Farmers are not defined in the International Treaty. However, in several provisions, the Treaty emphasizes farmers who conserve and develop plant genetic resources for food and agriculture, particularly so in the provisions on Farmers' Rights.
In some countries most farmers are members of farmers' organizations, in other countries few farmers have such memberships. However, even in countries with high membership levels it may be difficult to identify legitimate representatives of farmers, because not all organizations have participatory and democratic methods of electing representatives.
Ideally farmers should do so themselves. In countries with high membership levels and good representation, it is possible to invite the relevant organizations to identify representatives themselves. Perhaps they will choose some of their leaders and some farmer members to ensure that the views from the ground are well covered.
Even when farmers have been identified on a legitimate basis, it is not necessarily sufficient to ensure farmers' active participation in the implementation process.
A broad based consultative process should ensure participation from all central stakeholder groups, from all regions of the country, from different ethnic groups (if relevant), from men and women.
In most countries of the world institutions and people involved in Farmers' Rights are few and resources scarce. Thus, joining forces and pooling resources for the realization of Farmers' Rights are vital. This means that all stakeholders are invited to join forces and pool resources, including stakeholders that have traditionally not been thought of as allies in terms of Farmers' Rights.
The first use of Farmers' Rights as a political concept dates back to the early 1980s, when Pat Roy Mooney and Cary Fowler of the then Rural Advancement Foundation International (now ETC-Group) coined the term to highlight the valuable but unrewarded contributions of farmers to plant genetic resources for food and agriculture.
To understand the provisions on Farmers' Rights in the International Treaty, it is useful to review the history of negotiations regarding these rights. Since Farmers' Rights were first taken up in international negotiations in 1986, important clarifications have been made.