Latest Resources

18 June 2018

Agroecology points the way towards resilience against climate change

This week the water-stressed city of Cape Town hosts the bi-annual Adaptation Futures conference, where scientists, business leaders, and practitioners from the world of development and agriculture will come together to engage in ‘dialogues for solutions’ to the multifarious problems wrought by our rapidly changing climate. As actors with different perspectives design modes of collaboration, […]

13 November 2017

Smallholder farmers score victory at international ‘Seed Treaty’ meeting

A landmark decision on the establishment of an Ad Hoc Technical Expert Group to realise farmers’ rights was recently taken by the seventh session of the Governing Body (GB7) of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA; also known as the ‘Seed Treaty’). There was stiff opposition from countries from […]

16 October 2017

Is transformation on the Horizon?

Someone asked my son when he was about three years old, ‘What is your father’s job?’ He said, ‘Sibseba’, which in Amharic means ‘meetings’. This was because every time my son used to ask me where I was going, I used to tell him to sibseba. At the time, I was coordinating the Ethiopian civil […]

27 September 2017

Seed sovereignty for Peasant Farmers in Malawi blocked by emerging national seed policy

The government of Malawi is poised to adopt a draconian National Seed Policy that blocks peasant farmers’ opportunities to secure and strengthen farmer-managed seed systems (FMSS), and which would undermine farmers’ rights and the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, to which Malawi is a Party. An ad hoc stakeholder policy […]

4 August 2017

Local seed varieties are essential for sustainable food systems … but face challenges

Smallholder farmers in Mozambique want access to a diversity of quality seed, but not exclusively from the formal sector. Farmers highly value their own varieties and want to work on enhancing these, too. These strong messages came out of a dialogue held between smallholder farmers, government officials and research institutions in Chimoio, Manica Province in […]