Rethinking strategies for agricultural research : global program helps farmers conserve the genetic diversity of crops

French version available in IDRC Digital Library: Repenser les stratégies de recherche agricoleSpanish version available in IDRC Digital Library: Nuevas estrategias para la investigación agrícola : un programa global ayuda a los agricultores a conservar la biodiversidadResource-poor farmers, a large number of whom are women, produce as much as 20 percent of the world’s food, and they may well hold the key to increasing biological and cultural diversity. For in their struggle simply to survive — and produce — on poor soils with limited resources, small farmers continue to allow plant varieties to evolve. The result is that these farmers have become custodians of diversity, maintaining the genetic variation that is essential to the continued evolution and adaptation of plant genotypes