So many European research projects or informal processes lead to the question of how to use and maintain agrobiodiversity, which is dramatically disappearing. For this reason, without relying on political or institutional processes, we can immediately start with Community Seed Banks.
What are Community Seed Banks?
CSBs have been founded since the early 1980th in many parts of the world and in Europe are mostly based on seed savers’, gardeners’ and farmers’ networks. They maintain and develop agricultural bio-diversity, enhance access to seeds and plants adapted to local conditions, provide training and sensibilisation activities and thereby contribute to sustainable agriculture and food sovereignty.
For more than 40 years, Community Seed Banks (CSBs) around the world have emerged as part of informal seed systems to counteract the loss of locally adapted crops through dynamic, collective management.
In fact, In Europe, the number of CSBs has grown rapidly in the last 15 years. They had a crucial role in raising public awareness of the importance of plant and seed diversity, protecting local varieties and adapting them to current needs. CSBs have also enriched our society with their innovations, such as newly adapted tools and methods and social forms, to help building a more sustainable food system.
Through the #DYNAVERSITY project, we have produced 3 Manuals to provide a comprehensive overview of how they can be established, their management and the exchange laws that affect them.
This topic concerns everyone, and these manuals can help to start a CSBs !
Technical manual series on CSBs
Manual #1 “Establishment, management and governance”
This first manual shows how to manage and start a CSBs. What seeds to choose? How to multiply it? With lots of little tips, this manual will help you to manage it in the best possible way.
Manual #2 “Documentation systems: a tool for data and information management”
Conserving germplasm in community seed banks is important for making certain plant varieties and mixtures that are not easily available on the commercial market accessible to a community of interested users. However, the value of any collection, including those which are maintained in a community setting, is strongly related to the quantity, type, and quality of the information associated with it and to its accessibility to users, who are in this way enabled to make informed choices, based on their specific needs and preferences. With this second manual, you will learn how to manage your CSB database.
Manual # 3 “Community Seed Banks: regulating access to germplasm and benefit sharing models”
European CSBs are generally embedded in informal PGRFA conservation and seed systems, and most often their origin does not emerge out of any relationship with formal PGRFA institutions. However, as their activities and services grow and diversify in scope and outreach, it is not at all un-frequent that they interact with research institutes and national or international genebanks. Strengthened collaboration between genebanks and organisations working at different levels on seed system development is potentially beneficial for both sides: farmers may benefit from access to genetic diversity they otherwise would not have, and genebanks get to interact with seed systems they would not reach through conventional channels.
This third handbook seeks to shed light on all the laws, directives, treaties, and conventions that affect the world of seeds and their access.
DYNAVERSITY analyses and describes the actors involved in plant genetic conservation for agriculture in order to suggest management and governance models and to construct new forms of networking. It facilitates exchange and integration of scientific as well as practical knowledge on how to best manage diversity in agriculture and in the entire food chain, restoring evolutionary and adaptation processes. This project received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation program under Grant Agreement n. 773814.
