THE IMPORTANCE OF SUSTAINABLE SEED PRACTICES

Abstract

The dynamism and diversity of seed practices is highly crucial to the health of the global food systems.  In this paper, the aspects of the environmental, economic, and social sustainability of seed systems are examined with respect to the usage of the heirloom seeds, seed sovereignty movements, and communal seed banking.  We consider the difference between conventional seed practices and the conventional commercial framework in the light of preserving biodiversity, the opportunity to change with the climate, the opportunities of farmers to have greater control, and the availability of food. We can do this by taking a glance at the data that one can find in the real world and the policy analysis.  The findings indicate that ancestral and open-pollinated seeds resist greater drought and pests. Their yields are, in fact, as much as 30 percent less affected by climatic stress-conditions as those than can be wholly of the genetically homogeneous breeding.  Tables indicate that the seed-saving techniques imply 45-60 percent less input expenditure and 33 percent higher Farmer Autonomy Index scores. There also exists a very high positive connection (r = 0.78) between food security measures and seed diversity.  Seed banks under community management achieved higher resilience scores and policies with high participation of the civil society were much likely to be adopted.  In addition, the traditional crop varieties also incessantly contain higher micronutrients than their genetically modified seeds indicating how vital they are in the area of public health nutrition.  This degeneration of genetic diversity of seeds is depicted across the world in the last one hundred years has been declining steadily as indicated in visualizations and it is correlated with the rise of industrial agriculture.  The findings indicate the need to get off of corporate monoculture-based seed systems and on to pathways of decentralised, farmer-driven and biodiverse seed governance.  One of the decent ways to transition to food sovereignty, climate-friendly, and ecologically sound settings is sustainable seed practice as it integrates agroecological notions with the participatory dimensions.