations and civil society, which gather in Florence and exchange ideas and experiences for alternative and sustainable environmental, economical and social development.

Vandana Shiva, a scientist and environmental activist, presented a series of initiatives to defend the survival of local and traditional seeds. The initiatives connected land, food sovereignty, biodiversity and environment.

Shiva presented the “law of the seed”, a campaign targeting intellectual property and patents claimed by agribusiness giants. The project aims to reaffirm the centrality of biological and natural rules against the logic of the agribusiness sector, which relies on genetically modified organisms (GMOs), monocultures and intensive agriculture.

“What we intend to achieve is to overturn the logic behind the criminalisation of ordinary seeds and protect the right of farmers to breed their own seeds,” Shiva told IPS.

Yet the current trend seems to be running in the opposite direction, with multinational companies trying to impose the use of patented, genetically modified seeds, with disastrous consequences for local farmers, especially in the third world.

“We have already seen what the entry of Monsanto [a multinational company in agricultural biotechnology and leader of genetically engineered seeds], has done to the cotton sector in India,” Shiva explained.

She added that “95 percent of cotton seed is currently owned and controlled by Monsanto, causing farmers to get into deep dept to pay the royalties”.

Staving off GMOs

According to Beppe Croce, the head of the non-food agriculture section of Legambiente, Italy’s biggest environmental organisation, Europe has managed so far to keep the cultivation of GMOs outside its borders. “From a legislative point of view, the local production is protected,” he said.

The problem lies instead in what European countries import from abroad, as Croce explained to IPS. “Most of our animal feed is integrated with imported products, such as soy and maize. More than half of the total maize cultivated in the world is transgenic,” he said. “This is why we need to strengthen and uniform the tracking system of imported products throughout Europe.”

Giovanni Fabris, national coordinator of Altragricoltura, a national farmers’ movement for food sovereignty, is similarly critical of Europe’s importation policies. During a workshop on access to land in Italian agriculture, he noted, “Europe is focusing on guaranteeing its citizens with the cheapest food possible, regardless of where it comes from.”

According to Fabris, this policy is undermining the production system of countries like Italy, which “have to face the competition of agroindustrial systems outside Europe that are obviously cheaper than ours”.

Under such circumstances, the odds of GMO cultivation not entering Europe seem all but impossible.

“The argument is always the same: the population is growing and we need GMOs to meet the future food demand,” Croce pointed out. “The truth is that production cannot be boosted indiscriminately everywhere, and most of all, it does not need to be done via GM techniques.”

But the lobbying efforts of agribusiness companies are finding new ways of breaking through. On May 6, the European Commission drafted legislation that prevents farmers from producing their own seeds.

“This draft is an example of criminalising the alternative to GMO,” Shiva told IPS. “They would like only patented seeds, all royalties flowing, farmers having no freedom to choose what to grow and consumers having no freedom to choose what to eat.”

People power

But citizens are rediscovering the value of good food, as demonstrated by phenomena and movements such as Slow Food, solidarity-based purchasing groups, and urban gardens. After a half-century of industry control, “people are experimenting [with] new solutions to have more control [over] what they eat,” Shiva said.

Another initiative, “Seeds of Future, Gardens of Hope”, is moving in the same direction. It is being promoted by Shiva’s non-profit organisation, Navdanya International. Through it, children in Florence’s primary schools are given plants of local species to grow in their gardens.

“We are not just talking about education. We are talking about them being the custodian,” Shiva told IPS.

“But everyone is a child in this matter,” she added. “Farmers have been made into children in the sense that they have been made to forget they are savers and breeders of seeds. Consumers have been made to forget that food begins with seed. So, in a way, this it is education for all, education for life.”