GRAIN is a small international non-profit organisation that works to support small farmers and social movements in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems. Our support takes the form of independent research and analysis, networking at local, regional and international levels, and fostering new forms of cooperation and alliance-building. Most of our work is oriented towards, and carried out in, Africa, Asia and Latin America.
GRAIN’s work goes back to the early 1980s, when a number of activists around the world started drawing attention to the dramatic loss of genetic diversity on our farms — the very cornerstone of the world’s food supply.
We began doing research, advocacy and lobbying work under the auspices of a coalition of mostly European development organisations. That work soon expanded into a larger programme and network that needed its own footing. In 1990, Genetic Resources Action International, or GRAIN for short, was legally established as an independent non-profit foundation with its headquarters in Barcelona, Spain.
By the mid-1990s, GRAIN reached an important turning point. We realised that we needed to connect more with the real alternatives that were being developed on the ground, in the South. Around the world, and at local level, many groups had begun rescuing local seeds and traditional knowledge and building and defending sustainable biodiversity-based food systems under the control of local communities, while turning their backs on the laboratory developed ‘solutions’ that had only got farmers into deeper trouble. In a radical organisational shift, GRAIN embarked on a decentralisation process that brought us into closer contact with realities on the ground in the South, and into direct collaboration with partners working at that level. At the same time, we brought a number of those partners into our governing body and started regionalising our staff pool.
By the turn of the century, GRAIN had transformed itself from a mostly Europe-based information and lobbying group into a dynamic and truly international collective — functioning as a coherent organisation — that was linking and connecting with local realities in the South as well as developments at the global level. In that process, GRAIN’s agenda shifted away from lobbying and advocacy much more towards directly supporting and collaborating with social movements, while retaining our key strength in independent research and analysis.
GRAIN is an organisation that represents no one but itself. However, it is through collaboration and partnerships that we link in with local and national realities and play a meaningful role in our information, research, advocacy and networking activities, be it in the regions or at international level. In fact, we work with many groups in different parts of the world to produce and disseminate collaborative publications and analyses, and engage in other collaborative projects.
Between April and June 2012, GRAIN underwent its latest external evaluation. This evaluation focused on GRAIN’s work on land grabbing, over the period 2008-2011. The executive summary and recommendations are available here. (A copy of the full report can be made available on request.)
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Resources
Displaying 46 - 49 of 49Pastoral life in Iran
This document reports on a meeting of a group of pastoralists from throughout Iran. Over recent decades Iran’s pastoralists have been experiencing changes that have totally altered the social, political and economic landscapes through which they must navigate. This meeting intended to discover the impact of these changes on local breeds.The dialogue was facilitated by Taghi Farvar and Maryam Rahmanian of Iran’s Centre for Sustainable Development (CENESTA)
Overseas Territories Justice, Security & Governance
General
This programme aims to ensure that the Overseas Territories (OTs) are protected from and resilient to a range of security threats including natural and man-made disasters, economic insecurity, crime and public health threats. It also aims to ensure that OTs are governed by effective and transparent government agencies and institutions that comply with key identified international conventions. This is an ODA and non-ODA integrated programme. The spend reported against this programme is the ODA element alone.
Food crisis and the global land grab (Burma)
Several articles on land grabbing in Burma/Myanmar
Farmlandgrab.org
This website contains mainly news reports about the global rush to buy up or lease farmlands abroad as a strategy to secure basic food supplies or simply for profit. Its purpose is to serve as a resource for those monitoring or researching the issue, particularly social activists, non-government organisations and journalists.