Custodian farmers of agricultural biodiversity: selected profiles from South and South East Asia

Agriculture is the largest global user of biodiversity. Over-reliance on a handful of crops puts global food security at great risk especially in the context of climate change. Selected and used by generations of farmers, agricultural biodiversity contributes to reducing malnutrition, alleviating poverty and combating climate change challenges. This diversity has been in decline for decades and is now in danger of disappearing and efforts needed to conserve them using both ex situ and in situ approaches. Although most farmers practice ex situ conservation, global commitment to support on-farm conservation efforts have not yet yielded tangible or comprehensible interventions on the ground.

Despite this global scenario of biodiversity loss on farms and in the wild, there are still a few farmers, known as ‘Custodian Farmers’, who actively maintain, adapt and disseminate agricultural biodiversity and who posses the knowledge needed for its use and cultivation. This paper is a summary of the outcome of the workshop on “the Custodian Farmers Agricultural Biodiversity: Policy Support for their role in use and Conservation held from 11-12 February, 2013 in New Delhi, India. Organised jointly by Biodiversity International, Indian Council of Agricultural Research, National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources and Protection of plant Varieties & Farmers Rights Authority, the workshop

The workshop, which drew 20 participants from India, Indonesia, Nepal, Thailand and Malaysia, was instrumental in developing a ‘responsibilities and rights’ framework for the identification of policy support to custodian farmers. Some recommendations made at the workshop include, among others:

Advocate for special recognition of custodian farmers
Create and raise awareness of the roles, responsibilities and rights of custodian farmers
Support the identification and documentation of 1000 farmers case studies
Establish and recognise networks of custodian farmers
Assess the importance of custodian farmers for on-farm/in situ conservation
Acceptance of farmers elite/unique materials for registration
Formulate national on-farm/in situ conservation strategy

Mobilise social capital for locally driven financial assets to establish community biodiversity management funds.