Complementing Farmers’ Genetic Knowledge: Farmer

Genetic conservation and improvement depends (among other things) on the action of local people (CBD, 1994). We know that farmers are extremely knowledgeable about their crops and that they continuously experiment with them and with new materials arriving from various sources (Richards, 1989). Certain farmers are locally recognised as having “expert” knowledge about agro-biodiversity. They are the farmers who stand out during participatory breeding and conservation exercises for their knowledge, experience, interest and dedication to plant genetic resources. One way of ensuring that agrobiodiversity is not lost is to encourage these local experts to continue experimenting with, conserving and enhancing their genetic resources. There are many ways of going about this. This workshop explored the feasibility and methods for complementing farmer experts’ knowledge and skills in the enhancement and conservation of agrobiodiversity. The idea of using skill enhancement as a way of encouraging local people to conserve and enhance biodiversity is not new (McGuire et al. 1999; Pelegrina 2000), but it is one that has not been studied systematically or in-depth.