Innovative Pilot Scheme Would Match Seeds to the Needs of Women Farmers (Ethiopian Seeds for Needs)

• Innovative Pilot Scheme Would Match Seeds to the Needs of Women Farmers (Ethiopian Seeds for Needs) (User:Wikigender, 09:29, 9 March 2011)

EthiopianSeedsforNeeds.pngThe “Innovative Pilot Scheme Would Match Seeds to the Needs of Women Farmers” (also called “Ethiopian Seeds for Needs”) is one of the winning projects of 2009 Global Development Marketplace: Adaptation for Climate Change. The Development Marketplace is a competitive grant program organized by the World Bank, aiming to identify about 20 innovative projects dealing with climate change. The “Ethiopian Seeds for Needs” is one of the winning projects of the 2009 competition (it won an award of $200,000). It was put in place in Ethiopia by Bioversity International, the “world’s leading organization dedicated to agricultural biodiversity research”.

The Project

“Ethiopian Seeds for Needs” started on the observation that climate change endangers food security in many developing regions of the world, in particular in Africa. Therefore, the goal of the project was to give women farmers “an assured supply of climate-tolerant seeds for food production as climatic conditions change in the future”.

Identifying Resistant Seeds

The project was launched in April 2009 and it first consisted in identyfring resistant seeds. Bioversity International worked closely with Ethiopia’s Institute of Biodiversity Conservation (IBC), which safeguards Africa’s oldest gene bank, to identify seeds that would resist drought and elevated temperatures. Durum wheat and barley were selected among 30,000 samples, being considered as having the highest potential for local adaptation. 100 varieties of each crop were then selected to be tested out by farmers using a geographic information system (GIS).

=== The Role of Women in this Project === […Innovative Pilot Scheme Would Match Seeds to the Needs of Women Farmers (Ethiopian Seeds for Needs)…]