From left to right: Jason Allerding, Maya Muller, Germán Fernández and Ben Rivoire at the World Seed Congress in Cape Town, South Africa.
Channel World Seed dives into the impact different companies and organizations are having on the environment and lives in Africa.
As an industry, there are several pieces of a puzzle that need to be addressed and placed in proper spots. The seed sector must ensure everyone is fed in our global society in a sustainable way to protect our environment for the future. This needs to be done in a harmonious manner while finding a way to produce more food on less land.
Does this sound like the hardest puzzle to put together? It can be as is it’s proving to be quite the challenge to find the proper solution for.
On June 7, the International Seed Federation’s (ISF) World Seed Congress tackled the questions of environment and social responsibility in Africa by asking some hard questions: how is the seed sector impacting and giving back to smallholder farmers both in terms of the environment and society?
“It’s all about serving the smallholder farmers. We believe that market development and people development cannot exist without the other,” said Maya Muller, public affairs and communication specialist with East-West Seeds, during the Channel World Seed Coverage of the conference in Cape Town, South Africa.
While that’s a difficult task to manage, Muller says there’s a slew of things to consider while working on environmental and societal development: transferring technical skills, training farmers to farm sustainability, raising awareness on biodiversity, working and uplifting women farmers and teaching the next generation of young farmers in Africa.
“In terms of future vision, we really want to continue to leverage our impact and focus on African farmers and the next generation,” Muller said.
“Transformation of agriculture is a two-way street,” said Jason Allerding, global head of sustainability, health, safety and risk management of Syngenta Seeds during the panel. “You can’t just hand out information or great technologies — they have to be understood, appreciated and leveraged fully by those who receive them. That’s where capacity building is so important.”
Within that, educating communities and customers about the value of agriculture and the quality of seed, as well as making those quality seeds and education accessible, is critical, he added.
Even within Allerding’s role within ISF, as part of the ESR group, it’s a similar mission. A lot of it is educating about sustainability overall.
“Fundamentally, capacity building for our industry is critical to unlock this value in the mission we have,” he said.
Case in point, it can be difficult to develop a practical example for capacity building, Syngenta’s seed production in South Africa has partnered with Stellenbosch University to establish a regenerative ag trial. The program has established three different trials to implement different regenerative ag practices, such as no-till and continuous soil cover, while also doing them in tandem with local South African growers.
“Our growers are able to come and learn with us and from us by partnering with us,” he added. “Hand in hand is actually a chance for us to build capacity in real time.”
East-West Seeds focuses on a similar approach. The goal is to focus on training farmers and with trainers localized on the ground so the growers can bring back that knowledge to their villages.
Muller says Asia has had a lot of capacity building examples, like in Myanmar, where women and youth didn’t have access to the market at all. East-West Seed came in to help them in various ways, and a survey showed their incomes increased considerably along with their yields.
“But this is only the beginning, and we hope to continue to put on major knowledge transfer programs across [Africa], but we need partnerships for that,” Muller said.
Universities as well are participating in capacity building by educating students on the ground in agribusiness management.
“We have a lot of students from Africa,” said Germán Fernández, CEO and president of the International School of Agri Management (ISAM). “What they like about our programs is that we’re not focused on the technical side — we are only focused on the agribusiness management and the export market.”
To achieve that, the ISAM program has students visit more than 40 companies that represent the whole supply chain to gain a better understanding of how the value chain operates. In addition, they also participate in internships with seed companies across the globe, as well as a consulting project focused on sustainability within supply chains.
“That’s something they can learn and take back to their countries,” Fernández said. “We don’t teach them how to grow, because there are very good organizations that are doing that — it’s how to run the farm in a more efficient way. You need to know how to manage people, you need to have some knowledge of finance, you need to have a better understanding of technology to be more efficient.”
With all these companies and organizations focusing on giving back, there’s still room for improvement.
Muller sees three points that organizations can continue to help with: taking sustainability one step further, partnering to become more efficient and remembering to think about the farmer.
“We can take a leading stance, but we have to come together to make this happen,” she said.
Want to listen to the rest of the coverage? Make sure to watch the full panel on Channel World Seed’s Youtube page:https://youtu.be/LfIU5Jfiqcg
