Sustaining Life, Securing Livelihoods

Seeds of Survival (SoS) is a USC program that promotes long-term food security for marginal farming communities in developing countries. It stresses the importance of using time-tested farmer knowledge and practices, limiting the need for external farming methods that are often incompatible with local growing conditions.

The first objective of SoS is to ensure a secure source of food and livelihood for small-scale farmers without losing the resource base essential for sustaining it. The second, and equally important goal is to promote crop diversity.

History of Help
The SoS Program was launched in Ethiopia in 1989 to save threatened crop varieties from extinction – a real challenge given that it was a time of severe drought.

Working in collaboration with the Ethiopian Gene Bank, we designed a program that combined the work of scientists trying to improve local crops, with the traditional knowledge of local farmers. The result was farmers and scientists working in tandem to produce more reliable seeds and seed storage that could easily be used by small-scale farmers.

USC has continued to encourage collaboration between scientists and farmers. That model has spread, and SOS has evolved into a global program with partners in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Mali, Nepal, and Timor Leste.

Program Components
In partnership with local NGOs, farmers’ groups, governments, and research institutes, the SoS program works with farming communities on seven key components:

• Providing a space for dialogue between farmers, NGO workers, scientists, and government
• Facilitating farmer-to-farmer exchanges for documentation and learning
• Encouraging conservation and enhancement of local traditional crop varieties
• Fostering the creation of small community seed banks
• Promoting natural resource management systems that suit diverse production systems and conditions
• Strengthening farmers’ ability to manage seed supply systems and to influence public policies
• Fostering school arboretums to promote lessons of biodiversity.

Farmers as Experts
Knowledge-sharing is a key component of the program. We organize regular international meetings to encourage training and information sharing. Agricultural specialists discuss their SoS experience with other food security practitioners, searching for ways to improve existing practices and apply SoS concepts to local conditions. These gatherings help establish collaborative relationships between farmers and scientists.

To date, there have been 13 such workshops involving more than 350 agro-biodiversity practitioners (farmers, scientists, government and NGO staff). As a direct result, participants have established farm-based seed saving programs in at least 59 countries, helping spread biodiversity-based agricultural principles across the globe.

After more than 15 years, SoS is our most recognizable program. It’s credited with inspiring similar programs implemented by NGOs, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), members of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), and national governments.