Building on community traditional knowledge and practices for food security

Southeast Asia Regional Initiatives for Community Empowerment (SEARICE) implemented ‘Putting Lessons into Practice: Scaling up Peoples’ Biodiversity Management for Food Security’ (2012-2015), in collaboration with partners from government, non-government and research institutions. Objectives were to develop adaptation strategies for food security by bridging traditional knowledge and science; to influence policies on food and agriculture from local to international level toward realizing the right to food of indigenous and smallholder farmers; and to strengthen their adaptive capacities in plant genetic resources conservation, including access to and sustainable use of PGRFA, by scaling up successful and/or innovative models. Components include capacity-building through collaborative strategies, e.g. Participatory Plant Breeding (PPB) and community seed management, and policy support by providing a venue for farmers to articulate their concerns and issues to government leaders. The Farmer Field School approach was used as a learning and empowering methodology, while the system of rice intensification and PPB were introduced as climate-change mitigation measures. The initiative targeted 75,000 low-income farming households from several regions of Vietnam. Farm productivity and yield increased by 10%, while periods of food scarcity were reduced from a maximum of 17 weeks to a maximum of 7 weeks across all regions by its conclusion.