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AGRA’s Program for Africa’s Seed Systems

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Nairobi, Kenya
August 20, 2008

Dr. Joe DeVries, director PASS and Jane Ininda compare bean varieties at local market.

Source: AGRA Update

AGRA’s Program for Africa’s Seed Systems is a new venture in African agriculture whose mission is to increase income, improve food security, and reduce poverty by promoting the development of a seed system that delivers new crop technology to farmers in an efficient, equitable, and sustainable manner.

PASS prioritizes getting funds to key individuals and agencies working directly with Africa’s farmers on developing new crop varieties, producing new seeds, and developing new delivery systems for getting critical inputs to smallholder farmers.

PASS is funding the development of new varieties of beans, cassava, cowpea, maize, rice, sweet potato and sorghum in 12 countries. Our crop development uses conventional breeding, and relies upon close collaboration between plant breeders and farmers. It pays special attention to conserving the great diversity of Africa’s crop varieties and cropping systems, and in many cases makes use of this biodiversity in developing new, higher-yielding varieties.

Circulating widely and working with front-line practitioners across a 13-country program area, in 2007, PASS Program Officers developed 43 grants totaling US$36,801,778, all aimed at improving crop yields under Africa’s
challenging farming conditions. Grants made by PASS in 2007 will train 80 new African plant breeders to the PhD level and increase yields of eight important food crops in six African countries.

Already, PASS-funded activities have produced over 400 MT of improved seed and trained over 400 village-level
distributors of seed in professional business practices. Equally important, PASS activities have communicated
an exciting message to a generation of agriculturalists working in both the public and private sectors in Africa that now is the time to bring forward new ideas for increasing food production—which until now have remained only dreams.

AGRA supports private seed companies across Africa.

In its first year of operation, PASS has breathed new life into Africa’s hopes for a green revolution based on increased harvests among its millions of hard-working small-scale farmers. PASS works along a value chain that begins with newly-trained African crop scientists, continues with funds for breeding new crop varieties, and achieves impact in the lives of farmers through a vigorous campaign of seed production and supply of agricultural inputs at village level.

PASS makes carefully targeted grants along a “value chain” of interdependent activities which includes:

“Education for African Crop Improvement” (EACI), which targets funds for education and training, especially MSc and PhD fellowships for plant breeders and other crop scientists;

“Fund for Improvement and Adoption of African Crops” (FIAAC), which makes targeted grants to individual breeders and their support teams to develop and popularize improved crop varieties of Africa’s major food crops;

“Seed Production for Africa” (SEPA), which provides grant support and equity investments for the emergence of private, African seed companies and other seed dissemination activities;

“Agro-dealer Development Program” (ADP), which provides training and credit to establish and support the growth of private, village-based agrodealers who are a primary conduit of seeds, and other agricultural inputs plus knowledge directly to smallholder farmers to increase their productivity and incomes. It builds and develops networks of certified agro-dealers to enhance the quality, volume and range of seeds sold. This will result in a significant increase in adoption of improved crop varieties.

Complete newsletter: http://www.seedquest.com/News/releases/2008/pdf/23442.pdf

 

 

 

 

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