Seeds, guardians of the past and the future

Valleys of fields, shrubs, and forests stretch as far as the eye can see. Constant humidity and fincas are scattered across the hills at the end of long, winding dirt roads. This is the landscape Maricela Gironza, a farmer from Caldono in Colombia’s Cauca region, wakes up to every morning. While her gray hair shows the passage of years, the motivation and energy she pours into her farm are impressive. She draws this energy from the farming community around her and their work with seeds.

Over millennia, farmers worldwide have created an incredible number of seed varieties. These are known as peasant seeds or traditional seeds, as opposed to industrial seeds. These small seeds are precious to farmers. They are nutritionally richer than industrial seeds and require no expensive fertilizers or pesticides. Thanks to them, farming families are autonomous and independent of industry. Furthermore, each seed is adapted to the local region, soil, and climate, making them particularly resilient—a major advantage in the face of climate change.

Maricela Gironza knows just how rich ancestral seeds can be: “I still grow seeds that my grandfather sowed fifty or sixty years ago. The rest of my seeds have been enriched by encounters, exchanges, and bartering with other farmers. So, on our farm, we have corn varieties that can withstand drought or cold temperatures, as well as tomatoes and beans that produce good harvests despite heavy rainfall. And we don’t go hungry.”

Unfortunately, our century is witnessing a rapid decline in the number of traditional seeds. According to the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations), 75% of all varieties worldwide have been lost over the last hundred years. The main reason for this impoverishment lies in agro-industrial monopolies and pressure on farming families. “Multinationals concentrate largely on a handful of plants: wheat, corn, soy, rice, and a few vegetables. Their aim is to market certain crops worldwide, leading to the disappearance of local varieties,” explains Simon Degelo, seed expert at SWISSAID.

However, the loss of variety diversity is also due to the fact that policies and regulations are strongly geared towards industrial seeds such as those from Corteva, Syngenta and Bayer. In addition, there are regulations on intellectual property, such as patents and plant variety protection, which allow corporations to further expand their dominant market position. This is at the expense of small breeding companies and farmers. In many countries, they are only allowed to multiply, exchange and buy their own seeds to a very limited extent. Instead, they have to buy new seeds from the companies every year.

In Colombia, industrial seeds are supported by a national program and distributed free of charge to farmers. Maricela Gironza has tested them and is disappointed with the results: “We worked with improved coffee seeds, which were supposed to be rust-resistant, but two or three years later the pest was already present, and we had to treat the crops.” The same happened with maize. The farmer then turned to another type of agriculture.

In 2012, Maricela Gironza heard about the work to preserve and restore indigenous seeds, supported in particular by SWISSAID’s Semillas de Identidad project. Immediately convinced, the Colombian farmer converted her farm to agroecology with the support of SWISSAID and turned it into a community house, also known as a seed bank. By selling and exchanging seeds, these places give farmers back control over the production, conservation, and control of traditional seeds, as well as the associated knowledge.

The Colombian peasant woman herself became a seed guardian, with several missions: to preserve, produce, store, and sell or exchange quality seeds. This meticulous work enables local farming families to obtain quality seeds. “With our seed banks, we feed many families at a very low production cost,” says the farmer.

In Colombia and the rest of the world, traditional seeds represent much more than a quality harvest. In 2021, the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Michael Fakhri declared:

“[Seeds] are at the heart of people’s culture and food systems, so much so that to control seeds is to control life.”

The exchange of seeds enables the transmission of ancestral knowledge. Additionally, the processes involved in setting up and managing seed banks positively impact village organization. “The main difference between indigenous ancestral seed crops and industrialized crops lies in the collective aspect. We are farmer groups, the houses are communal, and together we aim to preserve biodiversity, food security, the well-being of the inhabitants, and to defend our territory,” notes Maricela Gironza.

This preservation work creates new jobs and generates income. This is particularly the case when farmers specialize in seed growing, pursuing selective cultivation and planting new varieties. Seed production can also offer young people an alternative to the rural exodus.

By 2022, the total number of seed banks built by the Semillas de Identitad project had risen to 83. A similar project is underway in Nicaragua. A total of 500 seed varieties have been created in both countries and stored in seed banks. And some 12,000 families are taking part! Convinced of the importance of small seeds for the independence of farming families and the fight against climate change, SWISSAID is launching similar projects in Niger, Chad and Tanzania.

The future of our agriculture and food depends on the diversity of our seeds. They contain our history, but also and above all our future. People who live off the land have understood this and are fighting to safeguard biodiversity. Like Maricela Gironza, who fights every day for her land, the seeds of her ancestors and the future of our planet: “Seeds survive as long as they are in the hands of farming families and all those indigenous groups who, for thousands of years, have preserved them. It’s up to us, the indigenous peoples, to appropriate them, defend them and protect our territories And now it’s up to us to support this struggle, which will benefit the whole world.