Tuesday 20 November 2012

Seed SOS

The seeds grown for our food were earlier in the hands of farmers and public-sector plant breeders. Today, however, for an increasing amount of seeds the first link in our food chain is controlled by a handful of multinational corporations. Still there are a number of farmers who save their own seeds and many backyard vegetable gardeners and communities are also following different techniques to secure seeds and a future for food outside of corporate control.
The national agricultural research systems (NARS) come forward to solve farmer’s problems. The use of participatory rapid appraisal surveys (PRAS) by both NARS and the extension services have highlighted issues and farming practices previously unknown or considered not worth bothering about. They highlight farmer resourcefulness which should be harnessed to provide possibilities to develop more efficient technology.
The seed bank proper comprises several major components: a seed store, a germplasm repository, a herbarium and a documentation section for holding records and information on local and scientific knowledge, and an administrative and records unit. The seed store represents a seed reserve system consisting largely of local varieties, including those enhanced and/or selected and multiplied on-farm through either participatory plant breeding (PPB) and/or participatory variety selection (PVS), as well as locally adapted and adopted introductions obtained by way of exchange or from various other sources.
The disappearance of biodiversity and seed sovereignty creates a major crisis for agriculture and food security, corporations are pushing governments to use public money to destroy the public seed supply and replace it with unreliable non-renewable, patented seed which must be bought each and every year



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