Seeds: Where Food Security Begins on World Food Day
This World Food Day, let's recall the most pivotal input that allows us to grow, harvest, process, sell, and eat quality, diverse foods: seeds. Those who don't build their livelihoods from seeds can take them for granted. But in Uganda, where agriculture is the most common livelihood, seeds are central to household food security, to incomes, and to our cultures.
Take Edeidei, a local sorghum variety found in Serere and surrounding districts. Families have passed it down for generations and kept it for over 100 years. They value its drought tolerance, its taste in local brew, and a head shape that keeps birds from feeding on it. For this region, Edeidei has meant both food and income.
Income, though, has been a barrier. Edeidei is a farmer variety in the farmer-managed seed system, not a certified variety in the commercial system. That limits how it can be sold and keeps its market price low.
“There are many growers of Edeidei but the price for it is very low. If the seed is registered, I may have a means of getting better market for seed”
John Bosco, smallholder farmer in Serere district, sharing the history of the variety and the challenges growers experience selling it in their communities
Edeidei is not an exception
In a recent Oxfam survey of smallholder farmers in Iganga, Serere, Amuru, and Kalaki, more than three in four (76%) grow a farmer variety.
Of those growers, 61% have kept their variety for five years or more, 79% have shared it with other households, and 68% believe it has commercial value.
Farmers are also the main seed providers in this system: 76% save seed from their own harvest, while just 4.5% accessed Quality Declared Seed and 15% accessed certified seed this season, the two classes in Uganda’s commercial seed system. Farmer-managed seed is the backbone of how these communities eat and earn.
Janet Atim, a smallholder farmer involved in Oxfam and partners’ project, advocating on farmer rights to Uganda's Parliament.
Registering a variety
Farmer variety registration (FVR) would give varieties like Edeidei formal legal recognition. For farmers, that means a stronger voice in the market, better prices, and safer ground for selling and exchanging seed.
For the country, it means safeguarding the diversity that farmers have conserved over generations, our best defense against drought, pests, and a changing climate.
Recognition is also about protection. Farmers hold the knowledge, the resources, and the living seed that Uganda's food security depends on. Because so many have already shared their varieties, registration should be paired with an Access and Benefit Sharing agreement, so farmers are compensated when their varieties are used commercially and protected from exploitation.
Through the Rooted in Diversity project, Oxfam in Uganda is taking this evidence to policymakers, so policy rests on farmers' realities rather than assumptions.
Farmer displaying a variety of bean local to Teso region called Beyale
The future is in farmers' hands
Certified seed and farmer-managed seed both have a place, and farmers deserve a real choice between them. This World Food Day, let's remember that food security does not start at the market or on the plate. It starts with a seed, and with the farmers who hold the future of our food. Protecting their diversity, knowledge, and resources is how we protect all of us.