Agricultural Centers launch "Seeds of Hope" to save Rwanda's food crops, avert famine

That's why seven International Agricultural Research Centers are launching "Seeds of Hope," a crash program to rescue, multiply, and distribute seeds of Rwanda's six most important food crops before they disappear forever.

"The seeds aren't for eating, they're to plant," Scowcroft explains. "Seeds of Hope" is a post-war program--started before fighting ceased--to restore Rwanda's agriculture and preserve as much of its genetic diversity as possible. "That's never been done. At least, not on this scale."

Most Rwandans are subsistence farmers who will return to tiny, hillside farms that they planted, then abandoned in April, Scowcroft explains. Surviving Rwandans will glean what meager crops are left in the weed-choked fields. They'll eat the seeds they would save, in normal times, to plant the next crop.

"Farmers eating their seeds...that means more than human starvation, it's also the genetic death knell for hundreds of rugged, traditional crop varieties that feed Rwanda," Scowcroft says.

Nature and farmers have selected, over centuries, varieties of crops like beans, sorghum, maize, and potato with the genetic potential to resist local pests and grow in specific ecological niches. If those varieties disappear, so will their potential to help future generations.

The six crops comprise 73% of the total food consumed in Rwanda before the war, and contribute 80% of both calories and protein to the Rwandan diet.

The seeds are mostly of Rwandan varieties that had been preserved in Center and national gene banks, says Dr. Julia Kornegay, leader of CIAT's Bean Program. CIAT had stationed bean scientists in Rwanda, with support from the Swiss Technical Cooperation, from 1983 until their evacuation last April.

The seeds are being multiplied jointly with national agricultural programs in Burundi, Kenya, Tanzania, Zaire, Ethiopia, and even in Colombia. CIAT, which coordinates Seeds of Hope, began to multiply bean seeds for Rwanda in May-- forerunner to the seven-Center initiative. Aid agencies and non-government relief groups will distribute packets of seeds along with food aid. "Otherwise, farmers would eat the seeds, not plant them," Kornegay says.

Sustainable food production in Rwanda depends on biodiversity, Kornegay points out. Rwandan farmers always mix the beans that they plant so a single pest or disease can't wipe out an entire crop. For example, CIAT scientists have identified more than 2,000 different mixtures of some 500 bean varieties in Rwandan fields.

Rwanda was Africa's most densely populated country. As many as 700 people per square kilometer were packed onto her cultivated land before the war.

At least US$1 million is needed to finance the seed rescue program through 1995, Scowcroft says. The U.S. Agency for International Development, through its office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, had pledged an initial $200,000 to catalyze the project. Other governments and agencies are being approached. The International Centers will provide in-kind resources of $800,000.

Crops, and Centers with primary responsibility for their multiplication, are: for beans: CIAT, whose research center is in Colombia; sorghum: ICRISAT, the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, based in India; potato and sweet potato: CIP, the International Potato Center, in Peru; maize: CIMMYT, the International Center for Maize and Wheat Improvement, Mexico; cassava: IITA, the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, Nigeria; and plant genetic resources in general: IPGRI, the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute, based in Rome. ILCA, the Ethiopia-based International Livestock Centre for Africa, has volunteered to multiply seeds for the project.

(CIAT news release)