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GRAIN is a small internationalnon-profit organisation that works to support smallfarmers andsocial movements in their struggles for community-controlled andbiodiversity-based food systems.
GRAIN's work goes back to the early 1980s, when a number ofactivists around the world started drawing attention to the dramatic loss of genetic diversity on our farms — the very cornerstone of the world's food supply.
GRAIN began doingresearch,advocacy andlobbying work under the auspices of a coalition of mostlyEuropean development organisations. That work soon expanded into a larger program and network that needed its own footing. In 1990, GRAIN was legally established as an independent non-profit foundation with its headquarters inBarcelona,Spain.
By the mid-1990s, GRAIN reached an important turning point. They realized that they needed to connect more with the real alternatives that were being developed on the ground, in the South. Around the world, and at local level, many groups had begun rescuing localseeds andtraditional knowledge and building and defending sustainable biodiversity-based food systems under the control of local communities, while turning their backs on the laboratory developed 'solutions' that had only got farmers into deeper trouble. In a radical organisational shift, GRAIN embarked on adecentralization process that brought them into closer contact with realities on the ground in the South, and into direct collaboration with partners working at that level. At the same time, they brought a number of those partners into their governing body and startedregionalizing their staff pool.[1]
In 2011, the organisation received theRight Livelihood Award "for their worldwide work to protect the livelihoods and rights of farming communities and to expose the massive purchases of farmland in developing countries by foreign financial interests."[2]
