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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Displaying 31 - 35 of 49Land and Seed Laws under Attack. Who is pushing changes in Africa?
The lobby to industrialise food production in Africa is changing seed and land laws across the continent to serve agribusiness corporations. The end goal is to turn what has long been held as a commons into a marketable commodity that the private sector can control and extract profit from at the expense of smallholder farmers and communities. This survey aims to provide an overview of just who is pushing for which specific changes in these areas – looking not at the plans and projects, but at the actual texts that will define the new rules.
O ataque ás leis fundiárias e da sementes
“Os 50 milhões de pessoas que a Nova Aliança do G8 para a Segurança Alimentar e Nutricional afirma estar a retirar da pobreza só poderão escapar à pobreza e à fome se abdicarem dos seus direitos e práticas tradicionais e passarem a comprar todos os anos as sementes que lhes permitem a subsistência às empresas que operam sob a égide do G8.”
Hungry for land: small farmers feed the world with less than a quarter of all farmland
Includes the figures and what they tell us: the vast majority of farms in the world today are small and getter smaller; small farms are being squeezed onto less than a quarter of global agricultural land; we’re fast losing farms and farmers in many places, while big farms are getting bigger; despite their scarce and dwindling resources, small farmers continue to be the world’s major food producers; small farms not only produce most of the food, they are also the most productive; most small farmers are women, but their contributions are ignored and marginalised.
Media release: Hungry for land
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Media release
28 May 2014
GRAIN | La Vía Campesina
For immediate release