This article by Angela Hilmi and Sara Burbi explores the importance of peasant farming worldwide, the debate about its disappearance and the way it is being impacted by differentiated policies. It takes two examples, Tunisia and Egypt, during post-colonial times. In both cases policies tended to favour the modernization of agriculture, ignoring the contribution of peasant farming to the national economies. But interestingly the data show a surprisingly significant importance and increase in the number of small farms in both countries. While theoretical debates continue about the disappearance of peasantries, reality demonstrates that peasant farming is a formidable and resilient buffer for human societies, which helps stabilize, balance and enrich them.

Opinion by Million Belay.
We are told that high input agriculture will boost food production in Africa. A persistent worry for Million Belay is the loss of knowledge related to our nutritious, traditional crops if they succeed.

This contribution discusses access and benefit sharing within the context of participatory plant breeding. It presents how Chinese farmers and breeders interact in relation to crop improvement and on-farm maintenance of plant genetic resources. Based on more than a decade of action research, a number of institutional changes were accomplished as a result of the interactions between national and provincial breeding institutes, rural development researchers and local maize farmers. Although the respective legislation in China is not yet adequately formulated, access and benefit sharing can still be addressed in contracts and by labelling products of a particular geographic origin.

A network of communities in West-Central Mexico has rescued its traditional landraces of maize. This experience shows that the benefits of defending an ancestral good is not only limited to regaining cultural identity and agrobiodiversity. The defence of native maize has become a space where old and new knowledge redefined
agriculture and where people achieved food sovereignty, technical autonomy, and a new sense of community.

Efforts to rapidly increase on-farm biodiversity are a matter of urgency in an era of climate change. To do so, family farmers need better access to the genetic material of research stations and gene banks. Collaboration with scientists who are willing and able to work together with farmers is crucial. The Evolutionary Plant Breeding programme in Iran is one example of how this can be done.

Increasingly, seeds are the domain of professional breeders, agribusiness and policy makers. They decide what makes for a good variety and they develop legislation that excludes other varieties. Despite this,family farmer organisations and social movements in Paraíba,Brazil, have managed to strengthen decentralised farmerdriven seed selection and distribution systems and public seed policies. They may well be opening the way for another seed regime in the country, with its own access and benefit sharing mechanisms.

What is successful access and benefit sharing’ for
smallholder family farmers? This contribution argues it is not about legal contracts or mechanisms that regulate the international transfer of plant genetic resources. It is about farmers’ access to seed diversity and the ability to share in the benefits of the continuing cycles of seed conservation and development. The Community Technology Development Trust in Zimbabwe supports mechanisms that, in practice, do result in substantial access to and benefit sharing of local and modern varieties.

The Dutch potato breeding model, which involves a partnership between family farmers and commercial breeding companies in a modern, Western context, is unique. While there are other examples of collaborative relationships between farmers and breeders in Europe, the Dutch potato breeding model stands out in terms of its long track record, the involvement of the private sector, and the institutional integration of the relationship which up to today facilitates access to genetic materials and financial benefit sharing.

This special issue of Farming Matters magazine has explored the ways in which access and benefit sharing of plant genetic resources can work for family farmers. On one hand it presents cases that demonstrate the limited extent to which family farmers have been able to benefit from the ‘formal’ ABS process: the rather complex arrangements between international agreements and national authorities, institutions and communities. On the other hand, this publication uncovers some of the effective principles and mechanisms for access and benefit sharing that are part and parcel of farmers’ everyday practices, even when formal ABS regulations have not yet been designed or implemented. What can we conclude?

In the Ecuadorian provinces of Bolivar, Chimborazo, and Cotopaxi, family farmers are building new capacity to conserve and use the biodiversity on their farms. By participating in action research they gain a greater understanding and control of their plant genetic resources. This results in increased resilience to climatic and other shocks and takes them further on the path towards food sovereignty.