How Do Farmers' Seed-Saving Movements Work? Experiences from Smallholders in Thailand and Africa

Photography / Wu Shao-wen Cover image / Guo Zhi-rong

If you ask me about the relationship between seeds and soil, I believe we should not change the soil to suit the seeds; instead, we should select locally native seeds to adapt to the local soil. - Daycha, 2011.10.10, Taiwan, "Taiwan Community Supported Agriculture Workshop"

Daycha lived through the Green Revolution, and he witnessed firsthand the impact it brought to Thai agriculture. He believes that although the seeds developed in laboratories brought high yields, the farmers who planted those seeds ended up with increasingly barren land. They had to spend more money on fertilizer to maintain soil fertility and more money on pesticides to maintain yields. They did not even dare to eat the rice they grew themselves, and instead bought unlabeled rice from the market; only because it had no labeled source did they dare to eat it. What conventional farmers lost was not only the fertility of the soil; gradually they could not even keep their land and had to auction it off to support their families.

After ten years of operation, the three work stations greatly improved the lives of local people and also changed the landscape and terrain. Most importantly, they changed people's thinking about plants, land and the environment. Nowadays, when a daughter in that village is about to marry, she will first specify that she will only marry a farmer in the work station program.

Looking at the farming methods of Rice God and Arne, the former, because Thai farmers had fallen into a vicious cycle of pesticides and fertilizers, used more technology to improve seeds; the latter, because the land was gradually desertifying and even crops could barely be grown, completely trusted the reproductive capacity of wild species and planted as many kinds as possible. Their geographical conditions and agricultural environments differ greatly, and the responses they adopted also differ, but both believe in the importance of native seeds. After natural selection and elimination through evolution, native seeds are themselves very well adapted to the local environment, pests and diseases, and are the basic varieties most suitable for direct planting or for use in improvement. The more attention paid to preserving and planting native seeds, the more dependence on chemical fertilizers and pesticides can be reduced, while also maintaining high yields and harvests with low pest damage.

The forum at the end of the second day also discussed this issue. Participants asked Elizabethwhat she thought about the Thai Rice God's method of seed selection,compared with the African Niger case, which does not select seeds at all and treats all alike. Elizabath said she had also asked Daycha the same question the day before. Daycha believed that Thai rice farmers already had clear production goals,and increasing yield was an important purpose of production, while the village in the Niger desert had a harsh and barren environment,so the more kinds of plants that could be planted, the better, in order to increase the possibility that plant species would survive.

Believe in nature, follow nature, respect nature, learn from nature, and you will become a good farmer with a good income.
- Daycha, 2011.10.10, Taiwan, "Taiwan Community Supported Agriculture Workshop"