CAFOD and our partner BIBA-Kenya (Biodiversity and Biosafety Association Kenya) recently conducted research into how Kenya’s 2012 seed law has impacted women farmers and seed savers
We have great news to share! After years of campaigning, a group of farmers supported by civil society organisations, including our partner BIBA Kenya, have successfully challenged Kenya’s seed laws that criminalised farmers for saving their own seeds.
The seed laws have been declared unconstitutional, setting a positive precedent to challenge similar laws in other countries as well as proposed new laws.
The ruling means that, without fear of prosecution, farmers in Kenya are now free to:
save their own seeds
share seeds within their communities
exchange and sell farmer varieties
strengthen farmer-managed seed systems.
This is a huge step towards restoring seed sovereignty, defending indigenous knowledge and protecting the heart of African agroecology, and affirms that seeds belong to farmers, communities and generations - not corporations.
Campaigning work
This ruling is the result of years of campaigning, community mobilisation, court battles, policy advocacy, farmer education and collective resistance against criminalisation of indigenous seeds.
In CAFOD's own Fix the Food System campaign, we have been working to put an end to regressive seeds laws that restrict - or even criminalise - smallholder farmers' access to their own variety of seeds. When farmers cannot freely access their own seeds, food for their communities cannot be produced.
Our report, Seed systems and gender equality, includes interviews with women farmers in Kenya in which they explain how the seeds laws affect them. This is why this landmark ruling is also a vital step in facilitating access to food.
What is the role of the World Bank?
Although the Kenya law has not been directly pushed by it, the World Bank plays a key role in promoting these regressive seeds laws because once these laws are put in place, small farmers are forced to buy expensive commercial seeds, which are good for agri-business profit but have devastating consequences for millions of small farmers, including many of the communities that CAFOD serves.
In 2023 a smallholder farmer from Bangladesh, Salina sent a letter to the World Bankurging them to protect the fundamental rights of small farmers to use, save and exchange their own varieties of seeds.
As you might remember, this campaign mobilised 70,000 Catholics (in over 760 parishes) to add their names in support of Salina‘s letter.
Although this Kenya law has not been directly pushed by the World Bank, it is part of the same “logic of profit” supported by them.
Given that over 2.3 billion people globally suffering from food insecurity, overturning more regressive laws – such as those in Kenya- is imperative to return the rights to farmers to use their seeds to grow food.
During 2026 we will continue to stand with our partners as they challenge these seeds laws. Together with them we will also advocate for agriculture methods such as agriculture which restore farmers’ rights to access to their own variety of seeds and promote ways of growing food that fits their specific climate, soil and culture needs.
Please help us to make this possible by calling on the UK government to refocus funding from its aid budget on agroecology programmes, which build climate resilient, sustainable livelihoods.
Urge the government to support sustainable ways of growing food
Urge the Minister for International Development, Baroness Chapman, to support sustainable food systems, which would make a huge difference to people's ability to feed themselves.