Humans have radically altered the evolution of agricultural plants since World War Two, remaking our seed system with industrial agricultural practices to feed a growing population. Yet in the changing climate of decades to come, UVM researchers say, the seeds that will feed the world are in the hands of smallholder farmers.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1449240174198-2’); });In a new discussion in Plants, People, Planet, Chen and co-authors examine how the emergence of professional crop breeders have “disrupted evolutionary processes” to “reshape the entire food system.”
The mass production of high-yielding seeds in limited varieties has created a chasmic divide between a “formal seed system,” which now sells most seeds worldwide, and the “informal seed system,” which consists of farmers who select their own seeds to develop diverse, locally adapted crop varieties, known as landraces.