I was delighted to see the headline Food security in a climate crisis must start with seeds pop up on my Devex alerts. But then I read the article by Michael Keller, who leads a key international seed industry lobby group — and my heart sank.
I read the same tired narrative selling the idea that lab-grown crops and imported technology are the answer to food insecurity.
My opinion is that this narrow approach is wrong. It focuses on profits for big business while ignoring the climate-resilient seeds that farmers are already using in places such as Kenya. As U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Michael Fakhri put it last year: “Seeds are life … to control seeds is to control life.”