Seeds are the foundation of agriculture which forms the bedrock of our food system. Without seeds, agriculture will not thrive, much less sustain the food needs of our population. The seeds we have, define the food we eat. The higher the seed diversity the wider the range of
options to shape our food systems. More options to produce food means better food and nutrition security. Unfortunately this is not the way agriculture is structured today. In the last 50 years since the Green Revolution, the model of agriculture that governments and agricultural
research institutions have been promoting prescribes the use of genetically uniform modern seeds that are dependent on fertilisers and pesticides and grown in plantation-style monoculture. The result: despite the resulting higher farm efficiency and productivity, there are currently 795 million hungry people (or 1 in every 9 of the 7.3 billion population) suffering from chronic undernourishment, almost all of them live in developing countries where much of the agricultural production take place.1