Small-Scale Farmers on Two Continents Agree to Share Crop Varieties for Adaptation to Climate Change

A warming climate may confront any of us with unfamiliar problems.  The upside, though, is that people half a world away from each other may already have some answers.

Small-scale farmers on two continents – from Yunnan in China and from Bhutan and Peru - are now working together to help their communities to adapt to the impacts of a hotter world.

They have agreed to share indigenous crop varieties, and the knowledge needed to grow them in different climates and landscapes, in a scheme that aims to maintain resilient food systems relying on a number of crops, not simply monocultures.

The aim is also to provide the farmers with secure access to seeds each season, and to protect “food sovereignty”, so that they retain control of their harvests without agribusiness intervening.

Small-Scale Farmers on Two Continents Agree to Share Crop Varieties for Adaptation to Climate Change