Description

“If we fail on seeds, we fail on food. If we fail on the right to food, we fail on the most basic of human rights”.

From 2015 until 2023 Oxfam Novib and partners carried out the Sowing Diversity= Harvesting Security program. This important work laid the foundation for many new initiatives and programs, on the topics of farmer’s crop improvement and adaptation, farmer seed enterprises, nutrition and local food plants, as well as an enabling policy environment.

Through collaboration in every country where the program took place, we can confidently claim that farmer-managed seeds systems are stronger and more diverse, and thus food security has been strengthened. Zambian farmers and plant breeders created and released a new sorghum variety in four years, a record by any standard. Several governments adopted ways of working with farmers, securing agricultural biodiversity introduced to them by the programme.

They also formally recognized, or else considered, critical components of the seed systems that had always been dismissed as “informal” and often deemed illegal: the seeds of so-called farmer varieties and the roles of farmers in seed production. In the space created by these changing policies and with the skills gained in their farmer field schools, farmer groups in all programme countries now earn incomes from selling seeds of their most important crops, crops often left unaddressed by the commercial and formal sector. And finally, complementing the dietary role of these staple crops are the myriad local food crops. Learning about these indigenous crops, unravelling the stigma surrounding their use, and cooking them in novel ways has demonstrably reduced hunger and enriched dinner tables. To varying degrees, these changes and the ways of working have become part of the DNA of formal and non-governmental institutions in the countries where SD=HS worked. While more work is needed in many cases, we are confident the changes seen in the countries where SD=HS worked will last and begin a life of their own.

Partners