Farming always faces a lot of challenges, such as climate changes, and weeds, pests, and diseases. To cope with such problems, seeds of varieties with diverse genetic characteristics are supplied to farmers so that they can... [ view full abstract ]
Farming always faces a lot of challenges, such as climate changes, and weeds, pests, and diseases. To cope with such problems, seeds of varieties with diverse genetic characteristics are supplied to farmers so that they can choose seeds suitable for their farming to sustain food production toward the future. Therefore, farmers who recognize the importance of varieties of seeds have been saving and producing the varieties of seeds called “heirloom seeds”.
In the meantime, seed supply systems have been changing drastically. Today modern technologies are applied to production and distribution processes of seeds in which large seed companies are increasingly involved. They supply so limited hybrid and genetically-modified (GM) varieties, which allowed farmers for more uniform, stable, and greater production. Market and retail sectors also needed mass supply of uniform and standardized products. As a result, most farmers quieted their seed saving, and then heirloom varieties, which demonstrate unstable traits, and smaller and less uniform production, were driven out of the market gradually. Ashworth (2002) said today’s commercial vegetable varieties have evolved from the same varieties. The disappearance heirloom varieties do not only limit seed choices by farmers, but also enhance a vulnerability to the environmental changes (Nishikawa, 2004). To such serious situation, in recent years, Japanese farmers who have strong interests in biodiversity or protection of seeds started saving and exchanging seeds among farmers collaborated with local stockholders.
With the background, the goals of this paper are to grasp the details of activities to save and exchange seeds and sell the products of heirloom varieties, and then to propose better policies and managements to sustain the seed diversity in Japan. To achieve the two purposes, first, interviews with small seed companies, seed saving farmers and supporting NGOs. Second, based on the results of the interviews, their roles and functions in the seed saving activities were specified by referring to the models of Louwaars (2007) and Imaizumi (2014). The analysis pointed out that farmers, especially organic farmers led the activities in Japan and the networks with other multiple actors through exchanging knowledge impacted on sustainability of the seed saving.
