Seeding future sustainability

Overview

Results

The team

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So what's the problem?

For millions of smallholder farmers all over the world, their choice of which seed to plant at the start of the growing season can be crucial. High quality, seeds of pest-resistant varieties produce higher yields, but not all farmers are able to access varieties that are best suited to their environment.

Traditionally in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, 80-90% of smallholder farmers recycle seeds from their previous harvest to sow their new crop. The seeds are also traded through friends and extended family networks. These seeds are readily available and affordable but may not produce predictable results due to poor selection and storage practises.

These traditional seed stocks also face numerous threats ranging from natural disasters and civil unrest, climate change and invasions of exotic pests. Indigenous knowledge relating to seed selection and storage is being undermined by agro-chemical companies wishing to profit from selling hybrid seeds, and stringent laws which contravene farmers’ rights to exchange and sell seed. The loss of knowledgeable family members through HIV/AIDS before crucial information can be passed on to the next generation is also a serious problem.

New varieties are bred to withstand changing environmental conditions and exotic pests, as well as to suit urban market tastes. However, even where demand for these new varieties is high, lack of access and high prices often prevents their take up.

What is this project doing?

The Good Seed Initiative focesed on improving the livelihoods of food-insecure farming households through the production, selection and marketing of high-quality, farmer-saved seed. Funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, CABI implemented this programme to promote farmers’ rights as both the protectors and beneficiaries of agricultural seed biodiversity. In Bangladesh, a series of videos have been co-produced by CABI and shown to over 100,000 female farmers. In these videos local women explain and demonstrate how to produce, select and store high quality rice seed (the sorting and storing of seeds is traditionally done by women in developing countries). Women who watched the video were inspired to adopt the practises that were being recommended.

In countries that have farmer-friendly seed laws, such as Bangladesh and Tanzania, CABI also helped farmers to profit from selling their seed. In wheat growing areas of Bangladesh food-insecure farmers received training to enable them to sell climate-change tolerant varieties of wheat seed, whilst in Tanzania sorghum farmers multiplyed the seed of brewing varieties so that they could market the grain to local brewing companies.

Results so far

In Bangladesh knowledge gained through the project enabled farmers to judge the quality and value of purchased seed, empowered them to demand good quality seed from the market and enabled them to gain income through becoming suppliers of quality seed in their own right. Farmers participated, with their families, in the training and production, selection and storage of seed.

CABI researchers, in Bangladesh, found that women who had watched the training video twice or more had been able to use 15% less seed per acre, whilst experiencing increased yields at no extra cost. This meant that poor families who had previously harvested less than half their annual grain requirement were able to increase their food security by four weeks per year. Meanwhile, hundreds of food-insecure wheat seed producers managed to escape extreme poverty by selling improved wheat seed, produced from tiny plots measuring eight square metres, to neighbouring farmers.

Farming families who used their profits to lease or buy more land in the following season were able to increase their seed sales and were instantly transformed from food-insecure to food-surplus households.

More women-to-women videos were produced; aimed at improving the production, selection, storage and selling of wheat and vegetable seeds, and targetted the most vulnerable rural communities that inhabit the shifting islands of the Brahmaputra River.

Getting the right information to farmers is crucial. In Uganda, where many rural communities have little or no access to electricity, good seed-saving techniques were shared over the radio or through training courses. Farmers learnt about the benefits of producing seeds of a new variety called NERICA (New Rice for Africa). This hybrid combines the advantages of high yielding Asian rice and the drought-tolerance and pest resistance of African varieties. The emphasis being on increasing farmers’ profit from seed production by reducing labour and external input cost. A further aim was to strengthen farmer groups to ensure they obtain a fair price for their seed. Marginal farmers in Tanzania and war-weary farmers in northern Uganda are also striving to make money from seed production and marketing.

This programme will help reduce poverty and improve food security of some of the poorest farming families in the world.

Project reports

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Project flyer - Africa

Project Executive