But eventually he lost access to the land, so he collected samples of everything. He put the seeds in packets and the packets into bags-everything numbered and with dates of their propagation. And that is what we found during our survey. He is very old now. We have mobilised local scientists to assess his material so that we can put names to these varieties, and we are trying to arrange a network of farmers to plant out the accessions again.
Scientists usually think of farmers as collecting seeds in a clumsy way.
In reality there do exist farmers like this one, who are much more meticulous and scientific in their approach. Priority is a word used increasingly at international scientific meetings. But in my view the prioritisation should not be done by scientists. They have certain objectives which are not always the same as those of rural farmers. Often we think about the potential commercial application, while neglecting certain crops that play a vital role in subsistence farming, which science could help improve.