Nonthaburi, Thailand
July, 6, 2025
Simon Nanne Groot, beloved father, friend, visionary, founder of vegetable seed company East-West Seed and former World Food Prize Laureate, passed away on July 6 in Enkhuizen at the age of 90.
A 6th generation seedsman, Simon Groot is seen as a figurehead and pioneer, recognized in the global seed industry and in the world of agriculture for his transformative efforts in lifting millions of smallholder farmers out of poverty in more than 80 countries. By providing them with quality seeds and imparting knowledge on improved cultivation practices, millions of farmers have earned greater incomes, benefiting millions of consumers globally with improved access to nutritious vegetables.
Simon Groot was bestowed the Order of Sikatuna in the Philippines, and he was awarded a royal decoration: Officer of the Order of Orange-Nassau.
With a strong desire to bring quality seeds to tropical regions, Simon Groot set foot in the Philippines in 1982 at the age of 47. Combining his innate understanding of the complexities of plant breeding, hand-in-hand with his background in economics, Simon Groot began working with the Royal Tropical Institute in Amsterdam and Filipino seed trader Benito Domingo to deliver quality seeds to smallholder farmers in Asia. As such Eastern and Western knowledge were combined.
His work has invigorated both rural and urban markets for vegetable crops, making nutritious vegetables more widely available and affordable for millions of families each year.
BACKGROUND
Background information: Simon Groot “It’s in my genes.” - Simon Groot Born in 1934 in Enkhuizen, a small Dutch town known for its world-class seed companies, Enkhuizen gained this distinction in no small part due to the activities of Groot’s own ancestors, who had been in the seed business for five generations. In fact, his family laid the foundations for the Dutch vegetable seed industry.
After graduating from Erasmus University Rotterdam with a degree in business economics and serving two years as an officer in the Royal Dutch Army, Groot entered the family business Sluis & Groot in 1958 at his father’s urging.
One of his first assignments upon starting at Sluis & Groot was a traineeship with Chicago-based Vaughan’s Seed Company, where he would learn more about the U.S. seed industry and practice his English.
In 1965, Simon Groot went on his first business trip to Indonesia to arrange flower seed production for Sluis & Groot. In the highlands above Jakarta, he discovered a field planted with cabbages of a variety that his own company bred and distributed. Though this variety grew well and uniformly throughout Europe, in Indonesia it was producing fewer heads, many of them misshapen. The variety which had been bred to thrive in a temperate climate had fizzled in the tropics. The thought struck him that here was a huge opportunity to introduce hybrid cabbage to the tropics. This idea would stick with him for 16 years until he would ultimately find himself in a position to do something about it and transform the lives of millions of farmers in the process.
When East meets West
Simon Groot founded East-West Seed company in 1982 in the Philippines with the idea that a good vegetable seed could change the lives of the poor. Having observed the many challenges facing poverty-stricken smallholder farmers in Southeast Asia, Groot set out to establish the first market-oriented vegetable seeds breeding company with smallholders as the main client base. After years of dedicated research and development with business partner Benito Domingo, Simon Groot introduced the first locally developed commercial vegetable hybrids in tropical Asia. These varieties were fast-growing, high-yielding and resistant to local diseases and stresses. Simon Groot also realized that in order for farmers to maximize the value of these high-quality seeds, they needed training on improved vegetable cultivation.
When Simon Groot started East-West Seed, commercial vegetable breeding was all but unknown in the tropics. Smallholder farmers struggled to grow a good crop with low-quality, poorly adapted seed that they often saved from season to season. Low-quality seed resulted in low yields, which translated into poverty and malnutrition for farmers and their families. Groot sympathized with the farmers’ plight and saw a way to break the vicious cycle of poverty and help farmers achieve prosperity through diversification into high value vegetable crops. It started small, with a five- hectare farm outside Lipa City, Batangas, to begin initial plant breeding activities and train local people as breeders and technicians. Rather than import seeds, Groot enlisted well-trained plant breeders from Wageningen Agricultural University in the Netherlands to jump-start the breeding process and help train locals. This association with Wageningen was among the first of the many public-private partnerships that Groot would cultivate through the years to aid his mission to bring quality seeds to smallholders.
Knowledge Transfer
Working closely with local and international NGOs, Groot created East-West Seed’s innovative Knowledge Transfer program, which was set up in 2008, which trains 150,000 farmers each year in good agricultural practices for vegetable production. As a result of better seeds and farming methods, farmers saw a dramatic increase in their profits, doubling or even tripling their incomes, and consumers found greater availability of these nutritious vegetables in their local markets.
East-West Seed serves over 20 million smallholder farmers in more than 80 tropical countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Simon Groot led the transition of millions of subsistence farmers, many of them women and youth, to horticulture entrepreneurs, greatly enhancing their livelihoods and income.
These farmers have invigorated both rural and urban markets for vegetable crops in their communities, making nutritious vegetables more widely available and affordable for millions of families each year.
In 1982 Simon Groot established East-West Seed in the Philippines. In 1986, East-West Seed locally developed the first commercial hybrid bitter gourd in tropical Asia. Soon after, hybrid tomato and eggplant and pumpkin varieties followed.
“I have always been a seedsman”
Their philosophy became to be the trusted friend of the farmer providing quality seeds, by exchanging knowledge, and by educating the farmers on better cultivation practices. Prior to that, most farmers were not aware of this method.
Like seed breeding, the development of the market in Asia was a long haul. East-West Seed now controls 80% of the vegetable seed market in the Philippines. It took ten years before East-West Seed had its first €1 million in sales, and another twenty to make the next €10 million. Simon Groot is an inspiration to other seedsmen, who followed his initiative in developing the seed markets in Asia. In 1994, he was one of the founding fathers and after that an active member of the Asia and Pacific Seed Association (APSA), and in 2003 of a consortium of vegetable breeders to support AVRDC - The World Vegetable Center - with funds and expertise. He was honored with a lifetime membership of APSA in 2014. In 2015, he was awarded the Mansholt Business Award for Sustainable Entrepreneurship at Wageningen University.
He successfully developed a dynamic, smallholder-centric tropical vegetable seed industry, starting in Southeast Asia and spreading throughout Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
His work has invigorated both rural and urban markets for vegetable crops, making nutritious vegetables more widely available and affordable for millions of families each year.
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