Farmers’ attitudes and use of seed exchange systems for maintaining crop biodiversity

A well-established, but puzzling, procedure in traditional agriculture has since ancient times been exchange of seed among farmers. Even when self-produced seed was sufficient, new seed from external sources was regularly recruited. In the Nordic countries, seed exchange systems were common until the early 20th century.

We hypothesize that these were important to maintain crop biodiversity and contributed to food security in times of climate change.

We will investigate farmers´ perception of biodiversity in crops and analyse how seed exchange affected its geographical distribution.Our research will use a unique historical, ethnological and biological source material from the late 19th century. We will use ethnological questionnaires, farmers´ diaries and agricultural literature.

We will also genetically characterize 19th century seed collections to measure the distribution of biodiversity in barley, oats and pea.

Interpreted together we can draw a picture of how historical farmers, through seed exchange, managed and used biodiversity to climate adapt crops and secure food production.The proposed research will increase our knowledge of the historical processes that result in diverse crops, food security and climate adaptation through systems of seed exchange.

Thereby, the project contributes to the restoration of systems for on-farm preservation of crops. A more efficient management and use of plant biodiversity would fulfil several of the sustainability goals.