Seed Banking, Egg Trays, and Vegetable Farming: A Regenerative Agriculture Session with the Kuliglig Bangsamoro Women’s Agriculture Cooperative

AGREA Foundation and WFP convened the Kuliglig Bangsamoro Women’s Agriculture Cooperative for a learning session on seed saving, egg-tray propagation, nutrition, and climate-resilient farming in BARMM.

What the women already knew, and what the session added

The women of the Kuliglig Bangsamoro Women’s Agriculture Cooperative (KBWAC) did not arrive at the learning session empty-handed.

They came with farming practices they already use in their community, questions they had been carrying, and a willingness to connect what was being discussed to work they do every season. According to AGREA’s account, their engagement was visible throughout: they asked questions, shared experiences, and tested the lessons against what they already know.

AGREA Foundation conducted the Regenerative Agriculture Learning Session in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, part of its continuing collaboration with the World Food Programme under a project funded by the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation. The session covered seed saving and seed banking, seedling propagation using egg trays, the connection between farming and family nutrition, climate risks and adaptation strategies, and vegetable farming fundamentals.

The timing is not incidental. The United Nations has declared 2026 the International Year of the Woman Farmer, with FAO framing the year around the theme “Empowered women, transforming agrifood systems.” The declaration aims to raise awareness of the role of women in agrifood systems and the challenges they face, including land tenure and access to resources. A session with a women’s cooperative on seed sovereignty and soil health is a local expression of that global focus—and a reminder that the year’s ambitions are realized, or not, at the level of a jar of seed and a tray of seedlings.

Seed banking: from habit to system

The session began with hands-on seed selection and saving. Participants learned to identify good-quality seed and store it properly, with the aim of building their own supply of planting materials, reducing dependence on purchased seed, and preparing for seasons when purchased seed is unavailable or unaffordable.

The gendered dimension of this work is documented. A 2024 submission to the UN Human Rights Council noted that rural and Indigenous women in the Philippines are “seed keepers, seed savers and knowledge holders,” yet their labour and expertise are often invisible in policy and decision-making. Research from the Philippine Council for Agriculture, Aquatic and Natural Resources Research and Development has advanced farmer seed-saving techniques from selection to storage, recognising that women farmers in the Philippines play a central role in climate-smart seed systems.

The practical value is direct. A farmer who saves open-pollinated seed from her healthiest plants reduces her dependence on purchased inputs and gains some control over the timing of her season. She can replant after a failed sowing without waiting for a supplier. She can share seed with a neighbour and receive it back after harvest—a practice documented among Filipino farmer groups, where a bamboo tube of seed borrowed is returned at a larger volume after the season.

Storage is where good intentions often fail. Seed must be properly dried and cooled before storage, kept in airtight containers, and labelled with variety name and harvest date. Minimising exposure to air and sunlight maintains viability. These are not advanced techniques. They are the difference between a jar of seed that germinates and a jar of seed that does not.

Egg trays: a second life for a household object

The second hands-on component introduced egg trays as a propagation tool.

The method is simple and well documented. Cardboard egg cartons are pierced for drainage, filled with potting medium, and used to germinate small-seeded vegetables. When seedlings are ready to transplant, the individual cells can be cut apart and planted directly, because the cardboard breaks down in the soil without disturbing the roots.

The significance is not the egg tray itself. It is the principle: a nursery does not require purchased equipment. It requires a container with drainage, a growing medium, water, light, and attention. A household that already has egg cartons has the first of those.

For women managing small plots alongside care responsibilities, this matters. A nursery that fits on a windowsill or under a shade tree can be managed in short intervals between other tasks. It does not require a dedicated structure or an uninterrupted block of time. It scales to the space and labour available.

The broader value is in the seedlings themselves. A farmer who can raise her own planting material is not dependent on a supplier for the timing of her season. She can stagger production, replace a failed sowing, and experiment with a new crop without committing to a full field.

Nutrition: connecting the farm to the plate

The third component connected what the women grow with what their families eat. Participants discussed balanced and diverse diets, affordable and locally available nutritious foods, household food security, and proper nutrition during pregnancy, breastfeeding, and early childhood.

This is where the term “nutrition-sensitive” earns its meaning. Nutrition-sensitive agriculture is not simply the production of nutritious food. It is the deliberate design of agricultural activity so that it improves nutrition outcomes—by diversifying what is grown, by aligning production with household dietary needs, and by ensuring that food reaches the people in the household who need it most.

The need is documented. WFP has conducted social and behaviour change communication research in Maguindanao, BARMM, to explore the socio-cultural factors contributing to poor dietary practices among women and children, and to identify the enablers and motivators that can improve those practices. The research framing acknowledges that dietary decisions are shaped by culture, cost, and custom—not only by knowledge.

A session on dietary diversity using affordable local foods is therefore not a lecture on nutrition science. It is a conversation about what is already available and how it might be combined differently. A household that grows three vegetables and eats one has a diversification opportunity that costs nothing but a change in habit.

The inclusion of pregnancy, breastfeeding, and early childhood nutrition is particularly significant. The first 1,000 days—from conception through a child’s second birthday—are the period in which nutrition has the greatest long-term effect on health and development. A women’s cooperative that understands this is better positioned to support its members through that window.

Climate risk, soil health, and the case for diversity

The fourth and fifth components examined agriculture as the backbone of the country, agricultural technologies, climate risks, and adaptation through crop selection, land preparation, soil management, and farm planning—followed by vegetable farming basics including crop diversification, soil health, biodiversity, planting schedules, and identifying quality vegetables for the market.

The climate context in BARMM is not hypothetical. In May 2026, the Bangsamoro Government placed the entire region under a state of calamity citing the combined impact of El Niño and a global oil crisis. Around 800 rice and corn farmers in Maguindanao del Sur and Maguindanao del Norte had been affected, and roughly 851 hectares of farmland across 36 municipalities and 167 barangays were damaged—537 hectares of rice and 314 hectares of corn—with losses of approximately 1,500 metric tons. El Niño conditions were projected to continue into early 2027.

In that context, crop selection and soil management are not abstract principles. A farm that depends on a single water-intensive crop is a farm exposed to a single failure mode. A farm with diverse crops, healthy soil that holds moisture, and organic matter that buffers temperature extremes has more ways to absorb a bad season.

The session’s emphasis on biodiversity and living soils reflects that logic. Diversity in the field is a risk-management strategy as much as an ecological one. A garden with several crops, planted on a schedule that staggers harvests, is a household with more than one way to eat.

The partnership behind the session

The learning session is part of the continuing collaboration between AGREA Foundation and the World Food Programme, under a project funded by AECID.

The project—Empowering Indigenous Women through Nutrition-sensitive Interventions and Agriculture Livelihoods Support towards Improved Food and Nutrition Security and Climate Resilience—is a PHP 45 million effort (approximately USD 780,000) intended to reach 28,000 people from Indigenous and rural communities across BARMM. Its components include training rural and Indigenous women in climate-resilient agriculture and leadership, strengthening women’s cooperatives through market linkage, and incorporating social and behaviour change for nutrition.

The project’s design responds to a documented gap. A 2024 WFP study found that barriers such as climate-related risks hinder rural and Indigenous women from accessing resources and decision-making processes, resulting in lost livelihood opportunities and poverty. The project’s training components are designed to address that gap directly—not by treating women as beneficiaries of assistance, but by strengthening the capacities they already exercise.

The session’s five components map directly onto the project’s design. Seed saving and nursery propagation support production. Nutrition education supports the nutrition objectives. Climate-resilient farming supports adaptation. And the fact that the session was held with a women’s cooperative—not individual farmers—reflects the project’s emphasis on collective structures as the unit of change.

What the session does and does not establish

A learning session is an input. It is not evidence that participants have adopted seed banking as a routine practice, that they will raise seedlings in egg trays rather than buying them, that household diets will improve, or that farms will be more resilient to the next dry spell.

Those outcomes depend on follow-through: whether the practices fit the labour and land available, whether stored seed actually germinates, whether egg trays are available in sufficient quantity, whether nutrition messages are compatible with what households can afford, and whether the cooperative provides reinforcement in the months after the session.

The honest measure of the training is not the number of participants or the enthusiasm in the room. It is what appears in the following season: jars of labelled seed, trays of seedlings, a garden with more than one crop in it, and a plate with more colour on it.

What comes next

For the participants, the immediate next steps are small and concrete: select and store seed from the best plants at the next harvest; try one tray of seedlings; add one vegetable to the household menu that is already available locally; and test one soil-building practice on a small plot before applying it widely.

For the cooperative, the next step is to decide whether these practices become shared activities—a community seed bank, a collective nursery, a group purchase of storage containers—rather than individual habits.

For AGREA Foundation and WFP, the next step is to continue the collaboration and to track whether the session contributes to changes in practice. That tracking should be honest about what changes and what does not.

A note of appreciation

To the women of the Kuliglig Bangsamoro Women’s Agriculture Cooperative who participated: the practices discussed are not new inventions, and many of you already knew them. What the session offered was a structure for doing them deliberately—and a room in which to compare notes with other women doing the same work.

To learn more about AGREA Foundation’s work with women farmers in BARMM and its partnership with the World Food Programme, explore our official channels. Organisations interested in supporting regenerative agriculture and nutrition programming can reach out through our contact page.