4. UNDERSTANDING ACCESS: HOW A SUSTAINABLE LIVELIHOODS PERSPECTIVE CAN INFORM WORK ON SEEDS/PGRS

4.1. Introduction

In what ways do people secure access to seeds and PGRs? How does this differ across households (or, indeed, within them) and in different vulnerability contexts? Access to seeds and PGRs is, of course, a necessary precondition for their use and is therefore essential to realising their contributions to livelihood security. The processes through which access is secured are often, however, poorly understood or under-appreciated, leading to the entrenchment of false assumptions about access, to the neglect of important access routes, and to a limited understanding of the factors that influence and the forces that bear on access.

A livelihoods perspective focuses attention on access, and enables us to unpack what it means in different contexts and for different groups of people. Three elements of a livelihoods approach are particularly useful in understanding diverse and variable issues of access to seeds and plant genetic resources:

1. Asset configuration: access to seeds and plant genetic resources is linked with, and sometimes dependent on access to other livelihood capitals. The combination of assets which a household or individual commands will, in part, affect the extent and nature of their access to seeds and PGRs (e.g. how many channels through which they are able to source seed, what kinds of seeds and plant genetic resources they have access to).

2. Institutional complexity: institutions are crucial in shaping access to seeds and plant genetic resources and/or the other livelihood capitals with which they are linked. Which institutions matter in determining access will vary depending on the household or individual as well as the particular kind of seeds or PGRs in question, and the channels through which they are available.

3. Strengthening resilience: with its attention to assets, institutions and strategies, as well as the important interactions within and among them, a livelihoods approach can help suggest how particular interventions or broader changes may affect livelihood resilience.

People may gain access to seeds and PGRs in a number of ways through markets, aid programmes, extension services, formal and informal community-based institutions, and others. Some examples of this great range of channels are:

• Seed relief in emergencies through state or donor provision

• Package programmes (e.g. Starter Pack)

• Public or private extension services

• Engagement in agricultural research through participatory plant breeding, varietal selection etc.

• Contract farming with the state or, increasingly, private sectors

• Market mechanisms

• Community-based channels

• Local harvesting of weeds or wild resources

Each of these access pathways is underlain by particular institutional configurations that may be overlapping and contested. For example, community-based channels may rely on more informal institutions of gift-giving and exchange governed by social relations and culture; local harvesting of wild and weedy resources may require negotiation of overlapping informal and formal institutions, such as resource tenure and rights regimes. Which channels are available, and the ways in which they are negotiated, will differ for different households and individuals as well as for different kinds of seeds and PGRs.

To more fully explore how people gain access to seeds and PGRs, and the institutional dynamics around such access, we focus the remainder of the section on three case studies, a subset of the range listed above. We have chosen the case studies deliberately to demonstrate that the issues and questions of access vary across varying contexts, and suggest how in each case a livelihoods approach can help highlight the range of institutions and policies, as well as the links with other assets, that are important in shaping access to seeds and/or plant genetic resources.

Emergency seed provision/relief: In emergency situations the assumption is often made that that seed is unavailable. In many cases, this is not true. Rather, the real challenge is obtaining access to appropriate seeds in sufficient quantities. A livelihoods approach, with its focus on assets and institutions, turns attention to questions of access.

Wild and Weedy Resources and Minor Foods: The significance of these resources has often been overlooked in agricultural and rural development strategies, yet these resources are often significant in rural livelihoods, especially for the poor. Accessing these resources usually depends on gaining access to other livelihood capitals and on negotiating multiple, and sometimes overlapping institutions. A livelihoods approach enables understanding of these processes.

Farmer Engagement with Agricultural Research: Farmers in many parts of the world lack access to plant genetic resources with characteristics suited to marginal environments and low input farming systems. Conventional agricultural research and extension systems have often failed to enable such access, and private sector companies - increasingly important players in the development of seeds and PGRs - show little sign of altering this trend. By drawing attention to the institutions through which farmers access plant genetic resources, a livelihoods approach helps to suggest the ways in which such access may be strengthened.

Together, the case studies demonstrate:

• the assumptions made about access/lack of access;

• neglected channels through which people access seeds and PGRs;

• links with other livelihood resources; and

• the way that local questions of access are ‘connected up’ to institutions and processes at national and international levels.

The range of access issues in each case study is enormous and complex and, given limits of time and space, our discussion of each case is illustrative rather than exhaustive. We intend to use each case to demonstrate the way in which a livelihoods perspective can sharpen the focus and facilitate new ways of thinking about access to seeds and PGRs.

4.2. Case 1: Seed Provision in Emergencies

In emergency situations, assumptions are often made that the crisis has rendered seed unavailable and, on this basis, direct distribution of seeds is included as a component of many relief efforts. In many cases, these interventions occur with little prior knowledge of how seed systems normally work, how farmers gain access to seeds, to what extent and in what ways seed systems have been affected by the crisis and with what implications for which farmers or groups of people. A livelihoods approach offers a route to better understanding of these issues. This sub-section first offers some background on seed relief and then moves on to consider what value added a livelihoods approach can offer.

Since around 1990, seed relief has become a routine component of relief efforts, particularly in Africa, and is often seen as a complement to food aid (Sperling and Cooper, 2003). The FAO estimates that by the mid-1990s around $10 million (US) was spent on the procurement of seeds for emergency projects in Africa alone (Sperling, 2002). Seed relief is therefore seen as a way to help farmers recover from shocks, typically brought on by natural disasters or civil conflict, and re-establish their farming livelihoods. ‘The focus has been on replacing a single capital asset, seed, as the leverage point for strengthening broader seed system structures and processes’ (Sperling and Cooper, 2003). Emergency provision is often not, however, a one-off event. In Mozambique, emergency seed provision has occurred almost every farming season for over a decade (Longley et al., 2002). In contexts of protracted emergencies, seed relief cannot be seen as existing outside the seed system but becomes normalised and integrated. As a regularised pattern of seed relief develops, relief becomes another channel through which farmers may access seed and comes to impact other aspects of the broader seed system.

The myriad goals and objectives, involvement of multiple agencies, and acute time and resource pressures that characterise emergency situations make seed relief inordinately complex. While the logic of seed relief is to rebuild farming livelihoods, multiple simultaneous and sometimes conflicting goals and objectives may characterise a single relief effort. Relief may be provided to fill a temporary gap, encourage self-help, serve as a gift to achieve both political and farming goals, or encourage progressive, modern farming practices (Sperling, 2002; de Barbentane Nagoda and Fowler; 2003; Remington et al., 2002; Tripp, 2001). Different agencies involved in relief may be motivated by different objectives. The highly pressured environment in which relief occurs, and tight time and resource constraints present a further challenge.

Seed relief interventions have recently been subject to close scrutiny (see Disasters, 2002, 26.4) which has yielded the critical insight that the ‘seeds and tools’ approach has underestimated the complexity and dynamics of seed relief: how aid itself works, and how it impacts farmers’ management strategies and sustainability. This analysis, often undertaken by people involved in seed relief, has produced the following findings:

• relief efforts have shown a lack of sensitivity to or understanding of local seed systems;

• farmers have been disappointed by the seed provided;

• the resilience of local seed systems and markets has been underestimated; and

• on-going relief can cultivate chronic or routine dependencies

(See: Haugen 7 Fowler, 2003; Remington et al., 2002; Sperling, 2002; Tripp, 2001)

Inappropriate seed relief may, at best be unnecessary, and at worst undermine the sustainability and security of existing seed systems.

What Can a Livelihoods Perspective Offer?

A livelihoods perspective on seed relief in emergencies provides a way of identifying the sources of seed insecurity and links these with broader issues of livelihood vulnerability and resilience. The framework below has been developed to indicate the different aspects of seed security.

Table 4.1: Seed Security Framework: Basic Parameters

Source: Sperling and Cooper, 2003; Remington 1998; Remington et al., 2002.

Emergency seed relief efforts can be strengthened by a livelihoods approach in several ways. A livelihoods approach helps to show how seed insecurity is often caused by problems of access to seeds, rather than problems of availability (Remington et al., 2002; Longley et al., 2002). Access is identified as one component of the framework, though access issues also engage questions about availability and use: for example, accessing seeds in sufficient quantity and of the appropriate varieties is important for achieving seed security.

While in some cases sources of insecurity caused by access problems may be traced to lack of income or access to credit, a livelihoods approach also draws attention to the messy and complex ‘social life of seeds’. In emergency situations, ‘damage to the social fabric of a seed system is as significant as direct physical loss of seeds’ (Richards and Ruivenkamp, 1997; see Box 4.2 below). A livelihoods approach, by drawing attention to the links between seeds and social relations, as well as to the institutions through which seed may be exchanged in informal systems, can be used to understand what constitutes this social fabric and how it is affected in emergency situations.

Given the important social context of seed systems, relief activities may need to also focus on helping to re-build or strengthen the social relations and networks around seeds. Such work is being undertaken through the use of seed fairs (CRS), vouchers that facilitate access to seed through local markets and other systems of exchange.

Of course access to seed is not only determined by the complex of local institutions, wider processes are at play too. With changing patterns of seed ownership, for example, through the consolidation of the seed industry, there may be less choice of seed options for supply in emergency situations. With growing commoditisation of seed, channels of access are increasingly through the market, often via a few key companies and their subsidiaries. Seed availability is also affected by regulatory controls governing seed certification and varietal release. This again affects the nature of the local seed system, and the degree to which it is resilient to the impact of shocks and stresses, whether drought, flood or conflict. Gaining access to seed is therefore by no means straightforward. An analysis of the institutional arrangements governing such access for different groups of people - ranging from the micro local level to more national and even international dimensions - is a vital first step in any assessment of options for emergency intervention.

We have seen how lack of understanding about local seed systems prior to emergency relief can lead to inappropriate seed relief which, in extreme cases, may cause more damage to livelihood resilience and sustainability than the crisis itself. Better understanding of local seed systems has been identified as an important area in which seed relief work may be strengthened (Sperling and Cooper, 2003). With this in mind, efforts have been made within the FAO to develop livelihoods based needs assessment which, among other things, will help to identify whether seed relief is appropriate in a given emergency context (FAO, 2003). Work is also being undertaken to develop a Seed System Security Assessment (SSSA). The purpose of these assessments is to identify the formal and informal channels through which farmers access seed, how these differ across different socio-economic groups and regions, and how they have altered over time. The objective of such assessments will be to understand the dynamics that make seed systems vulnerable and identify the underlying causes of seed insecurity.^[3] With such knowledge, seed relief efforts may be more precisely targeted to ensure that they strengthen rather than displace or undermine existing seed systems and enhance farmers’ access to seeds.

4.3. Case 2: Wild and Weedy Resources and Local Crops

The local harvesting of wild and weedy resources and the cultivation of so-called ‘minor’ crops are often neglected in many research and development efforts to strengthen rural livelihoods. These efforts tend to focus instead on improving productivity of major staple food or cash crops, often through the investment of sizeable resources in the development of a select few varieties. The development of a relatively small number of high-yielding varieties during the Green Revolution or, more recently, the development of GM crops such as Bt cotton are hallmarks of interventions which have such a focus (Seshia and Scoones, 2003).

While it is often noted that only 3 crops - wheat, maize, and rice - provide over half the global plant-derived energy intake, many plant species which may look insignificant when aggregated at national, regional or global scales emerge as important in particular local settings and, indeed, for particular groups of people such as women and children (FAO, 1998). Crops of this description are more accurately termed ‘local’ than ‘minor’. The importance of these crop species may lie in their nutritional value, in terms of plant-derived energy or protein but also as sources of essential micro-nutrients. They may also be an important source of income-generating activity: rubber tapping and the harvesting of non-timber forest products are notable here (FAO, 1996).

A livelihoods perspective can help to overcome the neglect of certain species that have been deemed ‘minor’ or, worse, ‘weedy’ in many mainstream public and increasingly also private agricultural research systems. It does so by locating local crops and wild and weedy resources within the broader context of people’s livelihood systems: identifying the ways in which they may enhance resilience, strengthen or maintain assets, and contribute to livelihood strategies.

A livelihoods perspective also focuses attention on questions of access, and draws attention to the institutions and processes operating at multiple levels that affect access to these local crops and wild and weedy resources. The remainder of this section will consider how a livelihoods perspective may be used to better appreciate the significance of these resources. It will then address two of the major access issues that emerge around minor crops and wild and weedy resources: first, the question of access to the areas where resources are located; second, the implications for access of increased proprietary claims of ownership and control.

Access within the farm landscape

The terms wild and weedy resources as well as local crops encompass a broad spectrum of plant species that may be more or less intensively managed. These range from foods that grow in uncultivated areas, to cultivated ‘weeds’ harvested in fields, to carefully tended home gardens. Here it is important to note that wild foods may be found on common and marginal land, such as roadsides and pathways, as well as in environments disturbed by erosion.

While any plant that is not part of the major crop is often regarded as a weed, these weeds may have a variety of uses. Weeds are an important source of food and nutrition for poor households. What is and is not a weed is very much in the eyes of the beholder. The degree to which weeds are managed is variable - sometimes they are self-sown and simply collected when needed; in other cases weeds may be ‘cultivated’ by collecting seeds and scattering them in fields.

Home gardens are complex, multi-story and intensively managed environments. In recent years, they have received substantial attention as their contribution to plant genetic diversity is recognised. For example, in Java, 500 species of plants were found in home gardens in one village (Scoones, et al., 1994). Similarly, in a survey of 30 home gardens in the sub-tropical and tropical central midlands of Vietnam an IPGRI study identified 171 different cultivated species. From a plant genetic resources perspective, home gardens are significant as sites of plant domestication, plant introduction and distribution, experimentation and production, and as a refuge for diversity and cultural heritage (Engels, 2002). ‘At the ecosystem level, the home garden provides a complex micro-environment that links more complex natural ecosystems with agricultural systems.’(Eyzaguirre and Watson, 2002) In this way, there are important links between home gardens and wild or uncultivated areas as they are sites where wild species may be introduced and cultivated through processes of outcrossing and geneflow.

Wild, weedy and local crops make substantial contributions to livelihood security, especially through their contributions to nutrition where they are an important source of micro-nutrients, fibre and anti-oxidants (Johns and Eyzaguirre, 2002). This contribution is often, however, overlooked resulting in a ‘hidden harvest’: for example, in the maize-dominated system in Bungoma, Kenya, people consume 100 different species of vegetables and fruit (Scoones, et al, 1994). Wild and weedy foods enable households to strengthen their resilience when confronted with seasonal or sudden changes in agro-ecological and climatic conditions. Particular foods may fit certain seasonal niches - in Zimbabwe, for example, fruit acts as alternative to grain in the dry season and constitutes 1/4 of all meals (Scoones, et al., 1994). When crops fail, wild foods become important in sustaining livelihoods during famine. The role of famine foods in supplementing and sustaining local diets has been documented in both the Ethiopian and Ugandan famines of the 1980s (Rahmato, 1988; Biellik and Henderson, 1981).

Access to wild and weedy foods is an important part of strategies of livelihood diversification, and is particularly important for poor households, which may lack access (or access in sufficient quantities) to food for consumption, either through subsistence production or market mechanisms. The significance of wild and weedy foods also varies within households. Women are often associated with the collection and use of weeds and wild foods, as well as the management of home gardens. Collection of wild fruits is also an important component of children’s diets.

The simplification of agro-ecosystems through conversion of forests to pastures may result in the loss of wild foods and income-generating resources. Similarly, agricultural intensification and associated increased use of fertilisers may wipe out important weedy species from cultivated land. It is, however, difficult to makes generalizations about the effects of agro-ecological changes, for these processes are not so simple and vary greatly across contexts. While woodlands are converted to agricultural land, new species may appear; while agricultural intensification may eliminate certain species it may also lead to the growth of others.

Institutional change often accompanies or underpins agro-ecological change, and may be as, or indeed more, significant in determining access to wild and weedy resources. From a livelihoods perspective, what is important to consider is how access is affected and for whom. This requires attention to the other capital assets with which wild and weedy resources are linked, and the institutions that shape access to these other assets.

Access to wild and weedy foods relies crucially on access to land. Land and resource tenure arrangements are therefore key, with the relationship between more privately held spaces (e.g. gardens and fields) and the wider commons (of forests, rangelands etc.) being a key dynamic. As the now vast literature on land and resource tenure shows, institutions that affect access to land and wild resources need not be formal. Informal claims, concessions and arrangements are also important in determining access. But often, accessing the resources will require negotiation of overlapping institutional arrangements. This institutional complexity, consisting of overlapping, parallel or indeed conflicting institutions, systems of management and administration and forms of authority, is often compounded by processes of decentralisation (SLSA Team, 2003). Support for efforts to negotiate these arrangements may be an important avenue for interventions in this area.

Property Rights and Regulatory frameworks

The above discussion has focused mainly on access to wild and weedy foods, but increasingly access will be shaped by emerging regulatory frameworks regarding the ownership and control of plant genetic resources. At the international level these include the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPs), the Convention on Biological Diversity, and International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. Nationally, these frameworks open up new law and policy-making areas around the governance of seeds and plant genetic resources. The effects of these changes will, increasingly, be felt locally by people whose livelihoods rely on access to and use of such resources. The commercial significance of wild and weedy resources, as well as ‘minor’ or ‘neglected’ crops is likely to increase as commercial interest grows in their medicinal, nutritional and other properties.

One important activity in which connections between ‘local’ and ‘global’ are forged is bioprospecting.^[4] As international agreements and national legislation facilitate the making of proprietary claims to plant genetic diversity, and replace the much contested principle of it as ‘common heritage’, Access and Benefits Sharing (ABS) arrangements are becoming an important part of bioprospecting activities (Swiderska, 2001). Indeed, in recent years benefit-sharing has been an important component of bioprospecting undertaken by public and private organizations alike, including the International Cooperative Biodiversity Group (ICBG), Shaman Pharmaceuticals, Novartis and the US National Cancer Institute (Brush, 1999; King et al., 1996; UNED-UK and Novartis, 2000; May et al., 1996).

Growing commercial and proprietary claims to plant genetic resources have prompted local level responses. These include efforts to document local knowledge about PGRs, and the establishment of community registers and genebanks. While these efforts are often viewed as mechanisms to protect and recognise local knowledge about and access to genetic diversity, they nonetheless require careful and critical attention to issues of knowledge, power and control (see Box 4.3 below).

Attention to institutions and policies recognises the real-life complexity and messiness of institutional arrangements that people must negotiate to secure access to seeds and plant genetic resources. Such messiness may stretch from the local negotiation of access across different, overlapping tenure regimes at the village level to the multiple jurisdictions and competing claims over plant genetic resources between the international public and private sectors. Such analysis draws attention to the multiple levels at which institutions operate, and is therefore valuable in tracing the way institutional and regulatory changes at national and international levels play out locally. Though its focus/origin is local (and this is crucial), using such a perspective one can look up and out at the processes and institutions that connect local resource users with broader national and international processes of regulatory and politico-economic change.

4.4. Case 3: Engaging with Research: Farmers' Access to Plant Genetic Resources

Focusing on access to plant genetic resources requires attention to processes of agricultural research and critical analysis of institutions that determine what plant genetic resources get developed and for whom. A livelihoods perspective, which draws attention to policies, institutions and processes, can help promote better understanding of the way in which formal systems of agricultural research (constituted by particular configurations of policies, institutions and processes) may or may not serve to strengthen farmer access to PGRs. As a people-centred approach that emphasises people’s agency and ingenuity, it regards farmers not as ‘end-users’, ‘clients’ or ‘recipients’ of seeds, but as actively engaged in their own processes of plant breeding and with broader agricultural research and extension systems.

Historically, agricultural research has been a linear process, in which formal sector plant breeders implementing a research agenda develop seeds and technologies that are then transferred to farmers through a ‘pipeline’ approach to extension (Manicaid and McGuire, 2000; Batz and Dresrüsse, 2000). This model has led to vast increases in yields - in India, this model of research and extension drove the Green Revolution (Seshia and Scoones, 2003). But it also has led to great disparity; as many of the seeds developed through such processes are not suited to more marginal environments or the socio-economic conditions of resource-poor farmers (Batz and Dresrüsse, 2000). ‘The failure effectively to involve farmers in the process of governance, planning, priority setting, financing and evaluation...’ (Batz and Dresrüsse, 2000) has been recognised as a key reason for the slow progress that agricultural research has made in developing seeds appropriate for resource-poor farmers.

A similar research paradigm prevails in the development of agricultural biotechnology, though the process of its development is led by the private rather than the public sector. Given the failure of many Green Revolution technologies to be useful to resource-poor farmers, there is a danger that any benefits to be gained from agricultural biotechnologies may also by-pass poor farmers. (Manicad and McGuire, 2000). Conventional research paradigms, therefore, have tended to deny access by farmers to seeds with appropriate genetic traits or expressions for their environments and agro-ecological conditions.

In recent years efforts have been made to involve farmers in agricultural research, with the aim of drawing on plant genetic resources appropriate to local conditions and so enable the development of a greater range of appropriate seed varieties. A huge array of names and activities has emerged around these efforts, and has received substantial attention: farmer-responsive research, participatory agricultural research, participatory plant breeding, participatory varietal selection, participatory technology development. While the term ‘participation’ invariably appears in most of these efforts, it is important to note that the meaning of participation varies. In certain contexts, participation may be instrumental - used primarily to develop more appropriate seeds and technologies, while in other contexts it may be part of process-oriented approaches that emphasise capacity-building and social transformation.

While the differences among them are considerable, participatory approaches to agricultural research are likely to be more grounded in the realities of farmers’ livelihoods and attuned to their needs and the opportunities and constraints they face.

Participatory plant breeding and varietal selection has demonstrated have important it is to use farmers' own understanding of their livelihood system to select traits and make best use of available germplasm. Simple participatory ranking techniques, for example, highlight how prioritization of crop characteristics differs by social group (men, women, rich, poor and so on) as well as by agroecological setting. Effective responses to livelihood needs require moving away from a one-size-fits-all approach to technology development and design. Such a challenge applies as much to conventional plant breeding as it does to advanced techniques of plant biotechnology. Yet too often plant breeders and genetic engineers do not understand these needs, and instead are focused on particular traits which may not be as relevant to farmers.

Making the most of local germplasm thus requires an approach which looks at the institutional and policy context in the whole innovation and delivery chain, including:

• Priority setting in research and development

• Experimental design and analysis

• Intellectual property rights and plant variety protection

• Varietal release and seed certification

• Extension and service provision

• Monitoring of effectiveness at meeting local needs

• Feedback to research and development processes

While there have been some innovative experiments with participation in some elements of this sequence in some public sector systems and with some NGO pilots, a full integration of farmer priorities into the whole innovation system has been limited. Efforts have been piecemeal and in many instances not sustained. This has been particularly the case following the retraction of the public sector (including the international one) due to funding constraints imposed by structural adjustment policies, for example.

A key challenge - as yet unmet and barely thought about - is how to follow through with this sort of innovation in a more integrated way both in the public sector R&D system, but perhaps more significantly in the private sector. With a few major companies dominating the world market in seeds, the challenge of incorporating a farmer-oriented livelihood focused approach in this context remains enormous. Multinational seed houses and biotech companies exist to make profits from their business. But the challenge for public policy - both at national and international levels - is to see what levers, incentives, requirements can be imposed to ensure that poor farmers in the developing world do not lose out.

This requires a detailed analysis of each of the elements of the fast changing, increasingly globalized, but highly differentiated innovation and delivery chain (see above) and an assessment of what public policy entry points can be identified to improve livelihood outcomes for the poor.

4.5. Summary

Access to seeds and plant genetic resources may occur through diverse channels. These channels are shaped by institutions, organizations and policies working at different levels - ranging from local, informal institutions to international frameworks. Understanding access to seeds and PGRs, with a view to strengthening interventions, demands recognition of these channels or routes and attention to the institutions, organizations and policy that shape them. Although different types and levels of institutions are distinguished, it is important to note the ways in which they connect, overlap, reinforce or conflict in practice, the particular institutional dynamics this produces, and how this affects the ways in which people negotiate this institutional complexity. The table (4.2) below summarises the case studies considered in this section, identifying for each case what current gaps exist, what some of the issues and questions of access are, and how a livelihoods perspective can lead to a better understanding of access.

Table 4.2: Overview of case studies