Farmers in developing countries are losing one of their best hopes to limit the impact of climate change because of growing corporate control of the seeds they plant, researchers claim.

The warning comes as the World Seed Conference at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation takes place in Rome this week.

The researchers - from the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and partner organisations in China, India, Kenya, Panama and Peru - said the diversity of traditional seed varieties is falling fast and this means valuable traits such as drought and pest resistance could be lost forever.

They claim that one reason for this is that while the international treaty on the protection of new varieties of plants (UPOV) protects the profits of powerful private corporations, it fails to recognise and protect the rights and knowledge of poor farmers.

Krystyna Swiderska, project leader at the IIED, said: “Where farming communities have been able to maintain their traditional varieties, they are already using them to cope with the impacts of climate change. But more commonly, these varieties are being replaced by a smaller range of ‘modern’ seeds that are heavily promoted by corporations and subsidised by governments. These seeds have less genetic diversity, yet need more inputs such as pesticides and fertilisers and more natural resources such as land and water.

“Western governments and the seed industry want to upgrade the UPOV Convention to provide stricter exclusive rights to commercial plant breeders. This will further undermine the rights of farmers and promote the loss of seed diversity that poor communities depend on for their resilience to changing climatic conditions.”

Ruchi Pant of Ecoserve in India said: “The farming communities that have developed and sustained a rich diversity of seeds over millennia urgently need incentives to continue sustaining them. They need the same rights over their traditional seed varieties and associated knowledge as corporations have over modern varieties they develop and patent. The new seed laws being introduced in developing agrarian countries are posing a threat to the rights of small farmers to save, sow and exchange their traditional varieties.”

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