Author Archives: seedethiopia

Strengthening EGS production & supply through systems thinking

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The Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EAIR) and Regional Agricultural Research Institutes (RARIs) are key seed sector stakeholders. These institutes have a lead role in variety development, variety maintenance and quality EGS production. To support and strengthen their efforts ISSD provided a training to these organisations staff, highlighting the opportunities that the ISSD approach and adopting a systems perspective could present. Read more

Innovations improve linkages between seed supply and demand

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Ensuring seed supply matches demand is a complex national process. Various institutional bottlenecks continue to result in farmers not getting seed of the varieties they want, while unused seed sits as carryover, degrading and potentially becoming unusable. ISSD and partners strive to address these challenges and our collaboration is yielding promising innovations. Read more

Social capital and community welfare motivates nodal farmers’ informal seed exchange

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Nodal farmers’ role and motivations to exchange seed in their locality formed the topic of recent research. ISSD Tigray Unit facilitated a Wageningen University (Netherlands) researcher to conduct a seed social network analysis, concluding that while nodal farmer self-interest plays a role, community and neighbourly well-being remain important factors in engaging in seed exchange. Read more

Local seed business models revisited

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ISSD Ethiopia provides evidence for the sustainability of local seed business (LSB) in Ethiopia by revisiting 33 LSBs graduated from programme support in 2015.

The study set out to test two assumptions of the programme. The first is that the LSB model is commercially sustainable and the second is that LSBs make a significant contribution to the local seed security of smallholder farming communities.

A full report on the study can be downloaded here.

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