Good seed supplies are the basis for successful agriculture. For farmers in poor and remote rural areas, diverse seed stocks are an important resource. Seed diversity makes it possible to breed plants with a range of useful characteristics. Farmer networks play an important role in protecting on-farm crop genetic resources.

Crop genetic diversity is very important for small-scale farmers. It allows them to adapt crop varieties to different ecological settings. Diversity also enables seed systems to withstand pressures, for example from pests and diseases. Understanding how farmers maintain genetic diversity on farms is a significant task.

Farmers’ social relations and networks are vital for the maintenance of crop genetic diversity. They are an opportunity for farmers to share good seeds and maintain access to a stock of wide diversity. Research by the Centre for Maize and Wheat Improvement in Mexico investigates patterns of seed exchange among communities of traditional maize farmers in southern Mexico. The research identifies several important features in the conservation of genetic diversity:

• Farmers’ seed systems contribute to the preservation of traditional varieties, along with the careful experimentation with, and adaptation of, new varieties.
• The quality of seed and the characteristics of the plants that may grow from it are difficult to assess. Thus, farmers depend on the information offered by seed providers - this makes trust a key element in seed transactions.
• Farmers’ use of social relations for seed is more complex and flexible than the researchers predicted.
• Farmers save seed for a number of reasons, including more trust in their own seeds than commercial seeds or other farmers’ seeds.
• Farmers also feel secure if they have saved seeds for the following year. Furthermore, local value systems identify saving seeds as a characteristic of a ‘good farmer’.
• The research found no evidence of a specialised social organisation based on collective action to mediate seed flows. Seed transactions are not part of an organised system of long-term obligations between buyer and seller.  

Policymakers need to support seed systems, particularly where a commercial seed sector has not developed. They could address several issues, including:

• Identifying appropriate opportunities for introducing low-cost, low-risk access to new and interesting seeds varieties.
• Recognising that programmes supporting large-scale collective sharing networks, such as ‘community seed banks’, are not always appropriate.
• A ‘one size fits all’ approach to seed development is not appropriate in most places - it would be better to strengthen existing relationships between farmers, particularly where farmers prioritise diversity in seed resources, rather than single varieties that offer increased yields under particular conditions.

Source(s):
‘Collective Action for the Conservation of On-Farm Genetic Diversity in a Centre of Crop Diversity: an assessment of the role of traditional farmers’ networks’, CGIAR Systemwide Program on Collective Action and Property Rights (CAPRi) Working Paper No. 38, by Lone B. Badstue, Mauricio R. Bellon, Julien Berthaud, Alejandro Ramirez, Dagoberto Flores, Xochitl Juarez and Fabiola Ramirez, May 2005 Full document.

Funded by: CGIAR Systemwide Program on Collective Action and Property Rights

id21 Research Highlight: 9 February 2006

Further Information:
Lone Badstue
International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT)
Apartado Postal 6-641
06600 Mexico D.F
Mexico

Tel: +52 55 5804 2004
Fax: +52 55 5804 7558
Contact the contributor: l.badstue@cgiar.org

Centre for Maize and Wheat Improvement, Mexico

Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research

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