ABSTRACT
In Columbia, farmers helped to maintain traditional seeds through practices of local and direct channels of reproduction and exchange, carried out within an ancient social and cultural network organised around the ‘custodian farmers of seed’. They are acknowledged as experts of breeding and invaluable sources of information on local varieties. These practices have been recently consolidated through the putting into place of ‘seed houses’, i.e. more or less structured meeting points which, while facilitating the flow of knowledge, empower participative breeding and enable seed storing and exchange.
