The ability of farmers to choose appropriate seeds for changing climate conditions are further constrained by the implementation of international Intellectual Property Rights regimes, which restrict farmers’ freedom to engage in seed saving, sharing, and participatory breeding activities to generate locally adapted crop varieties. The global consolidation of the seed grain industry ( Ceccarelli, 2012 Howard, 2021) reduced genetic variation by limiting the free flow of genes between populations through cross-pollination or mixing of seeds that have allowed landraces to evolve in response to climatic change for millennia ( Mercer et al., 2012). What followed was the consolidation of sources of seed, technology, fertilizers, and pesticides and the subsequent dominance of a small number of commodity grain crops with a narrowing genetic base ( Pingali and Traxler, 2002 Khoury et al., 2014). The widespread adoption of modern, high-yielding seed varieties was promoted and administered by transnational and national research institutes with the assistance of state agricultural development policies and programs, as well as funding from agroindustry ( Sumberg et al., 2012 Patel, 2013). We find that the Magsasaka at Siyentipiko para sa Pag-Unlad ng Agrikultura’s (Farmer-Scientist Partnership for Development) polycentric governance approach directly addresses the root causes of vulnerability, particularly in working to reclaim farmer rights and control over resources, connecting local and global struggles, and revitalizing agrobiodiversity and place-based knowledge. We explore the extent to which the network’s decentralized and farmer-led organizational structure programming and services promotion of diversified, organic, and agroecological farming systems and political organizing and advocacy create broadly accessible and diverse pathways for resource-poor smallholders to build climate resilience. To overcome barriers to climate resilience in the Philippines, a grassroots farmer-led organization comprised of resource-poor smallholders, scientists, and nongovernmental organizations have organized a polycentric network over the past 30 years to implement food sovereignty initiatives. Enhancing climate resilience in agrarian communities requires improving the underlying socioecological conditions for farmers to engage in adaptation and mitigation strategies, alongside collaborative and redistributive community development to reduce vulnerabilities.
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