Presented by CropTrust
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving in the United States — a holiday with an uncomfortable history behind the delicious culinary traditions. Untold numbers of Indigenous peoples worldwide have been displaced and killed off throughout the centuries. As climate change, conflict, economic instability, and industrial agriculture fuel biodiversity loss, it’s worth thinking about how to save indigenous food crops from disappearing, too.
That brings us to Lima, Peru, where this week, 175 countries are gathered to deliberate how to strengthen global commitments to the seeds and plant genetic resources that feed us all. It’s formally called the 11th session of the Governing Body of the Food and Agriculture Organization’s International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, or GB-11. The goal is to pass a package of measures that will make the system work better for an ever more complex world.
Crop diversity refers to the seeds, varieties, and genes nurtured and developed by plant breeders, farmers, and Indigenous communities for centuries. The Plant Treaty, adopted in 2001, is a binding document that aims to preserve those materials by promoting their sustainable use and ensuring fair and equitable sharing of the benefits that arise from their use, such as plant breeding by researchers and commercialization of new varieties by seed companies. But the treaty’s system for access and benefit-sharing has long fallen short of its promise.
That means whatever happens this week in Lima has high stakes for the future of crop research and development. Discussions center around three major points:
• Digital sequencing information, aka genetic information obtained from DNA sequencing, which is increasingly important for plant breeding but isn’t covered in the original treaty.
• Expanding Annex 1, the treaty’s list of 64 food and forage crops it currently governs, to include all plant genetic material.
• Implementing a payment structure and rates for accessing genetic material.
There are major disagreements on all of those things. For example, many global north nations want a full expansion of Annex 1, but many in the global south support some restrictions or a phased approach. “There’s still a number of very hard discussions that they need to have, but they decided to commit to this process,” Álvaro Toledo, FAO’s deputy secretary for the treaty, tells me. “They just gave themselves a deadline, which is this week. So there’s a lot of pressure on them.” The conference is set to end Saturday.
As for benefit-sharing — which refers to both monetary and nonmonetary benefits — there has been very little sharing of the monetary kind, which many want to see expanded to support smallholder farmers who are guardians of agricultural biodiversity. At present, the fund’s two main funding sources are voluntary contributions from countries, the private sector, and philanthropies; and income from profits arising from crop varieties that have been developed using material from the treaty’s multilateral benefit-sharing system. But it’s a long road from research to commercialization, and so far, revenue from that sharing system has come from only six seed companies and totaled $824,680, or 2.2% of the fund’s total income. In Lima, there are proposals on the table for a subscription model, in which the private sector pays anywhere from 0.01% to 1% of annual turnover to access all genetic material — which would make the system much more financially viable.
“We are business people. We are totally committed to genetic resources,” says Michael Keller, secretary-general of the International Seed Federation, which represents the $54 billion-per-year seed sector. The problem, he says, is that companies’ breeding programs may never need the vast majority of the material to which they’re subscribing, so a “single-access” model may be more appealing to some. “We are ready to subscribe and pay 0.01% of our annual turnover," he says. “But if you put a rate at the level of 1% or even far lower than 1%, the risk is that nobody will subscribe.”
The meetings kicked off Monday with an Indigenous Peruvian blessing ceremony — and then the hard part began. The outcomes in Lima have implications for plant breeders, farmers, the world’s 850-plus gene banks, seed companies, and anyone who has an interest in preserving food security — which is to say, everybody everywhere. In an opinion piece for Devex, Switzerland’s Alwin Kopse, FAO’s Kent Nnadozie, and Crop Trust Executive Director Stefan Schmitz urged countries to reach an agreement.
“Every seed conserved is a possibility preserved — for farmers, for plant breeders and researchers, and for future generations,” they write. “Together, we can meet this moment of challenge, protect the diversity that sustains us all, and build a more sustainable, resilient, just, and food-secure world.”
Read the opinion: Why crop diversity is key for the future of food
See also: How the seed sector can step up for food security
And don’t miss: Food security in a time of crisis must start with seeds
Here’s another example of why gene banks are so important: Scientists have developed a new disease-resistant potato variety in a significant breakthrough in combating late blight, which caused the Irish potato famine in the mid-1800s — and is spreading to new regions due to climate change. The variety, formally called CIP-Asiryq, was developed by the Peru-based International Potato Center with the help of Indigenous Andes communities.
CIP-Asiryq offers many benefits, as Devex contributor David Njagi reports. It requires fewer costly fungicide sprays and cooks faster, saving both farmers’ input costs and households’ energy expenses.
Another variety is under development that would be suited for the highlands of East Africa. Mike Kiambi, a researcher with the Kenya-based Agricultural Development Corporation, tells David this good news for hundreds of thousands of potato farmers in Kenya and Uganda, where late blight can devastate 60% to 100% of their crops.
Read: How a new blight-resistant potato variety is boosting food security
See also: Can potatoes help to counter climate-fueled hunger in Africa?
And don’t miss: What can modern farming learn from the ancient Incas?
“When rural households are desperate, they make short-term decisions that accelerate environmental damage — such as clearing forests and exhausting soils and water — to survive.”
— Máximo Torero Cullen, chief economist, FAOTorero writes in an opinion piece for Devex that the Belém Declaration on Hunger, Poverty, and Human-Centered Climate Action made at this month’s U.N. Climate Change Conference, COP30, linked climate action to both eradicating hunger and social protection — an essential connection for those who hope to reduce the world’s food insecurity.
Read the opinion: COP30 paves the way for climate action to start with social protection
Final report card from Belém: What moved, what stalled, and what’s next for COP30
Further reading: The 3 big outcomes of COP30’s final plenary (Pro)
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Leaders from the world’s most powerful economies — minus the United States — met for the Group of 20 leaders’ summit last weekend in Johannesburg, South Africa. Despite widening geopolitical rifts, they came to consensus on the first day of the gathering, publishing a leaders’ declaration that brought the global south’s most pressing issues into the fore. There was an entire page dedicated to food security, with the leaders affirming several recommendations made by the bloc’s working groups throughout the year, my colleague Elissa Miolene reports from the summit.
The focus was on food price volatility. It’s a major concern for low- and middle-income countries, where households spend a far larger share of their income on food, and even small price swings can push countless into hunger. For Gilad Isaacs, the executive director of the South Africa-based Institute for Economic Justice, what jumped out to him most was the mention of food buffer stocks: government-held reserves of staple foods that can be released when prices spike, helping stabilize markets and keep food affordable for low-income consumers.
It’s something Isaacs’ institute had been pushing for, despite the fact that it’s not a typical market-centric approach. Since the G20’s food security group highlighted the concept, the African Union and African Continental Free Trade Area have begun exploring it as well.
“It legitimizes that we can intervene so that prices shouldn’t just be the outcome of the market,” Isaacs tells Elissa. “Cracking that open, and having it be recognized as a legitimate policy tool, I think is a very positive outcome.”
Read: G20 summit in South Africa adopts declaration without the US
And ICYMI: Africa can feed the world if the G20 frees it from debt
European Union member states agreed last week to a second one-year delay of the bloc’s flagship anti-deforestation law, which had been due to come into effect at the end of December.
The EU deforestation regulation would require producers exporting to the EU to prove that commodities such as coffee, cocoa, and rubber had not been grown on land which had been deforested within the last five years. Agricultural production is the main driver of global deforestation.
The policy — the first of its kind — had already been postponed once, amid concerns about the readiness of the EU’s information technology systems. Many had also warned that smallholder producers in low-income countries lack the technical expertise and funding needed to comply with mapping and documentation requirements, risking their exclusion from EU markets.
But coming in the middle of COP30, environmentalists say that the decision undermines the credibility of the EU’s global climate commitments. With forest loss reaching record levels in 2024, “postponing protections for forests sends exactly the wrong signal,” said Stientje van Veldhoven, vice president of the World Resources Institute, in September when the delay was proposed. Major agrifood businesses such as Nestlé also pointed out that businesses had already begun to invest in traceable supply chains “in good faith,” warning that changes would introduce further market uncertainty.
Background: African coffee farmers race to pass EU tree test
Armed attacks and aid cuts are provoking record hunger levels in northern Nigeria, with nearly 35 million people “projected to face severe food insecurity” next year, according to the World Food Programme. [Al Jazeera]
Democrats on the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee have requested inspectors-general from USAID and the State Department to investigate reports that the Trump administration wasted food assistance. [House Foreign Affairs Committee]
The World Bank’s Axel van Trotsenburg outlines ways to secure fresh water for a livable planet. [Devex Opinion]
Elissa Miolene and Catherine Davison contributed to this edition of Devex Dish.