Conservação de base comunitária de sementes crioulas : a experiência da Casa de Sementes de Barra do Tamboril, Januária/MG

The main objective of this work is to understand the experience of the “Casa de Sementes da Gente” (Our Seeds House, freely translated, also called “community seed bank”, in English), which belongs to the Barra do Tamboril community in the county of Januária, Minas Gerais state, Brazil. It analyzes the strategy adopted regionally related to the conservation of agrobiodiversity in the semiarid northern region of the state. Two other strategies were combine up in order to fully implement this community seed bank: the trials and seed fields, where the more adapted native seeds are tested, replicated and selected in relation to the soil conditions and local climate. Also, some political, educational and environmental actions were taken in order to face the large companies' domain in the so called “improved” (conventional) seeds distribution and the resulting loss of local varieties and ancient knowledge associated with them. From a methodological point of view, this work is a case study with an ethnographic approach. The field research revealed the occurrence of a seed shortage process by the community seed bank, which fostered analysis based on peasant theories. The shortage was then perceived as multifactorial process, encompassing: [1] droughts in the region, [2] community social organization aspects, [3] the peasant autonomy related to the reduction of dependency of the community to the conventional seed and [4] features contingencies to project context. The small storehouses, family structures seed storage, during the research also came up as an important conservation strategy. The study concludes that a community-based conservation strategy should consist of different structures and processes under family and collective supervision, complementing one another: the seed fields (targeting seed production), the community seed bank itself (as a collective storage facility aiming at supplying crisis events) and the small storehouses (as the family structures of conservation).