How few firms dominate African seeds market

That is the second half to our cowl story on seeds regulation in Africa.

Africa is now witnessing a continent-wide polarised battle between two seed administration techniques: Farmer seed techniques, which is the dominant casual and indigenous system managed by small farmers, and the commercial seed sector, the formal commerce dominated by a handful of multinational firms together with native subsidiaries.

The newly adopted seed legal guidelines cowl the formal industrial seed sector. Malawi’s new seed regulation is the newest growth on this push to formalise, or industrialise, the seed sector in Africa, which has seen some 20 international locations roll out seed insurance policies up to now 5 years.

The international locations now search to implement what is known as “seed commerce harmonisation” to facilitate simple motion of licensed seed throughout the continent.

Since 2005, African international locations have been negotiating methods to develop the seed sector. The African Seed and Biotechnology Programme — a continental seed progra-mme steered by the African Union (AU) — got here into impact in 2008.

Its focus is to determine efficient and environment friendly seed techniques, and enhanced software of biotechnology and methodologies throughout the seed sector.

Inside the continent, there have been a number of regional financial bloc-specific seed regulation regimes. The Frequent Marketplace for Japanese and Southern Africa (COMESA), an financial bloc of 21 African nations, adopted COMESA Seed Harmonization Implementation Plan (COMSHIP) in 2014; the Financial Group of West African States (ECOWAS), a regioal financial and political bloc of 15 nations, handed the ECOWAS Seed Rules in 2008; and the Southern African Improvement Group (SADC), a safety and political bloc of 16 nations, adopted the Harmonized Seed Regulatory System (HSRS) in 2013.

All these rules govern seed selection releases, seed certifications, and phytosanitary management. So, over these 15-odd years, there have been deliberate efforts to create an institutional mecha-nism to formalise this sector.

The enactment of the brand new seed regulation in Malawi comes 4 years after the launch of the nation’s seed coverage in 2018. This coverage has been pushed by HSRS, to which Malawi is a signatory.

HSRS establishes elevated requirements for seed manufacturing and commerce among the many member nations, permitting for fast cross-border motion of improved, high-quality seeds.

Underneath this, the nation has to make needed institutional adjustments in all three parts of the regional coverage: Seed selection launch, seed certification and high quality assurance, and quarantine and phytosanitary measures for seeds. With Malawi enacting the seed regulation, it turned the second SADC nation after Zambia to totally cultivate HSRS.

COMESA can also be spearheading this course of in its member international locations by COMSHIP, which is steered underneath its Alliance for Commodity Commerce in Japanese and Southern Africa (ACTESA) programme. John Mukuka, chief government director of ACTESA, stated: 

Of the 90 million smallholder farmers, solely 20 per cent have entry to high quality seed. The initiative is to make sure improved seeds to all…It doesn’t stop one from utilizing indigenous seed. COMESA system embraces each the formal system which includes inspections to just remember to produce high quality seed and the casual seed system the place individuals can use indigenous seed however for their very own use.

“With out seed, we can not develop something. And if we don’t personal it, we don’t personal meals as properly” — this appears to be the brand new battle cry in Africa as DTE reporters journey throughout three international locations to take inventory of developments. Nation after nation is adopting legal guidelines to manage the seed markets, ostensibly to assist farmers entry high-yielding varieties.

As soon as upon a time, the continent had distinct geographical tags for particular meals variety. Malawi was recognized for its potato; Zambia produced tasty and nutritious maize; West Africa had millet; and northern Africa was filled with rice, grown largely alongside the banks of the Nile.

However one thing occurred alongside the way in which that’s making these indigenous seeds and crops go extinct. At the moment only a few Africans can boast of rising, not to mention having fun with, the continent’s indigenous meals since most international locations at the moment are dominated by crops grown from seeds produced by a number of firms.

Protests in opposition to these legal guidelines have additionally change into extra vocal. Farmers’ teams throughout the continent see the legal guidelines as end result of a nexus between the governments and multinational seed firms to take over the multi-billion greenback commerce.

In addition they see it as an encroachment on their meals sovereignty and concern they’ll quickly lose rights over their seeds as soon as they begin buying them.

Take the case of Zambia, one of many first international locations to be part of the harmonisation of seed initiative underneath SADC and COMESA.

Underneath Zambia’s seed legal guidelines, a farmer has to get a top quality certification for buying and selling in indigenous seeds. The nation’s farmer seed system, like elsewhere, is a casual however established community underneath which seed change takes place.

In 2014, the nation noticed many farmers’ teams and non-profits protest in opposition to the seed harmonisation initiatives. They noticed a menace to the indigenous crops and data on which farmers nonetheless rely. They had been of the view that the seed harmonisation programme would stop indigenous seed from flourishing. And it unfolded precisely that manner.

One has to go to the Nationwide Plant Sources Centre, housed on the Zambia Agriculture Analysis Institute (ZARI), to get a way of the nation’s indigenous seed and plant variety and the absence of demand for the varieties.

The centre is a gene financial institution that collects, preserves and propagates indigenous seeds and vegetation from throughout the nation to avoid wasting them from extinction. In accordance with Sumini Sampa, assistant senior agricultural analysis officer of the centre, the gene financial institution at present has over 6,000 indigenous seed and plant varieties, saved in particular fridges that function at -20°C whereas totally different vegetation are grown across the centre.

“All these seeds and vegetation are given free to anybody who wish to develop them,” Sampa stated. Nonetheless, the centre, on common, receives solely about 4 requests a month, the officer informs.

Chikwangala is a small farmer of Mpemba village in Chongwe, a farming district about 50 km east of Zambia’s capital Lusaka. Chikwangala remembers with nostalgia the “good outdated days” when farmers may retailer seeds like maize after harvest in preparation for the following planting season. He says the hybrid seeds “imposed” on farmers aren’t solely costly but additionally dangerous to the surroundings.

“Farming has change into very tough and unprofitable as now we have to purchase seeds at very excessive value. These seeds have additionally destroyed our soils,” Chikwangala stated. Barbara Hachipuka Banda, chief government officer of non-profit Pure Agriculture Improvement Program Zambia that promotes native crop varieties, tells DTE,

“The seed harmonisation initiative has not considered the good variety in our agricultural practices. These legal guidelines are a sort of one-size-fits-all mannequin. Each nation has a definite circumstance and panorama. By making the continent one unit, you solely assist the multinational firms to commerce properly,” stated Banda. Mukuka stated: 

It isn’t COMESA’s mandate to cease these fascinated by coping with indigenous seed. Our job is that for those who wish to export they will use the harmonised system by SCCI [Seed Control and Certification Institute, Zambia’s seed authority] or different seed firms in international locations like Kenya or Zimbabwe.

In accordance with him, it is not going to have an effect on indigenous data, which is able to at all times be there on the gene financial institution at ZARI.

In November, 2021, numerous farmers’ organisations in Ghana appealed the Supreme Courtroom in opposition to the nation’s Plant Selection Safety Act (Act 1050), adopted in 2020. The teams, which included the Peasant Farmers Affiliation of Ghana, Meals Sovereignty Ghana (FSG) and the Centre for Indigenous Data and Organisational Improvement, stated the regulation was designed to strengthen multinational seed firms and would finally put Ghanaian seed firms at drawback.

Ghana’s parliament had mentioned this regulation some 9 years in the past and shelved it in 2015 following opposition by civil societies. In a go well with filed on the nation’s supreme court docket on November 11, 2021, FSG challenged the constitutionality of the Plant Selection Safety Act.

The attraction within the highest court docket stated that the brand new regulation threatened indigenous data and practices of saving, utilizing, multiplying stocking, exchanging or promoting seeds and different propagating materials.

In accordance with the petitioners, Ghana’s casual seed system accounted for 85 per cent of the entire seed market. So, by extension, the brand new regulation would additionally influence the livelihood of numerous farmers.

This was first revealed in Down To Earth’s print version (dated 1-15 Could, 2022)