Latest Resources

ACB 2024 Annual Report: Our Year in Review

In 2024, the ACB collaborated with progressive civil society networks to advance an integrated agroecological response to the biodiversity, climate change, and sustainable food systems issues of our time, intensifying our efforts to conceptualise what just and sustainable food systems could look like in the future. We actively participated in several policy processes in South […]

Kenya Seed Savers Network workshop on CBD and GBF

In September, ACB research and advocacy officer Sabrina Masinjila participated in a multi-stakeholder workshop hosted by the Kenya Seed Savers Network. The aim of the meeting, which took place in Gilgil, was to develop a strategy for grassroots organisations to effectively engage in the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and actualise the Global Biodiversity Framework […]

World Food Day 2023: Working towards a just food system for all

This World Food Day, marked annually on 16 October, we’re connecting the dots between agriculture, our wider food system and the multidimensional crises we face, which includes climate change. The industrialised food system, from agricultural inputs and production to consumption, transport and storage, feeds climate change, and climate change, in turn, impacts the food system, […]

Just transition and adaptation in the food system: national policy dialogue

The National policy dialogue on a just transition and adaptation in the food system took place in Ekurhuleni, from 20-22 September. Organisations representing the labour movement, smallholder farmers, farm workers, labour tenants, informal traders, waste reclaimers, food and land justice organisations, civil society, and policymakers came together to discuss building a coordinated understanding and policy […]

Assessment of support for agroecology in South Africa’s policy landscape

by Dr Stephen Greenberg (Veuillez cliquer ici pour le français) In March 2023, civil society organisations and farmers met with the Portfolio Committee on Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development to share views on agroecology and to promote a call from 58 organisations for a national agroecology strategy. In support of the process, the ACB […]

The Last Seed – A film produced by Rosa Luxemburg

‘The Last Seed,’ a documentary film produced by Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung in association with the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA), Biowatch, and Participatory Ecological Land Use, Management (PELUM) Tanzania, features ACB’s ED Mariam Mayet as one of the key voices advocating for seed sovereignty on the African continent. Through the lived experiences of African small-scale […]

Agroecology advocacy meeting held in Suurbraak

In February, together with the Environmental Monitoring Group (EMG) and Trust for Community Outreach and Education (TCOE), the ACB hosted a meeting in Suurbraak, Western Cape, bringing together a network of farmer and civil society organisations to discuss a strategy to approach government to support agroecology. Through the lens of advocacy, and a focus on the challenges facing […]

Zimbabwean smallholder farmers show us the way towards alternative food systems

– by Dr Stephen Greenberg These reflections come from attending a farmer exchange in October 2022, hosted by the African Centre for Biodiversity (ACB) and Participatory Ecological Land Use Management (PELUM) Zimbabwe, in collaboration with Towards Sustainable Use of Resources Organisation (TSURO) and Community Technology Development Organisation (CTDO). The 35 participants, including farmers, non-government organisations […]

Breaking from the rest of the continent

South Africa moves towards recognising smallholder farmers’ Right to Seed and farmer seed systems – but the road ahead is still long By Linzi Lewis, ACB Research and Advocacy Officer & Mariam Mayet, ACB Executive Director After much anticipation, the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE) published draft Regulations to implement the Plant […]

Reflections midway through 2020: The need for solidarity and global rules for rooted change

ACB’s Executive Director Mariam Mayet looks back at the first half of the year We are mired in a world shattering pandemic of unprecedented magnitude and virulence. The architecture of global economic, environmental, human rights and political governance institutions and rules established in the 20th century are in the process of atrophying. The crisis is […]