Abstract
Social seed systems are important for the maintenance of crop genetic diversity on farm. This is governed by local and informal system in the community through a farmers’ network. This paper analyses these local seed systems through application of social network analysis tools and mappings and examines the network member and its stability over space and time in a small rice farming community in Nepal. NetDraw software is used for data analysis and network mapping. We found that the dynamic network structure had key role in provisioning of traditional varieties and maintaining of crop genetic diversity on farm. We identify and ascertain the key network members, constituted either as nodal or bridging (connector) farmers, occupying central position in the network who promote seed flow of local crop diversity, thus strengthening crop genetic resource diversity on farm.
Highlights
A network in a social system refers to the interpersonal relationship of a set of persons connected together through flow of information, goods, or implementation of joint activities or other social bonds of one kind or another
It has been widely reported that seed requirements in most farming communities are fulfilled through informal seed supply systems [6] and on-farm management of crop genetic resources
Hoang et al [10] reported from work in Vietnam that social networks are the most valuable asset of the resource-poor farmers which can be used to their advantage as extension and development workers can successfully communicate with the target community
Summary
A network in a social system refers to the interpersonal relationship of a set of persons connected together through flow of information, goods, or implementation of joint activities or other social bonds of one kind or another. This study analyses the farmers’ seed system using social network analysis tools and maps to depict both the mathematical and visual relationship among the members of such networks in the community that maintains the genetic diversity using the straightforward application of known measure centrality theory. This paper, aims to investigate whether the social seed networks and key members are stable over the years and examines the role of the social seed networks and the farmers in provision of local level seed supply across the members of all categories in the community Dynamics of these networks over time in the community is studied to assess the value of such networks to on-farm conservation and other developmental interventions
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