Creating Policies for Scaling Smallholder Access to Quality Seed

Event Date: Jun 24, 2015
Time: 09:30 AM to 11:00 AM (GMT -5)
Location:
Oceanic Room, Ronald Reagan Building
1300 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington, District of Columbia, 20004, United States
Event Links: Webinar Recording
Information
The production of quality seed requires high technical expertise and specific equipment and infrastructure. In many developing countries, this is undertaken by the public sector’s breeding institutions. Unfortunately, these institutions often face obstacles in making adequate amounts of quality seed available to farmers in a timely manner. A landmark new study conducted by Monitor Deloitte and funded by USAID and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation-provides a new framework that could help address seed availability issues by looking at different types of seed development and distribution systems. Pradeep Prabhala, one of the authors of this study, will join the Ag Sector Council Seminar to discuss this the policy implications of this study’s findings.
Furthermore, seed policy formulation should be designed with the wider context of national agricultural policy development in mind—ensuring synergy and consistency with environmental, trade and socioeconomic policies. Charlee Doom from the USAID East Africa Regional Mission will discuss efforts to standardize regulations and streamline the process of getting improved varieties into the hands of farmers.
This Ag Sector Council seminar, which occured on Wednesday June 24, explored:
- Early generation seed market archetypes in Sub-Saharan Africa
- Eastern Africa trade harmonization efforts to improve seed access
Creating Policies for Scaling Smallholder Access to Quality Seed

Mark Huisenga is a Senior Program Manager in USAID’s Bureau for Food Security working on Feed the Future programs. He manages the Scaling Seeds and Technology Partnership, conducts investment due diligence and modeling, and... more analyzes commercial, legal and institutional reforms for agricultural development. Mark has also researched approaches to breeder and foundation seed production by US states and was a key contributor to the “Early Generation Seeds Study,” co-funded by USAID and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. less

Pradeep is a Senior Manager with Monitor Deloitte. He leads Monitor Deloitte’s work in Agriculture and Food Security in Emerging Markets and has worked extensively across Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, South East Asia and the... more Middle East. He has led Monitor Deloitte’s work with USAID on Feed the Future Private Sector Action Plans and has supported governments across Africa and Asia on transforming agriculture sectors through inclusive private investments. He also has extensive experience in Fertilizer and Seeds systems in Africa and has led several engagements with various development actors such as USAID, the Bill &Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Bank, the Islamic Development Bank, and the Rockefeller foundation. less

Charlee Doom manages the Integrated Partnership Assistance Agreement with the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA). Her work with this portfolio focuses on seed, biotechnology, and fertilizer regional policy... more harmonization in the 19 Member States of COMESA. She also manages the agricultural component of the East Africa Trade and Investment Hub. Prior to working at USAID, Doom worked in the private sector for firms including Bunge Global Agribusiness, BASF – The Chemical Company, and Monsanto Company. less
The discussion on policies for assuring quality seed to smallholder famers in an important undertaking but needs to be done with considerable care to make certain that most of the seed doesn’t go to larger farmers and the certification process does not lead to substantial informal income (corruption) opportunities for the certification officers involved. The key concern is the financial capacity of host governments to support the program. In this regard it has to be recognized in the overall suppressed economy common (1) to virtually all host government, there is virtually no tax base, and thus no operating funds to provide sustainable support for a certification program (2). Thus, while it is relatively easy to develop the technical capacity in seed technology and provide labs for doing the seed testing, the funding to operate and maintain such labs may be severely limited. Also, the logistic needs to reach smallholders in remote areas where the off-tarmac transport cost could be triple the paved transport and this be fairly transparent to compute, could make routine distribution of certified seed uneconomical.
The need is to avoid the Nigeria situation where there is only one seed certification team in Kano State to undertake the certification of a multitude of less than 1 ha seed multiplication plots (3). This would be impossible to actually make the designated 3 site visits per season and thus most of the certification has to be on the “honor” system most likely assisted with some nice Gratuities for the team!!
Thus seed policies need to carefully consider the prospects they have to provide more than a small fraction of the seed required each year and that the vast majority (<90%) of the crop land will be planted to “market” seed. The main question is how to get quality seed into the market seed system and be available to smallholder farmers and a price they can afford, particularly if the government imposes price ceiling on major stable crops.
Perhaps the most effective means of getting quality seed into smallholder communities is what I refer to as the “genetic pump” (4). That is for NGO working directly with agro dealers in various smallholder communities to import various lines for final multiplication within the community. A process if done carefully will only need repeating once in 4 or 5 years. I don’t know any other means to get it done, given the limited financial capacity of most host governments to sustain programs, seed or otherwise, and once you exceed the government’s financial capacity the probably are your program will go into the informal income process and be a greater disservice than service to the smallholder farmers. This also means concentrating on self-pollenated crops or composite varieties and avoiding hybrids. The WASA (West Africa Seed Association) had a great opportunity to engage in this approach but got diverted into post-harvest handling of the grain.
http://smallholderagriculture.agsci.colostate.edu/financially-suppressed-economy .
http://smallholderagriculture.agsci.colostate.edu/financially-stalled-governments/ .
http://smallholderagriculture.agsci.colostate.edu/impact-of-financially-stalled-government-limited-variety-improvement-seed-certification/ .
http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.echocommunity.org/resource/collection/F6FFA3BF-02EF-4FE3-B180-F391C063E31A/The_Crop_Genetic_Pump.pdf .