30 April 2014

The Virtue of Participatory Plant Breeding


Seeds are essential not only for all human beings in general to produce food, but also for farmers as the main food producers in order to retain their livelihoods. They are vital parts of environmental conservation for maintaining global biodiversity. A wide range of plants is also crucial for conserving life in all ecosystems over the earth. Then a mutual symbiosis occurs between humans and nature, which is in this case between farmers and agricultural environment. Throughout the world today, however, there is a lack of variety in seeds. In Indonesia this problem not only induces natural degradation, it also affects farmers. The break of food chains due to the loss of one or more kinds of plants will disturb an ecosystem with farther result that is small farmers especially are losing their livelihoods. They are used to live their life by researching and reserving various strains of seeds traditionally in their farms. This causes a heavy dependence on the surrounding environment where farmers live. One of the direct effects of this is that high-priced seeds are not affordable to small farmers. Another effect is the reduction of seed varieties, since the companies purely develop few types of seeds massively for broad farming areas. A method where farmers are the leader in the agricultural research, called Participatory Plant Breeding (PPB), could be used to resolve both the ecological and economic problems related to the increasingly lack of seed diversity.
Big Business
The development of seed industry has become the business of big companies up until farmers as the genuine plant breeders are eliminated. This trend results from the Green Revolution that was employed in the agricultural sector by Indonesian government in 1970s. A few varieties of major crops produced abundant yields and required high inputs of production that pioneered by scientists at the international agricultural research was become the basic principle of the emergence of the Green Revolution (Vernooy, 2003). Big companies then take advantages of this opportunity from this continuation of the Industrial Revolution to develop seeds. In this era, agricultural sector has begun to alter from traditional to modern practices through industrial agriculture, where researchers and big corporations cooperate in plant breeding and seed production. The corporations can guarantee the production of high quality seeds, through the use of high-technological machines and current-modern research. With their larger amount of capital, technology, and human resources, they act as giant seed producers who incline to be oligopolistic and control seed industry (Sayaka, 2005). In addition, from the beginning, the establishment of several multinational companies on seed production in Indonesia has been marked by the high prices of hybrid seeds. These kinds of seed took no longer time to dominate seed market and be preferred by farmers because of their high yield and quality. High selling prices of the companies exposed that they were competent to control the seed market and were likely to be oligopolistic (Y. Chiffoleau, D. Desclaux, 2006). The seed companies then become a number of oligopolists who are ready to endanger seed farmers’ livelihoods. From now on, much profit in seed industry has gone to the companies as opposed to farmers. Also, from the legal perspective the companies can use their money to provide related resources to attain all requirements as seed producers. “All the seed companies have exclusive rights to produce labeled-commercial corn seeds” (Sayaka, 2003). And they are furthermore capable of distributing the seed and reaching even remote areas where agricultural fields are often located.
Despite giving more attention to those effects so as not to be worsening, the government still entrusts big companies with the development of seed production than giving farmers more opportunity to participate in this industry. The main reason is that the government considers the companies capable of providing a big amount of capital without any interventions from other parties including farmers. This following example has shown the government’s relation with the companies as the primary seed producers at the moment. A research describes a fact that on doing their business, the seed producers did not sell directly to the consumers or farmers, but coursed their sales through the projects of the government agencies (Sayaka, 2005). One of the projects is renowned as the seed subsidy that is intended for hybrid rice and corn seeds. Through this project, the government has positioned farmers not only being the targets and subjects, but also being victims as they lost in profits and dignity. Farmers’ seeds selling was hampered by the subsidize seeds produced by the companies. On the other hand, as the project was over consumers have already depended on hybrid seeds that become more expensive then. Illogically, the government does not take any significant actions to reduce the high price of hybrid seeds. This cannot be justified since a research shows a possibility that the government confines maximum retail price of hybrid varieties made by the multinationals because it is considered overpriced (Sayaka, 2005). The high-priced seeds will further offer much more benefits to the companies instead of farmers. Thereby, those facts indicate the government has no concern on farmers’ right to produce seeds. As the result, farmers have lost their pride as seed producers.
PPB Exclusively for Farmers’ Wealth
When analyzing participation in relation to the role in PPB, “farmers play a key role in providing germplasm to the breeding process” (L. Sperling, J.A. Ashby, M.E. Smith, E. Weltzien, S. McGuire, 2001). They have been evolving various plant varieties for centuries. Especially small farmers still maintain specifically extinct seed varieties which are usually low-priced using when planting in limited resources. In other words, “farmers have become custodians of diversity for maintaining the genetic variation that is essential to the continue evolution and adaptation of plant genotypes” (Vernooy, 2003). One of the main purposes in PPB is to alleviate poverty among agriculture workers by giving farmers a bigger role in the development of farming technology. Researchers who currently dominate plant breeding activities can build an equal partnership with farmers so that it can restore farmers to be the original breeders. So, placing farmers as the subject in agricultural research is crucial for certain objectives. The first is to meet farmer’s need on particular seed varieties with lowest external inputs and highly local preferences as possible. This will be successful if farmers can choose the genetic materials by themselves in accordance with their knowledge and skill on farming in their own land which they have mastered to date. Secondly, it is to give a fair benefit sharing to farmers “for their role in conserving and improving plant genetic resources” (Vernooy, 2003). An equitable sharing will improve farmers’ income by giving them control over basic means of productions and access to advanced information in agriculture, and eventually they can be lifted out of poverty.
The implementation of PBB based on a fact that a number of farmers can produce their own seeds independently. This survival practice has lived for years so as not to pay expensive seeds to cut the production cost of farming. On the contrary, certain policies applied in the last decades that have made farmers depend heavily on external inputs of production should be revised. One of them is in the form of Farming Intensification implemented in the New Order Era as a replication of the Green Revolution.  The Farming Intensification was conducted through The Five Farm Enterprises, which consisted of the use of superior seeds, land cultivation techniques, irrigation system or water management, fertilization, and pests and diseases control. Their main objective focused primarily on high external inputs of agriculture. The program was dominated by the consumption of chemicals, and the use of superior hybrid seeds and high-technological tools as the inputs. Those chemical inputs not only bring on an environmental degradation, but also the dependency of farmers. To overcome the second problem in particular, the concept of PPB issues an excellent opportunity for farmers to be independent again, in addition to fight for their rights as the focal seed producers, rather than multinational companies (Y. Chiffoleau, D. Desclaux, 2006). In fact, a large number of farmers from widespread areas of the world master various plant breeding techniques until now. This can be a valuable asset to start applying PPB, purposely in areas where are loaded with genetic resources but the people work mostly in agriculture and still live in poverty. Furthermore, it is essential to improve farmers’ natural skill combined with advanced technology so that farmers can produce high-quality seeds to fulfill their needs.  As a consequence, when many farmers can produce their own seeds, their price will be cheaper which is good to lessen the cost of production in the farm business and to increase the quality of farming products.
Locality is Valuable
Locality is accounted an important principle in PPB. It focuses on the individuality of the subject and object, which are farmers and the varieties respectively, so both of them have to be originated from the same area. Based on several studies in different region, it can be concluded that “farmers can take a major role in matching specific varieties to specific environmental niches and uses” (L. Sperling, J.A. Ashby, M.E. Smith, E. Weltzien, S. McGuire, 2001). Every farm land has a compatibility with specific plant varieties according to their localities. For two different areas, high land and low land for instance, there will be at least two plant varieties with significant dissimilarities of their physical characteristics. Hence, “PPB and the in situ conservation of agro biodiversity – which means maintaining the diversity of plant species on farms in the habitats where they originated and continue to evolve – are two complementary methodologies” (Vernooy, 2003). Ordinarily, locality of plants is developed in an area with strong and maintained agricultural culture by the inhabitants who rely on farm. The practice of locality can bring back local people’s livelihoods and preserve biodiversity as well. Moreover, it can be reduced seed’s price since the distance between producers and consumers is closer. This is because a special plant variety can only be grown in a limited area which is not far from where the plant originally comes from or was firstly invented. So, PPB employs locality for restoring and improving local people’s basic skill in agriculture so that they can produce seeds.
Plant breeding which is developed by farmers brings some environmental advantages. Farmers are used to conserve biodiversity in their daily farming unconsciously. For their struggle simply to survive on poor soils with limited resources, small farmers continue to allow plant varieties to evolve and select plant types (rather than varieties) based on their own observations and according to their specific needs. The result is that to a surprising extent these farmers have become custodians of diversity. Through their skills as plant breeders, “they are maintaining the genetic variation that is essential to the continued evolution and adaptation of plant genotype” (Vernooy, 2003). This is the first benefit. Then within the limited source of production, farmers implement natural practices in plant breeding that can prevent environmental destruction as the second one. On the other hand, the seed industry that promoted modern plant breeding included some bad effects on agro biodiversity in particular (Smolders, 2006). The main cause is that the industrial agriculture focused widely on developing a small number of major crops. In the future, various kinds of plants that have a huge contribution to maintain biodiversity will vanish gradually in the development of the seed industry. To prevent this situation to happen further, PPB is highly recommendation to be employed.
Seeds can be yielded in an environmentally and economically way to maintain biodiversity by involving farmers in the implementation of plant breeding program accordingly. The program, which is Participatory Plant Breeding, concentrates on improving farmers’ potency as plant breeders while conserving agro biodiversity. The implementation also can bring prosperity to farmers. They can be more skilful as the main producers or breeders and they can develop their farming system comprehensively. In the long term, the development of seeds can alleviate famine in the world.

Bibliography

L. Sperling, J.A. Ashby, M.E. Smith, E. Weltzien, S. McGuire. (2001). A Framework for Analyzing Participatory Plant Breeding Approaches and Results. Euphytica 122: 439–450, 2001 , 447.
Pribadi, D. P. (2011, May 11). From Green to Gene Revolution. Retrieved July 4, 2011, from Kibar Kediri Blog: www.kibar-kediri.blogspot.com
Sayaka, B. (2005). Market Conduct of the Corn Seed Producers: Multinationals verses Local Companies. Jurnal Agro Ekonomi , 23, 101-132.
Sayaka, B. (2003). Market Perfomance of the Corn Seed Industry in East Java. Jurnal Agro Ekonomi , 21, 26-49.
Smolders, H. (2006, April). Enhancing Farmers' Role in Crop Development: Framework Information for Participatory Plant Breeding in Farmer Field Schools. PEDIGREA . (H. Smolders, Ed.) Wageningen, the Netherlands: Centre for Genetic Resources.
Vernooy, R. (2003). Seeds That Give: Participatory Plant Breeding. Ottawa, ON, Canada: the International Development Research Centre.
Y. Chiffoleau, D. Desclaux. (2006). Participatory Plant Breeding: the Best Way to Breed for Sustainable Agriculture. International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability , 4, 119-130.

Dian Pratiwi Pribadi - Maastricht, July 22, 2011

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