Protect farmers' seed system for food sovereignty and climate resilience

For decades, Bangladesh, like many developing nations, has embraced industrial agriculture to boost food production and meet the needs of its growing population.

This approach, characterised by the use of chemical fertilisers, pesticides, high-yielding hybrid seeds, and intensive irrigation, has undoubtedly increased monoculture rice yields. 

But it has also brought about environmental and health impacts that need immediate remedies for sustainable food and nutritional security and climate resilience.

The menace of industrial farming

The justification for meeting the food requirements of the population through industrial agriculture is now debated because firstly of the wrong assumption that food is merely a matter of quantity and not about safety, nutritional quality and the fundamental necessity of a biological entity. 

Human beings are not machines and to ensure quality and nutrition it is crucial how we define 'food' and how they are produced. The proven harmful effects of industrial food production on health and the environment are now recognised. 

Food production can no longer be seen merely in quantitative terms but must address quality, nourishment and regeneration of the healthy agrarian environment, prohibiting degradation of land, water and ecological foundation of life. 

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) had to invent new terms such as 'safe food', a chilling oxymoron, since 'food' by definition must be safe, at least.  FAO considers food safety to be a major public health priority and integral to achieving food security. 

There are an estimated 600 million cases of foodborne illnesses annually caused by unsafe food, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). industrial food production, thus, has become a threat to human health and economies globally. 

Since liberation in 1971, Bangladesh has adhered to the "prescriptions" of the World Bank as outlined by its President Robert McNamara's strategy of 'integrated rural development' for assisting the small peasant farmers. 

Small producers were engaged to increase food production with credit and assistance in adopting modern agricultural techniques; also named the Green Revolution. Promoting modern agricultural methods, in hindsight, has inflicted serious harm upon our environment and public health. 

Farmers were prompted into embracing laboratory-engineered seeds for rice, accompanied by a package of artificial chemical fertilisers, pesticides, and groundwater irrigation. These measures, once touted as progress, are now unequivocally revealed as destructive forces. 

The Green Revolution increased rice production, the staple food in terms of quantity but reduced other important food crops like pulses, oil seeds, vegetables, and many more. Therefore, malnutrition remains a severe problem along with food insecurity in the country particularly among women and children. 

By the early '90s, over 70% of the smallholder farmers owning below 2.49 acres of land were not able to afford the high input costs of fertiliser, pesticides, etc. The number of farmers is decreasing gradually because farming is no longer affordable to them; so they are shifting to non-farm occupations.  

Seed Act and hybrid seeds

Small-scale farmers traditionally depend on the seeds they preserve in their houses. The introduction to industrial agriculture needed a shift in the type of seeds. The Seed Act was first enacted in 1966 before the liberation of Bangladesh by the East Pakistan government as a foundational legal instrument to initiate the Green Revolution. 

Along with the chemicals needed for industrial food production, restrictive seed laws were thrust upon small-scale farmers, and corporate seeds gained the sponsorship of international agencies and the government. These seed laws support seeds developed by breeders rather than farmer-saved seeds. It allows uncontrolled marketing of the corporate high-yielding variety (HYV) and hybrid seeds. 

As rice is the most widely cultivated crop in the country, the Seed Act mostly affected the rice-growing farmers. Some 75% (6.5 million ha) of the total cropland (8.6 million ha) is completely under rice cultivation. The majority of the farmers were growing HYV after the promotion of modern agriculture or the green revolution. 

After the flood of 1998 which affected the Aman rice crop, the government introduced hybrid rice in the following boro rice season. Interestingly, hybrid rice (F1) came through four private seed companies and one NGO (Brac) using micro-credit as a coercive marketing tool to force the borrowers to purchase hybrid seeds. 

These were small and marginal farmers. It was aimed to destroy the farmer's seed system so that farmers are compelled to purchase hybrid rice seeds in every rice growing season from the seed companies. 

Hybrid rice yield gain is claimed to be 15-20% over inbred local varieties, but despite efforts of the government and the corporations hybrid rice adoption is still low in Bangladesh, covering only 6% of the total rice area and is limited to only the boro season. 

Its yield gain is not significantly higher than the inbred rice variety BRRI 29. It also does not enjoy a better price in the market compared to the inbred variety because of its inferior grain quality. The taste of the rice is not better than any other HYV or traditional variety of rice. Most importantly, hybrid seeds are not a farmer-friendly variety and require a special way of cultivation, which is industrial farming.  

UBINIG research shows that the Seed Act and the entire seed management system of the government helped create a lucrative opportunity for large agro companies to make a profit out of the seed business. 

Bangladesh Seed Association, an association of businessmen involved in seed business, has also been formed under the Bangladesh Joint Stock Company and Firms Act. The members of this association are seed traders and seed dealers. So this commercial seed system is out of the farmer-led agricultural system. The seed companies consider farmers consumers of their product, i.e. seed. There is little scope for farmers to improve the seed system on their own against the power of the seed companies. 

The companies developing hybrid seeds need to print a warranty on the back of the seed packet to say that they do not take 'any responsibility for the performance failure of the seeds to generate'. For them, seeds are dead inputs, just like any other commodity — not a live entity that is capable of regenerating and open to the management of farming households. Seed is a commercial product.  

But could hybrid seeds have taken over the entire agricultural system? The answer is no. There is resistance from the farmers, and the government is not on their side. This is reflected in how the rice crops are distributed over the three seasons. 

According to the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI), 90% of the total rice area is boro (winter rice), which is mostly HYV and hybrid; while Aus (summer rice) covers 25-30% and Aman (Autumn rice) covers 50-55% of the rice area, which are mostly traditional varieties. The government supports boro rice (HYV and hybrid) with all extra inputs like chemical fertiliser, pesticides, and groundwater for irrigation.

In recent times, even mechanisation has been introduced for seeding and harvesting. According to the Bangladesh Department of Agriculture Extension, the land areas under hybrid rice cultivation in the Boro season almost doubled in the period 2017 to 2022 from 0.66 million hectares to 1.21 million hectares. 

However, despite such aggressive corporate promotion of hybrids, over 70% of the seeds in our markets are the result of farmers' dedication to saving and preserving their traditional seed varieties which are grown in all three seasons Aus, Aman, and Boro. 

Farmers have been preserving seeds for hundreds of years and continue to do so. Nevertheless, the market has gradually been overtaken by the corporate seeds (30%) supported by the seed laws, which are of concern. 

On the other hand, the burdensome bureaucratic requirements for seed certification have proven to be a heavy yoke around the necks of our small-scale farmers. There is no support for farmers playing such an important role in maintaining the genetic diversity of crops. 

The disproportionate promotion of the corporate seeds along with corporate inputs goes against the recently adopted United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Peasants and Other Rural People (UNDROP), a beacon of justice and equity. 

It unequivocally states that peasants possess the right to seeds, the right to safeguard their traditional knowledge concerning plant genetic resources for food and agriculture, and most crucially, the right to save, exchange, and sell their farm-saved seeds and propagating materials. Through the seed laws/acts, the farmers are being marginalised, and particularly women are pushed out of agriculture. 

Bangladesh is also a signatory to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which pledged unwavering commitment to the conservation and rejuvenation of biodiversity, along with the preservation of traditional indigenous knowledge. However, the emphasis on hybrid seeds and other laboratory seeds will encourage monoculture and the loss of diverse crops and other food sources. 

A critical review of industrial agriculture

Experience shows that despite promotion by international institutions like the World Bank, modern rice varieties are not adopted by all farmers. In more than 50 years, 66% of land has modern rice contributing about 73% of rice production. 

The rest is used for the traditional varieties. The modern varieties are cultivated with huge amounts of investment in irrigation, extensive use of pesticides and chemical fertilisers with subsidies, and with management of groundwater extraction. 

The policy of three seasons for rice crops is an attempt to take away land from the winter cropland from vegetables, oil seeds, lentils etc. for monoculture rice. Boro rice is an extra imposition on farmers in the areas where it needs an extensive amount of irrigation. It is the industrial form of rice production using fuels for irrigation, along with chemicals thus contributing to the GHG emissions. 

Experiences also show that modern agricultural methods did not prove to be productive and environmentally sustainable. The World Bank study on the Environmental and Natural Resource Degradation in Intensive Agriculture in Bangladesh by Stefano Pagiola (1995) showed four significant features of modern agriculture that are of concern to environmentalists. 

These are: yields have been declining and higher fertiliser applications are necessary to maintain yields; high-yielding modern varieties are far more demanding of soil nutrients than local varieties had been; rapid increase in the use of pesticides harms the health of farm workers and contaminates ground and surface water and inland fisheries; and pesticide use became higher in the late 1980s, 70% of pesticides are used on rice and usage is heaviest in Boro.

For a few decades, modern industrial agriculture has dominated the landscape. It has been driven by a profit-centric ideology that treats seeds as lifeless inputs for industrial production. This reductionist perspective obscures the true nature of seeds as living beings with the innate ability to regenerate themselves naturally. This ideology has forced farming communities into a cycle of dependence, where they are compelled to purchase seeds from commercial markets, stripping them of their age-old practice of saving and exchanging seeds.

Industrial agriculture's heavy use of synthetic chemicals poses a grave threat to human health and the environment. Pesticides and herbicides contaminate our soil, water, and air, leading to a range of health issues. On the other hand, ecological agriculture prioritises natural and organic farming methods, safeguarding our well-being and reducing exposure to harmful chemicals. These are well documented in scientific research around the world. 

Moreover, the practices of industrial agriculture contribute significantly to habitat destruction and the endangerment of numerous species and heirloom varieties. It bulldozes forests, wetlands, and grasslands, robbing countless creatures of their homes. In contrast, ecological agriculture operates in harmony with nature, nurturing a diverse array of flora and fauna. It acts as a refuge for endangered species, preserving biodiversity for future generations.

In this process, rural farming women are stripped of seeds and genetic resources, and their role in seed preservation and biodiversity safeguarding is conveniently ignored, both technologically and legally. This perpetuates gender inequality and climate injustice. Ecological agriculture, contrarily, empowers farmer women by granting them control over their resources, particularly their seeds. These seeds are the result of generations of careful selection, adapting to specific local environments, and embodying the wisdom of traditional farming practices.

And now the new term is smart agriculture, which aims to obliterate the essence of agriculture itself, replacing it with a soulless assembly line of food production. This is also another corporate mantra introducing more technologies and displacing traditional practices. 

But changing the name from 'modern' to 'smart' will not work. Furthermore, innovations are monopolised, and the dissemination of scientific knowledge is restrained by the shackles of intellectual property rights. Climate disasters demand principles of care and restraint in our relationship with nature, not the hollow 'smartness' of corporate technology that degrades farming from an agroecological practice into a mere cog in the wheel of industrial food production.

Nayakrishi farming and seed sovereignty

Since 1992, UBINIG has rallied small-scale farmers for biodiversity-based farming, championing the Nayakrishi Andolon movement, predominantly led by women. This movement underscores the importance of seed preservation, exchange, and sharing. 

Women are safeguarding hundreds of rice seed varieties, as well as vegetables, oilseeds, pulses, medicinal plants, fruit trees, and everything essential for survival and well-being. Thousands of women in Nayakrishi, courageously address the dual challenges of food security and nutrition, education of their children, and preserving biodiversity; all while confronting the vulnerabilities imposed by climate change. 

They possess an intimate understanding of their local conditions and hold the key to solutions that are ecologically, environmentally, and culturally apt. They know stress-resistant crop varieties and livestock they keep. Several thousands of indigenous varieties of rice including flood-tolerant, drought-resistant, salinity-tolerant varieties are common collections in different agro ecological zones of the country. 

Nayakrishi or ecological agriculture in general, guided by Farmer Seed Systems, champions diversity by encouraging the cultivation of numerous crop varieties adapted to local conditions. This diversity acts as a safeguard against crop failures, pests, and diseases, ensuring a more resilient food system. 

The Nayakrishi or the agroecological methods not only preserve the diversity of the cultivated crops but also preserve the "uncultivated" greens, if the environment is kept from using pesticides, herbicides and other chemicals.  

The attempt to create a so-called 'formal seed sector' that supplies 100% of the seed for planting is both unrealistic and dangerous. Farmers have historically been the innovators of crop varieties that can withstand floods, droughts, and other natural calamities. The corporate drive to control seeds and replace Farmer Seed Systems with a commercial and corporate seed market poses a direct threat to food sovereignty, particularly in countries like Bangladesh. 

In this industrial-ideological context, we must fight for the irreplaceable role of Farmer Seed Systems in ensuring seed and food sovereignty. These systems are resilient and capable of adapting to local conditions, a stark contrast to the rigid, standardised parameters of the corporate seed industry. The conflict is not merely scientific but a struggle for the survival of farming communities and the preservation of the biological foundation of life.

In conclusion, we must prioritise the preservation of local and indigenous knowledge systems and promote the wider application of traditional practices. By framing the issue of seed ownership and control in terms of human rights and justice, we can shift the conversation and prioritise the needs of small-scale farmers, marginalised communities, and the very planet we call home.

Farida Akhter. Sketch: TBS

Farida Akhter is the executive director of UBINIG.