We Are the Custodians 

Women Leading the Charge to Safeguard our Agricultural Heritage

Author

Arnab Gupta
August 09, 2023


We Are the Custodians

Women Leading the Charge to Safeguard our Agricultural Heritage

Our global food supply depends on the genetic diversity of our crops. This biodiversity provides resilience against pests, diseases, and climate disruptions that threaten monocultures of genetically uniform modern varieties. However, industrial agriculture and standardization are eroding this vital diversity, putting our future at risk. Fortunately, women around the world are acting as custodians and stewards of traditional crop varieties, preserving precious genetic resources through their knowledge, action, and leadership.

Preserving Heirloom Seeds in India

In India, activist Dr. Vandana Shiva has been instrumental in saving heirloom seeds through her organization Navdanya. By establishing over 100 community seed banks, she has helped conserve more than 3,000 varieties of rice alone. This vital crop diversity harbors unique genes that may prove crucial for adaptation. Dr. Shiva’s movement has empowered women farmers, validating their wisdom as essential to India’s agricultural and cultural heritage. These seed custodians are now recognized for safeguarding varieties adapted to local conditions, along with traditional knowledge of how to grow them sustainably 1.

The Seed Mothers of Africa

Across Africa, the role of “seed mother” carries great responsibility and honor. Elizabeth Mpofu, an organic farmer in Zimbabwe, embraces this role as a seed protector. Through her organization ZIMSOFF (Zimbabwe Smallholder Organic Farmers’ Forum)2, she promotes conservation of heirloom seeds and teaches women organic growing methods. This strengthens local seed diversity and food sovereignty. ZIMSOFF’s programs train women farmers to select, save, store, and exchange traditional seeds, ensuring availability of well-adapted local crops and protecting against dependence on expensive hybrid imports.

The Maize Matriarchs of Mexico

Mexico is the birthplace of maize, a sacred crop dependent on human custodians. Felipa Martinez continues a thousands-year legacy growing heirloom maize varieties in Santiago Yaitepec in humid southern Oaxaca. Through CIMMYT’s landrace improvement programme, she alongwith the indigenous communities work together with professional maize breeders to continuously improve and conserve their native maize. Here, women operate seed banks, farms, and cooperatives that strengthen economies while preserving genetic diversity. This enables continuation of local maize varieties cultivated since pre-Columbian times3.

Custodians like Felipa exemplify a profound tradition of caretaking native crops that is vital to conserve. Women around the globe persist in growing heirloom varieties that tie cultures to land and locality through traditional agriculture.

Argan-Keepers of Morocco

In Morocco, women are the main custodians of argan trees, which produce a valuable oil that is used for cooking, cosmetics, and medicine. They collect, process, and sell the oil and other products from the argan fruits, which also provide food and fodder for their livestock. They also protect and manage the argan forests, which are a unique ecosystem and a UNESCO biosphere reserve. By conserving and using argan genetic resources, women contribute to their income, health, and environment 4.

Women Farmers in the Andes: Guardians of Crop Diversity

In the Andean highlands of South America, women farmers play a crucial role in conserving the genetic diversity of native crops such as quinoa, maize, potatoes, oca, olluco, and mashua. These crops are adapted to diverse and challenging environments, and provide food security and nutrition for millions of people. Women farmers use their local knowledge and skills to select and save seeds, and to manage home gardens where they grow a vast variety of indigenous crops. By doing so, they protect biodiversity, improve soil fertility, reduce the threat from pests and crop diseases, enhance food security and nutritional diversity, and preserve cultural traditions5.

Millet Mothers of India

Some Indian women farmers are involved in a participatory plant breeding (PPB) program that aims to improve the productivity and quality of millets, sorghum, and pulses. These crops are important for food security, nutrition, and income generation in dryland areas. Women participate in selecting, evaluating, and multiplying seeds of improved varieties that are adapted to their local conditions and preferences. They also exchange their seeds and knowledge with other farmers through seed fairs and networks. MS Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF), in partnership with other organizations, has been supporting these women to participate in PPB and to access quality seeds. They have also provided training on seed production, storage, testing, and certification. Through these activities, MSSRFhas helped the women to enhance their access to and control over plant genetic resources².

Kenyan Seed Banks

In Kenya, women farmers are involved in a community seed bank project that aims to conserve and promote the use of traditional crops, such as sorghum, millet, cowpea, and sesame. These crops are important for food security, nutrition, and resilience in semi-arid areas. Women participate in collecting, storing, and distributing seeds of diverse varieties that are tolerant to drought, pests, and diseases. They also share their seeds and knowledge with other farmers through seed networks and training. USAID, through its Feed the Future initiative, has been supporting these women to establish and manage the community seed banks. They have also provided equipment, materials, and technical assistance for seed processing and packaging. Through these efforts, USAID has helped the women to improve their seed security, income generation, and biodiversity conservation 6.

Socioeconomic, geopolitical challenges

Women play a vital role in conserving plant genetic resources and related traditional knowledge for food security and sustainable development. They are the main custodians, users, and managers of diverse crops, wild plants, and animal breeds that are adapted to different ecological and cultural conditions 7. They also have a rich knowledge of the properties, uses, and benefits of these genetic resources, which they pass on to their children and communities 8.

However, women face many challenges in performing these tasks, such as:

  • Lack of access to and control over land, water, seeds, credit, markets, and extension services.

  • Lack of recognition and protection of their rights, roles, and contributions to genetic resource conservation and utilization.

  • Lack of participation and representation in decision-making processes and institutions that affect genetic resource management and governance.

  • Lack of education, training, and capacity building opportunities to enhance their skills and knowledge on genetic resource conservation and utilization.

  • Lack of adequate infrastructure, technology, and information to support their genetic resource conservation and utilization activities.

  • Exposure to various risks and vulnerabilities due to climate change, environmental degradation, conflicts, disasters, poverty, and gender-based violence.

These challenges limit the potential of women to conserve and use plant genetic resources effectively and efficiently. They also undermine the food security, nutrition, health, income, and well-being of women and their families. International knowledge institutes like Wageningen University and Research can play an important role in mitigating these challenges by:

  • Conducting research and innovation on plant genetic resources that are relevant, responsive, and respectful to the needs, preferences, and values of women.

  • Collaborating with women farmers, indigenous people, local communities, NGOs, CSOs, governments, private sector, and other knowledge institutes to co-create knowledge and build capacities for sustainable plant genetic resource conservation and utilization.

  • Supporting the establishment and management of community seed banks, gene banks, botanic gardens, and other conservation facilities that involve women as key actors and beneficiaries.

  • Advocating for the recognition and protection of women's rights, roles, and contributions to plant genetic resource conservation and utilization at local, national, regional, and global levels.

  • Promoting gender equality and empowerment in plant genetic resource conservation and utilization policies, programs, projects, and practices.

The Eye Opener

The stories of these seed custodians resonate across geographies and crops. Their common theme is preserving biodiversity through traditional knowledge and collective responsibility. Such grassroots efforts are expanding as consciousness grows of the need to conserve our global genetic commons. Initiatives like Seed Savers Exchange and Navdanya directly help by training and supporting local seed keepers. Ultimately, the fate of this biodiversity lies with all of us.

While individual women have embraced vital leadership roles, protecting crop diversity must be a collective endeavor. We must support leaders in the indigenous communities and global south who have long safeguarded these resources. However, the scales of both the crisis and opportunity require participation across genders, nations, and generations. Diverse networks of custodians working in solidarity at local to global scales are needed to secure the future of our agricultural heritage.

On this fragile planet, we face escalating threats from climate change, extinctions, and monopolization endangering the biodiversity that sustains our resilience and adaptability. Courageous women, along with their communities, remind us we can each help safeguard our shared genetic resources. This begins with saving seeds and spreading awareness of what is at stake and those working to conserve diversity. We vote for biodiversity through our purchases, policies, and practices that keep traditional varieties in the hands of the people.

The Tribute

By honoring the work of women leading the charge, we sustain the momentum toward conservation while facing the sobering truth that their selfless efforts cannot continue alone. The task is too immense, the need too urgent. We each have a civic and even moral responsibility to become stewards ourselves, planting seeds that nourish continuity and hope. With compassion and care for both human and ecological communities, we can cultivate a future where once more we all see ourselves as custodians of Earth’s gifts. This vision must grow from the ground up, through actions rooted in love, relationship and living soil.

The seeds these women save are part of our shared inheritance—a living archive of cultural knowledge and potential for survival. What happens to this biodiversity depends on this generation. The choice we face is stark: Will we support the guardians of crop diversity today or will we be the ones to explain to our grandchildren why we stood by as it slipped away? The plant mothers and seed keepers worldwide are sowing abundance through their faith in the seeds’ power to nourish, adapt, and endure. Now it is our task to do what we can to cultivate the change so this precious diversity is never lost, but passed on, planted anew, and allowed to evolve for generations to come.

Read More

Galluzzi, Gea, et al. 2010. “The Role of Women in Plant Genetic Resource Conservation and Management.” FAO. http://www.fao.org/3/am308e/am308e00.pdf 

World Bank. 2019. “Integrating Gender in Biodiversity Conservation.”