Seeds of resilience: the contribution of commons-based plant breeding and seed production to the social-ecological resilience of the agricultural sector

• DOI: 10.1080/14735903.2021.1963598
• Publication Date: 2021-09-08T05:28:32Z
• Authors: Lea Kliem; Stefanie Sievers-...
• Keywords: Agroecology; Agricultural biodiversity; Ecological resilience; Resilience

Building resilience in food systems is a priority to meet societal challenges such as climate change and biodiversity loss. However, there has been little systematic research on the role of seed production fostering agroecological resilience. The increasing commercialization privatization conventional industry result development use only small number high-yielding varieties. To counter this trend, new organizational approaches governance structures plant breeding build upon common ownership collective management. In study, we analyse how commons-oriented promotes comparison private-property-based production. We apply an indicator-based framework publications from seed-producing organizations German-speaking vegetable sector. find that production, commons promote several respects. They foster diversity at genetic, crop species, landscape level, create redundancy supply channels, increase autonomy external resource inputs international markets. commons-based contribute through high degree self-organization farmers breeders along value chain, participatory approaches, greater access rights seeds.