RESEARCHERS say farmers in developing countries are losing one of their best hopes to limit the impact of climate change because of growing corporate control of the seeds they plant. The warning comes ahead of the World Seed Conference which opens tomorrow at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation in Rome . The researchers from the International Institute for Environment and Development and partners organisations in China, India, Kenya, Panama and Peru, say the diversity of traditional seed varieties is falling fast and this means valuable traits such as drought and pest resistance could be lost forever. "Where farming communities have been able to maintain their traditional varieties, they are already using them to cope with the impacts of climate change," says project leader, Krystyna Swiderska of International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). "But more commonly, these varieties are being replaced by a smaller range of "modern" seeds that are heavily promoted by corporations and subsidised by governments. These seeds have less genetic diversity yet need more inputs such as pesticides and fertilisers and more natural resources such as land and water," he says. The researchers say that one reason for this is that while the international treaty on the protection of new varieties of plants - known as UPOV - protects the profits of powerful private corporations, it fails to recognise and protect the rights and knowledge of poor farmers. "Western governments and the seed industry want to upgrade the UPOV Convention to provide stricter exclusive rights to commercial plant breeders," says Swiderska. "This will further undermine the rights of farmers and promote the loss of seed diversity that poor communities depend on for their resilience to changing climatic conditions," the researcher argues. The researchers also point out that in order to continue conserving and adapting their varieties, farmers also need to be allowed to freely save, use, exchange and sell farm-saved seeds. Technologies which restrict these customary rights - namely Genetic Use Restriction Technologies (GURTS) - pose a very serious threat to genetic diversity, seed quality and the livelihoods of poor farmers. The World Seed Conference is intended to raise awareness of the importance of new plant varieties and high quality seed in this context and considers how governments can develop an enabling environment to encourage plant breeding and the production and distribution of high quality seed.

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