Community seed bank has more than 20 years of history in Nepal. The main objectives of establishing a community seed banks are to halt the rapid erosion of local varieties and their on-farm management, improving local livelihoods and resilience through providing easy access to quality seeds of diverse crops and varieties at the local level and realizing farmers’ rights on seed. This video presents some cases of how community seed banks in Nepal supported by LI-BIRD in collaboration with various development partners are achieving the conservation and livelihood goals.

This methodological toolkit aims to aid farmers and technicians in better understanding the principles and mechanisms that underlie the resiliency (or lack of) of farming systems and how agroecological management can enhance the adaptive capacity of farmers to unpredictable and sever climatic variability.

The tool can be used for:

• Conducting a rapid agroecological assessment of farms and their level of vulnerability
• Initiating of a process of agroecological conversion to enhance the response capacity of farmers and thus improve the resiliency of their farming systems
• Monitoring the trajectory of the farms under agroecological converstion after climatic events such as hurricanes, rain storms and drought.

Authors:

• Miguel A. Altieri
• Clara I. Nicholls-Estrada
• Alejandro Henao-Salazar
• Ana C. Galvis-Martinez

Sustainable agriculture in dry and degraded areas is about the resilience of farmers and ecosystems. With examples from different parts of the world, the latest issue of Farming Matters, shows the importance of local knowledge and appropriate policies. Farming Matters is published by ILEIA quarterly and reaches readers in 172 countries.

International delegates of La Via Campesina gathered in Surin, Thailand, from 6 to 12 November 2012 for the First Global Encounter on Agroecology and Seeds. The objective of the reunion was “to share experience and construct a strategy and vision on agroecology and seeds, in the holistic understanding that both are part of the struggle to achieve food sovereignty.”
In Thailand, small scale farmers are currently pushing toward a shift from an industrial model of agriculture to agroecology with the full support of La Via Campesina movement and that is the reason why this country has been chosen for the meeting.
The Surin Declaration states clearly why Agroecology, as truly sustainable peasants agriculture based on traditional knowledge, is considered the corner stone of food sovereignty, as well as an intrinsic part of the global answer to the main challenges and crises we face as humanity. You can read it the full text of the Surin Declaration here.

La Via Campesina website: http://viacampesina.org/en/

A new 30-minute film produced by The Gaia Foundation and the Africa Biodiversity Network, in collaboration with MELCA Ethiopia, Navdanya International and GRAIN.

Narrated by actor Jeremy Irons, Seeds of Freedom is set to explode pervasive myths about agriculture, development and Africa’s ability to feed herself. At the heart of the film the story of seed and its transformation from the basis of farming communities’ agri-culture, to the property of agri-business.