Saving seeds for next year's crop
FAO estimates that about 1.5 billion farmers save and breed their own seed. Seed selection is often a woman's job and can be a sophisticated process, involving choice of seeds from strong, productive crop varieties which may then be interplanted with other favoured varieties in the field to encourage cross-breeding.
Bangladesh: woman cleaning Chinese cabbage seed
FAO/17408
- More photos on seed security:
- Rwanda: bean seed donated by the international community in 1994
- Peru: women farmers sowing potato seeds
- More resources:
- Photofile archive
- Factfile archive
- Agriculture Department
- Media database
- News & Highlights archive
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