About us

GRAIN is an international non-governmental organisation (NGO) which promotes the sustainable management and use of agricultural biodiversity based on people's control over genetic resources and local knowledge.

GRAIN was established at the beginning of the 1990s to launch a decade of popular action against one of the most pervasive threats to world food security: genetic erosion. The loss of biological diversity, undermines the very sense of "sustainable development" as it destroys options for the future and robs people of a key resource base for survival. Genetic erosion means more than just the loss of genetic diversity. In essence it is an erosion of options for development. Central to our approach is the conviction that the conservation and use of genetic resources is too important to leave to scientists, governments and industry alone. Farmers and community organisations have nurtured genetic diversity for millennia, and continue to do so. Any effort in this field should take their experience as a starting point.

Now entering its 16th year of work, GRAIN has witnessed and contributed to an enormous and ever-growing momentum of international concern, debate and action to redress the imbalances in the management and control of biodiversity. What started as a small and Euro-centred outfit in the early 1990s, has now grown into a dynamic and mature organisation with thirteen staff in nine countries and spread across 5 continents, carrying out a broad and challenging programme on local and global management of genetic diversity and the impacts of biotechnology on world agriculture, particularly in developing countries.

This evolution would not have been possible without permanent efforts to strengthen the growing network of partner groups in every continent of the world. The foundations of our work lie in the daily networking, communications and information activities of our small organisation. It is on this basis that we are able to strengthen our capacities and those of our many partners the world over in mobilising popular concern and constructive action for the safeguarding of the world's genetic diversity.

Last modified: 09 April 2006