Seeds of Diversity was the Canadian NGO participant in negotiations of an important international treaty that governs how countries share and exchange seeds.
The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture ensures that government seed banks around the world will conserve and exchange seeds fairly and share the benefits from their use, especially with countries that are the origins of our global crop plants.
Our role was mainly in the negotiations of "Access and Benefits Sharing", which turned out to be quite complicated. We also participated in the crucial inclusion of Farmers' Rights in the Treaty.
In the words of the FAO: "In Article 9, the International Treaty recognizes the enormous contribution that local and indigenous communities and farmers in all regions of the world – particularly those in centres of origin and crop diversity – have made and will continue to make for the conservation and development of plant genetic resources, which constitute the basis of food and agricultural production throughout the world. It leaves the responsibility for implementing Farmers' Rights with national governments, and lists measures that could be taken to protect, promote and realize these rights".
Even with the Treaty in place, it is still up to all of us to ensure that national governments protect Farmers' Rights in our laws and regulations about seeds. That work is still urgent and crucial today.
Overall, this Treaty is a very important step toward global seed sharing. It's very important for Canada to be part of an open and equitable world seed bank system, because most of the food crops we grow don't originate here. Wheat, oats, soy beans, potatoes, and most vegetables come from other parts of the world where seed banks have genetic diversity that we will need to keep Canada's food systems growing.