LOCAL SEED BANK

• Geographical location of the project
• Organic Farm"The Parcel"
• Locality: "The" rural "Carolina"
• Party: Florencio Varela
• Province: Buenos Aires
• Country: Argentina
• Background

The CEDEPO NGO (Ecumenical Center of Popular Education) carries out in the region a Project of Human Local Development and Agroecológico, within which this component is included.

Bases

The progress of the commercial hybrids on the traditional outputs, of the hand of the Green Revolution, and with the new threat of the genetically modified materials led to that many cultivated species, especially horticultural, were being lost by disuse.

This agriculture input--dependent, high-cost of production, took to the disappearance of many small family producers that could not adapt to this new proposal. On the other hand, the intensive use of agricultural chemicals contributed to the reduction of the biodiversity.

Many of the cultivated species and in disuse they present excellent characteristics of adaptability to our area, behaving favorably in the face of diseases and pests, aspect in which surpass widely the genetic materials introduced by the "Modern Agriculture."

These technologies separated from the ecological theory produced environmental problems in some irreversible cases, other recoverable long-term. The monoculture, the indiscriminate use of agricultural chemicals, the excessive working of the soil, the genetic erosion, among others, attempt in formadirecta on the natural biodiversity, encouraging the disappearance of species.

We can say that this new form that there has the man to be linked with the agricultural and livestock production produces a notable uprooting with the customs that ancestrally was maintaining, inducing serious cultural transformations, for example the loss of the capacity to improve its own seed through a masal selection, of the management of a high genetic variability that fulfilled not only the dietary needs but the religious // medicinal, etc, the loss of the capacity of observation of the phenomena and interactions that occur in an agroecosystem, etc., limiting the possibility of solution of a problem with a "soft" intervention.

General objectives

To establish a program of share that carries out the recovery - reproduction--distribution and recycling of local varieties.

To encourage in the producers the importance on the role that plays the biodiversity in the agroecosystems and the adoption of measures to preserve it.

 Specific objectives

Screening and recovery of the genetic material

Some family producers of the region have conserved a horticulture of subsistence or for personal consumption based on the species and traditional varieties acting as small banks of conservation of germplasm. These are detectable through the personal contact with the local reality that makes it possible to establish chains of information and exchange of seeds, acting we as technical, identificadores, and almacenadores coordinators of last entity.

Revaluation of the function of the small producer as curator of the genetic wealth

Although "La Parcela" has infrastructure in order to maintain and rejuvenate good part of the material already collected and classified, so much from the as much cultural standpoint of the effectiveness in this task, we consider fundamental that this preservation is done at the level of property by the actors himself and beneficiaries of the conservation, which means that we try to consolidate a "pilot" initial group of family producers consustanciados with the // proposal to carry on the process with the only aggregate of a technical coordination that permits a témporo-spatial organization more effective.

To encourage the use among the small family producers of the varieties adapted to the area

Through the extension work on the proposal and the multiplication of seed that permits the "pilot" group, we will initiate the return road toward the harvesting of the adapted varieties, which we believe it will be favored by the process itself of exclusion that generated the high-cost production system. The development of this stage is the true guarantee of conservation of the varieties since its recovery for the culture makes it possible to generalize its rejuvenescence.

To revalue the "in situ" conservation of the traditional species

By means of this joint task with the community rural, supported by workshops and trainings specific, we orient ourselves to the comprehension on the part of the producers himself concerning its fundamental role in the conservation of the species, varieties and ecotipos local, revaluing its role with regard to the conservation of the biodiversity.

Creation of a Local Seed Bank

As tool for the development of these objectives we envisage the creation of the Local Bank of Seeds (for us, "La Casa of the Seeds") that makes it possible for to us to centralize the management, identification, classification and redistribution of all the genetic material, bibliographic and informative in general, for which in the "La Parcela" is being constructed the adequate infrastructure (to see "State of development of the project") //

To promote the exchange of seeds among the producers

So that all the project keeps alive the participation of the rural population is essential through a permanent exchange of seeds between the Bank and the producers and among the producers among themselves, which guarantees the sustainability of the process. In this case, the Bank will act as concentrator and coordinator of the information and the local material, while will give the necessary technical assistance to whom start in the multiplication of these recovered varieties

To promote the creation of other local Banks and the interconnection among them

In the great region adjacent to the of the City of Buenos Aires Megalopolis (Federal Capital + Conurbano Bonaerense) there exist many agricultural areas (basically horticultural) where small family producers are grouped (For Example: Park Pereyra Iraola, El Pato, El Peligro, Supply, Gorina, Arana, etc., more all the western area) in which would be expected that are developed similar undertakings in narrow connection to this, in view of the fact that, to concern regions of similar characteristics agroecológicas, the genetic exchange among the same would be enriching for all.

State of development of the project

Is in an initial stage, foreseeing its public launching (together with the inauguration of"The House of the Seeds") for the first days of the next month of December, in occasion to be carried out in the property the Annual Fair of the Association of Producers of Florencio Varela.

However, the Bank already has an important provision of varieties and ecotipos in conservation or process of rejuvenescence, while basic information primers are being prepared for the internal dissemination (at the level of local producers) of the proposal.

Is been in its last stretches the construction of the building of"The House of the Seeds"." This public work consists of the following sectors: 1) laboratory: where the conditioning, classification, and analysis of the seed are carried out, either of production which is own or derived by the producers of the region; 2) conservation room: the equipped, classified, and ordered seed is stored up to its new process of rejuvenescence; 3) library: in order to have all the national and international information on the subject in centralized form; 4) computer and database: what will permit an up-to-date management of the local information and the access, via Internet, to all the centers of similar characteristics positioned in the web. In addition, in order to keep a page informative concerning the situation of the project.

In accordance with the objective proposed in the item previous, this bank will function dynamically and participatory, in permanent exchange and updating with the local rural environment.

Short-term shares to implement

The efforts will concentrate, during the rest of year, in the identification and capture of the "pilot producers" through which to diversify the sources of acquisition of material and places of multiplication. To this end we have the dissemination and the personal contact that will provide us with the Fair of Producers.

With the same object, we foresee the development of different activities during the first semester of the next year: a) realization of visits and surveys to local producers; b) presentation of workshops on organic production; c) preparation and distribution of a Periodic Informative Sheet, that disseminates from the experiences and knowledge of the producers himself, restoring the local traditions, up to the accessible technological new developments by Internet.