Now, these critics say, patent restrictions are choking the free exchange of seeds and technology that nourished the public system.
This makes it difficult for the CGIAR's 16 international centres, once at the heart of the Green Revolution, to serve poor farmers.Some are looking for new relations between the public and private sector to ease the exchange of seeds, machinery and other tools.
They organized the free exchange of seeds at fairs to assert their right to be "people of corn," and to continue traditional farming methods.
For maize in Mexico and Guatemala, most seed is exchanged within a community, with infrequent exchange of seed between people at greater distances (Perales, unpublished data; Van Etten et al. 2008).
Beneficiaries are given vouchers that they exchange for seeds of their choice from certified vendors.
Sometimes there is money exchanged in transactions between campesinos/as, but usually it's a free exchange of native seeds.
The experts gave the maximum importance to 5 variables: number of native potato varieties cultivated (D1), use of own seed (D1), form in which cultivation knowledge was acquired by the keeper (D2), exchange of own seed (D3), and number of other potato keepers known (D3).
This means only 8.7% of the total rice area received quality seed in that year, and the rice seed required for the remaining area was supplied from informal sources such as rice grain reserved from previous season's harvest or local exchange of rice seed with neighbours (SQCC 2011).
This implies both exchange of views among scientists as well as exchange of genetic information via shipment of seeds and propagules.
Despite having been domesticated for thousands of years, exceptional biodiversity is maintained in the current quinoa cultivars, through traditional seed exchanges of local Andean farmers17.
