Farmer-Managed Seed Systems, Community Seed Banks and Farmers' Rights: a Synthesis

This paper provides a brief synthesis of our knowledge to date about farmer-managed seed systems, how they contribute to seed and food security, challenges in this regard and how realizing farmers’ rights may help to unfold these potential opportunities for seed and food security. In this context community seed banks are highlighted as a promising approach to developing the potential of farmermanaged seed systems, thereby also highlighting the most important barriers that prevents this to happen. The paper concludes with a proposed agenda for further work.