Honoring Farmer Seed Systems

Farmers have always worked with and on the land to produce food, foster agriculture, and contribute to biodiversity. I am referring to peasant farmers, small-scale farmers, smallholder farmers, and rural farmers. I am speaking about farmers who have a direct relationship with the land, the soil, the environment, and their ecosystems. Farmers who are rooted in their local communities, who know their local food systems, and who are well acquainted with the landscape and the agroecological systems within their local settings. The seed system of these farmers has fed and nourished not just humans and their communities but also animals, birds, and all living things within their ecosystem.

A farmer seed system involves the selection, cultivation, saving, sharing, exchanging, and preservation of seeds. In other words, a farmer seed system involves farmers planting crops, cultivating those crops with agroecological methods, using their experience and expertise to select which plants they will save seeds from, and engaging in the processing of either harvesting, drying, or using local and traditional knowledge to prepare seeds to be saved. As well as, keeping the seeds in a way that will protect and preserve them until the next farming season. Farmers are not only directly involved in the creation and sustaining of their seed systems but are also active in the knowledge involved in how they produce, preserve, and exchange the seeds.

Sorghum Varieties from the Nabdam District

Over the years, farmers have grown and exchanged seeds within and across their households, communities, and neighboring villages, which has strengthened the diversity of their seeds. Local seeds carry high genetic diversity and are adapted to many environmental and climatic stressors. As farmers and their communities select seeds that meet their needs, food preferences, cultural needs, and climate changes, the diversity of seeds is also increased. Seed diversity reduces the risk of the loss and extinction of different varieties of crops, if one crop variety is lost in one household or community then another variety might be available in another community or household through a previous exchange and/or sharing. 

A few years ago, I remember meeting a farmer in the middle of a palm forest in the Western region who had a rare red corn variety I had never seen in Ghana. He mentioned that it was a local variety that was going extinct in the Western region, and so he gave me some seeds to plant. I brought the seeds to Bolgatanga and distributed them among two farmers, but it was already too late to plant during that season. I also received pumpkin, sorghum, and vegetable seeds from my friend Livhuwani’s grandmother in South Africa. I distributed these seeds to farmers. The vegetables did quite well in Bolgatanga, but the sorghum struggled a bit due to the climate differences. At that time the sorghum did well in April in Venda, South Africa and the weather was a bit chilly. However, they were planted in June in Bolga in the rainy season, and the sorghum did not grow well, which could have been due to the climate, soil, drought, etc. The free sharing and exchange of seeds enables farmers to some extent guarantee not just the survival of that seed but also to strengthen the genetic diversity of that seed.

September 2021, Western Region of Ghana

The brilliance of the farmer seed system is what has given us the diversity of foods we have access to today. Farmers know that quality seeds equate to quality food and the same applies to soil. Farmer seed systems are part of everyday communal life deeply interconnected with sustaining the well-being of all living things. Take the millet, for instance, and its importance to the Gurune people in the Upper East Region of Ghana. The early millet Naara is roasted, used to make Tuo Zaafi, Zumcum, Maasa, Bengari, Konkoree, and even added to soups in the dry season. The late millet, Zeer, is used in traditional ceremonies and for cultural purposes. Almost every community in the Upper East region grows both the Naara and Zeer, the seeds for these crops are one hundred percent farmers' seeds that have been passed on from one generation to the next. Millet is no doubt an important part of the identity of the Gurune people, and it is farmers who have sustained the life of the millet, thus fostering the lineage between the Gurune people and millet.

West African Peasant Farmers Seed Fair, Benin

The ability to collect, save, exchange, and control seeds was always in the hands of farmers, but now international seed laws like the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) and World Trade Organization Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (WTO-TRIPS) threaten farmers' rights and their seed systems. Corporations and private seed companies use the genetic diversity from seeds farmers have protected, preserved, and saved over hundreds of years to develop their new varieties, then proceed to use seed laws to make claims for ownership through intellectual property rights over the new varieties. To breed new plant varieties, corporations and private seed companies take from the crop diversity that farmers have preserved as their starting point. 

Farmer seed systems have given us a collective inheritance of seed diversity and plant varieties we otherwise would not have access to. Farmer seed systems hold our human history by giving us insight into what previous generations planted, consumed, and passed on. Farmer seed systems give us first-hand information about changes in the climate, environment, and ecosystem. Farmer seed systems have carried our ancestral practices and ecological resilience from the past into the future. Farmer seed systems have kept traditional and local knowledge alive. Farmer seed systems hold the blueprint of foods that are medicine for our bodies. Farmer seed systems protect the value, the life, the integrity, and the genetic information about the natural world around us that lives and breathes in seeds. Honoring and protecting farmer seed system is our gift and our appreciation back to earth for our time here.

West African Peasant Farmers Seed Fair, Benin