Farmers feed the world…but we’ve lost sight of how important they are.

For 10,000 years, farmers have selected, saved, planted, and conserved seeds. In this way, through thousands of growing seasons, they have expanded and safeguarded the world’s agricultural diversity. Over time they have acquired a remarkably deep resource of knowledge about their seeds, soils, and local ecosystems. This exceptionally important knowledge is in peril.

In recent decades, there’s been major shift toward large-scale agriculture and mass food production for international markets. It has profoundly changed farming and the food we eat. In the process, the farmer’s role in the world’s food system has diminished.

We All Rely on Farmers
With this diminishing role, we’re also losing nature’s greatest resource for ensuring a reliable and healthy food supply: agricultural biodiversity. Biodiversity is held in the rich variety of farmers’ seeds – all over the world – that have been treasured and passed on through generations. Small farmers are still doing their part to maintain diversity – since 1960, they’ve bred more than 25 times as many plant varieties as industrial plant breeders* – but they need support from the rest of us; the people who rely on them!

Peasant farmers still feed nearly three quarters of the world’s families today, often from some of the most challenging landscapes on the planet. And they do it using one quarter of the energy that industrial producers use to yield the same amount of food*.

Small farmers around the world today face serious challenges – climate change, water scarcity – and they need our support to continue developing crucial plant diversity, maintaining the health of local ecosystems, and feeding us all!

(*) Information and chart taken from Who Will Feed Us, Published by ETC Group in November 2009