Type: Research
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Strengths and weaknesses of organized crop seed production by smallholder farmer: A five-country case study
By B Dey , B Visser, HQ Tin, A Mahamadou Laouali, N Baba Toure Mahamadou, C Nkhoma, S Alonzo Recinos, C Opiyo and S Bragdon. In many countries, smallholder farmers play a key role in food crop seed production. So far, the community roles, operational structures, seed production efficiency, aspects of sustainability, and the social […]
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‘Advances in the Registration of Farmers’ Varieties: Four Cases from the Global South’ Agronomy, 11 November 2021
Over the last few decades, there has been a growing appreciation of crop varieties developed by local farmers, commonly referred to as farmers’ varieties. These varieties often have attractive characteristics for both producers and consumers, such as adaptability to harsh environmental conditions and high nutritional values. Yet they are usually not sold in formal markets, […]
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‘Agroecological Transitions: A Systematic Review of Research Approaches and Prospects for Participatory Action Methods’ Front. Sustain. Food Syst., 26 October 2021
There have been many calls for an agroecological transition to respond to food shocks and crises stemming from conventional food systems. A group of researchers, including SD=HS’s Gisella Cruz García, focus on participatory action research and transformative epistemologies, where communities are research actors rather than objects, have been proposed as a way to enhance this […]
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‘How regulatory issues on new breeding technologies can impact smallholder farmer breeding: Case study from the Philippines’ Plants People Planet, 25 May 2021
In this article, SD=HS team members Bram De Jonge, Bert Visser and Rene Salazar look at the impacts of breeding technologies regulations on smallholder farmers. The widespread use of patents on plants in low- and middle-income countries demonstrates the increasing privatisation of crop genetic resources. This potentially limits their use in farmer breeding, increasing the […]
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‘Foods of Oppression’
Front. Sustain. Food Syst., 17 March 2021The growing recognition of food justice as an element of food studies inquiry has opened a productive vein that allows for analyzing the effects of oppression on traditional foods of Indigenous peoples. Writing together with Lisa Price and Nemer Narchi in the open-access “Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems”, SD=HS’s Gisella Cruz García provides a preliminary […]
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Global Legal Constraints: How the International System Fails Small-Scale Farmers and Agricultural Biodiversity, Harming Human and Planetary Health, and What to Do About It
This publication explores the concerns driving relevant international instruments with the goal of increasing the understanding needed to achieve coherence and mutual support. Susan H. Bragdon notes the central role inequity plays both amongst the treaties and instruments discussed in this paper as well as in the broader international legal landscape that includes human rights […]
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Women, seeds and nutrition
technical report of the baseline surveyPhase 1 of the “Sowing diversity = Harvesting Security” (SD=HS) Programme, funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) and the Dutch National Postcode Lottery (NPL), was implemented between 2014 and 2018. Its objectives were to uphold, strengthen and mainstream the rights and technical capacities of indigenous peoples and smallholder farmers, and to influence […]
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Reinvigorating the Public Sector: The Case of Food Security, Small-scale Farmers, Trade and Intellectual Property Rules
Susan Bragdon Abstract: The world increasingly looks to market-based solutions to meet local and global food security needs. This trend is accompanied by a weakening of the public sector. These two trends have an enormous influence on the creation of a modern food system that is harming the health of people and planet. Individually and […]