First cracks in the glasshouse

Forty-four people from all over the world met in Thailand in July 2012 for a three-and-a-half day conference as part of the Agrobiodiversity@knowledged program (see annex 1 for a list of participants). The meeting was facilitated by the Embassy of the Earth and the Groene Aap using the search conference methodology. The conference builds on the meeting in Thika, Kenya, in October 2011, with a number of organizations active in the fi eld of agricultural biodiversity1. At the meeting in Thika, the Agricultural Biodiversity Community (ABC) was formed. This second meeting was organized to help consolidate this community and design follow-up plans and activities.

According to mr. M.P. Vasimalai, one of the participants from DHAN Foundation in India, “the meeting in Thika was like the germination of a seed. This second meeting brought a kind of binding that will only strengthen in the future.” The venue and the set-up of the meeting were special: the green, airy grounds of a Buddhist ashram surrounded by water and only accessible by a rope raft, but it was the approach which impressed participants most. Quoting the same participant, “the preparatory committee and the facilitator saw to it that the content came from the community, and therefore the ownership lies with the community”. The head, but also the heart and the hands, had to participate fully through the various exercises and workshops from making organic fertilizers to meditation exercises to cooking and singing and dancing in between the hard intellectual work.