When working with grower customers, seed businesses are constantly looking for their feedback. Is the product working for them? What are they seeing in the field? And most importantly: what do they think of our business, and how can we keep their business?
That’s a relationship the International Seed Federation’s World Seed Congress hopes to foster.
“When I look at the relationship between farmers and seed companies, there’s a mutual relationship,” says Elizabeth Nsimadala, president of the East African Farmers Organization and Pan-African Farmers Organization. “We need to develop a strong partnership between the two so that they’re speaking to each other.”
For Simon Groot, founder of East-West Seed and 2019 World Food Prize Laureate, being in the seed industry is more than delivering quality seed — it’s a matter of the value addition seeds can bring to different levels of the value chain. Getting to know the farmers — the customers — using the seed is the only insight to improve seeds for the future.
“It’s the farmer himself who sees yield improvements and those problems with disease,” Groot says. “It’s a long chain of events that need to be considered when looking at seed improvement.”
When it comes to the current relationship of seed companies and growers globally, the relationship isn’t strained, but Nsimadala believes there’s more to do.
“We can do more,” she says. “Seed companies need to listen more to farmers and respond to farmer requests.”
As an example, Nsimadala says there’s quite a lot of innovation happening in the seed industry globally, but asks, how much information reaches the farmers?
“Somehow, seed companies need to break the silos so that farmers are part of the information chain,” she says. “We need to have an ecosystem where farmers are able to move whatever is being innovated to the ground, because we are the solution to whatever you’re producing.”
Being part of the process is necessary to bettering the relationship, Groot says.
“You have to be involved in this process of teaching the farmer to become better farmers,” he says. “There are many crops in Africa where farmers aren’t making use of their potential of maximizing the results of the crop.”
One solution to this is farmer extension work, Groot says.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN, farmer extension is a process of working with rural people to improve their livelihoods — in agriculture, this involves helping farmers to improve the productivity of their agriculture while developing their abilities to direct their own future development.
“We have made some good efforts in setting up these farm extension systems to show the farmer how to be a better farmer and to make optimal use of the better seeds,” Groot says.
In addition, formalizing partnerships between farmers and seed companies could be beneficial to see what both sectors can do together, Nsimadala says. Some key areas she believes could be improved are training, advocacy and policy. But the biggest key? Being transparent about information.
“I want to re-emphasize the importance of information,” Nsimadala says. “The information flow is not always clear and the information that is available does not reach the ground. How do we make sure we all have the right kind of information across the chain?”
To the seed sector, Groot’s advice is becoming more active.
“Seed is not just a low cost, free of charge commodity — we have to show growers that seeds are far more. It’s the real source of their income growth,” Groot says. “That’s the message we must bring to the farmers, and that will take time, training and extension, because they have to see it with their own eyes.”
Want to read more from ISF? Check out:
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Implement a Systems Approach to Move Seed
ISF Tackles Communication Through a New Structure
Can’t be at the World Seed Congress? Here’s How to Watch
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